Acrylic on canvas/gunther
September 21, 2020
By Arthur H. Gunther III
There is at least a single incomplete umbrella in anyone’s life, no pole leading to canopy, a metaphor for incompleteness, perhaps something unfinished or just plain out of sight to anyone but you.
The journey taken, the one ahead, the one under way, well that’s yours, and you alone are the master of its fate. Is rain falling on the day you are going for that job interview? Is the umbrella at hand in which to disappear as you leave a love affair?
Is there protection in politically divisive times when those in charge would deny you the citizen an umbrella?
You know how to “hold” the umbrella, denied or not, for while its pole seems missing — incomplete — you know where it is.
Protection in life — and that’s metaphorically an umbrella — is what you make it, complete or not.
The writer is a retired newspaperman. ahgunther@yahoo.com