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Category: Introspection

A Scarf and A Question

I am surrounded by piles. But they are not piles of obligation. I am not stressed. I am simply in a place of reconsideration and rethinking, hence the piles. But I am also find it is perfectly acceptable to leave those piles in place, to release the pressure to address all questions immediately, perfectly acceptable to just do nothing and see what happens. It is perfectly acceptable to sit back and wait, perfectly acceptable to hold on to the thought that I want to do will become perfectly clear in its own time.

I did knit a scarf for my mom. It is a simple infinity loop. I gave it to her yesterday because it was cold and I decided gifts could be given freely, when the time seemed best, rather than waiting for a specific day.

The idea for the scarf was a last minute inspiration. However the finished result was not what I originally intended. Mom is allergic to wool so the yarns are cotton and a cotton rayon blend. The cotton is Cumulus by Juniper Moon, and it is very soft and fluffy. The multi-colored yarn is Alumco by Auracania. It is lovely, but it also proved too slippery for my initial idea. I knitted and frogged, reknitted and frogged again, working through multiple bouts of knitting and ripping before I settled on this very simple idea.

Although there have been moments of temporary frustration, that entire process of starts and stops, of knitting and ripping and trying again, was actually very calming and freeing. I was reminded that sometimes you just have to sit back and wait, sometimes you have to fail and try again, but eventually your efforts pay off. I think in my younger days I was too concerned with production. I was too concerned with the idea that success in life meant accomplishing as much as possible in as little time as possible. I see now that this was an error. Yes it works, but I wonder if that sense of accomplishment is really a false sense of accomplishment. How many potential rewards were cast off because visible results came too slowly?

What if success in the game of life is not about what you have to show for your time, but who your use of time allows you to become?

December 22, 2018
The Common Blue-Banded Booby

I believe this was the first time in many years that I did not post on Independence Day. I spent much of the day outside. It was a privilege and a joy, even though I did not spend my time at any Independence Day celebrations. This has not always been the case. In the past few years I have gone to cookouts, spent the day boating with friends, watched the Farragut Independence Day parade, gone downtown for the festivities there, watched fireworks, heard the symphony.

This year I celebrated my independence of choice. I celebrated the privilege to work, to work at projects of my choosing. In fact, the idea of privilege itself was a constant in my thoughts, and will perhaps be overused in this post. I thought about those who came to this country, many fleeing oppression of many kinds, seeking the freedom to choose their own lives, their own paths, their own work, their own religion. This is actually what our Declaration of Independence celebrates, the legacy of choice, the legacy of hard-working souls who insisted on their right to choose their own path.

Actually I wasn't doing anything so lofty. I worked in the yard, despite the fact that it was obnoxiously hot. I did some gardening early, mostly weeding, and then moved on to other projects. Yesterday felt like the first day of summer to me, although it wasn't really, but it felt like a day set aside, a day with no obligations, no interruptions, a day to do as I pleased. And I was pleased to wash and paint outdoor furniture.

This was not the first time I painted the Panton chairs. I refreshed the yellow chairs a few years ago. Apparently the colored chairs wee not meant to hold up outside, although they held up beautifully for years in Hyde Park. In Knoxville, after one year, they were pale faded versions of themselves. I don't know if it is the stronger sun, the longer humid season with its greater mold-producing tendencies, the pollen, or what. I spray painted them my second summer in Knoxville, and kept them in a protected spot afterward. But they went back outside here, at the new house, and were worse for it. They are not good outdoor chairs for Knoxville, and will not remain outdoors for any length of time in the future. But first they needed refurbishing.

I chose a color called lagoon. Four chairs were painted. There are no flat surfaces on a Panton chair, which means that it takes multiple steps to paint them, and it took much of the day, although there were periods of painting, and periods of waiting. I had lofty ambitions of cleaning the garage during the waiting periods, but it soon grew too steamy. I needed to run a couple of errands, and while I was out I decided to paint a table as well, a fairly modern black steel table that was looking worse for wear and was destined for the donation pile. I spent the remainder of the day washing and painting outdoor furniture, working in the garden and garage, and coming inside to work when I would get overheated, which was frequently during the middle of the afternoon.

As the afternoon waned, and I was out until nearly 9 before everything was finished, I would listen to various bursts of fireworks around me. I've not lived anywhere where so many fireworks went off, not at least in my adult life, although I remember going out to the lake or the countryside to set off fireworks with my parents when I was a child. I don't recall setting off fireworks at home, but I don't know if fireworks were allowed in city limits or not. In Hyde Park we could occasionally sit on our deck and watch the display from a nearby town, but often we went down to Poughkeepsie to see the fireworks display first-hand. Although I love professional fireworks displays, I have no interest in setting them off myself. In fact I love parades and fireworks, but somehow this year did not feel like going by myself, despite the fact that I knew I would see people I knew. I always see people I know. Not family however, I am the only one among my remaining local family who enjoy an occasional pyrotechnic display.

This year my intent had been to work and then go downtown, but I quickly realized that to leave would mean the work would be unfinished, and I chose to finish. I was content with my choice, reminded to once again to thank my own privilege, the privilege to choose to work, but also the privilege of keeping a cool house, the privilege to go inside whenever I felt overheated. These are luxuries not to be taken lightly. As I put the last piece of furniture in place, I saw the flash of some neighborhood fireworks through the trees, and I thought about what a happy fourth it had been. But I also thought about fireworks and parades and barbecues, and the many ways we celebrate the fourth of July, and that the very ability to do these things is a privilege, a privilege earned for us by our forebears, who were all immigrants to this place.

I am happy with the results of my labors. Two chairs remain outside, for now, but I will keep them here only a few days. The chairs will move with me to my apartment during construction. I'm not sure about the blue table yet. It is an inexpensive thing, the finish is peeling and flaking off the bottom, but it can go in the garage during construction, delaying the decision until next spring.

The table turned out well and I am newly entranced. It seems I am always drawn to color. I still don't know where it will go once the new deck is finished, as I want a larger table, but I love this light green. The pale blue chairs are not mine, we gave them to my step-daughter's family when we moved here, six years ago. It is hard to believe it has been so long. But they do look pretty with the table.

The other two Panton chairs are inside, in the morning room, with the twin to the now-green table. I did not paint this one as it always has a cloth. This table, and all four chairs will move to my apartment, as the dining space is not large enough for my dining table, even without the leaves. Looking at this photo, I see that the curtain needs to come down now, at least if I am going to leave the table in the corner, even temporarily. The curtains will come down anyway as I will be moving in less than a month.

But what about the "blue-banded booby"? I am the booby. Well, I actually believe we are all boobys at times, and in this instance I am not referring to the bird, but the other meaning of the word, although I am saying it with love and humor. Actually bobby's were so named because the sailors who named thought they were stupid. They weren't of course, perhaps unexperienced with humans, but they learned. I think that is something to remember, that we often make judgements based on incomplete information, that one seems stupid in one context may, in fact, not be stupid at all in another, and that we all, at some point make mistakes. Mistakes are actually what makes us human. Mistakes are probably the secret of our success, and the source of our greatest discoveries. We are all boobies and we should not take ourselves too seriously. It seems that much of the wisdom of age seems to revolve around holding things lightly, even mistakes.

I am the blue-banded booby. It was a very calm day, but at one point in the evening a breeze came up, and a few specks of dust got stuck in my wet paint. I can live with that. But I apparently did not realize that I was, at one point, downwind of the spray paint. It was late; I was tired; mistakes happen. Unfortunately, by the time I realized what had happened, the paint was sufficiently dry that it did not come off easily. I shall consider it a badge of honor, honoring my humanity, and a birthday gift to myself, although only a temporary one. Within a few days all remnants of blue shall be gone and only the memory will remain — memory and perhaps a gentle smile.

July 5, 2018
Traversing the Slough

I spent a bit of time in the slough of despond this week. In many ways there was no reason for it, I was coming off a fabulous weekend, although perhaps an excess of happiness and the remnant trails of exhaustion exacerbated my state. Who really knows, I am not here to explore the roads to the slough, or even the process of extraction, although I am on the other side. I am simply admitting that sometimes life grows difficult, our hearts and feet heavy and we trudge onward, hoping not to be pulled down into our own darker thoughts.

As stated above, it had been a fabulous weekend. Friday night I went to the symphony, the last concert of the season, and a lovely concert it was. I went despite the fact that I was exhausted. I went despite the fact that the program's theme was Rhapsody in Blue, a piece of music I have never really liked although I have admittedly never really spent time sussing out what it is about the piece that I don't like. I didn't like it when my piano teacher insisted I play it, even though I tend to like the piano composition far more than the orchestration. It all seems jangly and jumpy and although I know that is the jazz influence, I'd often rather just hear jazz.

But I went to the concert to hear the second half, Aaron Copeland's Symphony #3, "Quiet City", a beloved work, despite its inconsistencies. This is, in a way, and odd statement to make because I didn't even stay for the second half. I was so tired that I feared my ability to drive safely home, and although I could have ubered home and come back in the morning for my car, I probably would have slept through the Copeland anyway, no matter how beautifully performed. Surprisingly, I Ioved the Gershwin. Pianist Michelle Cann's performance was brilliantly exuberant, with a controlled rhythm and an elegance that I don't often hear in that piece. Still the rhythm was there and it made me want to dance. In fact the entire piece, piano and orchestra was alive, except instead of all jangly and jumpy it felt more to me like silk and chiffon moving and swirling in the winds of the music. Perhaps this interpretation of the Gershwin was shaped by the Florence Price work played earlier in the concert Concerto in One Movement for Piano and Orchestra, which I admittedly knew nothing about but which seemed to be a rather gracious melding of old-world European traditions with the roots of ragtime.

Saturday was puttering day, and catch-up on sleep day, which is why there was no blog post. I had been sleeping badly for a week, for no discernible reason. Mentally and emotionally I did not feel stressed, but my body did; perhaps this too was a precursor to this weeks trudge through the tar-like slough, some previously hidden imp of a thought working its way out of my psyche. Perhaps my body occasionally tells tries to clue me in to things my mind is refusing to acknowledge. But Saturday was mostly a grocery shopping and cooking day. I was cooking both for myself and for another family, which offered a double joy in a way, as I got to play in the kitchen and feed people, two activities that are always dear to my heart. At the end of the day I was tired, happy-tired, but tired nonetheless.

Sunday I went on a bike ride with a friend. It was my first excursion outside my immediate neighborhood, my first ride of over 2 miles, and I was a bit nervous to start, still wobbly, still occasionally getting my gear-shifts confused, but excited as well. We met at the EarthFare parking lot and rode to the UT Gardens and back, a ride that was, to my best guess, nearly 7 miles round trip. It is a good beginner trail and not nearly as hilly as my neighborhood, which was helpful. It was perhaps a mile too far, as I was struggling to get myself up that last slight hill returning to my car, but I made it, and it was my own fault anyway as I was the one who insisted I could make it to the gardens. and back. I've always had a tendency to overdo.

Sunday afternoon I made chocolate bark, and toasted and soaked Mexican Chiles to make a couple of kinds of Chile paste just to restock my pantry and for some upcoming menus. Then had a lovely dinner with friends. My Vitamix crashed on Sunday, well the canister did, and a replacement canister is on the way. Monday I crashed. No replacement self alas, but although perhaps more volatile, I am less brittle than plastic, and can be restored.

Wisely I didn't stop doing things during the week. Although my accomplishments slowed considerably. I am working on yet another round of sorting and putting away. I walked but I did not ride the bike, which may have been a mistake, as the feel of the air against my skin might have perked me up considerably. There were days when Tikka, reading my reluctant mood, did manage to convince me not to walk, whereas usually I drag her along, or she drags me along, and we support each other. Perhaps we were both simply experiencing an early summer miasma.

And here we are again, another weekend. It is an active weekend, but perhaps with a better balance between my social and solitary selves. This may be a good thing. It is human to want to find reasons, preferably problems we can fix, but I am not sure that is the answer. There are always hills. There is always mud. Perhaps, because I was tired, certain barriers were down and I was more open to vulnerability. But relationships also require a willingness to enter into vulnerability on occasion, even if that means occasionally traipsing through the mud. The trick seems to be in both allowing oneself to wallow when needed, but also being willing and able to both enter, and to see oneself to the other side.

Have a wonderful weekend.

May 26, 2018
Saturday Meanderings

Moisés took his first walk in the snow this morning. It was slightly before dawn, still almost dark, but the light was lifting. Perhaps I am not the only one settling in to myself. Perhaps Moisés is just experiencing a mid-life crisis. He is nine, and hasn't really been outside since he was a small kitten; he's never shown interest, and the two occasions he did find himself outside he was terrified. Perhaps he just wants to see what is so exciting to Tikka? I'll never know his reasons, and I was not sanguine about letting him out but he was determined. Now he and Tikka go out in the morning for a brief wander before breakfast. Tikka romps, oblivious to the snow; Moisés picks up his foot after each step and looks at it with unsettled disgust. Still he explores a little further before following Tikka inside for the joys of the breakfast bowl, Tikka dancing and spinning in eager circles, M with a dignified stroll and a brief swaying to one side, just enough to brush against my ankles.

We seem to have all settled into this place. I still worry that M will wander away; will get hit by a car, or hurt by another animal. But I suppose I have to let him be himself. Tikka is usually content to stay here in her own space, our yard, and she is far happier with this yard than she was with the condo. I don't know why unless it is just that I worry less. I do worry, I worry that she will run off after another dog when she sees one walk by — the opportunity to be social outweighs the risks of the invisible fence every time. Often I don't worry about the collar, she is not inclined to wander anyway unless tempted, and the temptation is too great, collar or no. She generally only wants to be out if I am out anyway, where we can keep an eye on each other. Both beasts are homebodies, happy in their space. Like their mom.

I've been knitting. I've been sleeping late as well. Knitting and sleeping. I think there is a connection here. I never wanted to be a person who woke up hours before dawn, a person who went to bed in the middle of the evening either, although I've been a lark most of my life, a person who bounds awake with joy. This is a project I started in December, didn't like, ripped apart and restarted this past week. Perhaps I simply needed to knit that shrug first, to get my knitting muscles back in gear, to rekindle the spark. I've been dreaming of yarn and cloth and fiber and thread, dreaming up projects, recording ideas, but the actual act of creation eluded me. I would pick something up and put it down again, overwhelmed with weariness.

Perhaps I was just committed to too many things that were not truly what made me happy, that were against where my own nature wants me to go. I really want to do nothing but take meanderingly slow walks, bury myself in thread and fabric and yarn, play, cook, eat, share. And yet I never quite managed it. I was always distracted by too many things that needed to be done. I was bound by not enough time when what I really needed was to escape time altogether.

When I pick up my needles and knit, I escape time. I sit and knit late into the evening. The hours disappear. It seems I was not knitting because I was disconnected from something essential, essential to me at least. Perhaps I was letting who I was dictate who I should be. That isn't it exactly. I was letting my past dictate who I should be, letting the world dictate who I should be. What I did was never who I was. My mistake was in thinking that it should be. Who I was is integral to who I am, but it is only a past me, a part of me, and not who I have become. Even though I don't wish to be that person anymore, I have struggled with letting go, with saying "yes, you are right, I could solve that problem for you, but no I will not, I can not, because to do so denies who I am at my very core". I need to be here, to play with yarn, to embrace silence, but also to share, to share my gifts as they are, not as they are expected to be, to accept that as busy and distracting as the world may be, in its very essence it is completely here, in every moment, in every small vortex of space.

There has been a cardinal in the tree outside my office window every morning this week. Every morning except this morning. The photo is from a couple of days ago, from before the snow. The light is muted by the storm window. I don't like storm windows, or screens. They mute the light, deaden the play of light in the house, deaden the face of the house from the street. And yet the screens remind me now of how many veils and walls we build. The snow will pass. This cardinal will go and another will come. There is no rush.

January 13, 2018
A House Filled With Music

Take a deep breath. Inhale. Breathe out, slowly, letting worries escape on the drifting waves of air. Inhale again, and with a deep sigh release all that needs release.

The happy corner: Light and Music, a happy collaboration, and a lifetime's worth of collected joys.

I decorated the tree last Wednesday. In 2016 there was no tree, no decorations. I planned to go away for the holiday, but instead I got sick and bought a house. The three years before that, after my back surgery, I had a decorator do the tree, do the house, at first because I wasn't certain I could do the twisting and reaching necessary, and later because my heart wasn't in it. I just wanted Christmas to appear, as if by magic. It doesn't really work that way of course. The magic is in the making. This year this house, this corner especially, is the both the least decorated and the most magical Christmas in a long time. I sit and breathe and relax, listening to the music, looking at the glistening lights, the reflections of light and color, and my heart is at peace.

A friend helped me drag the tree up from the basement last Tuesday, for which I am quite grateful. I hauled out the stereo and set it up, flipped and fluffed and assembled the tree, and started sorting and filing CDs and LPs, which were still in slight disarray from the move. The stereo had been waiting for the cabinet ,which arrived just before Thanksgiving, but set-up was further delayed while I waited for a call from the man with the drill. I could wait no longer, so the stereo went up top, my old Talking Heads albums came out, with perhaps a brief interruption from the Ramones, and I was dancing around the house, filing, sorting, cleaning, and reconnecting with my 20-year old self, dancing around my first apartment, hanging my first ornament on my first tree, an ornament I still have by the way. Silliness reigned, and silliness is a powerful force.

Wednesday was calmer as the decorations came out. All my ornaments are on that tree. That never happened on a decorator tree, and much as I love decorator trees in other people's homes, here, I love my tree best, a mishmash accumulated over decades, rustic items mixed with glistening Radko glass, all dubbed "whimsical" by the decorator. Whimsical isn't really my term, but I have grown into it along with the implied imperfection. I love my tree, and as I decorated I listened to a mismatched clutter of music as well, my choices constrained only by the letters D and E in my sorting and cataloging project, and my varying moods and peripatetic thoughts. I danced and decorated to a mixed bag primarily consisting of soothing piano music by Debussy, the cheerful infectious pop of Raghu Dixit, the moody blues-rock of the Eels, and jazz by Eric Dolphy, complex, sometimes enervating, often energizing. Other bits and bobs found their way into the mix, a soupçon of Dvorak, Depeche Mode, Dylan and Eminem, as needed to soothe restless thoughts. Right now, I'm not sure I crave anything more than a reacquaintance with my music, all my music, and all the music yet to be discovered.

As I sat in the semi-dark late one evening, admiring the tree and hoping to knit but instead finding a cat and dog negotiating a detente on my lap, a glass of proseco in my hand and more Debussy filling the room, I realized how well this mish-mash suited me. It seems that as I've grown older I've grown more adventurous in my taste in music, more willing to be eclectic, to resist being pinned down. I'm not comfortable being decorated, curated, collected or defined, and I hope that never stops. I hope I can grow younger and more open as I grow older. I hope that I can always stop and enjoy the twinkling lights on a tree, the music in the early morning air as the wind blows gently through the leaves, a soft underpinning to the cawing of the crows, I hope I can be open to new things and, first and foremost, the joy of enjoying life, both in times of quiet and in times of company, and the importance of having fun.

The past week has been a mini-retreat, a letting-go of responsibilities and obligations, a release of psychic energy, an acknowledgement that I cannot fix what is not mine to fix. It has been a reminder that the solution is not to build walls to stop the waves, walls which will inevitably come crashing down, but to find my own center of calm, to bend, to float, and to allow the current to swirl around me on its own path, releasing it to its own destinations while simultaneously freeing myself from the burden of obligations that cannot be fulfilled. I dance, not because I am oblivious, but because I do indeed care. I dance because joy, like creativity, is a precious gift, a delicate commodity to be protected and safeguarded. Joy isn't our weakness but our strength; it doesn't stem from the absence of pain and suffering, but through it, a light in the darkness, a spark to be protected lest it be snuffed out.

December 19, 2017
Morning Melancholy

While I was in San Antonio I spent some time looking at an exhibit of nineteenth and early twentieth century French art glass at the McNay Art Musuem. The McNay is one of my favorite small museums, and I try to go by each time I am in town.

This time the glass captured my attention, probably because I had just seen an entirely different collection of glass, glass created using entirely different techniques, in Arkansas at the Chihuly exhibit. As I studied the small pieces and read the information posted, I thought about art and skill and fashion, how we hold ideas in our heads. Looking at these small pieces of glass, I was thinking that some of them can never be recreated, the technique has been lost. I'm certain we did not intend to lose that knowledge, those particular skills. There were wars, people died, so many things changed. We value different skills now, but sometimes we don't even know what we lost until we have lost it.

I remember back when I was in my early 20s, talking to artists in the Woodstock community of New York state. I remember being told that only mouth-blown glass was true art, that fused glass, glass formed in molds, was inferior, was not art. Did the first person who fused glass together and carved it think that? No. I suspect not.

Of course we know better now, know that art and beauty come in many forms, in many guises. Hopefully we know we are as apt to lose them as we are to hold on to them, and that those two desires, two results, are interrelated. Hopefully we know that we can hold to tightly and crush the life. We can hold too loosely and not realize that what we truly valued has been lost. Or do we?

August 24, 2017
Not so random thoughts on a Saturday morning

I had a great time in Asheville. I do think it was the best vacation I have taken in a long time, and I was very relaxed. In fact, it probably would have served me well to stay a few days longer, and that is a big change. Just last year I was struggling with staying away more than 2 to 3 days; feeling antsy and like I needed to get home, and then not quite feeling settled when I was at home.

Perhaps that is the key, feeling settled. I feel settled and happy. Perhaps it is easier to go away because I am more settled when I come home. Perhaps being settled isn't as much about a place as it is a state of mind, of learning to accept that sometimes the world goes as we wish and sometime it doesn't, of learning to acknowledge our feelings and respect them, but then to let them go and not let them drag us into depression or anger in some situations, or into frustration or endless yearning for more or better. We never regain what we fear we lost and striving for more doesn't make us happier; often all we accomplish is creating more pain, pain in others we love. We all experience sadness, fear, anger, but how we deal with them is our own choice. Perhaps happiness is just that, acceptance. Happiness comes in embracing joy, acknowledging sadness, and living with the sure knowledge that both will come again.

Perhaps there is more to it than that. At any rate, in my brief time away I've accepted some new insights into the ways I do and do not always handle stress well. I will leave it mostly at that, simply stating that there are still things I internalize too much.

But then, I've also come to think that contradiction and struggle between striving and accepting is part of what it means to be human in much the same way we struggle between wanting to be independent and yet needing others, between creativity and safety. At time life seems to be a long lesson in finding ways to accept and let go. Sometimes we need to step aside, get away and clear our heads.

So I am happy and settled in my new house. But it really isn't about the house, although the house is not irrelevant. Part of my time in Asheville was spent at a craft fair and in galleries. The craft fair was all about things, and I suppose so is a gallery, but they can also be about seeing things differently. I was torn between not needing or wanting more things, and yet at the same time, sometimes wanting. More struggle. I am not about to disparage things in general, things can be fun, they just aren't the be all and end all.    In some ways going to craft fairs and galleries reminded me not to buy, and perhaps that inclination is worth a post of its own. But I did buy a couple of small things, one of which is pictured above. It is a necklace made of automotive springs, part of a line of jewelry made by an artist in Germany. The necklace is light, and springy, and I think it is really cool.

I bought the necklace because I simply think it is neat and interesting and pretty. But I wonder if wearing a necklace made of springs can remind me to spring back and let go.   I wonder if buying a necklace when I am thinking about being tightly wound, a necklace made of springs, can act as a talisman of sorts. I am probably just attaching too much meaning to the thing, but I suspect that even a thing can be a gateway. If, when I wear a sweater I knit I am always reminded of where I was when I was knitting, why can't something I purchased take on equal significance? The danger comes when the things become more important than the memories or ideas they represent, when the gateway becomes more important than the destination, when our talismans become more important than our connections and communities, when our small safe room becomes more important than the village that supports and nurtures us, the village that allowed us to create that room in the first place.

July 29, 2017
Time. To. Slow. Down.

Yesterday I woke up and would have sworn that every cell in my body ached. If I could have stayed in bed I would have, but my mind was already swirling with anxieties, my usually somewhat hidden insecurities jabbing away at my tender flesh.

I would have told you that I had done nothing to warrant this bodily revolt, but I knew that I would simply have been deceiving myself. The truth is I had been exhausted on Sunday, so exhausted I could barely stand and had to leave a reception early before I collapsed. Even then, I only allowed myself 2 hours before pushing myself further, pushing myself until I had to stop, and starting up again the moment I had the slightest charge in my energy stores.

It seems I am the queen of unrealistic self-expectation. For some reason this second round of unpacking has been harder than the first. Then, I was so happy just to be here that I gave myself space. Now, I've been here a month, and I inadvertently let my evil doppelganger out of her box, the little voice that says "why aren't you all unpacked yet?", "why haven't you weeded all the flower beds", "why haven't you trimmed the shrubbery", "why haven't", "why haven't", "why haven't….." The problem with that voice is that it looks for all the failures, and refuses to see all the successes. I know perfectly well that there is no rush. No one expects more, or cares, and even if they did, it would be their problem, not mine. But I've spent nearly 60 years letting that voice butt-in and have her way. Perhaps it is time to stop.

Yesterday, really for the first time since moving in, I sat down and wrote my morning pages. I wrote again this morning. I had to give myself permission to write first, rather than unpack, work in the garden, or take my walk. If I do all those things first, I will never write, and if I never write out my thoughts, I let my guard down. If I lose touch with my thoughts I let those little worms of insecurity rise up to the surface where they have no business living. In retrospect it seems I do this every summer, try to cram everything into the early morning, and then end up struggling all the more. But this summer the stress of the move, even of a good move to a place that feels so strongly my place, has amped up my tendency toward self-criticism.

In a couple of weeks I'll be embarking upon my 60th year on this earth. This is not something I want to carry into my 60s. It is time to let the things I think and say and believe, the words I tell everyone else, sink into the deepest darkest recesses of my own heart. It is time to hammer the last nail into that coffin and seal up that little voice the screams "not good enough" once and for all. I don't have to have a perfect house, or a perfect garden, if I am tired and forget to run the dishwasher the world will not end. I am allowed to fail, to be tired, to be wrong, to make mistakes

I am still tired today. But I will not push myself. The new bookshelves arrived, but if I don't have energy to carry them up the stairs today, so be it. There will always be another day. And if there is not another day, if today is the last day, bookshelves will be the least of it.

Yesterday, I wrote my morning pages, and I let Tikka drag me out for a walk. It was a longer walk than I felt like taking, but I felt better for it. Afterward, as I stood in the shower, I was struck by the combination of color shown above. Such a simple thing, a bathroom wall, a door, a towel, fog on the shower door. But it changed my perspective. I thought how lovely it was. I didn't pick the wall color, it was here before me. The towel may not really match, but I didn't think about that, didn't berate myself because I still haven't gone out and purchased a towel bar on which to hang the towel. Instead I thought how lovely it looked draped over the door, how happy that momentary observation made me.

And I rested. Later, I realized that the colors in my bathroom are the colors in my new glasses. As I sit here right now I see the same colors in the walls of my office, in the shadow of light passing through a sheet of glass and a watercolor on vellum, in the colors of the clouds on this rainy morning. These are the moments that count, not the stories we tell ourselves so that we feel more successful, or accomplished, or whatever. We are already accomplished; we are already perfect. Perhaps that is another myth we tell ourselves when we think we are striving for perfection. What if it is our striving that actually makes us imperfect? What if we only see our perfect selves in those quiet moments when we touch someone else's hand, when we watch the bird in the tree, when we listen with our hearts and our minds, when we just allow ourselves to be?

June 22, 2017
Three Decembers: A Journey

Saturday evening I attended a performance of Jake Heggie's Three Decembers produced by Opera Fayetteville. Although I have heard of Heggie, I am familiar with his work in name only. I have not been to any performances or sought out any recordings, and I intentionally went into this performance blind. I must say that although I cannot say the work is beautiful, the performance was powerful and touching. There is an easy lyricism to the music, and it was beautifully sung and acted. The performance perfectly captured the sadness of the characters and the frustrations and loss of this family, bound up in their own stories, and unable to express their love for each other.

Three Decembers is based on Terrence McNally's play Some Christmas Letters with some inspiration from Ibsen as well. The set was minimalist, befitting an opera that revolves primarily around the interior world of the three characters: famous actress Madeline Mitchell, and her two grown children. Set as a series of letters and interactions between the children and their mother, the story is really about the often tenuous nature of relationships and the way the stories we build around ourselves define us and enslave us. In the opera we hear and feel the yearning of the characters, but also their bitterness and we feel the constraints of the walls they build around themselves, walls they are unable to cross. When some of those walls are shattered, they must rebuild, but they don't necessarily cross through the rubble to the other side.

Opera Fayetteville is a young opera company in Fayetteville Arkansas with a two-fold focus: on providing performance opportunities for young opera singers in the early stages of their careers, and performing contemporary operas in English. I am happy to learn about this organization, and I was happy to have attended a performance. I am sure there are other interesting companies doing interesting work across the country, but this is where I happened to be.

Yes, I went to Arkansas. I went to Arkansas to hear an opera I knew nothing about, in a production by an company I also knew nothing about. And I had a marvelous time. I went on a lark. I heard about the opera because George's first cousin twice-removed, Jacob Scharfman was performing in the role of Charlie. I went because I like contemporary opera. I went because I've always been interested in going places to see and hear new things. I went because I had a free weekend. I went because, although I don't know Jacob well, his late father was someone I counted as a close friend in our youth, and although our lives had drifted, I still wanted to support Jacob in this endeavor.

I went, and I didn't tell Jacob I was going. Partly this was just because I've been struggling through the shallows in the last 5 or 6 months, and am only just beginning to find my way back into the deep waters. Partly this was because I was distracted and I forgot until it was too late, the timing was too close. This was precisely because I don't know Jacob well, and I would only be there in the middle of production when the would be working, and I did not want to impose a sense of obligation, a sense that something extra was needed to meet with some distant relative through marriage that he didn't even know. Maybe this was the right choice, maybe it was wrong; I simply don't know.

I do know that Jacob is a good actor as well as an excellent singer. I do know that the audience felt the raw power of emotion when his character, Charlie, was cradling one of the shirts belonging to Burt, his partner, who had recently died of AIDS. I recalled that same feeling, known to all who have suffered a profound loss, of doing the same with George's sweatshirt. It brought tears to my eyes, and not only mine. But I also saw a young Jacob, only a senior in college when his father died almost four years ago, loss and pain etched on his face. It takes talent and guts to channel that pain and turn it into art.

Perhaps that was a bit voyeuristic, that hidden knowledge. But it was a joy to see this young man shine, to see this moving story told by three marvelous young talents. It was good to simply be there, to see and hear this performance, to see good work being done by good people in diverse places. It was good.

December 6, 2016
A Change in Perspective

Monday night I was out for a late walk with Tikka, well after dark, when I happened to look up just as the moonlight was shining through the leaves of a river birch tree. Yes, the light seemed to be shining not just on the tree, but through the leaves, making them glow and dance with translucence. It stopped me in my tracks. I realized that the light came from the moon, and that it was very different than the light from street lamps hitting similar trees just 100 feet away. The light seemed to give the fading leaves, no longer green, but not quite yellow, an almost ethereal glow, as if something normally hidden was being revealed. I didn't have my phone on me, but I am not convinced that technology alone would have captured the magical effect.

This morning Tikka and I were out of our usual routine, even our usual Tuesday routine, when I have an early meeting. We left in a bit of a rush, and by the time we returned home the house was crawling with painters. We went from the three who have been here for over a week now to eight, and Tikka was not convinced she wanted to go back into the house. It seemed another, longer, walk was in order.

It was well past dawn, the light was bright, but the hills in the distance were gray and indistinct due to the smoke from various fires burning in the region. Luckily for us the breeze was carrying that smoke away from my own little hilltop this morning, and we had a lovely walk. It was more of a stroll really, as I was lost in thought and Tikka was more than happy to sniff and snort and shuffle through the decaying leaves on the ground. I was remembering those moonlit leaves and their strange life even while I looked at their same pale daytime faces. I would look at the leaves on the trees, the way they captured the light, but still seemed spent, the definition of autumnal, and think about the stages of leaves, of trees, of growth and life.

Still I was haunted by those moonlight spectres.

The memory of the light shining through the leaves, the almost surreal magic of them, remained as I admired the colors of leaves on the ground and on the trees. As I walked, I thought not only about what we see but also about what we don't see. I thought of our propensity to take things at face value, to rarely look below the surface, to either ignore context, or to flagrantly extrapolate from one context into a completely different one, oblivious to complexities and nuance. Occasionally too quick to judge, at other times far too slow, how often do we miss the light that is right in front of our eyes?

November 15, 2016