Pink of Perfection

Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play and pray, where nature heals and give strength to body and soul alike. ––John Muir

Yesterday I attended a Quaker meeting in a deep shaded grove. It was what some call a “popcorn meeting,” where, one after another, people spring from their seats to quote from poetry and conversations with therapists. And in the moments of quiet that came in between bursts, I listened to the forests sounds with my eyes closed or watched the way the sunlight came through the trees. One serious conclusion: I use the adjective “heavenly” far too colloquially.

There was a through-line to the talk: about the delicacy of feelings and the power of words to hurt or to heal. I had spent the previous week in my own feverish ways, annoyed, anxious, unable to concentrate. But there in the woods, I felt reclothed in my rightful mind. I remembered the importance of stepping out of the flurry of the day-to-day to stop and breathe. To sit in quiet. To experience fellowship. Why hadn’t I been going to yoga? Why hadn’t I taken the time to sit in the community garden? I knew both would reset my clock, but I just couldn’t find the time. I had stewing to do and worries to fret. Important stuff.

Simplicity is something I struggle with. My apartment tends toward clutter; with language, I often have trouble being plain. So much of what we say is for effect and response, to get a laugh or to seem smart. But someone is always on the receiving end of that talk, perhaps sadly so. I resolved there to think more carefully of how what I say affects others. Words, especially written ones, aren’t just play things. As Joan Didion says, “Writers are always selling somebody out.” Tread carefully.

Someone at meeting used the phrase “beauty is but a light switch away.” Morning googling has revealed this to be some kind of cruel pick-up line, but in the context of chirping woodland birds and senior citizens in chinos, I had interpreted it so differently: We only have to flip the switch to be bathed in beauty. Just as, we only have to shift our perspective to feel peaceful and accepting again. Sometimes that means sitting quietly in the woods or floating in a lake or having a glass of lemonade with someone you love. What I had forgotten is how utterly within my power it is to bring those feelings about in my daily life, and I know just how to do it. Sometimes we need only a gentle reminder of what we already know.

On Friday evening I packed up a picnic of cold tuna macaroni salad and watermelon and boarded an evening train bound for Massachusetts’ Pioneer Valley. We arrived in the dark and drank cold glasses of vinho verde before falling asleep. But in the morning, we awoke to a a town filled with red brick buildings and ringed by green mountains in the distance. We ate breakfast outside in the sprawling garden of a restaurant where they roast their own coffee beans and sell peanut butter chocolate chip cookies the size of your head. From there, we visited the kind of huge, creaky used bookstore that can only exist off rural highways, and here we get to the first point I want to make: of course I had to buy the book you see here the moment I saw it, even if it hadn’t cost $1.50. Please note the sentence at the top of the cover.

I got a little carried away at this book store, snatching up an M.F.K. Fisher book I didn’t have, a Joan Didion novel I’ve long wanted to read, and a cookbook that caused a staggering library fine the last time it was in my hot little hands. Sebastian found me a heavy anthology of personal essays. As the shopkeeper rang me up, he paused at that one. “Is this one free or $1?” As I might have mentioned, I love used bookstores.

We returned to home base for rosé and cold celery stalks smeared with pimento cheese. Everyone retreated into their books for a quiet hour or two. Later, we drove a few miles on empty back roads lined with coneflowers to reach a swimming pool tucked next to river. Here, a surly teenager served ice cold canned sodas and greasy hamburgers.

How delightfully far it all felt from New York! On the Sunday drive back to the train station, my damp swimsuit tucked back inside my suitcase, we got to talking about quality of life. How that can mean walking five minutes to your office and having the things you love––swimming holes, bookstores, bibimbap, and really, really good iced coffee––easily accessible. New York has everything anyone could ever want. But to get to those things, we have to travel; even my best friend lives over an hour away by subway.

Some day, perhaps, I’ll settle in that kind of perfect place where indie craft fairs and ethnic food are enveloped by a wide natural world teeming with trails for hiking and clear lakes for swimming. (Any leads on places that match this description, by the way?) Until then, my new goal is to focus on the living the charmed life at hand. That means sprucing up the apartment I actually live in (instead of dreaming about moving), climbing in bed with an old novel, its brittle, brown pages and that wonderful old book smell, lulled to sleep with the story of what happens when a group of Bohemians face up to love.

Can you imagine, for a moment, the way the light through the window was dancing its patchy pattern across the table this morning, and across these cherries? It scatters still, across my cup of coffee and keyboard; it seems a fitting thing to bring up for what I’m about to try to say.

Which is: There are days when you burst into your own life. Your sense of self fills every bit of your body: the round tips of your fingers, your elbows, your earlobes. Suddenly, you are fully present in your form and in your life. You are dashing across the street like Mary Tyler Moore, twirling in your skirt, every synapse open and firing.

I am waiting, knowing this moment will end. It began Friday night with the surprise of love and support at the premiere of Colin Hearts Kay (which won Audience Choice for Best Feature!). And then it slid into Saturday when I was wearing a cute outfit and feeling quite lovely, sitting alone at the bar of one of my favorite restaurants with a glass of cold white wine, reading As They Were.

These are some of the things I love: friends, wrap skirts, chilly wine on hot days, M.F.K. Fisher. But for whatever reason, sometimes we turn to the things we love and they fail to stir in us that expected delight, the longed-for pleasure. Instead it is just a glass of Albariño, just a curled paperback.

But every once in awhile we find our lives transformed by joy for an afternoon or a weekend. These are days when we are so fully alive in our bodies, we feel like the stars of our story. Should it be any other way? But, inevitably, there are those other days. The necessary downturns, the going-through-the-motions, the sleepwalking in our own lives. And that’s fine too, if not because melancholy can serve a purpose, then because they make the slow, rapturous intake of pleasure even more satisfying. Too bad there’s not a valve we can switch on and off; but then, I suppose, that would be all too predictable.

I have been on my own personal cloud 9 since Friday at about 8:30pm. And it’s not because of any good news or career triumphs of my mate. It’s because, as someone close to me said, of a transformation. It’s sounds a little heavy or sci-fi, I know, but isn’t that a lovely word? It’s something humming in me, a gear that’s clicked into sunny, quiet place of wholeness. A group of girlfriends brought it on, then more friends, more family, a sewing project free of frustration, an iced latte or two. And now, after a slow wander through the bookstore and a dash to the farmer’s market, these cherries will sustain it. If only for a few moments more.

Women Food and God

Lavender bubble bath

Goldie Hawn’s hair in Foul Play

fava beans

my little brother’s college graduation

peonies

morning pages (how cool is anne sexton in this pic?)

my new love of barley

tasting :: Alison’s you-wouldn’t-know-it-was-healthy-but-it-was strawberry rhubarb crumble

hearing :: rediscovering my infinite love for Frank Black’s Black Letter Day

smelling :: dreamy hand soap in a cafe that I can’t stop thinking about it

seeing :: exploding roses, everywhere

feeling :: very happy to spend the weekend with my mom

What are your senses this Friday?

Wishing you all a very happy, relaxing weekend. Happy Mother’s Day!

photo via LIFE

Mother, Washing Dishes

She rarely made us do it—
we’d clear the table instead—so my sister and I teased
that some day we’d train our children right
and not end up like her, after every meal stuck
with red knuckles, a bleached rag to wipe and wring.
The one chore she spared us: gummy plates
in water greasy and swirling with sloughed peas,
globs of egg and gravy.

Or did she guard her place
at the window? Not wanting to give up the gloss
of the magnolia, the school traffic humming.
Sunset, finches at the feeder. First sightings
of the mail truck at the curb, just after noon,
delivering a note, a card, the least bit of news.

–Susan Meyers

“Nor need we power or splendour, wide hall or lordly dome; the good, the true, the tender, these form the wealth of home.” — Sarah J. Hale

image via retro renovation

Something tells me you dear readers share my deep and abiding love for Thanksgiving. On Sunday, window shopping in a fancy food shop with a friend, I suddenly got an anticipatory thrill so moving I hopped a little. Not up and down, but just up, once.

Thanksgiving wasn’t always my favorite holiday, but it became so when I was about 14. The day took on a hodgepodge element that made it more unpredictable party than overstuffed family function. My sister brought seemingly-glamorous (to a 14-year-old) college friends home, cousins in their 20’s would take the bus out to the country wearing black leather jackets, carrying cheese plates, and with a friend or two in tow, a fix-up could well be in the works, and a to-the-death game of Trivial Pursuit was a sure thing.

Things have settled down a bit over the years as attendees have grown up and coupled off. Sebastian makes a mean green bean casserole, my mom’s mashed potatoes are inspired, and there’s usually almost as much stuffing on my plate as I want. This year my sister is being held hostage in Montana. For the first time, I can’t count on her bloody marys and bold accessorizing. But two of my favorite eaters are driving up to sit at the long table, and I bring with me not a boyfriend but a husband. After the fast-paced flurry of a wedding, it will be good to sit down and have long chats with friends and family over a slice of pecan pie, a midnight bowl of mashed potatoes and gravy, and a glass of wine or five.

What’s Thanksgiving at your house like? Do you host? Is it friends, family, or both? A somber affair or an event where someone always dances on a table? Music for the table dancing after the jump…

Continue reading “Countdown to Turkey” »