SENSEations

Several years ago, I threw a New Year's Eve party with one of my very best friends, a creative soul mate with whom I later shared a transatlantic blog. We put together a little booklet based on the 5 senses to give our guests: our favorite scents, our favorite music, our favorite blogs, etc. My post tonight is an homage to that party:

Tonight's Scent: the wood smoke from an outdoor fire at a back yard oyster roast on a South Carolina island on New Year's Eve.

Tonight's Taste: salty ocean juice bathing the oysters pried open to yield their secrets.

Tonight's Sound: fireworks exploding in my neighborhood--begone evil spirits!

Tonight's Touch: the soft hug of my North Face down jacket on a chilly night.

Tonight's Sight: a gold sickle moon hanging in the sky like a dream boat to carry us out of 'o8 into '09. 

Happy New Year!

 

My Word for 2009

Because I'm a Libra, I'll probably regret choosing "Journey" as my theme for 2009. Damn, I'll think, I should have picked "courage" or "dream" or some esoteric word like "kaizen." After all, as soon as I place my order in a restaurant, I wish I'd chosen what my friend was having or the dish the stranger at the table next to me is raving about. But there are so many journeys I want to take this year--a spiritual journey, a creative journey, a journey outside my self. I want to become healthier and fitter--a hard uphill trek for me because I hate to exercise and I love cheese and red wine. I'll never be someone who wants to summit Everest or climb Kilimanjaro or train for the Great Wall of China marathon. Just leaving the house to walk for an hour is a major ordeal, so if I follow through on this one, I will be elated. I want to start a tumblr list to record things that inspire me every day and that might inspire others--books, movies, web sites, insights. I want to do it to keep me en pointe, and if anyone else likes it that will only be gravy on my forbidden mashed potatoes. I want to become an explorer of inner space, which means becoming more serious about meditation, keeping my heart open for a guru, going back to yoga. I can't tell you how much I want a guru. My Episcopal friend would say this means I need church, but I think it means I need a teacher or a mentor. This year I shut down some departments in my life and narrowed my world for a lot of reasons. Maybe it was a necessary hibernation, but I think it's time to wake up. Selecting a theme for your year and announcing it is like telling everyone you're going to Weight Watchers (also on my horizon)--I'm not sure it's a good idea, because I'm prone to spiritual sloth, physical laziness and mental ennui. On the other hand, I respond well to homework assignments--I'll just have to remember there are no Fs in this class of one, only efforts. Here's hoping I'm worthy of joining other Barefoot Pilgrims.

Christmas in Fridaville

I keep strings of fairy lights on my porch all year long, but they are so special at this time of year. The neighbors across the street have put up their lights, and this ordinary street suddenly seems hemmed about with magic and mystery when night falls. I wish the big live oaks that line our street could bloom with glowing Japanese lanterns and that there were spangled nets of lights strung above the roadway the way they do in the San Gennaro festival in NYC or in the shopping districts of London at this time of year. I'll be digging in my closet to try and find the Pottery Barn lanterns I bought last year to hang from the crape myrtle tree by my gate and since we are having a warm Southern Christmas, I might sit on my porch, drink Champagne and get stars in my eyes.

First Day of Winter

Every year when this day rolls around, I wish I'd scheduled a party to celebrate the coming return of the light. Although it's the shortest day of the year--a time to turn on porch lights, set off fireworks, burn candles--I know that from now on the sun will linger a tiny bit longer each day. I'm reading a book about creating a more meaningful relationship with time, kind of like the slow food movement for our internal clocks. I always intend to mark solstices or the changing seasons in some special way, but I'm so divorced from the natural scheme of things and so ruled by artificial time that they usually pass me by unremembered.  But today I've been quietly hibernating, lighting spruce-scented candles, making soup. I've actually managed to continue my meditation practice (!) and today I had less trouble pulling my wandering mind back to attention--or maybe I was just less judgmental. And I'm taking two weeks of unused vacation time to burrow into my home, read books as late into the night as I want, spend the day in pajamas, create a personal pause in this year full of worry and uncertainty -- and maybe store up some strength and inspiration for the year to come. 

Where is Your Green Light?

Gatsby's green light at the end of the dock conjures up a longing for what was lost, what can never be,  fulfillment that is always just out of reach, a longing that doesn't even have a name. When I was taking an after-work walk in the dark recently, I saw this light at the end of a dock on the creek near my house, and I was unexpectedly suffused with nostalgia for dreams I can't even remember, with sadness for people who have disappeared from my life, with a yearning for transcendence that is a constant rumbling hunger.  I imagine everyone I know is overcome by this now and then, but we never really talk about it to each other. Maybe we allude to it, come at it sideways, but mostly it's the dailiness of our lives that makes up our conversations. And time passes and we never get around to baring the lonely thoughts that visit in the middle of the night, or the rare, blinding flashes of awareness when we sense in an instant the oneness with everything that lives, or the sensation that ghosts of our past selves live on in places we've left behind. I suppose that's why we're always searching for a soul mate, our lost half, the one who won't laugh, but will listen and say, "I know exactly what you mean." 

The View I'm Craving

Lately I find myself thinking a lot about living in the country. I fantasize about a cabin in the mountains, a farm at the end of a gravel road, a cottage on a lake. To throw open a window and look out on moonlight and mist, to be able to hear silence instead of sirens and static. It's fairly preposterous, because dark nights alone in the mountains would probably make me obsess about serial murderers, and I can't make anything grow, so I would starve to death on a farm. But I think it's important to pay attention to odd, extravagant cravings of the soul because it may mean you're pregnant with a desire that needs to be born. In my case, I suspect I need to make more time to be alone without distractions, and I'm so undisciplined that the only way I can force myself to do that is to remove myself physically, to enter a convent of the mind.  In the course of daily life and work, it's so much easier to fritter away my time than it is to focus my mind. There are ideas for projects that I toy with but never follow through on, creative itches that I scratch by watching television or snacking or talking on the phone instead of sitting at the computer or opening a sketchbook or signing up for a class. My daughter thinks it's a case of attention-deficit -- I'm so impatient and incapable of being in the present moment that I unbuckle my seat belt half a block from home just to be ready to get out of the car-- but I suspect it's more like having a slothful spirit. Could I be rehabilitated by putting myself in solitary confinement?