A Little Bliss

Most days are a jumble of good, bad, indifferent--I stutter through, beginning something, putting it down, getting interrupted, growing bored, picking up another thread and losing it, starting and stalling and forgetting where I was going when I got sidetracked. And then there are days like today, when I worked hard but effortlessly, when I worked steadily but wasn't drained, when I was actually able to finish things I started. A day of small but measurable accomplishments when I burned creative fuel all day but had something left over to kindle a fire tomorrow. When I saw a visiting friend out the door tonight and came in from the dark, I felt as if I were seeing my home with fresh eyes--the shelves of books, the turquoise chair, a green and black ceramic bowl, pink tulips from the supermarket--all transformed and glowing in the lamplight. Nothing had changed except the way I saw it, and nothing about my day was extraordinary except that I was momentarily able to step back and perceive its shape and texture and realize what a gift it had been.

Me and TED

Everyone and their cat has recommended, praised and pushed on me the TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love.  Not one of my favorite books, but I figure this talk must be incredible to have garnered so much adulation--and only adulation can describe the comments filled with lots and lots of exclamation marks.  It was interesting, but it also made me feel squirmy, the way so many TED talks do. I love them and I hate them. Because I always feel like the fat girl sitting by herself in the school lunchroom. Everyone speaking has been anointed a Big Thinker just by virtue of being on stage, and everyone attending is a genius by proxy simply by being part of the audience. I know I would feel insufferably hip if I could afford to go to TED and I would never turn down a ticket if I had $4,000 extra dollars, so maybe I'm just jealous. Green with envy that I didn't write a bestseller, green with envy of the cool kids in the class, green with envy that I don't have a single Big Idea. Don't get me wrong--I love TED talks. They make me think and aspire and be inspired, and it's great that they're posted online FREE--but they also make me feel like I'm on the outside looking in. And I'm not sure that's always a bad thing.

Breathing Spaces

I took this photo during a walk along the canal towpath in D.C. last fall. The water was so still and dark that I felt my soul shimmer in response. These magical places in nature are vanishing so quickly that I fear my grandchildren will be thirsty for spiritual H2O as they grow up. Every day when I drive to work I pass a pond that lies between an office building and a busy four-lane highway. I don't know how it has escaped being filled in for more brick office fortresses, but somehow it survives--a tantalizing remnant of what this coast used to be. There's usually a Great Blue Heron and a large white egret wading or simply standing in silent communion by the edge of the water. I look forward to it every day -- it helps make the transition from home to work, work to home easier. I automatically slow down to see if the birds are there, and it puts all my stupid work worries in proper perspective. It's like looking in one of those Easter egg dioramas and seeing a whole other miniature world inside. It's a small hidden treasure in a landscape that has been developed in a deranged kind of way--because of course we all need another Comfort Inn or Taco Bell in our lives. As long as the pond survives, it gives me hope for the land, for the future, for the return of two birds to the same spot every morning. Fragile hopes for a big planet.

Beautiful World

I love the pause between day and night, the blush of color up the sky, lights coming on in houses, the hush as the curtain falls on our daily drama. Coming home tonight with groceries after a yoga class, I felt all my blessings pour over me at once. Food in the house, a hot shower, magazines in the mailbox, messages on the phone from friends, a glass of prosecco, clean sheets and soft pajamas. I've done nothing to deserve it, and in these parlous times, I know life can change on a dime. I produce a magazine that's not a necessity (although I think it makes life sweeter), and I could have to take a pay cut. I could lose my job and not find another. I could lose my house and have to move in with one of my daughters (poor girls!). A meteor could fall on my neighborhood, aliens could abduct me and make me do laundry on another planet, and the economy could stay stuck on "It Sucks" indefinitely. But this Now is all we're guaranteed, and tonight my mantra is Now.

The Spirit of the Place

My guardian Buddha has lost his nose as the result of being knocked over by winds or maybe the neighbor's cat. I like him better this way--as if his spirit had been tested and tried. As if he had ended up in this raggedy, weedy garden bed and was making the best of it. As if he'd been around the block and had a hundred stories he could tell about what he'd seen. This is no pretty boy Buddha but one that has withstood a few freezing nights and too many unbearable southern August noons. A Buddha for someone who has been broke but not broken, someone's who's often lonely but not giving up on love, someone who has a hundred stories about what she's seen. 

Warning!

I found this banner on Joetta Maue's Bird and Bear etsy site and I immediately thought how handy it would be for those days when our lives are like crime scenes that require roping off until all the victims have been treated and the wreckage is cleared away. When everything goes wrong from the time we get out of bed to the time we crawl into bed like whipped dogs to lick our wounds. Like when you accidentally hit Reply instead of Forward with an angry commentary on an irritating email. Ouch. Or when your cell phone makes a "pocket call" and someone overhears your inane conversation in a bar. Ouch. Or when your skirt gets rucked up into your underwear and you leave a public bathroom not realizing it until a waiter tips you off. Ouch. Or when someone you know gets a promotion or an award and your Inner Bitch can't stop growling with envy. A day when all of this happens in a cascading torrent of bad to worse. Ouch ouch ouch. We all have our own versions of Crime Scene Days, and I need to learn how to say fuck it instead of flaying myself with what I've done wrong, because tomorrow is another chance to get it right, or at least, less wrong. And sometimes less wrong is all we can ask of ourselves.

Information Sickness

Twice this week, I've been at dinner parties where the main course was conversation. On Superbowl Sunday, no football was watched. Instead, we ate shrimp creole, climbed up to our hostess's roof to look at the stars in the cold night sky, and listened to a chef tell funny stories about his colleagues until the hour was late and all the wine bottles were empty. Two nights later, I shared soup and sensibility with three smart, independent women, and again the talk and ideas were what whet our appetites. They were occasions that reminded me of how much more satisfying face to face, heart to heart contacts are than electronic ones. And how I need to spend deep quality time with myself as well as others. I'm so often guilty of coming home after work and turning on both the television and the computer until it's time to go to bed. In the morning, I get up and turn on the television again to get the Sponge Bob Square Pants version of world events via the Today Show. When my children were small, I relished opportunities for silence and solitude, but that was before the computer took over my life. Over the past decade, I've gradually become addicted to chatter, both literal and digital, and I've started to realize how hard it is for me to turn it off. I'm going to try and make one night a week free of electronics--a small step toward renewing my acquaintance with my old self--the one who writes with a pen, sticks with a story instead of changing channels and listens to wind chimes instead of the Weather Channel. 

"the unregarded river of our life"

But often, in the world's most crowded streets,

But often, in the din of strife,

There rises an unspeakable desire

After the knowledge of our buried life;

A thirst to spend our fire and restless force

In tracking out our true, original course;

A longing to inquire

Into the mystery of this heart which beats

So wild, so deep in us--to know

Whence our lives come and where they go.

[from The Buried Life]

When I was walking across the drawbridge to the barrier island near my house, I stopped to take a photo of the marsh and Intracoastal Waterway and the scene suddenly made me think of "The Buried Life" by Matthew Arnold. How strange to have words from a Victorian poet time travel into such a setting, but somehow it seemed perfectly fitting, absolutely right. When I first read his poem in an English Lit class years ago, I felt an immediate recognition, as if someone had a key to my heart, and I could feel the tumblers clicking into place. I wasn't alone in being overcome by some "nameless sadness" when I was with a lover; someone else had wondered if one's deepest self could ever be fully known, even by those we love the most. It seemed a wholly modern poem, remarkable for its insight into the human psyche, the hidden self we all long to reveal, to share with another. Reading it again recently, it seems as fresh and moving as it did the first time I discovered it. We all have that longing to be known, to be recognized for who we really are, not what we seem--the constant hunger for it can drive us to God, sex or celibacy, work, food or drink, NASCAR, politics or piling up money--the substitutes are endless. Lucky Matthew Arnold, that it drove him to poetry.