the headline on the catalog page read: don’t just go somewhere. be somewhere.
i lounged in the gravity chair on our deck and looked up. just beyond the peaked roof of our house, inbetween the pine tree and our westneighbor’s tv antenna, with the wire that stretches across our driveway stretched right through it, there it was:
the clouds had drawn the sun. exactly like i would have done it had i had big fat sidewalk chalk in my hand and i was drawing on the breezy jet-streamed canvas of the sky: an arc for the sun, rays coming from the hot center. it was obvious, clear, pretty doggone cool.
i grabbed the phone to take a picture and, before it disappeared as if someone had lifted the cellophane on a magic slate, drew it to d’s attention. we were both a tiny bit giddy at this small gift in the sky.
and that’s how i want to live. being somewhere. in each moment.
with all the horrific going on, it is not hard to wonder about time limits on presence.
so – in addition to paying attention, to drawing attention, to downright attentiveness attention to all of that horrific – i’m going to pay attention, draw attention, be downright attentively attentive to being here.
“…leaving to fill in the space called the future…”
yesterday is but a shadow now. we rise with the sun and the lingering shadows and shapes in the dusk-then-darkness-then-dawn quietly disappear. we can’t hold onto them, any of them, despite our sometimes-longing to do so. memories are like that. the moments we most want to remember…they slyly tiptoe out of our mind’s eye, elusive to our heart-threads trying to hold onto them. that is why i keep a calendar.
my calendar is written. with a pencil. every day i write in it, catching up what we did with our time, what we worked on, where we went, who we saw, maybe a new recipe we tried. mostly, though, i write down moments i don’t want to forget. milliseconds or minutes of bliss with a loved one, gorgeous things said, handholds or hugs that i want to keep feeling, things i want to memorize but know will slip softly into a recess that i may or may not be able to access.
on the first day of the new year (or the last day of the old year) it is my ritual to read every day, every log, of my year’s calendar. in that reading we are transported. to the places we went, the people we visited with, the exquisite times, the arguments, treasured mom-moments that have repeated-time-release joy. we remember things we had forgotten. we stand once again on the precipice above the canyon or the beach on the cape. we stroll once again under a canopy of spanish-moss-covered live oaks or the big sky of the high range mountains. we sit once again on red rocks or on the train to chicago or on the subway in boston or on the pontoon boat up north or on the high kitchen stools having potluck friday or on the raft or at the pub near where we scattered ashes one last time. we hike once again in the nearby woods, on the river trail, through high desert. we roadtrip, once again, heading east, west, south, north. we have conversation-snippets-to-remember once again with The Girl, The Boy, david’s parents, our siblings, nieces, nephews, dear friends. once again, we make music and art, we write stories and blogposts and press releases and letters and emails and texts; some we want to hold onto, even if just a word or two, a sentiment or two. once again.
we process our year. we see. we celebrate. we learn. we plan and we plan to not plan. we dream. we look to the future.
delicate wings, barely visible…a reminder that each of us has them…right there…ready and waiting. sometimes we search inside for answers; this painting tells that story for me. we stoke up the fortitude. we call on peace to enter our souls. we ask our heart to hold on. we forge through what will invariably challenge us. but our wings, gossamer and full of grace, gifted to us by a magnificent Love, give us the lift. we know that no one can clip those wings. they belong to us and we can soar back (or forward) into ourselves. when we are ready.
to view or purchase david’s painting on his gallery site, click below:
peace. the written word (or the symbol) punctuates the corners of our home. it’s suspended on doorknobs, off of old window frames, made of old copper or tin, in my studio handmade by the boy out of a scrap of wood, a necklace from the girl hanging on a mirror, a chunky silver ring on my right hand from david…
“may you be peace” would be my motto, if we all had mottos. i just feel like i can’t think of better places to lead from than kindness and peace. way back in high school, a long while ago, the-amazing-english-teacher-andrea made an impression on all of us – with her peace signs and her pay-it-forward-thinking; if my obsession with peace signs hadn’t already started by then, this indeed was its jump-start.
david’s painting MAY YOU wraps a buddhist prayer around you and is astoundingly beautiful. as i photographed it for his gallery site, i found myself concentrating also on morsels of the painting, each stunning in their own right. this is one of the morsels. may you be peace is simple and complex, beckoning you to be both of this world and beyond this world. wishing you, today and every single day, this peace.
reverse threading 