We Sometimes Mistake What We Are for Who We Are

Daily Post: Observe

Been working with Ekphrastic Writing, taking inspiration from a piece of visual art. I used the self-portrait of Camille Pissarro.

Self-Portrait of Camille Pissarro

It’s a monotone sketch. Dark background and he wears a dark coat, clinging to his shoulders, with the neck opening hidden by a fleecy beard. Said to be a key figure in the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art movements, his dark eyes look out of his medium toned face. The eyes don’t stare, and maybe don’t even gaze, over the tops of the reading glasses perched fairly high on the bridge of his nose. The eyes look, his right eyelid a little lower, his left iris looking up, while the right perhaps focuses inward. Wearing an almost triangular hat, again light colored to balance the beard, Pissarro keeps his lips closed, the mustache hiding the slit between the partially exposed pair of lips.

The light must be coming from the lower left of the image, shining toward the subject-object of the work. Not at all photographic, he was afterall, an Imressionist artist. The glint of the light brightens the left side of the glasses, left as seen by the viewer, while the lack of light bouncing back at us from the right side of the glasses allows us to see through to the artist’s lower eyelashes.

Only now, I notice the hair, protruding from under the semi-triangular cap. The cap and face together form a bright capital T in a sea of darkness.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/observe

Another piece of writing from our writing group prompt today…

Querencia

Having never learned Spanish, this word sounds like it means something totally different from what it is said to mean by sources purporting to be truthful, or at least accurate.

Que usually indicates the root in Sanscrit referring to what. This root is used to make the word aqua. In other languages derived from Sanscrit, including English, there is also a relationship between what and water. In German it’s was and wasser. In Hebrew, ma and mayim, which is supposedly not related to Sanskrit. Anyway, my Hebrew teacher said it was because an untasted source of water was always a mystery. Always a question. That was my introduction to the name of the science of philology, which I had long loved without knowing her name.

So querencia sounds like what and hacienda kindof merged. What House? What home? The fantasy home that we can only have in our dreams. The home where there are always fresh flowers in the windows during the day, and a light at night. The home where someone awaits our arrival with open arms, a glass of wine, and a plate of cheese and crackers. The home where the sound drowns us not, but laps pleasantly around our feet, rising in gentle waves to bathe us.

Or is querencia a type of question? Yes, it brings us back to what, the exemplar question word. Like query and hence querant, the person coming to the Tarot reader. The one who wants to know. Kennen. Connaitre. Know. See. See what? See the eye. The eye is what sees what there is to see. Window is the eye for the wind. The wind carries spirit. Spirit knows all. What? What? Querencia. My final querencia is not the fantasy house. But the question. What? What lies where I can not see? What? The querant must query.

We mistake what we are for who we are.