Never Alone

I’m dipping into my archive of slightly esoteric vintage artifacts for today’s daily dispatch, so be forewarned that I’m exercising a fair measure of creative license in braiding together vintage photographs of dubious provenance (and uncertain authenticity), two compelling quotations of 100% verifiable authenticity, and some personal musings on Rosslyn’s populated past and present. The result, a collage-like meditation on our home’s curious capacity to ensure that we’re never alone.

Yes, this might be a quirkish reflection. More poem than essay, though most of my poetry is in fact essaying on or toward something. If you prefer the quick and uncomplicated, I’m allowing that Rosslyn’s project and presence have added an interesting diversity of lives and stories to our small family, two century’s worth of residential forebears, and almost decade’s worth of our own family, friends, and a breadth of participants.

Let’s start with the intriguing cast of characters peopling this post. I know none of them. But this collection (including eleven others that I might share anon) came to my attention because they were reputed to be residents of Essex, New York. No other information. No provenance. Just a clutch of evocative portraits.

I hypothesize that this collection might actually be related to Essex Street in New York City. This confusing overlap has demystified previous artifacts attributed to our fair village. But, unless some insightful sleuth offers helpful insight, I’m considering the possibility that these timeworn images might in fact capture personalities that once wandered our village, laughing (though certainly not in these ultra serious photographs!) as they gossiped with neighbors. In fact, maybe some of them lived at Rosslyn once upon a time?

This last possibility, though highly improbable, is the spirit with which I plait these people into today’s reflection. Without further ado I pass the narrative baton to Billy Jack Brawner whose clever snippet below appeared in the Spring 2024 issue of Magnolia.

I’m standing in the doorway of my living room… For nearly a century, a variety of folks have called this place home…

I wonder about the people who lived here before and the ones before them and the ones before them… My mind wanders to all the memories this room must hold—the parties and arguments and the heartbreaks and laughter and the Christmas warnings and mundane Tuesdays… I feel a strange sense of awe as I consider the storied past of this place.

[…]

I suddenly realize that I am not unlike this room. I, too, am aged and storied, and holding within me a lifetime of memories… I, too, am free to change, free to rearrange, free to take on new stories. And I, too, I’m still brimming with the potential of all that is yet to be.

— Billy Jack Brawner, “Room to Grow”, Magnolia, issue no. 30, Spring 2024

“Brimming with the potential of all that is yet to be”, indeed. Amen!

This awareness of our Rosslyn connectedness to all of the home’s forebears has been omnipresent. We’re never alone. A related thought from Pete Goss about a sailboat rather than a home pulls it all together for me.

Aqua Quorum embodied the spirit of all these people, and it was the thought of them that later pulled me through the bad times, particularly during those cold, wet, grinding parts of the race that nobody sees. I was never alone.

— Pete Goss , Close to the Wind (1998), p100

This idea is still a seed slowly germinating. Water. Sunlight. Patience. Stay tuned…