OUR PAST IS ALWAYS WITH US

Kevin Toolis wrote:

“How do we become the people we are? The mystery of our lives. Born within the slip-stream of our father’s and mother’s lives, we follow involuntarily in their wake. We never fully grasp the unseen currents that shift and shape; the imprint of their fathers and mothers before; the rites and cultural rituals of the preordained path; marriage, position, children; the flaws and inevitable failures of the mortal road. The onrush of our own lives, the glare of present novelty, blinds us. How much do we just re-enact variants of our forebears’ script? Mumble out the words of the same life song. By the time we believe we have seized command of our destiny we are already forged, unconsciously repeating determined patterns. Or torn by the rupture, as I was, between the city and an older, more tribal identity. In the becoming of our selves, in the confusion of the city, the mass of others around us, we think we escape the chain of lives behind us. But we never do. The baggage is invisibly passed on, transmuted into other forms, reappearing in other guises down the line; the trail of a wave, our own inexplicable response erupting somewhere within our futures. The wake of the past, our past, is always with us."

[Pgs 8-9 My Father’s Wake]

Art: The Ocean Never Ceases