It's hard for me to put into words what I felt while visiting Colorado this past weekend for the first time in years. Having lived their over twelve years ago, from when I was a very young child, I experienced an influx of long forgotten memories, feelings, and even emotions.
It felt almost as if I was in my infancy again as we drove through golden canopies of aspen leaves under layers of deep blue hues. The clouds arranged themselves in ways that inspired photographic dialogues of various places I've been but cannot identify. It felt so foreign, but so familiar all at the same time, to the point where I'm not sure if I am even the same person I was back then, but my conscious mind was planted atop the soil of an unknown existence, one that certainly didn't belong to me...
For how could it be possible that I lived in such a scenically beautiful and dynamic setting? An entire lifetime of backdrops that could only be drawn with a palette of grey and brown, with only hints of green and blue hues--that was what defined me. Or so it would seem. So unsettling was the sight of towering mountains surrounding crystal blue lakes, with wispy stalks of grass swaying gently in the foreground breeze, that I could not seem to come to terms with the overwhelming feeling of bittersweet emotion that came over me.
On the one hand, I lived there. I lived in Colorado, and that defined my childhood from around age 3 to 8. It happened. It might feel like a long time ago, but I can still see vividly in my mind picturesque scenes of myself and my family at various places I only know exist because of these memories. There's no disconnection between that and my current life, only a fluid transition from childhood into adulthood. It was what it was.
Then why does it take so much effort to see it this way? Why does is feel as though there's a HUGE disconnection between my life back then and now? Why does piecing together the memories feel like the pouring through the pages of someone else's autobiography?
As I sat on the rock near the lake at the base of Pikes Peak, I thought to myself, "He was here, a long time ago." I recalled the place, and the sights and smells were distantly familiar, but it didn't feel like me. At least, not entirely, and not without effort.
I began to think to myself maybe the reason nothing was ever good enough growing up was because my story began in a place such as Colorado. Granted, I moved around a lot as a young child, but something is quintessential about the ages 3 to 8 in developing the foundation of who you become as a person. Also those ages have a way of creating endless memories that become undefined in your subconscious, almost like "free" memories that we can arrange however we want. Maybe that's the reason I darkly embraced the cold, empty reality I painted for myself while living in the East--because I knew I would return here one day, and continue whatever it was that I started here.
And that brings up another point. It would seem my life in Colorado is easier to make connections with my most recent life in Texas, if for no other reason than it's simply closer than Pennsylvania. So in a way, its as if I had two lines of existence--one that began, ended for a period of time, and continues in the west, and one that lived in the east. Being here in Texas, thousands of miles away from the place that made me who I am today (Pennsylvania) it is all too easy to detach myself from that life and almost block it out entirely, as if the whole experience had never happened. From that perspective, my life consisted of Colorado, and Texas. It's a very blue and green setting...
But I can't wipe Pennsylvania from my memories. It means way too much to me, so I cannot lose my grip on it. While Colorado shaped how I grew up, Pennsylvania shaped everything else about me. And now, looking back on it all, the feelings that can only be described as shades of grey, raw emotion and the feeling of being lost, are priceless in the most paradoxical way. It was me trying to figure out who I was and more importantly, why. Why was it that, under a cold, unsaturated sky, was I forced to answer some of the most important questions of one's life.
And my life in the east wasn't all cold and grey. Moments of light and warmth, of crisp blue skies and cool breezes, often found interesting ways to work themselves into my life in a way that created some of the most valuable memories I will ever have, and wouldn't trade for anything. It was the combination and contrast of these ideas that makes what I like to call a dynamic existence. It is one that everyone should have. When I leave the east for good, it will always hold a special place in my heart, and the good memories will be painful to recall.
I now believe living in Colorado is what inspired me hours upon hours of drawing and writing alone in my bedroom as a kid growing up in Pennsylvania. It was an unstoppable torrent of pictures and feelings I never quite was able to get a grasp on while I lived in Colorado--for I was too young at the time. But my life in Pennsylvania forced me into a new perspective from which I could read all these images from the outside and begin to make sense of in my own way.
The result of all this? I can't pretend to understand any of it. But I'm here in Texas as a consequence of all the choices I made in Pennsylvania and I am determined to find what it is my child version was looking for. Visiting Colorado both helped me understand some of my emotion, and managed to confuse me even further by adding back in a whole new layer of images. Its an inexplicable feeling, but one I wouldn't trade for anything, because it keeps me going every day.
More to come on this topic later...
