Living in a northern clime where summer’s colors disappear and dissipate into the splendid clarity of stark white and whatever is its darkness opposite for several months every year, is pleasing, even self-justifying to the austere in me. The cool of being is replenished and fed by seeing out into a world which is so clean, clear and offtimes simple.

It remains unclear in all my most conscious efforts to probe my inner selves, what drives this sometimes search for the authentic: whether it is deeply me, or a necessity for which to search; for which to conduct a search. It is not only obvious and easy to relate to, but the austere in me cries out to be heard, to declare: “that’s me!”

What? A search for some sense of purity? of simplicity? of something lost, a thing for which to yearn lest life’s turns turn only upon themselves and the ground on which I rest crumbles to sand and dust?

I look toward the austere, toward the austere in my self, for that strength I need and for the will I will to be.