Category Archives: Happiness

If You can’t Say Anything Nice, Why Not . . .

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We love to gossip and tell tales behind each other’s backs, don’t we. Of course, the public attitude is generally to decry such inhumane and ungracious behavior and to vilify those who allow themselves to be caught acting on it. Even those of us who shamelessly mock others for being unlike us don’t really like to admit we engage in such naughtiness. In fact, many of us are quite adept at picking on people for being precisely like we are and doing exactly the same sort of, well, picking.

It may just be that we need to reevaluate the whole way we approach such things. Being in conversation and community doesn’t mean we have to spend our energies on acting like those stereotypical meddlers we like to decry, which is of course precisely what we’re doing in decrying them. How much better to spend our energies and attentions together on positive and good things, like finding common ground, sharing what we admire and respect about each other and learning fine and meaningful and joyful things from and with each other. That leaves little room for interfering with other people’s ways of doing, being and living. We can sit around chattering and nattering with impunity when the intent is to be kind and thoughtful, and without worry when we’re not creating any sort of reasons for anyone else to be critiquing us either.

Improbable as it all may seem, we all know from experience that there are good and happy and positive things to be discussed and done and that there can be just as much pleasure in them as in exercising our Schadenfreude instead.graphite drawing

Naturally

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Along with all of the other, perfectly legitimate and obvious, reasons that I celebrate every year when I am remembering the arrival of my next-younger sister on her birthday–the first one remembered mostly anecdotally given my tender years on the occasion, and all of the subsequent ones fitting days for delighting in the gifts with which her continued presence graces me and all of her circle of influence so consistently–I rejoice in the greater sense of appreciation for nature that she has given me.photoShe is something of a bouquet herself. Indeed, she is beautiful in the way of pretty things throughout nature, and also filled with liveliness and energy and purpose and growth that inspire me and amaze me regularly. I look on her as an enhancement of the world a little like a human bloom in its garden, unfolding each day and year with new surprises and joys that reinforce the very image of goodness in life.photoIn a more concrete way, with her love of the outdoors and its grand presents, pleasures and promises she has taught me and continues to teach me to appreciate the natural world as well. As much as our garden-genie mother shared her love of interacting with the created spaces in nature and even getting outdoors appreciatively on day hikes, in parks and on strolls wherever we could, the number-three sister in our quartet has given me yet greater love and sympathy for the breadth and depth of possibility in all those realms of nature and more. I will never keep up with my sister’s skill and prowess when it comes to being physically ‘outdoorsy’ as athlete, gardener or explorer, but every time I step out any door into the untrammeled world, I do and will see much of it as a living bouquet paying tribute in return to one of nature’s loveliest flowers.photoHappy birthday, my dear sister, and I send you these little pictures and words in token of my love that spans from your first blooming in the world to the end of my seasons.

O Ye Subversive Saints

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digital artworkRebels, radicals and reformers of the human superhero type are rare enough that we need to remember them and recognize the astounding things that they have accomplished despite their mortality. In those who–whether born to the task, having climbed to it willfully, or even having pretty much fallen backward into it–manage to effect positive change in the world, we are not only given an example but the encouragement to believe that we can and should attempt our own reforms and renewal, however small. Remembering today the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we are in turn reminded of the activist for whom he was eventually made namesake, Martin Luther, and of all the other agents of change who have marked our history by following, or better yet, setting, such grand examples.digital artwork from a photoThat Dr. King’s life in some surprising ways echoed that of his historic predecessor, from his questioning of not only social norms and civil authority but also the very early challenge he made as an astute youth to the principles of the very faith that later helped shape his determination to work for reforms. This should perhaps be true of each of us in some small degree: that we take it as our birthright and perhaps even our very nature to challenge any sort of thing, small or large, that smacks of injustice, of cruelty, of greed, or any other of the constant failings of humanity, and that we dare to speak out on it, if not act. To do so is best made possible when we know that we tread in the footprints of many who seem to us far mightier than ourselves, but who in their own turns very likely sought out the same comfort and encouragement from their own forebears, as we all must.digital artworkI, for one, am deeply thankful that there have been, and are, so many exemplars whom we can name our guides and helpers in this, because the need is never-ending. Peacemakers and healers and all of those who in their ways both magnificent and minute seek to better the lives of those around them will always be in high demand. May we all show our gratitude by heeding the same call as well as we are able.digital artwork from a photo

Rancho Romantico

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digital painting from a photoIn a Sentimental Mooed

Oh, pretty little heifer cow, I think you’re cute but know not how

Appreciation paid in full to such sweet charm could seem but dull

Poor compensation for my plain bland bullishness; am I a drain

Upon your dewy calf-eyed ways; am I so silly in my craze

For you, adorable and fine, that I’m a fool to wish you mine?

Nay, let us frolic and cavort and caper ’round for joy and sport,

Let us delight in being calves and neither shrink from fun by halves

Nor ever find we’re short of hay in pasture, or get sent away,

Or be penned up, for these things, too, would make a poor calf cry Moo Hoo!

No tragedy besmirch our wooing and leave us sadly this way mooing;

Let us, instead, just take a vow to stay together, bull and cow.

The Waiting Game

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Life as we know it in the present day is characterized as a hurry-up-and-wait proposition. We tend to bemoan the pressures at both ends of the spectrum with something like a sense of martyrdom, thinking this push-pull unique to our era. But it’s always been so. One only has to study a smidgen of history to recognize the same complexities of speed and sluggishness, and note the same anxiety regarding both, in our predecessors.

Now, I’ve never been pregnant or had a child of my own, but I have it on reliable authority that that process is rife with opportunity to experience the perfect distillation of both forms of anxiety. I can say, from my years of babysitting and cousin-watching and then a couple of decades of teaching, that regardless of the legal or moral or biological relationship, the ties we have with those younger than ourselves bring out such parental fears, anticipation, dread and excitement with greater intensity than pretty much any other kind of connection can do. Terror and hope will always intermingle in the heart if we have any concern for the young, filling the stasis of Waiting from the moment of their first cellular appearance and well beyond into full adulthood.graphite drawingLife and safety and comfort are all such tenuous things, it’s a wonder we don’t all burst into spontaneous flame from the sheer tension of our worries and our desires. The only assurance we have is the history demonstrating that our forebears somehow survived their concerns over us, and theirs in turn for them, back into the far reaches of historic memory. The tipping away from apprehension and toward faith in what lies ahead is the gift that enables us to wait, no matter how illogical and impossible it may seem.

The Fantastical & the Fleeting

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Stuff is ephemeral; imagination is what endures.graphite drawingReal life has enough elements of adventure, romance and mystery to sustain us–indeed, to astonish and entertain quite endlessly–but if we don’t record and celebrate such magic parts of our history they are lost. If we fail to study our chronicles and journals of such marvels, they are but dust.

So the sages among us keep what documents they can and teach us as much as we’re able to learn. What, though, becomes of all this if we are ourselves not so sage? Those of us for whom history is mostly data, steeped and stopped in the past, rely on fantasy to renew in us a sense of the remarkable. The fictional, metaphorical and colorful characters, creatures and cataclysmic events we create in our arts give us vehicles for understanding the true mystical powers in our real lives. Types and archetypes remain because they represent not Things so much as Experiences, not acquisitions but states of being. Through these avatars and our vicarious living of all the extremes that we can imagine, we revisit–and can even revere–the lives that have gone before us.

Through these imaginings, we are best moved to become greater than our small natural selves. In our better selves we have hope of living out lives that might, in turn, outlive us to inspire later generations to dream beyond, to imagine greatness and loveliness not yet known. Dream on, my friends, dream on.

The Sound of Inner Peace

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photoSilence is both elusive and therefore, golden in this life. Even when we can escape the ambient clamor of our everyday existence it’s rather rare to achieve the sort of true silence that’s found in deep contemplation, deeper meditation or deepest sleep. Our own brains make an immense quantity of distracting and sometimes just plain disconcerting noise so much of the time that it’s rather remarkable we even know what silence is or can be.photoIt’s almost ironic, then, that what makes inner calm and silence possible for me is often music. The way that music can clear my mind of mess and detritus, allow me to empty myself of unproductive or unpleasant things and focus on things of grace and beauty until my mind opens up so wide that it can embrace genuine calm, peace, contentment and meaningful introspection, achieve a kind of silence that transcends nothingness and surpasses quietude. Music makes me whole.photo

Airy-Fairy

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graphite drawingPossibilities

I think I have a hankering for things both rich and strange

To the degree that anything I love requires a change

From normalcy into a state you might consider odd

Or simply having no real weight upon the native sod

Of humankind–that is, not kin to mortals and their sort–

And if you find my life herein just makes you give a snort

Of disbelief (maybe disdain), I’ll not call it affront,

But pity you the sad refrain of living such a blunt

And circumscribed existence as mere ‘normalcy’ implies,

While I, adorned in fairy dust, take to the endless skies.

 

Foodie Tuesday: Hospitality as Apotheosis

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photoBeing good and doing well make us just a little bit more like angels. Making good food and treating guests well is just that much better. It’s a feeding not just of the stomach but also of the spirit. It puts one in a state of grace that can be earned, but at the same time is the richer for being given without thought of such recompense. A simple cup of hot coffee proffered with kindness becomes through this transubstantiation the elixir of joy.

Today I woke up thinking of such hospitality as I was remembering a time thirty years ago when I was the fortunate beneficiary of it. I was a recent college graduate, working for my uncle’s construction company while I paid off undergraduate loans and contemplated the prospect of taking out more for grad school, and I was sent out with a couple of fellow workers to spend a few days laboring on the repair and renovation of a hundred year old farmhouse out in the country. The weather was pleasantly warm and the house only moderately shaggy for its vintage, and the owners were friendly on our arrival.photoThe work, still, was dirty enough–removal of and repair from exterior dry rot and moss that was encroaching on the northerly upper story window frames and trim, and some interior rebuilding that the lead carpenter on the team would start framing in as a new arch between living and dining spaces as soon as the group effort of tear-out was finished on the second story outside. It was a pretty and classic old farmhouse, with a wraparound porch hugging it so that we were able to set up on the porch roof’s venerable cedar shakes to do our second-story work without having to run our ladders the full height from the ground. But therein lay the problem: by the end of the first day of demolition, the aforementioned carpenter was almost demolished too when the footing he’d installed on the roof for his ladder gave way, the ladder went flat with its top end spearing through an upstairs window and its base making a perfect slide for said gentleman to go shooting straight, if uncomfortably, off the roof.

The other guy and I were close by on either side of Chuck, but neither Jake nor I could, in the split second it took for this to happen, stop the ladder or him from going straight down into the gloom below. There was a terrible moment of near-silence while we scrambled over to the gutter to see whether we could get to him; the first thing we could see was the steel post of the truck bed spearing upward menacingly right about where he’d fallen, so we were breathless with horror as we peered over the edge into the dusk. To our immense relief, Chuck was lying in the spiny shrub next to the truck bed, where he’d slid instead, and though he had some impressive bruises afterward, he’d neither been impaled nor broken a single bone. Needless to say, there was a different wrap-up to the day than we’d planned, what with boarding up a broken window for the night and assuring the owners of the house, who’d come running at the crash, that all was going to be fine. No deaths, no lawsuits from either side, and an even better-repaired window, since we’d now rebuild the thing and re-glaze it rather than just scraping and painting.

Perhaps it was a bit of bonding brought about by the emergency that made them adopt us afterward, the homeowners, but whatever the cause, our next few days were among the most pleasant I ever spent on the job (along with those spent working in the house of the lady who afterward became another uncle’s life partner!), and the sweetness of it lingers in my memory. The second day was such a benevolent spring day that I opted to stay on the roof and eat my lunch while reading an Agatha Christie novel. That worked out remarkably well, for when the man of the house came out to see why I hadn’t come down with the others, he chatted me up about my enjoyment of British mysteries, disappeared, and reappeared later with a grocery bag crammed with said delicacies. It turned out that he was an English professor at the University and taught a course in this very topic, and that along with the house’s ‘issues’ for which we’d been hired there was one of steadily decreasing bookshelf space thanks to his and his wife’s reading habits.

The next day, there was to be no reading on the roof. All three of us workers were summoned into the house at lunchtime and seated at table. While the Professor expressed his kindliness in the gift of books, his wife expressed hers in culinary largesse. I had already thought her a very beautiful woman, with her elegant and mysteriously foreign-looking features, deep-set warm black eyes and smooth brown skin and all, her patrician carriage that belied a gentleness of manner, and her sleek black hair, but I think I fell in love with her more than a little when she put the food in front of us. It wasn’t terribly complex, perhaps, this meal, but it was heavenly. She served us robust bowls of satin-smooth potato-leek soup with slices of dark pumpernickel bread covered in rich Brie. When we thought we might be entirely filled up, we made room for more, because she came back to the table with a freshly baked, perfectly spiced apple pie.

It may be that these things have long since disappeared from the minds of all of the other players (though I find it hard to imagine Chuck has forgotten his scary adventure entirely), but the beauty of that meal so suffused me with happiness that I find it coming to me intermittently still, after all these years. I have no idea who the Lady and the Professor were and don’t even know precisely what became of Jake and Chuck, so I can’t check my facts let alone repay the kindness. I can only hope to pay it forward. I do have some of my home-brewed chicken broth in the fridge; might have to fix someone some soup soon.

Potato-Leek Soup (as remembered)

Boil a few medium-sized potatoes in enough well-seasoned chicken broth [vegetable broth, if you’re not a meat-eater] to cover them fully. While the potatoes are cooking, saute a bunch of sliced leeks in butter with a little bit of salt until melted. Deglaze the pan with a hearty splash of dry Sherry or brandy or whatever dry white wine happens to be handy.

(If you have to open the bottle for the occasion, why then you’ll probably have to have a sip whilst you cook. This is all the better if you have a friend or acquaintance standing by for the meal; you’ll enjoy the visiting all the more.)

When the potatoes are cooked and softened through, add the leeks to the pot, along with (optionally or–if you ask me–optimally) a splash of cream. Using a stick blender, puree the lot until as smooth as possible, adjusting the thickness with any of the three previously introduced liquids as desired, and tasting for seasoning. If you don’t have a stick blender, a regular blender will do as long as you take the necessary precautions against blending hot foods–or just use a potato masher and have a more rustic soup. This soup won’t lend itself perfectly to chilling like a Vichyssoise, because the butter and cream can curdle or separate, but warm or hot it should certainly be filling and definitely warm the spirits.

Cook. Share. Polish your halo. Enjoy.photo

 

Lean

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graphite drawingAs I lean into the new year (or slouch, depending upon your perspective), I am past the holiday’s excesses just enough to recollect my determination to become leaner. In body, perhaps a bit–though fitter would be a better term for my desire there–but mainly in attitude. I am reminded by the delightful yet unnecessary overabundance in my life that I could and should aim for a slightly more streamlined existence.

I am no Spartan by any means, and have no particular desire or sense of need to become monkishly ascetic. But I know that when luxury is the norm I am less appreciative of it and run the risk of simply being misled, if not sickened, by it. So as is often the case at the start of a new year I will indulge in paring down rather than piling on my acquisitions, my Stuff, my lifestyle. I will focus as best I can on getting the most out of what I do have, telling myself less that I ‘need’ something that I don’t have, and sharing what I can with friends who are less over-indulged and better yet, the have-nots around me.

It may not improve my posture, but it will surely improve my attitude. I look forward to putting my shoulder to the wheel and leaning in to it for a bit.