My Dearest Boy

My dearest boy,

Someone once said that when you reach forty, your demons will eventually shatter the glass dome of your soul and escape.
Well, that someone was correct. However scary those demons might be, especially if they come from a childhood scarred by a ravaging war, I say: make peace with them, or they shall haunt your days until the sun sets on them.
I made peace with them; I knew I ought to; I ought to make peace with them to allow the light to filter in again. I am returning to you very soon, my dear boy, with the birth of that peace; conceived beneath that marvellous light. I am returning to you clutching 40 canvases with no sign of shadows on them. Still, only light, a spectacular light, that mid-day light cast across the mountains. The light that makes the cicadas sing loudly, from pain they say, yet I am inclined to believe that it comes from Love—the eternal love of that light,
the light that makes colours so pure and bright.

I am returning to you with my homes and their dear com, the tall and mighty pine trees. Do you still play under those pine trees?
Don’t answer this question now, we shall have a lifetime of correspondence, and you shall tell me about them.
A great friend once said:
“Always at home. Eventually, we reach our goal – and it is then, with pride, that we can point to the long travels we undertook to reach it. In reality, we were not even aware of the
travelling. But we got so far because we believed at every point that we were at home.”
His name is Nietzsche. Do you know him? Well, I suppose not at your age, but you shall know him soon, and you shall love him dearly.

I mention this because the most precious treasure I am bringing back to you is my home – A bouquet of homes, in fact- the HOME that merged in me to become an abstract, and I believe now that it will always be a presence on my canvases.

Though I am not lamenting this pain; on the contrary, it’s a source of beauty, which is admittedly a cheerful thought. I’ve learned during the long travels I undertook (as Nietzsche said) that home is the skin that covers my whole. I know and knew too, that home is the person we love. And surely home is everywhere we smile, and we make love; home is where a bird sings to us; home is the embrace of a true friend; home is me
and you under that mighty pine tree.
You shall see solitary homes and solitary pine trees on those canvases, my dear boy,
Yes, when you make peace with your demons, you will start loving your solitude, and you will begin to cherish it. That yellow Home on the cliff is happy; he is happy in his completeness; he is happy in his solitude.

That black pine tree on the other cliff, my cherished cliffs, the cliffs of your mountains, that solitary pine tree is a free soul, a beautiful soul, and a story to be told.
Will you wait for me under that pine tree?

Yours dearly,

Gilbert Halaby