We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates…
Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.
— Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows
This past year, I turned 70, published my first collection of short stories, and lost my eldest brother to cancer. These events left me feeling as if I am only now beginning to know who I am.
Sometimes, the most difficult emotions can reveal things we could not know any other way. My brother’s death became a part of the experience of publishing my book, like a shadow, working its way in and around the light. It awakened me not only to my vulnerabilities but also to my strengths. I realized that my grief made possible the deepest and most meaningful insights. It revealed to me the complicated love I felt for my brother. We didn’t always have an easy relationship. But he was a formidable artist and I deeply admired him.
Working on my book in the wake of his death, I began to see the path of my own life as a writer and I wondered, were it not for him, how would my life have been? Though long invisible to me, I came to see the web of our connection as a beautiful and inextricable part of my life.
The experiences of death and getting older, of continuing to work even as I grieved, were a kind of gift made up of light and shadows. The poignant wisdom of Tanizaki’s words has shown me how the complexity of our lives, though sometimes painful, makes for patterns of beauty that would not otherwise exist.
Carmelinda Blagg
After retiring as a legal assistant for IFC (an affiliate of the World Bank), I began writing and publishing short fiction and last year published my first collection of stories, Geographies, with Atmosphere Press. I am originally from Texas, but have lived in the Washington, DC area for over thirty years. It’s a place that has everything I love – avid readers, writers, bookstores, museums, and classical music.
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