Willing feels like a word for grown-ups, the real ones, who do not expect things always to fall within one's comfort zone. I am not sure I qualify.
A willingness for what is physically painful, what may not pay the desired dividend regardless of effort, is not my greatest virtue. One of the sayings from 12-step programs is, "The only way out is through." I know this to be true. To be stronger, to be more safe and mobile, more independent, feels like a possibility. It calls to me constantly. My heart longs for those enhanced attributes beyond any other wish. No one else can make it happen. Medicare has provided all the physical therapy it deems appropriate or beneficial. I know more is possible, yet have shilly-shallied, let time pass and lost ground I had gained.
Courage and trust. If they were easily summoned, everyone would posses them. I must assume some aspect of the universe believes I am capable of this or the dream would not exist.
Gifts of Christmas, plentiful and wonder-packed, include Sandy Mastroni's stuffed and painted moon with noodle arms and the Paperways large notebook with French grid pages. The photo above doesn't quite do justice to the cover color, which is more a celery shade than lime. While I wasn't paying attention during the past two years, I became a fool for grid-ruled pages - in notebooks, Project Life cards, index cards, Post-It notes. While mine is not a name generally thought of when talking about "order," grid-lined pages appeal to something within that has been shouted down. For two weeks in the 1960s I worked for a bookkeeping firm, writing cramped yet tidy numbers in bulky, confusing books. We parted with good will after two weeks. I became a journalist.
We notebook fetishists, for that is who we are, not simply appreciators, too passive a title, really do lust after any bound collection of pages in which we can sketch, doodle, jot, muse, record or write. We can discuss pens and mechanical pencils another day.
Yesterday also brought reasons for gratitude, the first being an ability in my better moments to be in love with what may seem under-valued treasures. In no particular order from January 6, they are:
*A bag of pears from Trader Joe's that smelled the ways pears ought to smell but rarely do. Heavenly.
*The sample dabbing of "Femme" Parfum de Toilette from Surrender to Chance which could still be detected more than 24-hours after application. I have not found that to be true of any other fragrances for many, um, moons. What they say of it at the site: Rochas Femme was
created at the height of The Depression by Edmond Roudnitska, at the
request of Marcel Rochas, and it was to be a gift for Rochas' wife. The
story has it that Roudnitska created Femme while while pondering a rubbish dump and a paint factory. Olivier
Cresp reformulated Rochas Femme in 1989, and there are two distinct
versions, the post-1989 version bringing in the cumin note. This scent
is full-bodied, said to be inspired by Mae West, and it shows. There is
nothing of a young girl or ingenuie in this scent. It's a perfume that's
been around the block and now has the whole block following her like
the cats following that little thief in "Love Potion No. 9."
*Being quoted in an interview with friend Claire Beynon amidst words from, among others, Claire, Pablo Neruda and Wendell Berry. I swooned with delight. Article is in "Down in Edin" on-line magazine, found here.
*The warmth and comfort of higher temperatures in Los Angeles, one degree short of the record 85 degrees. On New Year's Day the noontime high was somewhere near 40, had been 33 at 8 a.m. I do apologize to those with windchill factors that dip below zero. Some of us are hothouse flowers.
*The joy of seasonal fruit, particularly how easy mandarin oranges and navel oranges are to peel.
*Taking a nap.
It was the scent of pears that caught me the most off-guard, such a delicate, distinctive sweetness, almost watery yet not vague.
We are meant, I swear, to fall in love with everything we possibly can. If it could take form, I would dance with the way pears smell.
As a girl I often spent the days following Christmas or my birthday devouring the Nancy Drew books I received as gifts. In those days the Pasadena Library System felt such pulp was beneath their dignity and did not carry Nancy or any other popular, and apparently trashy, series. Ownership and trading was our only option.
Then last week Lisa Hoffman, an adventurous and reliable source for stuff I don't know about, mentioned the luminous Essie Davis, her "homegrown horror film, The Babadook," and the Australian tv series, Miss Fisher Mysteries. Netflix-available, we began watching with Season One, Episode One that night. I enjoy the programs just as I did those blue-bound volumes so very many years ago.
Set in the 1920s with lavish fashion, interiors and vehicles that let you know where you are without feeling like a documentary, each story took me back to the scenes of earlier crimes, as I had started reading Nancy before she was modernized. My girl detective drove a roadster and appeared on the colorful dust jackets in sensible yet stylish garb of an era very close to the flapper age. Miss Fisher is, of course, more mature and considerably less chaste than Miss Drew (my son's frame of reference was Veronica Mars) and all the more appealing for it.
Even though I've managed to find a low-key footpath through Christmas, I still experience a bit of let-down when the chocolate gobbling has to stop and it seems that one needs to resume some version of regular life. Miss Fisher adds the right amount of fizz to an outlook grown a bit too flat. It was also abnormally cold for Southern California this past week. At least we in the San Gabriel Valley didn't have snow in our yards thought there was frost on the roofs. Any tolerance I once had for cold has vanished (how lucky I live in Los Angeles and not Billings, Montana) and I find myself longing for summer which is still but a distant hope. Without central heat, this is the land of many layers and of following the southern sunlight as though I were producing cholorophyll.
We have the return of "Downton Abbey" and "The Good Wife" to help see us through any January doldrums. As they have been joined by the handsomely-crafted Australian mysteries we may, with the addition of rededicating several hours a day to writing and drawing, find a crumb-trail back to warmer days (my mind may be trying to hibernate) without a complete loss of zest. Nancy Drew always was a favorite winter chum.
Thomas Moore on stories from The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life: "Themes are interventions of
providence that make an opening through which life can be born again and
again, and the many stories with their many themes keep us aware of the
liminality of everyday experience, the threshold where the human and
the divine converse, or where closed human understanding is pried open
by fate. It is at this very point of convergence that enchantment is
born, for our stories grasp and contain the mystery of that wonder of
divine incarnation that gives our lives purpose, meaning, and value
beyond all personal, human capacity."
and this:
"We are all bundles of stories that
are interlaced, embedded in each other, and connected to stories of
greater scope. One story, even an autobiographical one, only hints at
other stories that could be told."
Finally:
"The enchantment of a story lies in
its capacity to take us away from the rules, expectations, physical laws
and moral requirements of actual life, and that is why the best stories
usually betray an influence of mythology, fairy tale, sacred parable,
or some form of magic. A good story is like a wand brushing against the
mind, sending it into trance, teaching it lessons from another land,
beyond East and West, or from a golden time before and outside this
realm of fact and history."
Laoch - Thank you, I'm a fan of Mr. Moore's insights and belief in our
need for magic. Thank you for commenting, so nice to hear from you. I
am a wretched - of late - correspondent. xo
It was Monday night before we got around to watching a long-time, joy-affirming holiday favorite. I think we discovered "Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas" when it was among the discs that came with the revolutionary RCA video disc player, available to employees at the NBC Family Store in the 1980s, exact year long forgotten. The Jim Henson production would not, I fear, be funded by any current tv network. Puppets, I hear people shriek. Puppets, indeed, who can roll out pie dough, scrub clothes on a washboard, hammer a nail and row a boat. Puppets telling a slightly scruffy human story, simple and kind.
My one speed, slow, allows for just so many activities, chores, thoughts and still pauses in any given day. Because slow and gentle seem to prefer each others' company, I've chosen to leave behind some old ways of being and doing. While on hold two days ago for my health care provider, returning a call that caused me anxiety since I had no idea what it was about, I realized the tension that overtook me used to be the norm. Agitation was my common state and assuming that whatever was up for scrutiny or discussion, I'd done it wrong, was always my first quess. For the few moments I hovered there in uncertainty, I could feel how wrong that place was. I was aware of the cumulative damage that results from chronic anxiety. What a gift to be a permanent resident there no longer.
We are intended, I believe, to be softer, more yielding, far more flexible and forgiving that most of us started out to be. None of this, life, is a race or competition. Between thoughts of "let it go" and "don't take it up in the first place," I've found peaceful states which I still regard with occasional suspicion. What sorcery is this?
New Year's resolutions lost their luster some years ago. A day is a day, each one an opportunity to begin again. During those day, I am strengthened by hanging out with the likes of Emmet Otter and his Ma, their philosophical acceptance of unplanned outcomes making room for bright happenstance. I am shored up against unfavorable winds by laughter and norty weasels, then quieted by applying color pencils to papers with a smooth finish and some silly stamped images.
Sleep makes me happy, almost absurdly so, for it feels like such a luxury and costs nothing. Can this be? Remaining present takes focus and practice. There will always be something shiny to distract me, something shiny or sinister and I am healthier, stronger, for ignoring its stage whispers.
I speak to myself, not in harsh terms, before I've taken too many steps into a matter which hasn't arrived yet, notice when I droop from regret or remorse for the unchangeable past. Though I may refer to myself with some irony as "jittery," I am less prone to the whim-whams than I used to be. On the cusp of 70, I feel alternately foolish as I imagine new ventures and heartened by the ability even to consider them.
Thank you for your visits and comments. Let's have a group dance to celebrate our various triumphs.
I find hope to be a sturdy, inspirational tool. I believe that pretty much anything can happen, including impossible things, and what I may not be doing or creating today is no indicator of what I may be capable of tomorrow, or even later this afternoon. What do they say? It is never too late to become who you might have been. I aspire to reach beyond this moment, in ways imagined as well as unimaginable, while simultaneously learning to be content with what is. We are all contortionists in training, planted in the present, extending our vines toward the future.
A unicycle rider on a tightrope is no less challenged by balance than any earthbound dreamer. How do we savor contentment with now, full of gratitude, while still reaching for more. We plot, sketch, envision, write lists, make wishes and, in my case, inch ahead with a new medium, an unfamiliar form of expression. It may be age, it may be caution, it may be fatigue which causes me to proceed slowly, regardless of the heat generated by enthusiasm. From here I can see where I'd like to be, see what the finished work looks like, yet how it feels is that in order to get there I first have to machete a path through the undergrowth, clear a campsite and then with a stilled mind set to the task. Knowing that I am the thorny shrubs through which I must navigate does not make it any easier. There is more peace-making to be done, more compassion required, certainly more patience. I will always be the child who grows more stubborn when jerked by the arm.
When observing or reading of others' forward sprints, it is a challenge not to compare, an act which invariably finds me finishing well out of the money. We late bloomers, I hope one day to be their poster child, awaken, arise and advance in a fashion that often draws eye rolls and sighs of exasperation from those of swifter foot. Hope and aspiration are companions for the long haul. We are comfortable sitting in occasional silence, quietly cheering the sun across the sky, knowing the road goes on forever.
In the weeks leading to Christmas, I fell under the spell of a FB page called Celestine and the Hare.
Created by felting artist Karin of Monmouth, Wales, it is home to her
felted creatures including a great many weasels and the stories and
videos of their antics. It seemed the antics reached a pinnacle during
the holidays with an animated advent calendar and ongoing saga of the
animals' attempt to stage a nativity pageant. Karin added to my
vocabulary with her words "norty" (translation: naughty), and "choklit"
and "sekrits," of which there were many at this time of year.
Finding
her page, looking forward each day to generously and frequently posted
photos, videos and accounts of nortiness, I abandoned myself to the
magic of play, of silliness and the delight of surprise as a child might
experience it. Celestine gave me a world in which I did not have to
believe that Christmas wonder was solely a thing of the past. I laughed
out loud every morning and read comments from others who were doing the
same. With a lightened heart, I drew the softer rabbit (above) and
began to experiment with a slightly altered illustration style.
There
was emotion connected to this Christmas, welcome, warm feelings, that
nearly undid me. To take in the miracles, the magic, the quiet yet
bursting gladness, demanded, still demands, stillness and sleep. What
is enormous cannot be digested quickly. As the metaphors rage on, I
have the sense of being a river reduced by drought to a narrow and
turgid pretender, which suddenly gains volume and again races swiftly,
reaching from bank to bank.
A dormant or possibly
missing aspect of me-doing-Christmas was revived or restored, as though
through elfin craftiness, by a combination of surprises and
benevolence. That renewed, low-key glee continues to require a soft
tread, an avoidance of sudden, startling moves, not because I fear it
will flee but to acknowledge its precious nature. I continue to be a
mystery to myself, as does the Christmas of a seriously mature adult.
So little, really, is what we once thought it to be.
Unless otherwise credited, all material posted here, text, illustration or photo, is my own original work, protected by copyright. If you wish to link, which I welcome, please give appropriate credit. If you are interested in artwork, please reach me by email. Thank you.
“i want to think
again of dangerous
and noble things.
I want to be light
and frolicsome.
i want to be improbable
beautiful and
afraid of nothing
as though I had
WINGS.”
-- Mary Oliver
"The whole of life lies in the verb seeing."
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
(1881 - 1955)
