American artist Andrew Wyeth died on January 16, 2009. Christina's World is his most famous painting, but my favorite is Distant Thunder. A woman is resting or sleeping in a field at the base of a group of pine trees. Her hat is pulled over her eyes. A box full of berries and an empty coffee cup sit beside her. A dog rests in the grass behind her. It's a very peaceful, restful scene. In my mind I can hear the sound of the distant thunder as the lady rests after picking berries on a hot, muggy, late summer day. Even though nothing in the picture suggests a storm approaching, the title adds the unseen element.
It's a scene that reminds me of similar summer days, lying back in the grass on the lawn and resting as we waited for an approaching storm to arrive. In my mind I can feel the stifling heat and humidity and hear the distant rumbling of the thunder. I lie in the grass waiting for the wind, rain, and coolness that will follow. Those are the images that come to me as I view that painting. They are peaceful and soothing.
Sights, sounds, and smells will do that for you. They trigger memories, both good and bad. Paintings such as Distant Thunder act as memory triggers too. Last night's storm was also a memory trigger for me.
The first thunderstorm of the year rolled across the prairie. I should say it roared, not rolled. The wind blew so hard, the windows in our four-season porch rattled and shook. Before it arrived we could hear the sound of distant thunder and I thought of Wyeth's painting.
I had just sat down to start writing when the storm hit. We have large windows on two sides and a patio door leading to our deck on the other. It offers a great view of Mother Nature at work. In this case, she showcased a spectacular light show as lightning lit up the sky.
I turned out the lights and sat in the dark so I could view it without the reflections of artificial light from within the house. What a show it was! Flashes of lightning lit up the entire horizon, silhouetting the farms and trees in the distance. To the west, flashes of light backlit the grove of trees next to our house, creating an eerie, uneasy feeling within me.
The memory triggers were activated by the flashes of light through the trees and transported my mind back in time to events that remain a part of me, despite my efforts to bury them.
As the wind howled outside and the rain beat against the windows I was once again hiding in the tall grass and brush at the edge of a tree line with five other guys. The rain fell in torrents around us, as I pulled my poncho tighter around my head, trying to keep the pounding rain and misery out. It was a fruitless, losing effort. The rain soaked us to our very core. We were spending another miserable night on an ambush patrol in Vietnam. Those nights when the rain poured, the thunder rolled, and the lightning flashed, always added to the misery and apprehension. It was sometimes hard to tell if the distant flashes and rumblings were from lightning or were we witnessing a firefight in progress. Each flash was like another artillery round impacting and exploding.
Those sights and sounds triggered the smell of gunpowder hanging in the wet, heavy air, the smell of damp jungle foliage, and the wet poncho wrapped around me. The smell of burnt flesh and hair also linger somewhere in the recesses of my mind. Close lightning strikes and the resulting crash of thunder sent a wave of fear through me as we sat in ambush, but there was no place else to hide. Twice, we had guys hit by lightning and I had to go to their aid. To this day, I have a psychotic fear of being outside when it's lightning. I guess that's a good fear because lightning can be deadly.
The mind is an interesting entity. Sights, sounds, and smells triggered good memories and took me to places of peace and tranquility when viewing Wyeth's Distant Thunder. Those same elements transported me to a dark, foreboding place when viewed with the darkness all around me being illuminated by flashes of lightning. The sound of distant thunder, along with all the other elements, dredged up thoughts of another kind of distant thunder; the rumblings od a long ago war, buried in the dark recesses of my soul, that still find the light of day every now and then.
Most people don't realize how powerful the sight, sound, and smell triggers are in releasing memories. We all experience them every day. Many readers tell me that my stories trigger the release of memories buried deep within them also. When that happens, it becomes your story as much as it is mine. You become the person lying in the grass or sitting in the shade of your favorite tree, listening to distant thunder. I bet you can even feel and smell the approaching storm, and hear the wind rustling the leaves of the trees. How many of you have had that experience?
May the sound of distant thunder trigger only peaceful and soothing experiences from your memory bank.
No comments:
Post a Comment