i visit this place everyday. the place of contemplation. of pondering. of remembering. of dreaming. of silent conversational prayer. this morsel of david’s painting CONTEMPLATION speaks to me and my need to sometimes go inside…to sort, to be grateful, to relinquish a hold on something negative, to wonder.
SOFTLY SHE PRAYS
there is a similar painting, based on a similar image…called SOFTLY SHE PRAYS and i adore this for its monochromatic approach, its gentle existence. conversely, this piece CONTEMPLATION is filled with color – the colors of life and vibrance, saturated with the palette we live in every day, the colors we don’t always notice as we walk by, missed in our efforts to move into the next moment. ahh. yet another reason to sit and rest and contemplate.
words of wisdom from jessie holmes (a sled dog racer) of national geographic’s life below zero…such a simple truth. you can’t start in the middle….of the race, of the book, of the career, of the relationship, of the challenge, of the hallway that sits in-between one door closing and another opening. you have to show up at the starting line and experience all of it. wanting to avoid the pain, the ambiguity, the not-knowing-how-it-will-turn-out, we try to skip a stone from the start to the finish, but – if you picture a pinball machine and the ball careening off flippers and bumpers – we know that there are many variables and any one move will change where the steel ball will go next. just like life.
in a statement of the obvious, “you cannot play your pinball machine without the playfield.”(pinballsales.com) in jessie’s equally obvious but oh-so-poignantly-true statement, yes…you “can’t show up at the finish line without showing up at the starting line.” it all counts.
it goes by. time. no matter how much you want to hold onto it. there are THOSE moments…the ones you treasure. there are THOSE moments…the ones you want to forget ever happened. the only thing we can depend on, despite wishing otherwise, is that either moment – the one we cling to or the one we abhor – either moment will go by. we can’t hold the sun. it is elusive. it is fleeting. but a new day will come. we can look to the dawn for a fresh start, one more try, a little hope, another moment to cherish.
dogdog drags babycat across the wood floors through the house with babycat’s head in his mouth. at first, when dogdog was new to the family, it really frightened us and we admonished dogga for dragging the cat around. but then we realized that it was a game. if dogdog wasn’t playing, babycat would slap at dogdog with his claw-paw and make the chase start. it mattered not who “won” the match, for there was no obvious winner. (although i must say that it appears that babycat is indeed the alpha in the house.) most important for the two of them was the chase. just having fun.
it’s the same with anticipation. i can clearly remember having great anticipation for something-or-other, relishing that feeling, the adrenalin rush, the quickening of heart, the excitement i could feel. when the actual Thing happened, it wasn’t nearly as delicious as what led up to it – the anticipation, the process, the chase to it. the Thing was almost anti-climactic, a sort of denouement of all the details getting there.
albums are kind of like that. the process of writing, practicing, the anticipation, the work, chasing the perfect recording. and then, the tying up of loose ends, the post-project letdown. as much as i wish i could, there is no way i can control what the ‘catch’ will be, whether or not the music will resonate with listeners, whether or not the album will do well in the market.
as an artist, it is all the magic in the middle that matters to me. the chase.
we often walk at the end of the work day. we go inland to a lake trail and walk a couple times around the lake, somewhere around 6 miles or so in total. we mostly hike around the lake clockwise, which means that we are watching the sun come down across the lake at the beginning of our walk, a time when we are still processing the day and haven’t yet gotten immersed in the trail. sometimes we are so engrossed in talking or thinking-silence that we have to remind the other to appreciate…”look at that sunset,” one of us will say.
sometimes we will get up early and, with our coffee mugs, go sit on the rocks and watch the sun come up over lake michigan. every time we are witnesses to the beginning of a new day this way i think we should do that more often.
sunrise. sunset. it makes me think of the song from the musical fiddler on the roof. it’s truly a beautiful song, simple, sung with great heart. the passing of time. so fast. wendy wrote to say it was time to bring logan back to college – for his second year. i could so so feel how that felt, remembering times i had brought My Girl or My Boy back to college.
“Is this the little girl I carried? Is this the little boy at play? I don’t remember growing older When, did, they? When did she get to be a beauty? When did he grow to be so tall? Wasn’t it yesterday when they, were, small?
Sunrise, sunset, Sunrise, sunset Swiftly flow the days Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers Blossoming even as we gaze Sunrise, sunset, Sunrise, sunset Swiftly fly the years One season following another Laden with happiness and tears.”
(Sunrise, Sunset – by S. Harnick, J. Bock)
life somehow fits in between these sunrises and sunsets. and somehow, some days, we just seem to miss it. too many things to do, to worry about, to perseverate over, to check off lists. every time i vow to honor the sunrise and exhale with the sunset, somewhere in between i realize i forgot. i’ll try again tomorrow.
SUNRISE. SUNSET. a morsel from the painting A DAY AT THE BEACH
as i am writing this, The Girl just texted to say she was driving off the pass and that she and lumi-dog had finished their hike in the back-country. earlier she had texted (as is safe practice for all back-country activity) to let someone know both that she was going to be out of cell service, off the grid, in the high mountains on a hike and where she intended her hike to take her. she is a conscientious hiker and boarder and i can’t tell you how much i appreciate that. and so, early early this morning, i looked up the hike she was taking.
the #1 hike in the san juans (according to my trail app) it was taking her on a giant elevation gain and to a stunning lake, the color of which i couldn’t describe by the picture, and evidently was un-grasp-able even by the people reviewing the hike. this was a place incapable of being captured by even a crayola 64-box.
that is what i love about our world. countless places we couldn’t begin to capture with crayons. no matter how many we could get our hands on.
the places that take our breath away. the places that give us breath.
i keep a calendar. my sweet momma kept a calendar. the written kind. she had the old-school kind that you buy the yearly refills for, with two holes in them to line up with the two curved rings of metal on the holder. she wrote on it every day: appointments, important things, birthdays and anniversaries, dates of import, big events, the smallest fragment of time memory she wanted to keep. i guess that’s where i get it from. i love my old-fashioned calendar. i look forward to getting it at the dollar store every year and i keep a mechanical pencil with a good eraser in it. i write in it every day. and at the end of the year, i have always sat down and read through the year, re-living each day, sometimes a good thing, sometimes hard.
if i went through my calendar, even for this year so far, i would find moments i didn’t want to forget. days that were tough, days that were pretty amazing. i would read about My Girl calling out “mom!” and running over as i walked into where she was working and i could recall -way deep in my heart- exactly what it felt like when she introduced me to a friend and said, “this is my mom!” i would read about the manifest destiny of cucumbers and pickles, a funny-made-me-laugh-aloud debate over wine with My Boy. i would read about the gluten-free-dairy-free-egg-free chocolate cake my husband made me and the day we stayed in bed to read a book all day. i would read about lots and lots and lots of walking, hikes near and far. i would read about potlucks with our dear friends and laughter and wine and conversation lasting well into the wee hours of the evening. i would read about late late nights with each of my nieces and laughing till we were snorting. i would read about spending sweet time with my sister and ashes floating on the breeze over the lake. i would read about the quiet peace of the canoe and the sunshine and endless conversation on the pontoon boat. i would read about antiquing and the vintage typewriter i had fallen for that 20 sought out for my birthday. i would read about gatherings in our home and at friends’ houses, sharing time with our community of people. i would read about difficult days of worry or times of sadness. i would read about the hours of working together with d: writing all these posts for our MELANGE and designing all the products. i would see that it’s been much much more than 208 days in a year. it’s been 208 days in my life and every moment has counted. whether or not they are all joyous, all successful, all funny, all productive, they are all good.
opportunities. to drink in life. they happen every day. sometimes we scoop them up, with the scooping-zeal of a small child building a sand castle. sometimes we choose to sleep through.
this chicken nugget was inspired by a late-late-night-laying-on-the-rocks-by-the-lake viewing a meteor shower. it was one of those moments we chose.
i remember one freezing cold wisconsin winter evening. i was driving My Girl to an oboe lesson in town. in a crazy-fun moment we opened the sunroof, put on our sunglasses and played loud summer music. we laughed and it was indelibly etched into my memory bank. it could be cold or it could be a faux-summer drink-in-life. another day we drove across the state, donned southern accents and strode around an eau claire, wisconsin country music festival, pretending to be from “naaaaashville” but here in wisconsin because we had “kin” who lived here. the accents and pretending stuck with us all day and the memory still makes me giggle.
there was the time that i had to rent a vehicle while mine was being repaired. the only thing available was a big (and i mean big!) pickup truck with a extra-long bed lined with rubber. My Boy was little at the time and he (an avid car/truck fan at the time) couldn’t get over how big the pickup was and remarked that the bed was so big you could sleep in it. that night, unbeknownst to him, i carried out extra comforters and sleeping bags, pillows and flashlights and pulled the pickup further up the driveway. when it was time for sleep and he was saying goodnight, i asked him where he was going. he replied, “upstairs. to bed.” laughing, i led him outside to where i had set up our camp, in the bed of that rented pickup under the stars and dewy night sky.
sometimes you just have to say a loud affirming YES to opportunity. scoop it up. my goal is to do that even more. less sleep. more scooping.
“…you’re an angel in my life, and i’m still ridin’ on the back of your bike.”
“…you’re my big brother till the end of all time. angel you are.”
when i was little, my brother wayne used to ride me around on his bike…pretty much anywhere and everywhere. and so my adoration of him started early. he was nine years older than me; he had wisdom and know-how i didn’t…i was years behind him. even when i was small, i cherished all the moments he spent with me. and i didn’t know.
i didn’t know that time would be cut short and that this person who i relied on for advice and wisdom and fixing-stuff-know-how and just general big-brother stuff wouldn’t be around forever.
i remember being in the hospital with him during one of his chemo sessions. i asked him if i had been an annoyance when i was young, always wanting to go with him, always wanting his attention. there was this moment i will always remember – forever. he said, “no! you were my little sister and i was proud of you. i always wanted you with me.”
time stood still when he said that. i knew it was important to memorize that moment. i am still holding on to it.
the crystal clear water was cool around my feet, cold actually. the current pulled at my flipflops, necessary – for the rocks below were slippery and i didn’t have the cool sandals My Girl had on. the hot-hot high altitude sun blazed into my hair; it made me think i should have worn that new packable hat i got last year.
i scanned the horizon, a 360 of mountains and trees and sagebrush and blue-blue sky. and this river. going on and on. as far as i could see, it meandered through the landscape i was reluctant to leave.
and i stood in the water. never-minding the feeling of almost-numbness of my feet. because in this moment, i could feel. the very hot of a brilliant sun, the very cold of snow-capped mountain runoff. this time of cloudless sky and the murmur of the river. this time of being with my daughter. this time of dreaming and imagining and creating scenarios in my mind that would allow me to stay in this very spot. this time of (in this case, metaphoric) cloud-gazing.
every good cloud-gaze creates a story. every good cloud-gaze builds a memory. every good cloud-gaze gives you pause to breathe. it’s the same with your feet in the river, your blanket on the beach, your chair in front of the bonfire, your boots on the trail. make time, i say.
reverse threading 