Richard Brignoli: looking back in time, 1961 -2011

Richard in summer 1961; Montauk Point Light House, New York; roses and thorns;
contemplation and peace

some say do not look back because the past is elusive and can be read so many ways but memory and tangible objects spring the past into our consciousness where it impinges on the present. to rend the pleasurable and the painful from the present is to diminish the singularity of life, which occurs but once.

Richard Brignoli: in memorian, died 14 February 2006

Richard died in Greenwich, Connecticut , after becoming ill aboard his ship Carina. Shortly after his departure, his boat was caught in terrible storms and was damaged. Though in critical condition, the captain bravely steered his craft into Bermuda 's harbor. And then he was hospitalized, stabilized and flown back to Greenwich, where his family gathered at his beside to support him in his final moments. Brave Richard certainly, and he had many virtues. After our marriage collapsed when we were very young, our connection ceased until months before he died. A few brief telephone calls and a meeting that did not occur; I did not drive to Greenwich on that wintry day, preferring to put off our meeting until he returned, as he thought, several months later. Having completed his journey we would have had time to consider our divergent lives. As one draws towards the end of life's journey revisiting the past and understanding what was "then" and its incipient trajectories is worthy of meditation. The history of of one's life important most to the self but the story plays out against a field that is forever changing, the world's history. In any case, we never did see each other again; some who knew him in the years after we had been married told me about their experiences with Richard. Some I doubted, others confirmed what I had experienced, the person I had known in the 1960s. But is there not a core, an embryonic persona, a "heart" that is present from the beginning and given circumstances grows in certain directions, given opportunities and inclinations, while other areas wither or remain dormant or in the shadows, or are undernourished. No one escapes this human predicament but it is not not only humanity to whom this notion applies as the world in all its aspects in the present, in the past and in the future reveals.