Something out of Nothing

Why are art and literature important to us and our growth as human beings? When we sculpt, when we paint, when we compose, when we sing, when we write a story, a lyric, or a poem — we create something out of nothing. What I love most about writing is reaching into the shadows in my mind and drawing forth an image to be described, a feeling to be shared, or a story to be told.

Best when shared for the first time and new to those who receive them, or better yet, are new to me as well — they seem to spring from deep inside — from places I have not visited or have no memory of visiting. They are creations: Children of my mind that spring from the only things I truly own: my thoughts, my memories, my feelings, and my imagination.

They can be triggered by the slightest thing, from a whisper to a shout, from the faintest touch to a slap upside the head — springing forth with the explosive energy of a sun gone nova or uncovered only by the patient efforts of a true believer — piece by piece and layer by layer. Is it just arrogance to believe then, that perhaps far within this process lies the gentle hands of a powerful partner — that the creator of the universe still inspires creation among his creations?

The rational mind says there is no proof that God's touch moves within and among us. Reason allows no belief where there is no hard evidence. Yet neither can reason allow for the spark of creation within the human mind, for there is no evidence of its source. There is no rationale for something out of nothing. And yet we create, we write, we sing, we paint, and we sculpt. There is joy in the gift of creativity, whatever its source.

I take solace and find both joy and peace in my arrogance, in creating something out of nothing.

Mick

Something out of Nothing

The faintest spark of light in blackest night,
A glimmer in the shadowed dusk of thought,
The merest feather touch of deep insight,
The dearest treasure that cannot be bought,
A movement in the corner of your eye,
A raindrop in an ancient silent pool,
A tiny speck of life high in the sky,
The sudden rise of wisdom from a fool,
The first time childish innocence asks why,
A single snowflake on a winter's eve,
A silent word that rises in the mind,
A story that your heart says to believe,
And you believe, in what you cannot find:
The touch of God, swiftly and silently
Inspires human creativity.

Mick McKellar
October 2009

Golden Light

A day like today is a gem in the autumn coronet of the year. Soft and warm after a cool and foggy overture, it soaks like warm water into the chilled and frosty soil. The brilliant sunlight sets the golden foliage ablaze and lends a softly orange and brown patina to drifting and falling leaves.

Autumn's chill touch has spread the earthly slumber of cold nights across the land, but must retreat from the fiery gaze of the sun as its rays churn across the fields. Its tendrils tease the sleeping land to rouse, to once again feel life in trunk and limb and blade and stem. And though I know it will last but a few thousand heartbeats, I cannot help but feel hope for the surging life of spring, after the long sleep of winter. Here, on the very threshold of bitter cold and long dark nights, summer dances its last dance for 2009.

Mick

Golden Light

I love these sunny autumn days so much,
For in their brilliant afterglow, it seems
They reawaken thoughts of summer's touch,
Upon my slumbering and dormant dreams.
That here on winter's threshold, I can chance
Upon a splendid shining sunlit day;
When chilly winds turn wicked warm, and dance
Among the drifting leaves they blow away.
My heart goes forth, where I don't think it should.
I wish these halcyon hours could endure,
And that an ardent mystic artist, could
Paint them in memory both swift and sure:
Breezy, soft, and solemnly sylvan bright -
October's glowing days of golden light.

Mick McKellar
October 2009

Island

I'm not entirely certain why John Donne's meditation popped up in my head tonight. I think it may have more to do with newspapers than nuanced pondering. We have been bludgeoned by bad economic news, frustrated by lack of solutions, and infuriated by political infighting for so long that some of us may feel the need to just drift away, across that sea of doubt and dismay, to a place insulated from the noise and (at least) seemingly under our control.

Hemingway's Islands in the Stream paints problematic pictures of those who seek idyllic isolation. Then the popular song lyrics sculpt an ideal landscape: Islands in the stream that is what we are. / No one's in between how can we be wrong? / Sail away with me to another world.

Simon and Garfunkel's I Am a Rock resonates with Keweenaw residents: A winters day / In a deep and dark December; / I am alone, / Gazing from my window to the streets below / On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow. / I am a rock, / I am an island.

Perhaps the final words of their song strike closest to home for writers like me: I have my books / And my poetry to protect me; / I am shielded in my armor, / Hiding in my room, safe within my womb. / I touch no one and no one touches me. . . . And a rock feels no pain; / And an island never cries. In the Keweenaw, especially in the winter, it is easy to feel isolated from the rest of the planet -- despite the invasive news broadcasts and the constant links by Internet, phone, and cable. The sheer physical immensity of the snow, the cold, and the winds make you feel small and sealed away beyond a ocean of doubt -- in a frozen, white redoubt.

I guess it is the conundrum of human nature -- to seek isolation and yet be connected to one another -- "because I am involved in mankind." Tonight, I write from my island in the snow.

Mick

Island

I'm an island in an ocean of doubt,
My own little kingdom, where I'm the boss.
There are bridges in, and some bridges out;
I decide who's allowed to come across.
I also decide who's allowed to stay,
To visit, or take up their residence --
Until I tell them to just go away,
Or I let them stay, but behind a fence.
I dug the channel that keeps us apart,
For more control and to keep things cooler.
That ocean of doubt helps protect my heart,
For I used to be so peninsular.
"No man is an island," said old John Donne,
But I know better because I am one...

Mick McKellar
October 2009


John Donne
Meditation XVII: No man is an island...

"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

Dirt Clods and White Sound

Memories are quicksilver, tricky and shiny and always coming and going. I know not where they reside when they're not visiting me, and I'm not certain I want to go visit them. While daydreaming this afternoon, I was suddenly transported to the bedroom I shared with my three brothers on Crown Street in Westland, MI. It was the end of a long summer day and the last trailing flickers of green and golden twilight were tracing lines on the blue walls of the room.

I was on my side, my head aching and my hearing temporarily replaced by a hissing noise, a white noise that blocked the other sounds of our house. My brothers and I had been waging a dirt-bomb war with a group of neighborhood kids. Near our house was a gravel pit that also had large hills of clay soil -- sun-baked and crumbling into pieces just big enough to throw at each other. They would explode when they hit an object like a rock, a tree, a back, a leg, or a head.

I caught a high-arching clay grenade in the right ear and went down like a felled tree. I was about ten years old, and a casualty of the Cady Street Clay Wars. I walked home, but was sent to bed because my ear was full of dirt and I couldn't hear very well. Mom always cleaned our cuts, scrapes, and various and sundry wounds with hydrogen peroxide, which would foam and help cleanse them. With cuts and abrasions, this usually hurt like the dickens. How was I to know it wouldn't hurt to float dirt clods out of my ear?

Mick

Dirt Clods and White Sound

Long green shadows of twilight on the wall,
Flickered as the sun and clouds collided.
I felt Mom's footsteps -- heard nothing at all;
Nothing but hissing white sound, provided
By a clay-bomb smashing into my head,
And packing my right ear with dusty dirt.
Cool fingers probed my ear, swollen and red,
And I moaned to let her know that it hurt.
She turned me over and smiled in my eyes,
But I saw the brown peroxide bottle,
And the room filled up with my frightened cries,
As my siren roared up to full throttle.
While I squirmed, and I tried to get away
From the foaming touch of peroxide's sting,
She pinned my head on the pillow to stay
Put, and poured cold liquid into the thing.
I stiffened, preparing my shrieks and cries,
As I felt the foam and bubbles billow,
But pain never came, and before my eyes,
The dirt clods fell right out on my pillow.


Mick McKellar
October 2009