And over the course of those three or so months she spent living and studying in Tuscany, she felt more creative, inspired, singular, and aware than she had in what may have been years. Once again sensing mastery of her own emotions, she was able to concurrently observe her life retrospectively and realistically entertain the future. Her life, and outlook on it, had been changed significantly in the previous months and during her time there...to different degrees and at varying paces.
How much of it had to do with the breakup she eventually initiated after three years spent unknowingly, and foolishly in her blindness, making herself emotionally subservient to the same broken man? Or perhaps to do with the sudden onset, and then creeping end, to the life of her uncle who suffered from stage four brain cancer...a man with whom she was admittedly not very close?
Or, on that strain, the recurring motifs of death that quietly swarmed her--Uncle, ex lover's concession of his occasional wish to be dead, a visit to the Parisian Catacombs, the Florentine Capuchin Bone Church...Perhaps some of this newly augmented sense of fatality came from the unabashed themes of the European art and architecture that she had been consuming like a glutton; themes that were bold and morbid to her young, untrained, and prude American eyes, still in the throes of denial.
The images and laudation of the past's people serve as stark reminders to the present's living that we are an extinguish away from sitting still in a skull forever--All of our energy dried up and moved on to somewhere fresher.
I am afraid to die.
Skulls in Catacombs, Paris, France.
McKenzieSheltonPhotography.
How much of it had to do with the breakup she eventually initiated after three years spent unknowingly, and foolishly in her blindness, making herself emotionally subservient to the same broken man? Or perhaps to do with the sudden onset, and then creeping end, to the life of her uncle who suffered from stage four brain cancer...a man with whom she was admittedly not very close?
Or, on that strain, the recurring motifs of death that quietly swarmed her--Uncle, ex lover's concession of his occasional wish to be dead, a visit to the Parisian Catacombs, the Florentine Capuchin Bone Church...Perhaps some of this newly augmented sense of fatality came from the unabashed themes of the European art and architecture that she had been consuming like a glutton; themes that were bold and morbid to her young, untrained, and prude American eyes, still in the throes of denial.
The images and laudation of the past's people serve as stark reminders to the present's living that we are an extinguish away from sitting still in a skull forever--All of our energy dried up and moved on to somewhere fresher.
I am afraid to die.
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Skulls in Catacombs, Paris, France.
McKenzieSheltonPhotography.
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