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Description
Because it felt like too much for one person to hold.
I let them loose, all these conflicting emotions.

I was overwhelmed with the most bizarre mix of melancholy and ecstasy. I was stung a with a sharp sense of longing and loneliness. My mate is nearly a thousand miles away in a temporary (but still months-long) work situation. At the same time, though, a deep feeling of appreciation for the beauty of life welled up and mixed with the pain.
I was traversing roads cut through rural rolling hills. As I drove I was aware of the ancient coral beds and sediment that built up the layered rocks in the area, remembered learning how this was once the floor of a sea, so staggeringly long ago. I remembered the sabertooth cat fossils found no more than thirty miles from here. I imagined those great cats prowling the very landscape I now make my home. Their bodies were nourished by, then returned to, this very land. It seems like such a miracle. How could one place have been so many different habitats throughout the passage of eons? The atmosphere was a protective blanket spread above, above the lights of the city off to my right where hundreds of thousands of people lived. They were people I had never met living their lives regardless of my existence. An hour or so before, I had left the city where I work. The exercise of attempting to help people for my job is also another source meaning that often tinges my existence with satisfaction. The sky was deepening into darker blue as evening fell. It felt like my spirit soared into it above the dim gold glow of my headlights.

Oh yes, I was alone. I was a singular organism separated from its mate by the kind of distance that only migratory animals tend to overcome. Only humans can maintain a love connection over distances so far, and it still hurts. But this pure joy at the miracle of existence still washed over me. Pain and joy mingled together. This ecstasy was not happiness exactly, not warm contentment, but something powerful nonetheless. Meaning is probably a good word for it. It felt like too much for one being to keep locked inside.
So I got home and digitally painted this rather abstract thing. As usual, the feline subject represents my human experience. Flowing and exploding out of the cat subject (black silhouette in the lower right corner), there’s the brilliant gold of joy, strength and appreciation for how meaningful life is. There’s the blue and violet as well symbolizing the longing and sadness. There are the intertwining green tendrils representing the way nature and all of life is connected.
I felt like this tangle of feeling was too much to hold so I released it into the cobalt night sky, watched it twisting and swirling like colored fire. There may be an eternal contradiction to life as we know it, and the intensity of the human experience is a double-edged sword, but even in the bittersweet contrast it is beautiful.

Description
Because it felt like too much for one person to hold.
I let them loose, all these conflicting emotions.

I was overwhelmed with the most bizarre mix of melancholy and ecstasy. I was stung a with a sharp sense of longing and loneliness. My mate is nearly a thousand miles away in a temporary (but still months-long) work situation. At the same time, though, a deep feeling of appreciation for the beauty of life welled up and mixed with the pain.
I was traversing roads cut through rural rolling hills. As I drove I was aware of the ancient coral beds and sediment that built up the layered rocks in the area, remembered learning how this was once the floor of a sea, so staggeringly long ago. I remembered the sabertooth cat fossils found no more than thirty miles from here. I imagined those great cats prowling the very landscape I now make my home. Their bodies were nourished by, then returned to, this very land. It seems like such a miracle. How could one place have been so many different habitats throughout the passage of eons? The atmosphere was a protective blanket spread above, above the lights of the city off to my right where hundreds of thousands of people lived. They were people I had never met living their lives regardless of my existence. An hour or so before, I had left the city where I work. The exercise of attempting to help people for my job is also another source meaning that often tinges my existence with satisfaction. The sky was deepening into darker blue as evening fell. It felt like my spirit soared into it above the dim gold glow of my headlights.

Oh yes, I was alone. I was a singular organism separated from its mate by the kind of distance that only migratory animals tend to overcome. Only humans can maintain a love connection over distances so far, and it still hurts. But this pure joy at the miracle of existence still washed over me. Pain and joy mingled together. This ecstasy was not happiness exactly, not warm contentment, but something powerful nonetheless. Meaning is probably a good word for it. It felt like too much for one being to keep locked inside.
So I got home and digitally painted this rather abstract thing. As usual, the feline subject represents my human experience. Flowing and exploding out of the cat subject (black silhouette in the lower right corner), there’s the brilliant gold of joy, strength and appreciation for how meaningful life is. There’s the blue and violet as well symbolizing the longing and sadness. There are the intertwining green tendrils representing the way nature and all of life is connected.
I felt like this tangle of feeling was too much to hold so I released it into the cobalt night sky, watched it twisting and swirling like colored fire. There may be an eternal contradiction to life as we know it, and the intensity of the human experience is a double-edged sword, but even in the bittersweet contrast it is beautiful.