Ambiguity

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.
Delicious Ambiguity.” 

- Gilda Radner

     For years I thought  that ambiguity was the sole propriety of language.  I considered a sentence, a passage, a poem, a story, anything with words that was unclear as ambiguous.  And that's where ambiguity stopped.  In 1989, Gilda Radner died of cancer and I discovered this quote.  That's when the door opened on ambiguity for  me.

     Initially, I didn't like thinking of life as ambiguous.  I wanted to know exactly what was going to happen, how exactly were things going to turn out.  I didn't like waiting for outcomes and, instead, I determined that whatever way I wanted things to go was the way they were going to go.  Big mistake.

     More recently, I have made room on the bench of life for ambiguity. Ambiguity is going to push its way in anyway so I might as well make room for it.  Specifically, this means that I don't assume to know exactly how things are going to turn out.  It means that I can be curious about the outcome of some situation rather than decide that I am in charge of everything and that the universe will obey my demands.  

     Making room for ambiguity certainly does make life more interesting and, yes, entertaining. 

I know what I painted but do you know what I painted?  Ambiguity in art!

My Room

    

  Here's an odd revelation.  I recently discovered an ideal place to which I can retreat after work.  It's a quiet room, about 14'x14'.  It has a high ceiling and a lovely large south facing window.  The walls in this room are a creamy yellow with two of the walls having deeply rich wooden wainscoting. The high ceiling's soft ivory colored paint extends about 10 inches down the wall and the seam between ivory and yellow is covered with a delicate wooden strip. It probably won't surprise you that the floor is a beautiful light oak hardwood.  About two thirds of the hardwood is covered with a richly textured deep burgundy rug. That large glass window is actually comprised of a lot of smaller panes and those panes allow the yellow warmth of the sun or the gray heavy of the clouds to see and be seen.

         There's not a lot of anything in this room.  There is a comfortable easy chair with a soft footstool. A soft ivory/green/brown plaid cotton blanket is tossed over the armrest.  There are a couple of wooden chairs, a couple of stools (the kind that artists sit on), and an old library table.  The chairs and stools  have stacks of books on them as if that is their only purpose.  The table is a little dusty and has some scattered papers but that's about all.  I found out that I have permission to go to this room anytime I want and so I spent a significant amount of time there this week.  

      What did I do there?  Not much.  I picked up a couple of the books and flipped through them but put them back.  I tried out the easy chair and one day even took a short nap in the late afternoon sun.  I spent a good chunk of time just looking out the window, wondering about the world outside.

  If you want to see this room, try using this map:

If you get lost, this map might be better:

See you there!