moved

Here.

looking forward to the weekend

Back to my life in Pasadena after 12 wonderful, glorious (and at times also rather frustrating) days away with family and friends on the east coast, I have found that being away is just what I needed. The perspective that time away has given me has been rich soil to start planting my new year in. And now I have a fabulous weekend planned, one that might seem ordinary most weeks of the year. But today it is looking so fun, because I’m glad to be back, eager to catch up with friends, and definitely in the mood to celebrate. Here’s what the weekend holds:

Tonight: dinner and a movie with an old roommate and dear friend; can’t wait to catch up
Tomorrow morning: wake up early to make lots of red velvet cupcakes, then off to counseling for which I have TONS of material after staying with my parents for a few days over the holiday–should be a good [read: hard with lots of crying but also some glimpses of healing] session
Tomorrow afternoon: Somecrust with two dear friends–one of my favorite places with two of my favorite people
Tomorrow night: PARTY! we’re celebrating two friends who got engaged a few weeks ago with Korean food, my red velvet cupcakes, and hopefully lots of laughing and cheering
Sunday morning: church–glad to go back after a few weeks of being away
Sunday afternoon: coffee with another favorite person who I just don’t see enough of–talking with her often leaves me feeling like there was a small earthquake inside and all my interior furniture is all out of place . . .  I feel I’m in strange and unfamiliar territory, but it’s good . . .
Sunday night: hopefully some quiet with candles and a book and maybe some writing and listening to the rain that is forcasted for all weekend; oh, and keeping good on a new years goal to try one new recipe each week from one of my cookbooks. Roasted chickpeas anyone?

Hope your weekend is every bit as fantastically filled with good people, good food, and good rest!

my new friend mary

At Border’s in late August, trying to escape the suffocating heat of my non-air-conditioned apartment, I carelessly pulled her book of a shelving cart, drawn subconciously maybe by the one word title: Thirst. It’s been a love affair ever since. I fell hard for her spirituality of simplicity and solitude, for her love of nature. Those first poems I read were so beautiful I cried. And I still do when I read them.

Mary and I are still getting to know each other, and I’m loving the beginnings of this new relationship.

Today she told me, “It was not a choice of writing or not writing. It was a choice of loving my life or not loving my life.” Sit with that one for a while.

interruption

The word was “interruption.” It’s a word that is accompanied by others like messy, incomplete, unexpected. It’s a word that means good news, but before that some very bad news. It’s a word the shakes everything up, like someone is shaking the world in a giant snow globe and the dust takes a long time to settle. It was all those things; it was quite the interruption.

We’d been dating for nine months. That may not seem like a long time, but it was long enough. I can’t say that I didn’t have some clue towards the end that things were not as they should be. People say that when you’ve had some really hard relationships, and then you have a really good one, so good that it seems to not take any work at all, that’s when you know. When I heard these things while dating him, I thought, “you mean these things are actually easy sometimes?” I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to not have to work at it, because it had been work almost the whole time. An incredible amount of work for the few precious moments we shared, but I thought it was worth it, because when it was good, it was good.

But after the umpteenth fight about the same redundant problem we were having, we got tired of fighting. We got tired of working. I was slow to admit that I was tired because I had a hard time imagining life without the relationship, life after the dust settled.

It was Christmas. We had plans to share Christmas together–his first time at my parents’ house. That’s when the interruption came. Mary experienced this incredible interruption, her whole life rearranged in a dream-like interaction and a couple of words. And she said, “let it be with me as you’ve said . . . ” It brought the very bad news that would give way to the very good news. And she gave me courage to go ahead and let the interruption begin. Start shaking up the dust. Let the bad news start so the good news can come. Let’s stop dating, I said. I’m letting go.

That was four years ago, and it’s still what I think about when I read about Mary. Because it brought some really good news. It brought adventure. It brought deeper love for myself than I thought I had in me. It brought a firm, abiding trust that I would not trade for anything else.

That trust is a good thing, because there are still interuptions. This year it’s a disease. And sometimes it seems like all bad news, all mess and dirt and it’s something that I never asked for. It’s taking my body for a horrible ride. And I get scared. But because of that trust, I’m hanging on and believing that there’s good news. There’s a new way of seeing things and of being me, now that this is a part of my life.

These interruptions, they shape our hearts. We never ask for them. They come at the worst time, and we want so badly to go where we thought we were headed. But sometimes the dust that takes such a long time to settle is mercy to our hearts that hang on too tightly to things we don’t need. Blinded by the dust, we’re forced to let go. Ok. Let it be with me . . . Because God’s messy, interrupting, and incredibly disorienting word turns life into something so good . . .

devil of a bargain

When we traded homemaking for careers, we were implicitly promised economic independence and worldly influence. But a devil of a bargain it has turned out to be in terms of daily life. We gave up the aroma of warm bread rising, the measured pace of nurturing practices, the creative task of molding our families’ tastes and zest for life; we received exchange the minivan and the Lunchable. (Or worse, convenience-mart hotdogs and latchkey kids.) I consider it the great hoodwink of my generation.

-Barbara Kingsolver, on cooking and the modern-day woman in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

(I post this because I like the writing–I highly recommend this book. Also because it’s so true and sad. Mom’s who are working lead crazy lives, and though being mothers brings an incredible amount of joy, I’m sure, I really don’t envy their too-full lives.)

romance in the air

I started a post a few days ago, one that I probably won’t finish at this point, about my relationship with my life–how I’m in that you’ve-lost-that-loving-feeling-phase, the one where things aren’t bright and exciting and new anymore. New phases in life can be as thrilling and hormone-inducing (or so it seems) as the early days of courtship. Those are the days when I love my life, and nothing can convince me otherwise, really. But familiarity, while it can foster commitment and attachment, two key ingredients in a relationship, can also breed boredom. Dull, listless boredom. And that’s where really good dates come in.

Is it cheesy to go on dates with my life? I don’t think it’s a new idea, I think people do this kind of thing all the time. I read recently in one of those inspiring-writers-to-write type of books that taking an hour each week, at least an hour each week, to explore something completely new is essential. It will keep the creative blood flowing, like exercise for writers. A bit of romance in my life will keep me interested and my life interesting. And it will remind me of why I’m here, what I’m after, and that, in some sense, I’ve said for better or for worse to myself already, and that’s a commitment I need to keep.

I was sick most of this week: on the couch, under covers, my head in a fog so think I could have forgotten that it was Christmas if Ellen hadn’t been doing her 12 days of Christmas Giveaway and Martha hadn’t been doing her handmade gifts series. As I emerged from the sick-fogginess I’ve found some brightness in my life and heart that I’d forgotten were there. My love for good writing and my dream to produce some, for example. Last night, my first venture out (except for work) I went to a Christmas show with good music and dancing and acting, surrounded by people who appreciate good art, and probably some who create some themselves. And as I was sitting in the midst of this, I heard my heart say again, I’d like to write.

And today at a coffee shop, I heard my heart say the same. There was romance in the air, a surprising amount for how simple it was. I guess I’m a cheap date: coffee, a good book, and some eavesdropping will sometimes do the trick. Oh, and a man who writes a limerick for me–but that’s another story entirely. The eavesdropping–my favorite coffee shop is a house, so there are different smalls rooms to sit in, often with other people, which makes listening to others’ conversations so easy and completely irresistable, especially when they’re talking about travels in places like India and Florence. Is that just falling in love with other peoples’ lives, or is it also opening my arms to my own? Yes, let’s write. And let’s travel. Florence might not be as far off as you think.

That’s what my life whispered in my ear, and I whispered back, “I’m yours.”

when i am among the trees

…

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

excerpt from When I Am Among the Trees in Thirst: Poems by Mary Oliver

Read the whole poem in a preview on Amazon.

It’s 4pm

It’s 4pm. My desk is piled with opened file folders, papers I need to sort, and others that someone in this office needs to file. I just got a coffee–indicating just how worn out I am this afternoon (I’m trying to cut down on coffee and haven’t had one in the afternoon for as long as I can remember). I feel pulled in different directions–literally and figuratively. It’s been a long day. It’s been a long week.

One week ago I was on a flyaway bus to LAX. I booked a flight just a few hours earlier to travel across the country, home, for Thanksgiving. I was met with hugs and smiles and a soft, familiar couch that I sank into for the next few days. And by a niece and a nephew who are the two most adorable children I have ever met. They stole my heart. (I missed them before I even got on the plane to come back.) I walked in blowing leaves and the beginnings of rain and 40 degree weather. I walked to the farmer’s market and past my old apartment. I covered my mouth with my scarf, like I used to.

I came back (home?) to an empty apartment and a bathroom smeared with poo from plumbing problems. After a trip toTarget and a good cry, I mopped up the mess and made some coffee. Lying on my lumpy couch, I watched tv on my computer. A man reached for a woman’s hand, which made me catch my breath more than the requisite sex scene (it was Private Practice). And when my roommate came home and neighbors stopped by to visit, I told stories about teaching my nephew to point to his ears, how he said “Betsy,” and how he took out a diaper while I was packing, wanting me to change him.

a prickly relationship

A few dates in, we went together to an art gallery in D.C. It was abstract art, and normally we’d have a hard time making anything of it. But we were in that bliss of the first few weeks, when your eyes are bright and you can’t sleep and even a crazy piece of abstract art takes on profound beauty and meaning. We were in love.

 

The first piece we looked at was called “a prickly relationship.” After reading the title we just looked at each other, laughed, shrugged, and skipped on to the next piece. We were anything but prickly. We were in love.

 

A week later he gave me my birthday gift, which included a small cactus that he’d re-potted. It had a bright red flower on top and small, almost invisible spikes sticking out all over. I knew he was trying to make light of that painting we’d seen. We knew we’d defy any curse that painting had put on our relationship. We were in love.

 

 

The prickliness began a few months later.

 

I’m not a very affectionate person, physically. I like hugs, but rarely offer them. But my hand slipped easily into his the first time he reached for it, and from that point on I didn’t let go. I liked the feel of his curves against mine, the warmth of his body, the kind of forcefulness of his grip. He was alive to me. He was someone I could always have there with me. I didn’t have to feel alone anymore. I found that I looked forward to the touch more than anything else. Reaching over to put my hand to his leg, I was reassured that he was still there.

 

Every once in a while I’ll recall something from our relationship: a particularly lovely date or a difficult interaction. It will catch me off guard, because I don’t think about him that often anymore, and it’s been a few years since any of this has happened. But some memories are so lovely they seem almost like a dream. Was that me? In the middle of that prickliness was I capable of such a warm and true love? Was I able to enjoy it? The memories tell me yes.

 

Last night I remembered when we went to see A Christmas Carol at the Lancaster playhouse. We got dressed up, I pointed out a young girl in the play who was in my afterschool program, and afterwards we went to the local dive (that we loved) for beer and wings. I didn’t love wings before I loved him.

 

The prickliness—often I have a hard time explaining it to people. Sometimes I don’t even remember why it was so hard. Sometimes I wish I could have another go, to try out all the new things I’ve learned about myself and about love. I held on too tight, I know that, and I think he wasn’t really sure, deep in his heart. It was prickly, that’s for sure. We tried to move closer together but we always got stuck by those long thin needles that we could barely see. But we felt the pain, we had scars from the sticking, and eventually we needed to move apart to keep ourselves alive.

Six months later I was packing my things to move across the country. The cactus had died a few weeks before. I couldn’t take it with me anyway. I threw it in the trash, cleaned out the green pot, and put it in the pile for the Salvation Army.

case of a.d.d. reading

Currently reading:

The Way of the Heart, Henri Nouwen
I heart Henri.

Boundaries in Dating, Henry Cloud and John Townsend.
Yes, I’m serious. Is that corny? It’s actually super helpful.

The Right to Write, by Julia Cameron
I’m taking this one slow. It’s pretty good.

Elle Magazine

As you can see, I’ve been a little ADD when it comes to reading recently. Usually I pick one book and stick with it. I need some good fiction recommendations. What are you reading? What would you recommend?