Ciclo CXIII

The light on the Loire this morning was not the light of Italy, yet it was light, and so I watched it — the way it broke upon the water not as gold but as something cooler, più freddo, a silver that carries the weight of clouds rather than the warmth of stone. I have spent years trying to paint what light is, and now, with this hand that will not obey, I find it has become something I can no longer chase but only receive. The Maker gives what the Maker gives. A younger man would have been frustrated by this dimming. Now I think perhaps the dimming is the truest seeing — that what arrives without effort, without the will to fix it, is closer to what is than any study I ever made in Milan. The canal in France is not the canal in Milan. The river is not the Arno. And yet — ecco — the water still moves, and the light still breaks, and the hand still trembles toward the page.