It I cool this morning and the air is filled with fog. As Tikka and I walk the air I soft and gentle, the breeze like a whisper on the skin.
The fog shroud the world in mystery, in a kind of flatness that awes and confuses the senses. Holding its secrets close, waiting for discovery.
Colors, once revealed seem intensified. That which we once might have simply passed by positively glows.
The everyday becomes a precious jewel.
Perhaps we simply need to be reminded.
My first ever clematis bloom!!!
It is such a simple thing, and I really did nothing but put a plant in the ground last spring and have patience. I'd never had luck with clematis before, they never came back the second year. I guess I just never found the right spot, until I found this spot. And yet the joy of such a simple thing is profound.
Last week was a roller coaster of a week. I was up and down and all around. I withdrew when I should have been social, I blurted when I should have been silent. It was a week ruled more by my inner four-year old than by my older and obviously not always much wiser self.
The weekend has been filled with garden therapy: some weeding, some planting, some digging, some hauling around of heavy things. I am tired, and achy, and much more clear headed. Blossoms bloom when, and sometimes where, you least expect them. I cried in church today, but they were tears of joy. They were tears of gratitude, gratitude at having a place where I am welcomed even when floundering. May we all find such places.
More flowers are opening in the front flower beds.
These are tiny tulips. I am struck by the similarity of the colors to the early crocuses. I suppose it only means I am nothing if not consistent in my choices.
These are all flowers I planted. The tulips and daffodils planted when the beds were rebuilt, in the fall of 2014, have yet to show up, which is not surprising after what I still think of the mulch massacre of 2015. The former landscaper for this community applied mulch that was too hot, and all my bulbs, tiny tulips and many daffodils shriveled and lost their leaves. A few bravely sent up flowers, as a dying plant will in a last-ditch effort to procreate, but without leaves to collect nutrients, the bulbs died. I am a little apprehensive, but hoping for a better outcome this year, with a new landscape company.
We even have another tiny iris. I don't remember the name of this one, although I am certain I chose and planted it.
There is much still to do in the gardens, perhaps some I should have done already, although it is only March. But I probably won't get a lot done in the garden this Easter weekend. I am busy elsewhere, and next weekend is Big Ears. At least there is time in between. And I am more determined than I have been in quite a long time. That will help. I still occasionally give in to lethargy, and there is a fine line sometimes between intentional unhurriedness or a penchant toward quiet reflection and its darker cousin, lethargy. In the same way there is a fine line between determination and a tendency to overdo. I'm still working on those distinctions. Perhaps always shall.
But in the meantime there is Easter and its symbolism of death and rebirth if one is inclined toward Christianity, or the quiet stillness and potential for birth represented by Easter Eggs and bunnies, or, new leaves and flowers breaking the surface and bravely soldiering on, determined to grow and blossom and welcome the warmth of the sun whatever vicissitudes Mother Nature, the volatility of human emotion, and life in general may throw our way.
Have a lovely weekend, whatever your beliefs, whatever your plans, whatever your rituals, whatever stumbling blocks may roll into your path. Simply know that grace abounds in this world, perhaps dormant at times, waiting for nourishment, waiting to blossom.
I greeted the New Year with a dawn walk. Truthfully, I was hoping for one of those photographable moments, but the sky is solidly overcast, so instead there was simply a gradual brightening of the world, with no spectacular display of glory.
That's ok, really, because that is how enlightenment really happens most of the time. We wait for the big special moment, only, hopefully, to learn that we've carried the light within ourselves all along.
So here's to a season of birth, of bringing light to the darkness in all the ways that it is possible to do so. And since, I always think it is fitting that the New Year dawns in the middle of the Christmas season, a season of birth and joy, a season where we celebrate the coming of light out of the darkness, instead of sunrise, I'll share a photo of the lights reflected in the glass from my Christmas tree.
Say yes to the light. Say yes. And let your light shine and be reflected in the world.
I am mostly over my cold. The cough apparently will remain with me for a while. I don't know what changed, if it is just age or happenstance, something I did or didn't do when caring for George, but somehow, my colds have evolved from being mostly head colds, to being mostly chest colds, colds that seem inclined to develop into bronchitis. I'd like to blame it on Tennessee, because the first time I had bronchitis was my first winter in Tennessee, but I am sure that is coincidence more than anything else. But I'm here and doing pretty well, and I wanted to write this post, although it is not really very finished and really isn't likely to be. I ask your patience with unfinished thoughts and random musings, all I really seem up to at this point.
I've been thinking about little things, perhaps a series of random little things, yes, but the way little things can sometimes lead us toward insight. The path may be slow, it may be even a bit circular, but eventually we hopefully get where we are supposed to be.
For example, I walked into my office the other morning to find a good sized piece of glass sitting on the floor. I certainly didn't expect it, and initially I couldn't figure out where it might have come from. It seemed as if it had just miraculously appeared. But it was early, and I had not yet had my coffee, so perhaps my neural synapses were not quite up to full speed. It was also the first day of this recent cold, although I wasn't yet aware of that either.
Later, when I sat at my desk, coffee in hand, I noticed that there were fine glass shards on my desk as well. It was then that I noticed the candle, which I had been burning the previous evening, and which had obviously broken after I extinguished the flame and the candle was cooling. I was somewhat saddened by this loss of my favorite candle. It had not burned too low, according to the directions on the candle at any rate, I had not burned it over 4 hours (as directed) and I wasn't sure quite was had caused the problem. It is a small thing, and I yet I was saddened by the loss, and spent a disproportionate amount of time fretting about it.
Why was such a small thing so important? Things break. Life changes. Sometimes it is simply time to move on to something different. But I think we all hold on to the familiar, we all want to hold on to comfort, to what we know, to past happiness, and we tend to be nervous about change. We all hold on to things that are symbols of love, or warmth, or comfort, and sometimes we put too much weight in the small thing, and perhaps not enough weight in the big thing that the symbol commemorates.
A month or so a job I used to do was sent out. I wasn't consulted, and really there was no reason that I should be consulted. It wasn't my decision to be made. But that doesn't mean that I wasn't sad. I had enjoyed this particular task; I found it relaxing and grounding in a way, although truthfully there were also times when I was busy and it was time-consuming and I would have done other things. But when faced with losing that task, all I could think about was what I had lost, and it took me a little bit to recognize what I had gained.
Perhaps the candle was simply a metaphor. Perhaps I need to stop doing the same things I've always done the way I've always done them. I know this is true. I know that there are particular skills I have, skills that I've used in my career and my life, skills that have gotten me where I am now, and sometimes people ask me if I want to use those skills to help small business or do certain things, but at the same time I realize that although I do have those skills, I have not perhaps used them in the way that is best for me. I have used them in the way that is best for others, for what my job needed, or what I perceived others to need, or to help other people realize things that they needed, but I haven't used those same skills in ways that let my other gifts and talents flourish for my own growth and benefit. I keep repeating the same patterns because I am good at those patterns. And forging new paths is somewhat unsettling because I don't actually know that I will be good at these new things. But that doesn't mean that I don't need to try them.
Like lighting my familiar, favorite candle, I keep repeating the same paths, because they are comfortable and fulfilling enough, and I accept that good enough is perhaps all I need. But perhaps this is a mistake. Perhaps I need to stop treading the same old paths, wearing down my resources until my own glass weakens and breaks.
I was at a funeral yesterday. We sang Amazing Grace. I've written here before about how I held George's hand and sang Amazing Grace when he was dying, how he died during the final verse. A door was opened and he slipped through. For a long time after George's death I physically could not sing Amazing Grace. I would start to break down in tears, and then I would just shut down, lock the door and drop the key, afraid that I would fall apart. I couldn't sing, and because I couldn't sing I couldn't cry. I was thinking about what I had lost, and I was holding on desperately to that loss, trying to keep the door from opening again.
Eventually I let my sadness in, let love in, let grace in. And I was able to sing that song, and share my loss and sadness and also my joy, because there was joy mixed in with all that sadness and grief. That is what the song is about. And I remain grateful to those who stood by me and held me and helped me to sing again, and again, and again.
Yesterday, singing Amazing Grace, I wasn't sad at all. I realized that I was singing for the opening of the door, and that is what grace gives us. The bridge between those universes. As we all sang, it was as if a bubble in time, a bubble in dimensions even, had opened, and for that moment we could be in touch with all those universes, all our loved ones, together, singing. Not broken glass, but open doors.
When I was in San Antonio, I took this photo of a painting in the hotel.
It is nothing special, a simple bit of hotel décor. It is the kind of thing I could question, in fact once would have questioned. Overly self critical, I would have asked myself why I took the photo, and I probably would have deleted shortly after returning home, telling myself that the subject matter was not worth saving.
But I would have been wrong. I took the photo because the colors resonated with me, in fact still resonate with me. I took the photo not because it is great art, but because somewhere in my view of the world it struck a nerve. I took the photo because something in the colors drew me in, because I am always drawn in by color and pattern and texture more than the objects themselves. I took this photo because I intentionally walked down a particular hallway every day, just because I needed to see these colors again and again. Looking at this photo now, the colors still draw me in, still lead my perceptions in directions they might otherwise not have taken.
Here then is my question. Why do we undervalue our own perceptions and our own visions? Why do we let the world tell us what is important and valuable rather than trusting our own judgment? Why do we let others tell us what is beautiful and what will make life worth living, when, deep in our hearts, we already know the answer?
It seems I manage to embarrass myself on a daily basis. In fact, it seems like every day presents a unique opportunity to embarrass myself. And I am completely OK with that. It seems I no longer hold on to these moments tightly, and since I no longer hold onto my embarrassment, ie. my shame and discomfort, I am much more free to be light-hearted, much more free to be the occasionally inattentive, sometimes oblivious, dreamer that I am, and hence to embarrass myself yet again.
A few weeks ago I was at a workshop where the goal was really working together closely in an open and loving relationship, and one of the ice breakers was to reveal one of our most embarrassing moments. Truthfully, I was a bit panicked about this. My initial thought was "I don't have any embarrassing moments" which is not at all true. Goodness, much of my youth was spent dwelling on the things I had done to embarrass myself. Needless to say this was not good for my self-esteem.
As stated above I embarrass myself regularly, but most embarrassing moment? The old me, probably would have had a small collection at the ready, a few moments of shame that I carried closely in my breast pocket, always at hand when a little self-negation was required. But since I have let go of shame and self-recrimination, those angry little bullets of pain have proved more elusive to capture. I did come up with something, and I even grew embarrassed telling it as I recalled the feelings of that moment, although secretly I was more embarrassed that I was embarrassed over something so simple. The truth is, that at this moment in my life my most embarrassing moment is my most recent embarrassing moment, and even that is fleeting.
Yesterday morning I was embarrassed that I did not recognize one of my neighbors, mistakenly thinking they were one of the new families moving in, and I welcomed them to the neighborhood. The bad thing is that the husband and I are both on the HOA board, although I could not really see him until he emerged from the car. Oh well. Life goes on. It is possible that I may not always be as silly and mindless as I appear. It is also equally likely that I am not as smart as I occasionally appear either.
But where am I going with this?
In Lisa's Saturday post, she asked that we be civil to each other, that we perhaps even make an effort to go out of our way to be kind and courteous. This sentence, in particular, resonated in my heart for many hours:
“Then since we can’t know about evil, we’ve got to try to be as civil and amiable as we can.”
My neighbors were certainly civil to me while I was dithering away, and I hope they also treated me kindly in their thoughts, I hope they didn't walk in their door muttering to themselves about that "dingbat down the street" but they may have and I would never know. Or would I?
It seems to me that if you make a practice of being civil and being amiable, eventually all that civility will make inroads and civility will come more naturally. One's manner and demeanor might change. One might start to be not just civil, but also kind. One might even come to realize that we are all alike, every last one of us, with good days and bad days, insecurities and strengths. One might graduate from basic civility, Civility 101, if you will, and might grow into something greater, say Civility 201,or basic kindness.
Last year (2014) I gave up cursing at other drivers for lent. Literally. I decided I couldn't mutter "stupid idiot" under my breathe when another driver swerved across 4 lanes of traffic to cut me off and make a left turn from the far right lane. Not only could I not mutter, I decided that I couldn't even curse in my head, not even a minor little slip of "nincompoop" was allowed. Not vocalizing my frustrations was fairly easily, not thinking mean and unkind thoughts was not easy at all. A friend thought I was crazy, and upon comparative reflection, decided that giving up sugar wasn't nearly as hard as he had originally supposed.
The thing is, after 40 days of not swearing at my fellow humans, I kind of got out of the habit. Oh there are still bad drivers out there, and they still annoy me, but they annoy me less. Once I got out of the habit of swearing at everybody, I was much happier, and much more willing to listen to others, much more patient with their actions. Kindness is contagious. Even more surprising, once I stopped swearing at everyone else's mistakes, it eventually occurred to me that I was much harder on myself than anyone else. I realized the profound inconsistency in forgiving other's their mistakes and errors while simultaneously berating myself for every little slip.
By being kind to others I learned to be kinder to myself. You know there is a lesson in that. I don't know about you, but my parent's taught me that I was supposed to treat everyone equally, that I should treat everyone the way that I myself would like to be treated. That is basic civility. In Sunday school I was taught to "love they neighbor as thyself", a passage that comes from the Gospel of Mark. I seem to recall thinking meant the same thing as basic civility. It doesn't of course. Loving thy neighbor, truly loving other people, that is probably graduate level civility, but I digress.
But that line from Mark does point out something really important. "Love thy neighbor as thyself" and "Treat other people as you would like to be treated" are all well and good, but only effective if you treat yourself well also. You can only be kind to others if you are also kind to yourself. And yet even if you are not kind to yourself, but you make the attempt to show kindness to others, difficult as that may be, kindness will repay you in abundance. The kinder you are to others, the kinder you will be toward yourself. The kinder you are to yourself, the happier you will be and your happiness and kindness will spill out to others. The kinder you are to others, the kinder they may eventually be to themselves, and kindness will grow and grow.
Once you let go of self-recrimination you can't really take it back. It is gone. And once you forgive yourself it becomes far easier to forgive others. Civility and kindness come back to you over and over again.
Of course, like everything else we humans undertake, it is not really that simple. The idea is simple, the actuality of letting go of mental baggage is a rather circuitous route. Still, I'd like to think that if we could all just try to be courteous – one trip to the grocery store at a time, one drive to school and back, one day at a time, one slip-up at a time – acknowledging that we all have good days and bad days, being kind to each other when we make mistakes, forgiving each other our inconsistencies, that eventually courtesy could be such second nature that we wouldn't remember a time when people weren't courteous, weren't kind. What kind of world would that be? One I'd like to see.
Sometimes we go to see a movie or read a book, and we are surprised. Something about the story engages us, sticks with us, catches us in its web and alters our perceptions. Of course this is what a good story does. Stories play out all around us every day; everyone has a story. But often we are too busy with our own internal lists and goals, our own stories, to notice other stories. Sometimes, to escape our own stories for a little while, we go to a movie or read a book, and our worries are temporarily pushed aside. But the respite is short-lived; we return to our lives entertained but unchanged.
Until we are surprised.
I was surprised by the film Woman in Gold. I was not surprised that I enjoyed the film. It came well recommended; it sounded like a film I would enjoy. The story was expected, and yet, at the same time, completely unexpected. I knew it was a film about art restitution, and so it was. But it is also a film about so much more. By taking a grand public issue and making it personal, by compressing a large idea into an intimate tale of family, loss, history, and memory, director Simon Curtis has made a film that is not only about restitution but about reconciliation.
Helen Mirren's luminous portrayal of Maria Altman captured my heart from her first words. She seems to have gathered together, and understood deeply, the reserve, the wry wit, the ways of thinking, acting and speaking, the complexities even, of my late mother-in law's generation of once upper-middle class to affluent Austrian Jewish refugees. Although she did not remind me of any one person, her characterization is so spot-on, so true to my experience, that almost every phrase, every expression and action flooded my mind with memories of women I have known, women now gone. Throughout the movie my heart was going "Yes. Yes. This."
I also felt Ryan Reynolds was well-chosen to play Randy Schoenberg. I am aware that reviews of his performance have not always been positive. But to me his all-American affability was the perfect counterpoint to Mirren's complexities. His light hand in his portrayal of Randy Schoenberg helped to keep the film from being overwrought, from being emotionally toxic.
But the truth is, in my experience Reynolds's characterization is also spot-on. I know these men, children who were deliberately protected from the pain of the memory; children who were encouraged to be as American, as lighthearted and unencumbered as their grandparents were not. I know them. And Reynolds's character held many direct associations for me. I would think "this is X", or "yes, this is Y" and I would love them. I could see their interactions with their own families, sometimes the interactions in my own extended family, in the exchanges between Mirren and Reynolds. The choice of these actors, the portrayal of these characters shows us something about the dynamics of family, of history and starting over, of the sharing of memory within families, that may otherwise be lost with time.
Woman in Gold is a film of stories within stories, stories that will stay with you if you let them in. It is some of the quiet moments that echo the most deeply, the moments that could be missed that stay with me. In particular, this exchange between Maria and Randy, and exchange that occurs immediately following a moment of triumph, continues to make waves in my heart: "My mistake was in thinking this would make everything better. But it does not. I left them here. I left them."
Do not worry. The film does not end on that sad note. As I stated earlier, this film is about more than art restitution. It is about memory and reconciliation. But for that, you will have to watch the film yourself.