Escape Into Chris – Entry 9
Sketch by Chris Al-Aswad
April 2009 – Normal, IL
All is incomplete
Can you handle
being
a work in progress
Can you handle
incomplete
unfinished symphonies
novels
portraits
The moments of perfection
of completion
like finished work
that you set your gaze upon
When I stop to think about
the shuffle and
that John Lennon song
pops into my head
the one about the wheels
it occurs to me that all we have
and all we’ll ever have
is unfinished work
I guess the realization comes
when you realize you’re not headed
to some moment of perfect
but just another
moment of unfinished
incomplete work
It was a dream I had
before I went to bed
I said ‘Dad-
both of us were in the car
on a strip of the highway
Both of us stared into the
light on the road ahead
What – my dad answered
Is it always like this –
I mean do you ever get
to the end of the road
That’s when the desert appeared
in and out of the shadows-
and cacti made faces
Your work is never done
and the road never ends he said-
Then are we lost I wanted to know-
No, we’re not lost, we’re just driving
We’re not lost. We’re on an adventure.
Many times, on this journey of life, I have felt “lost,” like Chris. Chris, like so many of us, was in a hurry to accomplish something; something he could recognized as finished, complete and worthwhile. I wish that he had had more awareness of how beautiful he was in his incompleteness; how truthful he was in his searching; how much of a model he was to me in his struggle.