Painting by Ed Ruscha. |
My own exterior and the spaces I occupy are candidates for sprucing up. Little by little I work toward a mythical day of declaring all officially spruced. The interior is a different business. I don't imagine a day of completed interior tidying. I declare myself a work in progress and leave it at that.
These thoughts were sparked by beginning, last Saturday, year two of a daily chair yoga practice. That year one is now in the record books seems a miracle or something very much like one. When we were told "one day at a time," in our best moments we hoped we could manage such seemingly small increments. Continuity is created with baby steps. That a year now passes so swiftly is a mixed blessing. That time, as I experience it, simply evaporates, often without a trace, is disturbing. Yet its quality of vanishing even as I observe it makes 365 days of committed practice more possible than I could have guessed. Next is the addition of daily art, either as work or play. There are goals and desires. I see daily work as the only reliable road.
Another interior assignment is rumination or the clearing of unhelpful thoughts, replacing them with ways of seeing that lead me away from chaos. We seem generally to have been stockpiling chaos and are now cursed with a surplus which threatens to engulf everything. If ground coffee still came in cans, I could pour mine into the empty ones as I once did bacon grease. If I still had a back yard I could bury them there. Beneath the pine and the camellia bushes, the earth was shady and damp in all four seasons. In the absence of coffee cans and a private, walled garden, I've sought other solutions.
I adhere to the belief that our capacity for change is infinite. We do what we can, with what we have, from where we are. I realize that in my younger life, and possibly still today, I have been stupid in a thousand different ways. If I could go back, there is much I would do differently. But we only know what we know when we know it, if at all. I believe that simply being kind in any and all situations will never be a bad choice for me. I know that, once spoken, harsh words cannot be unsaid.
This, this living, is all so temporary and fragile, so finite. Everything we love is really just on loan and we are wise to treat everyone and everything that matters as sacred. We befriend and, one hopes, become the better angels we seek.
9 comments:
Fireworks! Kudos! Congratulations! Hip-hip hurrahs! Hallelujahs! Hazel tovs and pip pips! t has been such a joy to have you as our wise-woman-learning-what-true-wisdom-is, Marylinn. You have brought us so far with you, always with a gentling hand, kindness, delight and your so generous heart. Well done on defining your space, letting go of what is no longer necessary, parceling out the extras to those who will jump up and down with happiness. And commitment to your practice of chair yoga! Amazing work, my dear friend! And yes, there will be cake!!
Melissa - Thank you, my dear friend. Oh, she said, cake! We look up and notice we are deep in the process and there is our work. xo
Wise and well written words my friend. Your writing always inspires and opens. Thank you <3
Kristen - Thank you so much. xo
Rebecca - My own blog rejected my comment. WTF? I miss you, too, dear friend. Did, however, visit your blog before returning here and gave the secret handshake to be allowed to comment. A curious non-Masonic lodge, David Lynch?, where admittance is iffy. Thanks, Google. But I digress. I had written that finding my way to what is solid and real sometimes eludes me, that my communal connections are mostly finding and sharing what brightens my spirits, how these are times when there can hardly be enough warmth even on the sunniest day. Thank you for your congratulations. And I said that perhaps you sensed me touching the spines of your books yesterday as I paused at a bookcase. I love you and think of you in the context of so many things, the other day a Ken Kesey quote. "Since we don't know where we're going we have to stick together in case someone gets there." Always wishing you vibrant health and the peace of your island. xoxo
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