in these days – in any days – i could sit and – for long periods of time – stare at a dancing flame. much like cumulus clouds lazily floating by in a brilliant sky, my imagination drinks in the possibilities…every moment a different shape. constant flux.
“i do not understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” (anne lamott)
no given moment – as i have learned – is static. no given moment – as i have learned – is untouched. every everything is moving and swirling and spinning and the unexpected is right around the corner. just exactly when you think nothing is going to ever change. it’s fluid flame.
enthralled with it (my astrological element is fire) i took out my camera and started shooting flame photos, one after the other. it took less than a minute. it’s sometimes hard to remember that, in the overall arc of time, change is the only constant. one needs only watch the flame to get a sense of the evanescence of it all.
these moments – in the dark cool of a late summer night – the sounds of a few tenacious cicadas on the wind and squirrels scrambling along the wires and branches – watching the fire column interpretive dance – were glimmers. they visually reminded me of change taking place – that i can feel, that i can intuit, that i cannot even imagine.
and for a few minutes – precious minutes in these days – i gave over to the flame, grace and the mystery.
we were sitting on our infamous adirondack chairs on the patio. the sky was brilliant blue – much like in this photograph. so much was going on. we were taking a few-minutes-breather.
and suddenly, it was like tiny sparkles were landing on us – the tiniest raindrops we’d ever seen. one by one we’d sense them landing on bare arms. you could barely see them, barely feel them. but as they floated down they glittered like the eensiest dew drops in a sunrise ray, iridescent shimmers falling from the sky. it is hard to wrap words around this. but it was like being blessed by the universe, like minute stars touching us. grace. light. magic dust.
it’s not like we aren’t surrounded by these. glimmers. moments that radiate. moments that make you feel amazed to be alive. moments of joy or peace. they are – truly – everywhere. gentle touches of reassurance or comfort, reminders of bliss – out there. not magnificently large summits but micro moments in real living, real time, lingering in the air waiting for us to notice.
and when you notice…as a deliberate practice or an unanticipated surprise…the energy of your stardust quivers in goodness.
predatory-lending student loans. it’s not like i haven’t written about this before, most notably from a post called “sense?” on october 24, 2022:
“predatory lending in the student loan arena began around 2000. the arrow of the poison bow hit david in graduate school. it has not let go since. navient – one of the big student loan lenders – took part in subprime loans, private loans, misrepresented loans, aggressive forbearance-steering, sloppy accounting, the list goes on. and people’s lives – real people in the real world trying to make a real living and pay off real debt – have been skewered forever. crushing debt…in story after story in which interest is principalized, in which families aren’t given income-driven options, in which the debt rises instead of falls even as diligent efforts are made to pay down this farce of lending.”
and so now – after enormous governmental party-line fights to help-no!-help-no! we are back there, facing down a ridiculously ballooned forbearance-steered-misrepresented-principalized-interest-unforgiven set of loans.
we’ve consolidated, paid thousands extra when we could, applied for limited pslf and hope the idr count catches up. i have read student loan op-eds, student loan announcements, student loan laws, hundreds of student loan articles. i’ve placed phone calls and have more-to-dial on my list-of-things-to-do.
and the billing statement arrived.
there’s not much more deflating than treading water when the shore isn’t visible.
and we aren’t the only ones.
we have been the recipients of snarky comments about responsibility and snide remarks about artists and money-budgets. we have been sneered at and scoffed at. mostly by people who haven’t asked any questions – a recurring theme – by people who don’t understand – nor want to understand – what has actually happened in the warped world of student lending.
and we aren’t the only ones.
right now, the statement says we’ll pay david’s loans off in 2048 with an additional $40,000+ in more interest. but “student loans were never meant to be a life sentence,” (united states secretary of education miguel cardona.) we will be 87 and 89 in 2048.
this isn’t a funny SMACK-DAB. it’s not touching or poignant. but it is real. it is reality for millions of people victimized by dysfunctional practices – student loan malpractice – the government should have overseen.
we wore pink. our daughter said we’d get bonus points and we love bonus points. so we wore pink. i had on pink converse high-top sneakers and sported a pink floral drawstring backpack. david had on a pink v-neck t-shirt.
and we went to see barbie, the movie.
there’s a lot of talk-talk about this movie. and, for once, i’m not going to enter the fray. instead, i’m just going to say we loved it. and, we’d like to see it again, revisit some of the one-liners and implicit (and explicit) comments on our society. our tickets were from our daughter so it was extra fun to exchange texts about it after-the-fact. mostly, there are some really defining moments in this movie. it is unexpectedly thought-provoking. and, if you haven’t already seen it, we would both absolutely recommend it.
as you already know, when i was young i wasn’t allowed to have a (cultural icon) barbie. in an excerpt from a previous post about barbie and my mother:
“when i was 38 i got a package from my sweet momma. of course, it was from poppo too but he was pretty much a follower on this one. i excitedly opened the big box and there was a note inside. it read something like, “surprise! it’s about time…thought you could have one of these now.” curious, i continued to rapidly unwrap. inside this simply wrapped gift (for my momma had to mail it to me across the country and everyone knows that those sticky bows get squished when you mail them) was —- wait for it —- a barbie doll with chandelier earrings in a huge party dress with pastel flowers glued onto it! now, that – blossom beauty barbie – sounds like an unusual gift at 38, but you have to know the back-story…
my momma would not let me have a barbie when i was growing up. ahead of her time, she felt that the barbie-body was somewhat unconscionably derisive for women and the feminist in her was railing against having her own little girl fall prey to that attitude. and so, she never let me get a barbie of my own. instead, she got me the doll penny brite, an adorable, flat-chested, bright-faced, modestly-dressed doll who just looked 1960s happy. a little later i got a skipper doll, who was barbie’s younger sister – clearly she hadn’t inherited the same physical genes barbie had. not being particularly well-endowed myself, in later years, i teased my mom that she had given me nothing to aspire to, but she just pursed her lips and tried not to laugh.
so this was a big deal – getting a barbie from my momma. it’s too perfect that it happened to be one of the tackiest barbies out there. but i received this from her when i had my own little girl and she probably guessed i was about to start buying her some barbies (so as not to be “the only one” in her group of little girlfriends without one, like me, still recovering from non-barbie-ptsd.) momma was quirky that way.“
but because of my little girl, i was finally able to immerse in barbie-world. so the movie was particularly poignant as a recovered non-barbie-r, errr, delayed-onset barbie-r. the set, the barbie-house, the barbie-car, the use of product messaging, the language … the pink – all the pink – was pretty splendidly on the mark. and the messages were loud and clear. “it is literally impossible to be a woman…” and “it is the best day ever. so was yesterday, and so is tomorrow, and every day from now until forever.” and “you can be anything.” not to mention the quotes about patriarchy and gender inequality and humanness and the digs at capitalism, the question of play, the differences and similarities between men and women. all conversation fodder. ahh, go see it.
and then there is this moment at the end of the movie, when barbie inventor ruth handler (played by rhea perlman) says to barbie, “we mothers stand still so our daughters can look back and see how far they have come.” this moment made me cry.
the passing of the baton. no matter if we are born in 1921, 1959, 1990…the baton gets passed on. and the pink. it took my momma 38 years, but she passed it on. in a curious coincidence, she was 38 when she birthed me. the baton had already been passed. holding still, ever-holding.
we hiked past the dogwood off-trail. the tiny berries were almost all gone and the stems were exposed. pink. i immediately thought of barbie. it was a direct-connect.
and it made me want to run home and put on the converse high-tops i had fished out of my beloved daughter’s closet.
in color psychology, barbie pantone pink is the confluence of femininity, fashion, and vibrancy. in the dictionary, vibrancy is the state of being full of energy and life.
pink. in my world, it reminds me of my beautiful girl and her brilliance in the world.
i’ll be wearing those pink high-tops a little extra this fall.
the volunteer morning glory just showed up. all of a sudden. in-between the cornstalks growing under our birdfeeder, when the sun was low in the sky, its quiet blue-purple peeked out. i – literally – ran to it. and there, tucked in, were two beautiful morning glory blooms. but – absent – were the infamous heart-shaped leaves. i googled it. an unwelcome volunteer, this ivy leaf morning glory can be toxic to our dogga – who loves to graze on various vegetation – and, sadly, must be pulled out.
i was going to try to avoid the obvious parallel here – volunteers who show up, but not with the best of intentions. we’ve all met them. people with power and control fantasies who turn up in organizations where they immediately volunteer for positions of leadership. because organizations are eager for the energy of new volunteers – even when they are unknown – many will thoughtlessly place someone into these positions without restraint. that’s when all hell breaks loose. (welp, i guess i didn’t avoid it.) the ivy leaf morning glory can be hallucinogenic and can cause tremors and other physical ailments in a pet. yes…same, same. an organization can tremor itself into oblivion with the perceived goodness (read: agenda) of the volunteer, new or otherwise. it’s best not to allow your sweet dog or your cherished organization to ingest mind-altering substances.
but on the flip side? had this volunteer purple-blue flower been safe, it would be heartily welcomed in our garden. we welcomed the small cornfields that dot our yard. we welcome the volunteer ornamental grasses that show up where we didn’t plant them. we welcome the sneaky groundcover with yellow flowers and the wild geranium. but – since the ivy leaf morning glory is over there by the corn where dogdog schnuffles around – and it’s noxious – we will be cautious. we aren’t watching him every moment while he’s outside in his backyard and we want him to be safe.
and so today we’ll thank the beautiful flowers of this variety of morning glory as we pull it out and we’ll protect our sweet tripper. no volunteer flower is worth him suffering in any way. our discernment is imperative.
we have a meadow in our basement. it’s tucked in the northwest corner. indigenous wildflowers, stacked in boxes, cardboard containers of native blooms.
the oeuvre of decades, shrink-wrapped, flowers from seeds of thought-lyrics, of melodic gestures, of teasing harmonies, of simple evocative lines.
waiting, impossibly, to return to a time of compact discs. waiting, impossibly, for the invasives of streaming to get under control, to support independent artists rather than undermine their success, their ability for forward-movement.
the meadow sometimes beckons – like a soft wind through tall grasses – waving to me, begging me to step into the bramble and thick vegetation. like most good meadows, there is no clear path. you simply must walk in and turn – 360° – looking around, stunned by all the wild – flowers and weeds, both.
the broadcast music inc royalty check arrived. it was for $60.72. though it’s likely a few hundred thousand, i didn’t add up all the counts (listens). but one piece caught my attention. its play on youtube alone totalled 15,212 counts of this piece. my total royalties for this: $1.21. (for perspective on this: even if only 5000 people downloaded this piece of music for 99 cents and listened to it as many times as they wished, it would bring in approx $3465 (there are iTunes fees) instead of $1.21. a stunning difference.)
and we have another meadow in the basement. the canvases of bloomed paintings stack against the west wall; the easel stands in the northwest corner. the digital age of download and print has entered the art world of hanging wire and levels.
canvases, paint, jewelcases, polycarbonate plastic, discography – our wildflowers in the basement. the meadows are cultivated in fields of artistry, of color, of sound, of words and notes and splashes.
robust meadows self-seed. as do artists. we create despite roadblocks, despite the undervaluing of our work, despite the stacks of antique-store-someday-bound cds and canvas. despite it all.
but just like meadows need help – to more than just exist – to eradicate the invasive species, to grow, to prosper, to thrive – so do artists.
at long last – and truly for reasons of existence – we are contemplating a patreon account – a subscription donation platform to help support artists to continue to do the work you value, the work that has moved you, the work you turn to – as we gratefully acknowledge those of you who have contributed to our buymeacoffee tip jar. this simply means a monthly donation – as low as $2/month – that helps to make up the difference that the world has thrust upon artists. some readers may consider this timely, an avenue through which they may participate. some readers may consider this self-serving. either way, we are interested in your thoughts. feel free to email us: kerrianddavid1111@gmail.com. and watch for this – a patreon – one of these days.
we gaze over at the basement-meadows and ponder what is in our hearts, what is left for us to do, what is ours to do. we are each true to our work and, in the spirit of the fault in our stars, we know that we have – indeed – done good work if we have touched even one person along the way.
“do the best you can until you know better. then, when you know better, do better.” (maya angelou)
it’s all a journey in one giant meadow. and the difference between hardly existing and thriving.
and – just when it was beautiful enough – nature raised the bar. and the zinnia produced a round of tiny yellow flowers – a crown atop the center of the already-stunning flower. beauty squared.
it’s like adding a weep-worthy soaring cello line or a mournful french horn to a solo piano piece of music. beautiful enough, raised up.
i’ve been going through old bins in the basement, boxes in the attic. i’ve found old photos and old journals i had forgotten about: pictures of early life in new york, early life in florida. they catapult me way back in time, back to hanging out on the beach, roadtripping with my cherished friend sue, early days of choir-directing, youth groups i led. i took pictures of nearly everything, so it’s the absence of pictures of people or places or events that is noteworthy.
life isn’t always a zinnia.
and sometimes, it’s the long story that makes the short stories more bearable. we survive periods in our lives that seem unsolvable, painful, unending. years later we open the bins and see evidence of our enduring, our fortitude, even our clinging to flotsam and jetsam.
so it must be during the time in-between that we grow a second row of tiny flowers inside, ready and waiting for us, whenever we are ready for them, for those times we couldn’t see the beauty.
the weather this past weekend was stunning. with an invitation to autumn, this september saturday and sunday were blissfully sunny and cooler. a good time to sit on the back patio. a good time to marvel at the plumes on the grasses, to watch the cherry tomatoes ripen. and a good time to work in the dirt, to tend to the herbs, to take a hike, to brush the dogga, to witness the dance of the hummingbirds. in the middle of several ongoing projects – really important things that need our attention – we took the good time.
on just the right day, at the end of just the right week, at just the right place, at just the right time – we found a quilted heart.
a random-act-of-kindness initiative, this quilted heart was tagged and stated, “i need a home.” we plucked it off the tree on the side of the trail and carried it with us – home.
ifaqh (i found a quilted heart) is an anonymous project – they state on their site that “it is not about the maker of the heart; it is about the finder.” it is not affiliated with any organization or group and they “remain neutral”. they “place small quilted hearts around the globe to brighten the day of a stranger.”
and they did.
and the thing it immediately did – in my mind – was make me think about all the fabric i have in my sewing bins with which i could make quilted hearts – and all the places we could leave them for others. much like our planted-out-there painted rocks, these take us out of our own overstuffed angsty brains and into a spirit of goodness toward others. generosity overrides a worried heart. an intention, it turns us outward.
on this very day, at this very place, at this exact time, this little quilted heart was precisely what we needed.
i’m grateful for this simple gesture – being placed all over the world. hearts are the same no matter where you are: a reminder of love understood despite language or cultural differences, a gift given – anonymously – to sow joy.
his amber eyes are mesmerizing. his double coat of hair is as beautiful as it is plentiful. his heart is huge and his sensitivity is tuned in. his quirks are numerous and his dedication is steadfast. he is always present and only rests when he feels like he is finally off-duty at 8:30, his self-chosen bedtime. he’s taught us more than i could possibly write about.
he’s been central since he arrived. in everything. it’s one of those miracles that he’s here – with us. it’s one of those time-warpy things we realize it’s been ten years. already. and so soon.
what our dogga doesn’t realize, maybe, is that he is our whole world just as much as we are his. samesies.
because we hike these trails often, we notice subtle changes. new sprouts, thicker vegetation, fallen trees, vole-holes on the path.
this day we noticed this large limb – suspended. it had fallen. because we’ve had large limbs fall in our yard, we know that their size – particularly from far away – belies their weight. this broken branch, even dead wood, had to be mighty heavy.
and yet – the next tree over caught it and was holding on. merely three points of contact, like one hand and two feet on a ladder, these three little v’s where significantly smaller branches met. three points. and so, we will watch it. we wonder how – nestled into the other tree – it happened to fall just right. we wonder how long it will be there – high up in the other trees that show no sign of leafing, of life.
support doesn’t take much. it’s astounding to walk in forests and see evidence of mighty holding up mighty, mighty holding up small, small holding up mighty. nature caring for nature.
i stood staring at the tree from the trail. i looked at david, also staring. we know that the physics of how this branch fell into these three points, how it distributed the weight, must play into why it was held there. but as i stood there i could only think about how that could work in the people-world.
points of contact. support. extending branches of encouragement, reassurance, compassion – these could make all the difference for others. how often i have seen a plato-esque meme on social media reminding us to be kind – for everyone we meet is fighting a battle we know nothing about.
big limbs holding tiny branches. tiny branches holding big limbs.
points of contact.
they will hold a fallen tree in the woods. they will hold you stable on a ladder. they will hold your heart steady.
and – in this forest of humankind – at any given moment, you might find you are one of someone else’s branches, the bridge between falling and held, the difference between holding on and letting go.
reverse threading 