As Midnight Meets the Morning Glory

You don't have to be an artist to feel that you are frequently faced with conflicts. Obstacles present unforeseen opportunities for a shift in one's current path, while forcing us to re-evaluate just how much our current paths mean to us, as we try to jump these hurdles to continue down the road. There are always moments of questioning, be it through life choices, artistic choices, or matters within ourselves, but with this questioning inevitably comes new answers, or at the very least...new thought.

It's night time in Concord. The world is asleep; I am heading to dinner with family, then a dance with friends. The past two weeks have been physically and mentally strenuous, balancing work and Luminarium, while trading in sleep for more time to work on grant proposals with Kim. And yet, over the last ten days, some of the most memorable moments took place in that same dark black: Bonding with company members late at night on the streets of Portsmouth, driving home at midnight after an incredible play (windows down and music up), finishing Luminarium's latest grant proposals by the blue light of a computer screen, dancing with friends in Peterborough in a hall brimming with laughter and music, and seeing this...tucked away, nearly out of sight against the garage door of my family's home:

A morning glory. A beautiful, brilliant blue morning glory bursting forth through the panes of the heavy garage door. Unbelievable! How this graceful little plant made it is both a mystery and the perfect example of overcoming an obstacle. Having taken root on the far side of the building, the plant apparently crept its way inside the roof, taking care to loop its way intricately across the back inner wall of the garage before lacing itself through the wheels of some old bikes mounted there, and ultimately poked its vines back towards the sun through the tiniest of cracks in the center window pane (having fulfilled its curiosity of the dark-lit room through which it wandered).

What wonderful little monster of a plant, popping out where least expected, taking the long, windy road, rather than the short one around the corner. It was such a comically beautiful sight, seeing this single, proud flower blooming towards a black sky with its companions peering through the glass from inside... It has defeated everything: the garage, the window, and even its name. There's no "morning" in this glory. Just a plant with a mission and a meeting with Midnight.

This week, as yet another fork in the road beckons me, as an obstacle makes me challenge my current direction and the possibility of new ones ahead, I will do my best to attack it like my little monster plant: I will accept the challenge, take on the adventure, and break away towards something new...that is, all while keeping my roots firmly in place.