when he was a kitten, i wanted to name our cat ‘jack’ but The Girl and The Boy objected. to me, he looked like a ‘jack’ in the way animals look like names, plus every ‘jack’ i could remember meeting had been a really nice guy.
and, in line with my nice-guy-jacks, this jack – the one with the ‘save the beanstalk’ picket sign – is a nice guy.
another case of little-guy-vs-big-guy, jack just wants to face his giant, save what is good, fight for that which he worked hard, keep what is his safe, preserve what is organic and part of the earth. i immediately think of the many marches across our country.
beach towels
speaking their minds, good people are making an effort to face their giants, save what is good, fight for that which they work hard, keep what is theirs safe, preserve what is organic and part of the earth.
i believe that good prevails over giants, in the long run. sometimes, the long run is waaaay long. but good prevails. and beanstalks grow and flourish.
“don’t let that stop you,” she’d say. “remember the little engine,” he’d say. i grew up with parents who encouraged me to not doubt myself or what i could do. i hope that i made them (and are still making them – even on a different plane of existence) proud.
i watch my own children, The Girl and The Boy, and think they have figured this obstacles-thing out.
The Girl texted me photographs. she was in silverton, a vast expanse of ridiculously rugged mountains. she had (i’m glad i knew about this AFTERwards) snowboarded down these giants. she, literally, dropped off cliffs and boarded down the fresh powder, exhilarated and stoked. her girlfriend said, “we can do it” and they did. omg. amazing stuff! i am filled with awe. and more than a little jealous, in an i-wish-i-could-do-that kind of way. just the sheer chutzpah of it all is at the very heart of don’t-let-that-stop-you-little-engine-ness.
life is interesting. always. and obstacles are always there. they make life more interesting. yup. get stoked. rise to the challenges.
“don’t let that stop you,” she’d say. “remember the little engine,” he’d say. i grew up with parents who encouraged me to not doubt myself or what i could do. i hope that i made them (and are still making them – even on a different plane of existence) proud.
i watch my own children, The Girl and The Boy, and think they have figured this obstacles-thing out.
The Girl texted me photographs. she was in silverton, a vast expanse of ridiculously rugged mountains.
she had (i’m glad i knew about this AFTERwards) snowboarded down these giants. she, literally, dropped off cliffs and boarded down the fresh powder, exhilarated and stoked. her girlfriend said, “we can do it” and they did. omg. amazing stuff! i am filled with awe. and more than a little jealous, in an i-wish-i-could-do-that kind of way. just the sheer chutzpah of it all is at the very heart of don’t-let-that-stop-you-little-engine-ness.
mountain mugs!
life is interesting. always. and obstacles are always there. they make life more interesting. yup. get stoked. rise to the challenges.
right now my favorite boots are my timberland brown and black boots. they are hiking boots and they are always sitting at the back door….poised and ready. in between work(s), we will throw them on and drive off somewhere for a hike; our go-to adventures usually include a hike somewhere. at the moment, these boots are full of mud because the woods around these parts are completely muddy and squishy and on the verge of gleefully welcoming spring. but we don’t let that stop us.
beach towels, throw pillows, bath accessories
now it’s not too out-of-the-ordinary for us as we often have gotten caught in weather, but we chose to be in the woods in the rain last week and ohhh what a gift – the smell of rain dampening the earth was exquisite. looking back, it is one of my favorite moments in the woods and i’m glad to have not missed it.
today we are sitting in lake geneva drinking starbucks coffee and writing, a fire going just beyond our feet perched on the hearth. i think of the day we were out here having a glass of wine at an outdoor cafe. it began to drizzle and we got ready to go, but not sooner than the skies let loose. it poured down buckets of rain and we laughed and splashed through the puddles, playing in the water, nonplussed* by the torrents around us.
leggings
spring is around the corner. grab your rubber boots or your hiking boots or just be barefoot and go splash in those puddles. don’t let a chance to play pass you by.
*(so i just looked up ‘nonplussed’ to make sure i was using it correctly and was surprised to see two opposite definitions of it. the one i meant was ‘unperturbed’ but that was the second definition; the first definition was surprised and confused. words are funny, aren’t they?)
president jimmy carter was being interviewed by stephen colbert on the late show. stephen asked him (words to the effect) how he could love all people. president carter, absolutely sweet at “almost-94”, responded he “let go of the animosities he had cherished.” wow. although there were many moments in the interview that reinforced the respect i have for this man as a positive force in the world, this one really struck me. -let go of the animosities you cherish-
for who among us can not relate to that? how tightly do we hold to those things? and how do they prevent us from living right now? life is layered and our history and everything, from small slights to life-changing wrongs that others have done to us or our loved ones to -worse yet- all of our own wrongdoing, piles up like dark layers of sedimentary rock. weathering, weathering, weathering. how can we possibly be zen in all that?
president carter also said that he “forgets about them”…the people who have caused him undue pain or stress, who have been perhaps, i think, a dark layer of sedimentation in his life. now, at almost-94, my own sweet momma would have agreed with him. he reminded me of her. two peas in a pod. leading with kindness and generosity. forgetting about the rest in all the ways that forgetting is a good thing. who really has room in their life to hang onto all that and still make headway toward goodness?
from david’s painting MEDITATION, this morsel of painting – called LAYERED MEDITATION – makes me think of these layers of sediment, layers of life. the darkness on the bottom -not necessarily because it is buried but because it is overruled by other layers- the fire of passion and earth-life in the middle and the effervescence of light on the top. sedimentary layers of life. a picture of letting go, of transforming dark into light. a layered meditation.
ahhh. i don’t even know where to start on this one. what angle do i speak from? the fears inside us? the unknown? those who hold power over us? and how do i avoid the obvious? or do i walk right in?
the goliaths out there know who they are. they are puffed up and loud and full of you-can’t-get-me-ness, mean-spirited and self-righteous, self-centered and whatever is on the complete opposite end of the spectrum of compassionate. they are BIG and are convinced, even, that they are bigger than anything. they think nothing can touch them.
but it’s not true.
you don’t have to look too far to find the davids out there. the driven, dedicated, passionate, thinking, empathetic, big-hearted, others-centered people who commit themselves to causes and gather power around them. they are fearless.
nothing that is rotten at the core survives long. including goliath. even if he didn’t think it was possible. to those goliaths i say, “yes! be scared!”
two people get credit for this “just shrug”: 20 (aka john) and justine. it was in the “old days” when i was at the graphic design studio what felt like all the time when i learned this mantra.
20 designed the first ten or so of my album jackets (and traycards, if you want to get specific.) i would spend time with him and justine (the person who made things happen at the office) idea-brainstorming or watching layout. i can’t tell you how many times deadlines would rapidly approach or the print shop would goof on a run or the computer would glitch or…. i would inwardly be freaking out (and maybe outwardly), but 20 and just would be even and relaxed (at least on the outside.) one or the other would look at me and say, “just shrug.” after about a zillion times, it stuck.
shrugging off the stuff that stresses us out is not a science. it’s most definitely an art form – approached and accomplished differently by each person who attempts it. everyone chooses different crayons out of the box, everyone paints with different size brushes, everyone chooses a different key on the piano, everyone sings a different song, everyone relaxes a different way, everyone re-centers differently. but people are able -and if they weren’t, we would all be a paralyzed-with-stress community of people- to slough it off, to let it roll off their shoulders, to move on, to shrug.
i once heard an interview with a woman who was about 95. she was happy, happy, happy and spoke of her life. the interviewer asked her, “to what do you attribute your happiness, your ease in the world?” she answered, “i don’t take anything personally.”
my husband is a painter. of course, you know that. his studio is steps away from mine, steps away from our office, steps away from the coffee pot. what that means is that i can just pop in at any time to see what he’s painting, to chat, to have a cuppa or bring down a couple glasses of wine, to throw myself in front of paintings he is about to cover over with a swath of new paint.
what’s really fascinating is the process of his painting. i will walk down and find pieces on the wall or the easel that speak to me and he will tell me that he is “no where neeeeear done.” he takes pictures along the way and i scam them onto my camera roll for future use, not willing to let go of the resonance of one of the along-the-way iterations of a painting.
this week is a perfect example of that. he was in the middle of a painting – a follow-up to earth interrupted I – when i went downstairs to chat (read: procrastinate doing whatever it was i was supposed to be doing at the time.) the image and color screamed out at me. i couldn’t beLIEVE he was going to cover it all up with more paint. the process was so striking. take a moment to just really look at these process shots and the morsel i chose and breathe them in:
process morsel
process morsel
morsel of a process morsel – held in process
and yet, the finished painting earth interrupted II is a stunning, stunning, stunning canvas. it belongs somewhere to get its due. it makes me feel like the universe is weeping for the earth. it makes you pay attention to it. i am humbled by how truly magnificent this painting is.
earth interrupted II, mixed media 48″ x 34.5″
each week i design products from each of the days in our melange. some of these are cartoons, some just words, some lyrics or song titles and some are david’s paintings. i have the creative latitude to choose morsels of his paintings and design from there…a enviable starting point for someone who loves flexibility. this week is a sort of brain stretch. with the exception of designing leggings, where i used both of the morsels on this page, the morsel i have used in design is a morsel of a morsel process shot of earth interrupted II (i said it was a brain stretch.) it is called held in process and is a beautiful (and absolutely timely) image on its own. how odd that it is not actually the painting, but is underneath the painting, a layer of earth interrupted II.
it makes me wonder if we ever think about how layered everything is, everyone is. what is beneath the surface…a richness we may never know, a history we can’t necessarily comprehend. where we have all come from is woven color and texture and light and darkness, swaths of paint and attempted erasures that would cause other people to stand in front and call out to us, “no! don’t erase that! it’s beautiful! it’s important! it speaks to me.” we are all held in process.
with the advent of ancestry kits and accessible dna testing, we are a society of people with more desire to learn about our individual heritage. for christmas, The Girl and The Boy each got a dna testing kit from their father. i’m excited to hear the results of these. it’s fascinating to me to find out what our roots are; despite some specificity flaws and rounding up (or down) of genetic heredity in the testing and reporting kits i have read about, it is still interesting to know just a little bit more about where we come from.
my sweet momma and poppo traveled to salt lake city to work on the genealogy of our family. they spent hours in the library there, researching. they would have loved the idea of simply submitting dna to find out a broad spectrum of heredity, of lineage, but i suspect they still would have traveled to work on this the old-fashioned way, looking for names of family and how the branches of the tree spread out.
without doubt you have seen the commercials for these tests. my favorites are the ones where people find that they were either mistaken about their ethnic heritage or they found that there were some surprises. the best part is that – and i know it’s a commercial, but hey, i’m gullible – they embrace learning about this new part of their identity they had no idea existed. they embrace something different. they want to celebrate ethnicities they knew nothing about. why not celebrate these whether or not it is a part of our heritage? maybe we can make the legacy we pass down one of inclusion and acceptance and a curiosity to learn and welcome others, whether or not their dna matches ours.
more than once i have been in a moment when i thought, “this is a slice of heaven.” everyone has them. like this scene, it may be on the beach. it may be in the woods. it may be in the rocking chair with your tiny baby. it may be on the mountain in fresh powder. it may be listening to music while running (or sitting quietly) or reading poetry in an adirondack chair. it’s different for everyone. regardless of where it is, of when it is, of what it is, everything feels in balance and all feels well with the world, at least in your little piece of the world. we feel grateful and alive. and we wish for more of those moments.
what if we treated every breathing moment like that? like a slice of heaven.
reverse threading 