Tag Archives: happiness

The Googly-eyed Romantic Point of View

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Admit it, you start to slip into a coma the instant someone else starts spewing the horrifically saccharine details of their great love story. I do too; it just doesn’t stop me from being the mushy bore myself the moment I see a hairline of an opening. Honestly, don’t we all do it? There’s nothing much any of us are more inclined to brag about than our happiness, and nothing much that gives us greater happiness than fancying ours the Greatest Love Story in History.

You can be forgiven if you didn’t know yet that that title was already mine.

photoParticularly since I’m quite certain my love story doesn’t conform quite perfectly to your–or anybody else’s–idea of the ideal romance. We’re not much, around this household, on many constant and overt expressions of commercially endorsed couplehood: bouquets of roses, spontaneous gifts of expensive jewelry and sports cars, and going out to chateaux with extravagant four-star restaurants to toast each other over mortgage-worthy vintages are just not high on the list of things we often do. On the other hand, I am in the company of someone still teenager-enough to really like holding hands, hugging like there’s no tomorrow, and blurting out “I love you” pretty much every few minutes or so, even if we happen to be sitting right next to each other. He also reads to me, cuts my hair, laughs at my pitiful jests, cooks for me when there’s time, takes me on meandering road trips or spectacular world travels when the opportunity arises, covers my eyes when the really gruesome surprise is coming up in a scary movie he’s seen before so I won’t have to be tranquilized later, and sings me ridiculous made-up songs in the car.

Thing is, being soggy Romantics isn’t just about the stuff or the standards. It’s about finding pleasure not only in those storybook moments of ecstatic bliss but especially in the ongoing and real kindnesses and shared tasks that fill up the everyday, because the everyday is such an insurmountable percentage of our lives, singly and together.

So there’s no question that one of the things I find most romantic in my partner is that he does have an appreciation for all kinds of beauty and learning and amusement and work, from nature’s resources to friends and family, from rambling around a run-down part of town to finding starlight in the arts that we share as both as passion and as vocation. It’s reassuring, after all, that there’s not some impossible measure of queenly perfection I myself am expected to meet but that he sees good in the ordinary me and values it as though it were something romantic.

All the same, it doesn’t hurt that he’s fed me filets, tirelessly supported my “Expensive Hobby” career of being an artist/writer, and he’s taken me to castles and cottages, forests and mountains, cities of great sophistication and incredible vividness and hidden hamlets with more shaggy livestock than human population, and to seas both of the stormy north and those surrounding tropical islands. It is, truthfully, pretty romantic to stand at the shore of the ocean with the best person in you whole life right by your side.

photo + textThe most striking fact of our coming together as such a love-sodden twosome is that we were both quite content in our single lives and expected to live that way perpetually. I’m convinced that because we both liked who we were and how we lived our lives, had surrounded ourselves with a constellation of astonishing friends and loved ones, and had endless interesting things to do with our time and attentions, it was easier in reality to fall in love than if we’d been avidly hunting for something either of us felt too keenly that we lacked. And that is for me the romance in any part of life: that we don’t necessarily require it to make us whole or contented or excited or whatever-it-is; it’s a genuine, unexpected, unearned treasure. A gift, a bonus. The prize.photo

Get Out Your Super-Spy Gear: the Future is Inscrutable Yet Inviting

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graphite drawingWhen my sisters and I were kids, the Cold War was still chilling the spines of two cranky paranoid continents to pretty much the polar-offset temperature of today’s heated heights regarding relations between, say, anywhere in the middle east and the US. So we regularly crouched under our little school desks in Cold War air-raid drill positions that would’ve made us a whole new and much more crouch-y Herculaneum if Da Bomb had ever actually been dropped on our noggins. The fact that my early heartthrob Morgan M [name redacted to protect his dignity, if any] had vomited all over our shared desk when the Hong Kong flu swept through our school might’ve made my particular spot-de-crouch that much more stalactite-covered and sculptural, had I dared to look upward, but really, there was no greater sense of danger in those classrooms than the one that some teacher might decide my huddling wasn’t taken seriously enough, so crouch I did.

I also, along with my sisters, considered playing cowboys-and-Indians pretty generally passe, so 1950s, don’t you know, and eschewed that popular pastime for the much better use of our coolness in playing Secret Agents. That we never actually spied on anything more exotic than our own basement Rec Room or went on any mission more hair-raising than to demand a pitcher of green Kool-Aid from Mom to take out to the backyard where we would guzzle it until we were bursting and then run around in sugar-high mania having our Spy-vs-Spy battles (only slightly less ludicrous than those in Mad Magazine) was irrelevant; being Secret Agents was cool, was jazzy, was scintillating and ever so grown up. Naturally, we didn’t have the remotest idea what a spy was or what secret agents of any sort did for a living/dying.

What we did have was a whole lot of green-sugar-water-fueled shrimpy persons’ fun. And then, on a really good day, we’d come inside and have nuclear-orange macaroni and cheese for dinner and some outstanding stories from Dr Seuss or perhaps the infinite child-rearing wisdom of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle to top it all off. We were surrounded by the unspeakable dangers not only of the Cold War but of playground equipment made of heavy steel pipes and undergirded by solid concrete; by houses full of asbestos insulation and lead paint, foods crammed with deadly cyclamates and Red Dye No. 2; and of freely roaming streets full of unlocked houses with total strangers living in them and packs of mainly-unsupervised neighborhood kids playing Kick the Can on the same roads where cars full of seatbelt-repellant maniacs tore around smoking unfiltered cigarettes and spewing plumes of black exhaust every which way.

In my current glorious old age, I am quite delighted that I never had to be rescued from the depredations of cigarettes on either lungs or bank account, that I have a car with seatbelts and airbags and GPS (not a chance in the universe that I’d find my way around the old neighborhood without that), and that I have apparently lived to this advanced vintage with my teeth and internal organs basically intact and not even artificially dyed red. I’m pretty darn delighted to be, let alone to be healthy, well off, surrounded by wonderful people, and even able to remember some of those youthful dangers. But I’m still amazed by the will of modern, educated people to believe in all sorts of dangerous fictions. (I will leave my political commentary at that for today!)

Can’t say whether my love of more benign–designed for entertainment– forms of fiction, fantasy and mystery stemmed from that wilderness of seen and unseen ‘hazards’ menacing my youth, but all of that inherent excitement surely must have had some influence, on the whole. So I thank my parents for not over-protecting me from woodland fort-building and steel-wheel roller skating and river inner-tubing and from meeting the neighbors and all of that reckless craziness. And I thank my lucky stars and guardian angels and many random strangers that I have come through all of it so remarkably well that I look forward quite enthusiastically to the second of my half-centuries from here. No matter how completely that entire range of years is wrapped in mystery at this point.

So for my self-gifting and self-congratulating (I’m very good at both, as you know) on this my 51st birthday, I’m posting a couple of self-indulgent (also a talent of mine) fond and foolish reminiscences and a couple of my mystery story drawings. And wishing all of YOU a very happy day and a marvelous, surprisingly excellent year to follow: I’ll share my day with you if you promise to make it a grand year too, as best you can!

graphite drawing

No doubt the clues are all there, but there's something to be said for just continuing to go along on the adventure and seeing what happens . . .

Choosing an Upward Trajectory

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Mixed mediaUncertainty of Heart

Amid most fond expressions of affection, endless love,

Devotion and determination to be stewards of

These sentiments and feelings, is that little nagging voice

That tells us it would not be so if we had any choice,

Because we are perfidious by nature, roaming, weak,

And fearful of commitment to degrees we cannot speak,

And paranoid, on top of it, that others are the same,

And so we speak our pretty vows and play our little game,

Attempting to convince ourselves as much as other folk

That our desires and adoration aren’t some flimsy joke—

The shocking Surprise Ending to this tale is that at death,

Some of us finally realize upon our final breath

That all of it was true, and that our hearts were so inclined;

Too bad we take so long, we fools, to see that we have lived as blind.

acrylic on canvasboardLaudate

In a room with bright light and bright sound

It’s as though all the birds in the wide world have set

Their hearts on singing out the highest praise

Of sun and stars and moon, of life and light and love,

And of being wingèd things up in the broad green roof

Of the springtime world–and yet this song,

Sung in truth by mortals mere, by trebles in

The spring of their own lives, can only hint

At the brilliant sweetness of having been born to sing.

Something Rare

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Mies van der Rohe‘s dictum that ‘less is more‘ certainly holds true in many places and times. It’s clearly wise to apply it judiciously to the design and construction of many a lean and studied piece of art, architecture or cabinetry, for example. That chef is wise who learns restraint in concocting foods not meant to overwhelm but to grace the palate with subtle or purist readings of ingredients’ beauty. My own betters have long written poetry and prose whose clarity and brilliance stems from a pared-down aesthetic, from refusal to let excess verbiage gnaw away at the edges of refined excellence.BW photo

But when it comes to kindness and generosity of the heart, I think perhaps there should be no limit in sight. One ought to find ways to multiply and continuously add on to the volumes of hospitality and compassion and gentleness and humor. One of our dear friends was apt to find any dessert, no matter how excellent on its own, yet better ‘mit schlag‘–that is, with a generous application of whipped cream–and I feel the same about kind-heartedness. I have been privileged to know a number of people who embody that principle wonderfully.

One of them died this week, and among other things I must say that I saw her as a veritable avatar of the more-is-more way of sharing. My brother-in-law’s mother is no longer in our company in the physical plane, but thanks to this inner light she cultivated, she will be present and continue her influence well past her time in our midst.digitally doctored photo The first time I met her, when my sister married into her family, I was encouraged to call her Mor (Mother) along with the rest of the bunch. Somehow calling her by her first name would have seemed far too formal and distancing, of all things. And if you gave her the slightest indication you were willing, she would adopt you. I felt such ease and happiness at the table with Mor and the whole family that I never doubted my assimilation, even when I couldn’t follow the [Norwegian] conversation particularly well. All that was required of me in return was that I be contented in the company, eat heartily when presented with all of the good food in front of me (as if I could resist), and laugh often–as if that weren’t the most irresistible of all in Mor’s company.

What I’m thinking of most of all now after hearing of Mor’s passing is that high, musically un-selfconscious laugh of hers, something heard often in the times I was privileged to spend in her sweet company. She was hardly a ‘lightweight’, cheery because she had no understanding of darker things; Mor had reserves of strength and will built on hardships and trials that were her harsh tutors from early in her life and shaped a woman mainly undaunted by everyday tribulations that would make others crumble. Part of her will was the determination to see and enjoy the simple beauties and funny foibles of the world around her with full appreciation. That, to me, is one great talent to cultivate.

She made delectable things in the kitchen. The creamiest cauliflower soup imaginable. The most succulent and perfectly seasoned venison chops–I salivate involuntarily every time I even think of those incomparable chops. In perfect keeping with the whole over-the-top generosity with which she viewed and lived life, Mor’s bløtkake [cream cake] was spectacular, as was the cream she served more simply topped with fresh multer [cloudberries] when they came into their seconds-long peak season.

She knitted me an exquisite genser [Norwegian cardigan]. I knew that she had a couple of friends known for knitting the beautiful sweaters for hire, and since I had been hunting unsuccessfully for one myself I asked if she’d connect me with one of those friends. Next thing I knew, she was picking out yarn and patterns with me and made my one-of-a-kind genser herself, altering a pattern to customize it for her American-Norwegian extra kid. “I couldn’t let someone else make yours, you know.” So mine was unique not only in appearance but in being suffused with Mor’s inimitable warmth.

She made perfectly ridiculous puns and told silly stories, primarily with herself as the hapless heroine bumbling innocently through the wide world. Or through her own house: there was the time when, mid sewing project, she lost the shoulder pads destined for a jacket and only found them much later: they were tucked away neatly in the refrigerator freezer where she had apparently exchanged them for a food item she’d also been hunting to thaw for supper whilst en route to the sewing machine.

She took me to see some of the family property and showed me a little hidden spot where some sort of very delicate primrose-like pale flowers bloomed, though they were nearly impossible to find anywhere else. It was as though nature itself had planted a secret garden just for the elfin Mor to find and love, and so touching in its prettiness and Mor’s affection for it that I wrote her an illustrated poem about it. I called it Something Rare, and she liked it enough to hang it on her wall at the time, but I think she probably thought it was named for the uncommon flowers she’d shared with me when of course the poem was really named for her.

So whenever I get bogged down in petty everyday grimness or humorless attitudes, I shall endeavor to remember that I owe much better to the memory of a person who was gifted at piling the whipped cream on top of life. Mor is more.BW photo

Gone in an Instant–or Maybe Not . . .

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Since some of you have inquired about the possibility of seeing a portrait of Watch-Cat, I shall oblige. But let me tell you, being as stealthy as he is in his work, he is mighty elusive. The following is the only sort of glimpse we get of him most of the time, and certainly the best I’m ever likely to capture with the camera–he’s much too methodical in his rounds to hang around waiting to pose for the paparazzi.

Isn’t that how we all are in life, somewhat? Set on our appointed paths, head down, moving forward with only the rare thought given to change or breaking out of the known and predictable, even rarer the courage and spirit of adventure to follow through on the thought. Why not surprise yourself with one deviation from your expected path today, doing just one small thing that will bring greater enjoyment or move you toward an alluring new horizon?

photo

With a twitch of his tail, he's gone again . . .

He Who Never Overdid It

Howard, a fine, well-rounded cat,

was neither skeletal nor fat,

nor was he far too forceful or

behindhand, coming through a door–

not garrulous but neither mute,

nor glabrous, yet not too hirsute,

and when the milk poured, as you’d think,

was neither fast nor slow to drink.

The strange thing, you may be amazed

to know, knowing that he was praised

as a feline so fine, well-rounded

and refined–you’ll be astounded

–and I say it not in jest–

old Howard died, like all the rest.

So, if it means no jot or tittle,

I say: rock the boat a little!

photo (Calendula)

Dude, You’re Harshing My Mellow

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I was darning my husband’s sweater (they were only small holes, so not worthy of being damned) and in mid-stitch, was thinking that perhaps this is one of those many things that tells my age on me. As it is, I will readily admit to my advancing age–a thing of neutral value in my estimation, balancing fairly comfortably so far between worthwhile accumulations of experience and adventure and the brink of crepitation that will begin my final free-fall towards oblivion. So it’s not a touchy subject.photos x2What really struck me during this little bit of mending was that however cloddish my technique, it was still a very antique skill that I had learned from Mom in my youth and she, in her turn, from hers, and right on back into the impenetrable fog of history. Furthermore, a skill that you’d think a truly slothful person like I am at heart would find just a teeny bit repellant; you’d honestly expect something more like my flinging the sweater in a pile of give-away items as I slouched by on my way to the nearest chaise longue. I live in a disposable and spoiled society and it would be quite conceivable that I would far prefer to go with the flow of self-indulgence, lean back in the shade comfortably sipping sweet tea, and buy a new sweater with no untoward holes in it.

But along with that darning bit of old-fashioned fashion in me are a few other quirks of age. It’s clear that my multiple personalities are coming out of the woodwork in all of their glorious contradiction as I grow older. I am more able, for example, to recognize what would be the more mature thing to think, say or do in a given circumstance, but less willing to conform to that with every day that slithers by. I grow lazier–I would say by leaps and bounds, but that would imply energy being exerted to do so, obviously a misrepresentation, so let’s say by exponential expansion–that’s another thing, coincidentally, that I’m doing along with age, since I eat more and exercise less whenever I think I can get away with it. Even when I know I can’t. And yet another of these oddities is that while I grow lazier as quickly and surely as long blue-green hair grows on expiring vegetables, I also grow more stubborn about getting some things repaired in ways that will last longer and prevent my having to repair them next week yet once more. So I darn the darn things.

Everyone and everything else continues to age right along with me, so I feel safe in assuming a certain amount of knowing sympathy among my crinkled compadres, as well as understanding when I say that I am also simultaneously getting more profligate and more tight-fisted with my money. There are so many things that in days gone by I would have continently held in heart-thrumming abeyance as long as I could stand, both to see if I truly craved them enough for the sizable expenditure and because I thought it more fiscally prudent and Mature. Now, I’m often apt to shrug with a rich Gallic moue and say to myself, But Darling, you could, howcanIsayitdelicately, CROAK tomorrow! And POP! goes the wallet.

Some things I have learned actually do fall under the get-what-you-pay-for rubric, making up in the long term what they scared out of me in the present expense. Such, for example, is this cashmere sweater I mended. I am quite fond of bragging that I’ve bagged most of my non-shoe wardrobe for under USD $10, but on a couple of rare occasions I have seen one of a kind items either at surprise availability or better yet, on sale (perhaps resembling in this my brother-in-law, whose middle name we have occasionally joked should have been HalPris, or Half Price, for his amazing zest and gift for finding bargains)–when those moments come, it’s time to pony up and make the grand purchase. Because (a) high quality does last longer and (b) some outrageous things are just too jolly fun to have. So as I’m loath to cast off a slightly moth-eaten cashmere, it was worth the effort of the purchase enough that I’m willing to undergo the momentary exertion of actually mending and maintaining such a thing. It’s like a smaller and less complicated version of the relationship I have with a house: I know that things will constantly require attention and maintenance, and what falls within my limited skill range must be determined to be either worth the trouble or not, destined to be cheaply slicked over or staring me down with the necessity and value of genuine, if expensive, care and improvement.photoAs for the sweater with the holes in it, I just did the best I could making them disappear with some discreet back stitching and re-weaving of the threads. It deserved to be darned. The moth that munched the wool, him I did damn to perdition for his maleficence in undoing the pristineness of my husband’s only nice and slightly expensive sweater. Go back to your weed patch and chew on a rabid squirrel’s ankle or something, you mean MothMonster, why don’t you! And then I’d blow him away on a dandelion parachute, while lying back once again on my chaise as the sun drifts gradually down the afternoon sky.photo

Skipping thro’ the Birchen Wood, I Thought I Spied a Whale

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acrylic on canvas

Here in the forests of my imagination . . .

What wondrous light through yonder branches gleams? Would that it were the opalescent glow of glimmering brilliance coming to infiltrate my idle brain. Or perhaps, an itinerant faerie spirit heading my way, jeweled sceptre alit with inspirational powers to be bestowed on my waiting brow with only the lightest of touches. Even the wan incandescent light that flickers in welcome warmth when someone stops by and drawls, ‘Whooooa, cool poem, dude!‘ is an apparition that I welcome in these woods.

But left to my own devices, I am often content to play hide-and-seek with the absurd and ridiculous denizens with whom I myself people the copses and clearings. It’s hard to be bored when in the world of my imaginings I might just as well see a party of rhinoceri dining daintily on macarons and sipping mimosas as find the standard woodland chirpy-birds and curly-tailed possums. And of course I can find plenty of entertainment in the latter, should my rare white rhino friends fail to materialize on the occasion.

The who-what-when-where-why approach of old-time journalism is hardly limited, but so often is put to service in creating dull worlds that have no scintillation or silver-lined possibility of their own. Why should I merely recount the facts, if my friends and compatriots have the same at their own fingertips or floating in the ether encircling their own fevered brows? I feel much more compelled, drawn (and quartered) by the fantastical and unreal, and that doesn’t mean that I must limit my contact with the quotidian. In my view, the real world and everyday experience are both bursting with nonsense and bizarre occurrences that would challenge the sanity of anyone willing to look just slightly under the surface, a tiny bit off of the center of the frame. It’s this singing netherworld of oddity and mystery, of hilarity and not-yet-discovered realms of the heart and mind, that pulls me into its mystical swirl and mesmerizes me.

I am astounded when I hear tell of people admonishing artists and creative folk to give up their wastrel ways and do something Productive. Where these same critics expect inventions or discoveries of import, let alone life-enhancing pleasures and spiritual inspirations, to emerge if not from creative work and play I am unable to guess.

I’ve long since left it to others to describe what they tout as Fact and confirmed Truth. There are endless phalanxes of politicians and scientists and religious leaders, hover-parents and bosses, dictators and dullards, all of whom readily offer their convictions of reality whether I ask them to or not, so I learned that I’d much rather stick to my own version of reality and just see where it takes me.

Does this approach expose me to ridicule and censure? Of course it does. Anything anyone else tells you ought to be taken with an entire inland sea of salt, if it keeps you from swallowing nonsense wholesale. I certainly don’t believe everything I say!

But I did learn, when I bundled up my outsized cravings for outside affirmation in the dense wrappings of uneasy reality and flung them all out the casement, that any reality is somewhat overrated. That the lilac scented porpoises leaping in my own candy-colored seas were not only good company but sometimes took me along to actual places of learning and wholesome connection with genuine people willing to dive into alternate worlds too. And that I grew more deeply convinced that nobody is in such dire need of the strictly factual that their lives can’t be enriched, like mine, by the meandering, iridescent, depthless, deathless joys of curiosity and invention and hope.

acrylic on canvas

. . . and away I swam, bathing in the limpid phosphorescence of wonderment . . .

Imaginary Friends in High Places

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I never made a secret of being less-than-optimally mature and having an imagination that makes Attention Deficit look laser focused. Let’s be honest, keeping that reality quiet was a non-starter idea anyway; that particular cat shot right out of the bag before I even escaped my own play-pen, and, well, I was an early climber.

And speaking of climbing, I was a social climber from the beginning. I kinda think I’m better than I probably actually am, if you take my meaning. No, I never gave a serious fig for name-dropping (though, boy-howdy, the stories I could tell you!) or for impressing people with my associations with prestige. Not only do I find overt fawning generally an embarrassment except between actual friends, I’ve always been too poor, too cheap, or both when it came to buying Name merchandise. Not to mention that I think rich retailers should pay me to advertise their products, not vice-versa, and so on those rare occasions when object-lust converged with mega-sale, I am the person who instantly took said objet home and blacked out the corporate logo or sat and snipped it off the clothing, stitch by stitch.

All of this information is not as off-topic as you might think. My theme, you see, is that I think pretty highly of myself just as-is. Now, no doubt there are those detractors that might hasten to add that “it’s a dirty job but somebody’s gotta do it.” I’ll leave them to fester in their own frightful fallacies. If indeed my fine self image is problematic, there might be some other persons fit to share a portion of the blame with me: parents who subscribed to that bizarre notion, unconditional love; teachers (not counting my third grade ogress) who actually taught and encouraged me. Family and friends, too, who still unfailingly clothe me in the cape-and-tights raiment of someone admittedly far better than I am but for whom I am quite willing to be mistaken while I’m yet busily aspiring to become them.digital photo illustrationMeanwhile, I can tell you that I’ve always had a pretty good sense of this being surrounded by earthly and supernal cheerleaders to assist and enhance my sense of personal privilege and well-being in the world. It keeps me on a relatively even keel.

Now, if you happened to be on board here when I’ve previously mentioned coping with anxiety, clinical depression, phobias (yes, I’m a veteran of all of those), nerd-hood, weirdness and being 17 (I’ve survived all of those too), it should be as obvious as the strings carrying Ed Wood’s flying saucers that I am neither perfect nor so deluded as to think myself so, let alone be immune to self-doubt and those temporary bouts of dis-ease that rate various positions on the inadequate-to-self-loathing slide rule.

But thanks to this even more deeply ingrained, however fanciful, liking of myself, I have always eventually recovered and returned to my standard state of cheery self-hugging enthusiasm. I think I’m a little like those boxers’ training dummies, taking a righteous smack to the schnoz from time to time that floors me, but always eventually sproinging back upright with my vapid but genuine grin on my face, just happy to be here. Because, by golly, I really do think I’m kind of swell.photo

A Little Autumnal Magic

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I can’t help it: autumn brings out the nostalgia in me. Something about the solemnity of nature’s visible procession from summer’s excesses into a more profound state, one clearly aware of death yet always moving through its dormancy toward the revival of spring–it all calls forth recollections of seasons past, of holidays I’ve floated through without being quite conscious of how few of those loved ones around the room and around the table will be there at the next or the next one after that . . . .

photo

The emptying-out that comes with the end of a season is in preparation for newness yet to come . . .

But the loveliness in this is that that knowledge of what lies ahead is not only the foundation, the underpinning, of awareness at the end of the year, it is indeed the purpose of this cooling down, going to ground, this tempering of high spirits. In part, it’s what adds piquancy and sharpens the joys of the winter holidays, whatever they are in one’s culture or part of the world. For us in the northern hemisphere, the descent into winter has begun and brings with it the knowledge of our mortality–but those of us among the truly fortunate know that it’s precisely that gift that leads us to live more vividly in the present. So we sing and dance and feast and laugh a little more wildly, and it brings out the imaginative child in us all.

Thanksgiving has always been a welcome celebration to me. I come from a family that counts its riches and revels in its blessings very readily, and certainly not just on the Official date designated by the state but with perhaps renewed vigor on that day. But sixteen years ago on Thanksgiving weekend I was gifted with a particular reason for deep thanks, and so the whole festivity took on a yet more personal tone. That was when the man who would become my beloved asked me out on our first date.

You all know by now that I am not very quick on the uptake, so I’ll just say right off that I didn’t even know we were going on a date. I just thought this interesting person was being wonderfully collegial. He’d asked me to collaborate on a project at the university; we’d had a meeting or two with other colleagues to begin the planning, and I’d already started work on my part of the process and was only very dimly aware that when he’d check in on my progress his questions were less germane than personal. I was delighted to go along with the plot when he invited me to go with him on Thanksgiving weekend and have dinner and then attend a performance of the Mark Morris Dance Company’s production of ‘Dido and Aeneas‘. What’s not to like! We had a fabulous salmon dinner at a local bastion of Northwest seafood excellence and discussed, among other things, whether either of us intended to have children; you will begin to understand the true depth of my obtuseness when I tell you that I have no idea how that topic arose on a first dinner outing, let alone did I twig to it that it might indicate the dinner as something more than collegial.

So there we were, eating and chattering and–oh yes–almost being late to the performance. For which Mr. Smooth Operator had in fact prepared the pit choir. His choral group was singing along with the orchestra for the program, and I came that-close to making him late. And found out we were sitting in the front row, center, of the sort of theatre where you can not sneak in surreptitiously. I was in a mild panic. I also had no clue at the time that a conductor might prepare the singers but not conduct the performance (as in this case, where the orchestra’s conductor took the helm), so I was both worried and mystified that my companion was calmly clambering over knees right alongside me to the middle of the stage-apron row. But suddenly there was a tiny, sneaking thought that this person was intending to sit with me throughout the performance and therefore might–just possibly–not have invited me strictly out of co-worker friendliness.

Well, I’ll just cut to the chase and end your suspense. Oh, that’s right, I already told you the fairytale ending! Opaque as my love-goggles are, and slow as I am to order my facts and realize the truly obvious, once I got the hang of all of this I wasn’t particularly behindhand in taking advantage of the situation. I may be silly, but I ain’t stupid!

So I got this ethereal dance/concert date under my belt and wandered a little foggily through the Christmas holidays, dodging my fears of the unknown rather handily for such a big scaredy-cat if I do say so myself, and by the beginning of the year was engaged to build a lifetime of ridiculously happy adventure with Mr Sparkly. And I call him that not just because of our shared last name but because, dang it, he brought and brings enormous amounts of sparkle to my every day. I can’t think of anything for which a person could be more thankful, at this or any time of year.

Now, I’ve been all mushy and reminiscent on you, and I owe it to you to say that it’s entirely the fault of the season. HAH! Of course that’s pure nonsense. But I must reiterate my thesis that Fall encourages such things in me. It brings out with its chill and darkening the contrasting warmth and light of home, hearth, holidays, and hope, with all of their spices and sweetness, their inviting doorways and gates to adventure, and all of the beauty that living in a time of Thanksgiving can bring. I wish for you all the same!

digital photocollage

Can't wait to see what newness and graces lie on the other side . . .

Viewfinder

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digitally doctored soft pastel and colored pencil

Home is located on Cloud Eight.

You will not be the least bit surprised to know that my lifelong residence on Cloud Eight is situated as close as possible to the proverbial Cloud Nine, where all is perfection and the joys of every ideal are quite simply the norm. You may not even be shocked to hear that I have no need, intention or desire to relocate permanently to Cloud Nine. Frankly, I’m afraid that living there full time would blow my gaskets. Too much ecstasy, constant adrenaline and a permanent state of bliss sound dangerously close to hysteria and collapse. Further, I fear that such excess would find some way to become dull, lacking the contrast of subtler and more refined things.

I have no desire for pain and suffering, mind you; I am very well adapted to my happy and near-perfect life, and I am far too un-evolved to handle the demands of a trying existence. I am quite content to be, well, contented. And on Cloud Eight, there are just enough unforeseen twists of the road, moments of sorrow or fear or illness or what-have-you that, when they have passed, become salt: a seasoning valued so highly because in addition to its own flavors it highlights and enhances the other flavors around it. The piquancy and clarity and intensity of joy is only fully possible, I suspect, if one knows a hint of contrast. Maybe that’s just another iteration of my love of black and white imagery.

In the meantime, as I say, goodness and happiness have their own complications, not least of all a jaded or surfeited attitude brought on by over-indulgence. I find pessimism and paranoia dreary and tiresome companions, but a little part of me needs to stand at attention and be alert to their opposites so that I don’t drift along, bleary, blind to the beauty and inspirations all around me. If I fail to see the marvels in my own (albeit somewhat raggedy) garden, the humor in a child’s uninhibited playfulness, the drama and magisterial artistry in a lightning-streaked sky–why, then, there’s no point in lounging around on the everyday cloud most proximal to the place of perfection, let alone taking the occasional jaunt over ‘next door’ for that welcome hit of delirium, is there!

With that in mind, I make it a point to revisit my own environs with a different point of view or a revitalized attitude whenever I can, lest I lose sight of the wonders all around. If I should lack for a blog post idea for a moment, what’s to blame but my own failure to adjust the lens, to improve my focus. To see and revel in what’s right in front of me. I should take every opportunity to pause and refresh my senses, and then I can’t imagine that there won’t always be a new idea, a dazzling insight or maybe just a friendly reminder of how great the seeming old-familiar can be if I let it.

soft pastel on paper

If I tire of the view, I ought to change my perspective . . .