ナショナルジオグラフィックのインスタグラム(natgeo) - 11月8日 23時07分

Photo and caption by @petekmuller. "Curiosity has been my avenue to discovery,” says my father, Norman, as we sit before a waning fire. His visit to #Kenya soon draws to a close and my questions have taken a more philosophical bent. “Not just in terms of art,” he continues, “but it has sustained my lifelong interest in nature and people, too.” For the last several years, I’ve been recording these conversations, hoping to gain a stronger understanding of who he is as a person, not simply as my father. Like everyone, I suppose, my impression of my parents has been shaped, quite unavoidably, by the nature of our relationship. As I get older, and watch my peers raise children, I cannot help but notice what a seemingly inescapable charade parenting demands. Many endeavor to hide their own insecurities and confusion for the sake of setting a strong or reassuring example for their children. As I enter my 35th year, and my father his 80th, I am eager to unpack the paternal dynamics and gain clearer insights into who my father is as a man. In addition to art, work and endeavors of the mind, we speak openly about weakness, uncertainty and priority. We discuss his past which, now that I’ve joined the ranks of manhood and possess my own ledger of missteps, can be more openly aired. Our conversations become less conclusive and his advice less prescribed. I am reminded of a passage by my favorite contemporary writer, Hisham Matar, on the nature of relationships between fathers and sons. “And the fathers must have known, having once themselves been sons, that the ghostly presence of their hand will remain throughout the years, to the end of time, and that no matter what burdens are laid on that shoulder or the number of kisses a lover plants there, perhaps knowingly driven by a secret wish to erase the claim of another, the shoulder will remain forever faithful, remembering that good man’s hand that ushered them into the world. To be a man is to be part of this chain of gratitude and remembering, of blame and forgetting, of surrender and rebellion, until a son’s gaze is made so wounded and keen that, upon looking back, he sees nothing but shadows."

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