Beginnings And Endings

"You only grow by coming to the end of something 

and by beginning something else."

-- John Irving, The World According To Garp

New and old apples  6-7-14

"... there are never really endings, happy or otherwise,

Things keep going on, they overlap and blur ..."

-- Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

Baby green apples are popping out all over my apple tree.

A few of the stubbornest, crustiest old guys from last year are still hanging tough though, refusing to be pushed out of the way by the young upstarts.

I liked the contrast of young and old rubbing shoulders.

It's a good thing when generations hang out together.

Clearing Away The Rust

"If you find the mirror of the heart dull,

the rust has not been cleared from its face."

-- Rumi

Rust, Old Woman Creek 4-19-14

"Negligence is the rust of the soul,

that corrodes through all her best resolves."

-- Owen Feltham

Rust (2), Old Woman Creek 4-19-14

"And I was standing over there,

rusting for the longest time."

-- Tin Woodsman, The Wizard of Oz

Rust (3), Old Woman Creek 4-19-14

I took my new camera out for a walk at the Old Woman Creek nature reserve yesterday.

Inside the woods, away from the wind, it felt like being inside an incubator -- warm and sheltered and gentle and protected -- teeming with new life.

Thick patches of moss were turning lush and luminous. A little spider was spinning a silky shroud to encase a winter-dried thistle. A bee worked industriously to harvest what pollen it could from the few tiny, early wildflowers pressing bravely through the humus. A pair of raccoon tracks sank deep into the mud near the creek, its shallow stream no longer locked up in ice, but flowing freely.

At every turn, it seemed, there was evidence of the old was making way for the new.

Except around the final bend of the trail.

For all the years we've been exploring Old Woman Creek, the same jumble of ancient, rusted farm implements has sat in the exact same spot, slowly and continuously disintegrating into the ground. While the rest of the woods and marsh comes alive all around it, the heap of twisted, rusting iron just decays a little further -- crumbling to bits, day after day, year after year --sharp, jagged, broken, hard, rough.

I'll resist the urge to go all deep-and-meaningful about it. You can do that on your own time. It's just that the contrast seemed particularly stark to me on this late April afternoon, when rebirth seemed to be the theme of the day.

I exited the woods with a camera full of photographs, evidence of both the old and the new, of birth and death, of what was and what might be. I liked the other photographs too, but for today, on the tender front paws of Spring, it seemed like a good thing to clear away the rust.

Something To Keep Me From Totally Flipping My S#!T Because I'm Stuck Indoors

"To be human is to keep rattling the bars of the cage of existence,

hollering, 'What's it for?'"

-- Robert Fulghum

Self portrait 4-17-14

"Human beings want to be free 

and however long they may agree to stay locked up, to stay oppressed, 

there will come a time when they say 'That's it.'

Suddenly they find themselves doing something 

that they never would have thought they would be doing,

simply because of the human instinct that makes them turn their face towards freedom."

-- Aung San Suu Kyi

It snowed, again and dropped into the low 20s, again.

Remember those lovely daffodils I talked about a couple of days ago? They're fucked.

After the rain beat the shit out of them, the show completely crushed them into the ground.

I tasted freedom during an all-too-brief weekend breakout, but then Winter threw me back in lockup and slammed the cell door.

I'm trapped inside looking out, again.

Yesterday I could be have used my time in solitary confinement (or as I like to think of it, "the hole") to get a jump on Spring cleaning the house -- the windows need washing, the carpets need sweeping, the furniture needs dusting, the grout needs scrubbing.

Instead, in a desperate act of survival, I spent the afternoon fighting back the crazy by making this self portrait of how I'm feeling right about now. I had to get it out of my system before I totally flipped my shit and started smashing stuff. It's a good thing, cuz I was about to start eating my own offspring.

The grout can fucking wait. I have more important things to do.

Celebrating The Small Stuff

"Life is made up of small pleasures.

Happiness is made up of those tiny successes.

The big ones come too infrequently.

And if you don't collect all these tiny successes,

the big ones don't really mean anything."

--  Norman Lear

Daffodil blooms 4-15-14

"There was once a girl who observed the little things 

more than a normal person would do, rather, be capable of."

-- Addie S., a story about a girl and the little things

Daffodils 4-15-14

"It has long been an axiom of mine 

that the little things are infinitely the most important."

-- Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoir of Sherlock Holmes

I spent yesterday morning in a fierce, hard wind and pelting rain chasing my neighbors' blowing trash all over the cul-de-sac. I felt like I was in one of those cash grab machines where the money just flies around and you have to bare-hand catch as many bills as you can.

Good times.

While I was out there I noticed my daffodils were getting pretty beat up. They'd only just opened a day or two ago, and already, most of them had been knocked flat against the mulch, down for the count after a few hard blows.

I rescued a fistful of those that were still standing and brought them indoors before they got pummeled too. Outside among their fallen comrades they'd looked pretty pathetic and rather raggedy. But safely tucked into their little vase, they looked altogether lovely.

Speaking of lovely, later in the day, my husband took me out for a really lovely dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. 

We often go out to dine with friends, but last night was just the two of us. We were celebrating my little victory of landing a role in a play for the upcoming summer. When I first got the news, his immediate reaction was "We should go out to dinner!" 

He's especially good at that -- making sure we intentionally pause to acknowledge the good things in our lives, even if (often especially if) those things are seemingly as ordinary as small role in a play, or a fistful of cold, bedraggled, rain-soaked daffodils. I really love that about him.

We "cheers'd" to my success -- he clinked his glass of Chardonnay against mine of club soda and lime. It was so nice to sit across from each other at our quiet table for two by the window, to look at each other, to see each other, to have a conversation about nothing special, but which felt special, because we weren't interrupted by anyone or anything except our waiter coming and going with plates of delicious food. 

If we let them, the good things in life could blow past like trash in a harsh wind. It'll smash your daffodils before you even get a chance to appreciate them. Or, it'll dump two inches of heavy, wet snow all over them and crush them completely, which is exactly what happened to mine this morning.

Except for the ones in the vase.

Sure, they're still small and ordinary. Daffodils are nothing special. Every house in the neighborhood has some. But we have a shared history now, this particular little bunch of flowers and me. We went through something together. We weathered a storm. 

It was a small thing, it was an ordinary thing, but it was a good thing.

And if you ask me, it was a thing worth celebrating.

  

Re-Emerging

"This world is clearly emerging before our eyes.

The shifts ahead, the opportunities ahead are massive."

-- Carly Fiorina

Tulip sprouts 3-21-14

"We all hope for breakthrough rebirth moments."

-- Dane Cook

Tulip sprouts (2) 3-21-14

"You raze the old to raise the new."

-- Justina Chen, North of Beautiful

Tulip sprouts (3) 3-21-14

A year ago at this time I was in a dark and scary place.

I'd kind of dropped out of my life. I'd gone underground, buried beneath the pressing weights of insomnia, anxiety and depression.

I'd stopped doing some things that, until then, had been very important parts of who I am. Most notably, I'd stopped acting.

In addition to my 365 days projects, I am also an actor. Theater mostly. But performing on stage and auditioning for roles, in my then-current condition, was out of the question.

In the last show I did, I was so exhausted and sleep deprived that I forgot my lines onstage more than once, which is definitely not something I am used to. During a scene in the show before that, my persistent facial spasm went apeshit and the other actor zeroed in on it, and it totally threw him off his game. In the green room afterwards, he teased me about it and I tried to play along with the joking, but it hurt. A lot.

I do most of my work an hour away in Cleveland, and there were nights I drove to and from rehearsals after 36 hour stretches of zero sleep, nights when I had no fucking business being behind the wheel of a car.

It all scared the shit out of me. It left me snake bit, gun shy, and super skittish about wanting to try again too soon, if at all.

The thing that scared me most, though, was how easily I was able to let go. I was growing ever more lackadaisical and apathetic about something that had once been a driving force and a passion. I didn't give a fuck. And even if I wanted to give a fuck, I didn't have a fuck to give. The passion, the drive, the hunger, the need -- vanished.

I was honestly starting to doubt whether I'd ever get back on the horse.

But yesterday I got a sensation that something was stirring again -- struggling to break the surface and re-emerge after its long, hard, dark dormancy.

I went on my first audition in almost a year and a half.

I think I did OK. I felt good about it. I was rested, calm, confident. The atmosphere felt familiar and right. My facial spasm was wonderfully obedient.

And whether I get the job or not is beside the point. The important thing is that I did it. I showed up. I went. I tried. I pushed back up through the packed earth and peeked out at a world I feared I'd never see again.

Guess what? It's still there.

So am I.

Something Green

"Our green valleys will be greener once we 

fully grasp the infinite vitality of the green!"

-- Mehmet Murat ildan

Shamrock flowers 3-18-14

 "She turned back to inspect a bank of greens:

olive, jade, leaf, kiwi, lime, 

a silver-green like the back of birch leaves,

a bright pistachio."

-- Anne Bartlett, Knitting

If push comes to shove and Spring refuses to come to me, then I guess I'll just hafta go out and buy it.

Which I did, sort of.

As I drove past our local garden center, the light-up sign was blinking "Come in and buy a shamrock!" It was St. Patrick's Day, after all, so I thought "what the Hell" and went in.

It was nearly closing time, and except for a couple of workers winding up hoses and cautioning me not to slip on the wet floor, I was the only person there. It's more of an outdoor/landscaping kind of establishment, but they do have a little bit of a greenhouse. They'd just watered the hanging baskets, so water was draining and dripping down from overhead as I walked underneath. 

Even though it was only 29 degrees outside, the late afternoon sun warmed the greenhouse air, making it dewy and heavy. It smelled sweet, vital and alive, like dirt and moisture and growing things and flowers and well, Spring. Even though outside was still hard, cold and monochromatic, in here it was all green and hopeful.

There was a 3-shelf cart by the window full of shamrock plants in full flower. The blooms were all turned toward the glass, straining their little white faces to catch the last light of the waning sun. I couldn't help wondering who, if anyone, would buy all of these little beauties once St. Patrick's Day was over. What is the market for shamrocks after March 17?

At $10 a piece I couldn't adopt them all. But I brought home one, watered it and put it in my kitchen window.

Everybody knows about shamrock leaves. This time of year every other house in the neighborhood has a tacky glittery one hanging on the front door. But shamrock flowers get short shrift. I thought the tiny, tender, trumpet-shaped blooms were delicately lovely.

With a name like Erin you might think I'd go whole hog for all the St. Patrick's Day schtick. Heck, I didn't drink anything green. I didn't even wear anything green. I did beer-braise a corned beef and boil some potatoes and carrots, but that's about it. 

And I adopted a shamrock. I guess that's my "something green."

It's still sitting in the kitchen window looking out, patiently watching Winter dig her stubborn heels in, wishing and waiting, like me, for Spring to show up.

Who knows? Maybe having a shamrock in the house will shift the luck of the Irish in our favor and we'll finally get our wish.

That'd be a good thing. 

A Walk Outside

"No one saves us but ourselves.

No one can and no one may.

We ourselves must walk the path."

-- Guatama Buddha, Sayings of Buddha

Self portrait 3-16-14

"When I'm in turmoil, when I can't think, when I'm exhausted

and afraid and feeling very, very alone, I go for walks ...

I walk and I walk and sooner or later something comes to me,

something to make me feel less like jumping off a building."

-- Jim Butcher, Storm Front

The snow and ice on the sidewalks finally melted, the impassable puddles finally receded, and the Sun finally warmed the air enough for me to take my first walk of the year through my neighborhood. 

Birds were chirping and singing, little boys were bouncing basketballs in driveways, mothers were pushing bundled-up babies in strollers. 

It felt really good.

Sun On My Skin & Wind In My Hair

"For what is it to die but to stand naked

in the wind and to melt into the sun?"

-- Khalil Gibran

Barbie 3-11-14

"If you wish to know the divine, 

feel the wind on your face and the warm sun on your hand."

-- Buddha

March's lion momentarily yielded to her lamb-ish side yesterday and it was glorious.

The joggers were wearing shorts. A couple of motorcycles were out. I heard the sounds of children shouting and laughing outside for the first time in months. Large, open patches of grass and Earth bloomed and spread like dirty green stains between islands of receding snow, releasing a sweet Spring aroma of possibility. 

On my way to get the trash cans from the curb, I lingered in the driveway and let the stout but sun-warmed wind work away at my inner cobwebs as I watched flocks of birds dip and soar along the thermals and updrafts. 

I inhaled. I exhaled. I uncoiled and expanded.

The lion is prowling again this morning. I knew she would be. She's never been one to go without a fight. But her knees are buckling.  

A Glimpse Of Spring

"Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer.

The one melts, the other breaks into pieces."

-- Henry David Thoreau

Melting icicle 2-13-14

"Ice contains no future, just the past, sealed away."

-- Haruki Murakami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

I ain't stoopid.

I know there's more Winter to come.

I've lived in Ohio and Michigan my entire life, so I know that Winter always has a second act. And most likely, a third.

I know better than to get my hopes up when there's a brief intermission -- a momentary thaw. 

But that doesn't mean I don't still enjoy it when the big round thermometer nailed to our fence, basking in afternoon the sunshine, reads a balmy 40 degrees. Or when the icicles that fringe the eaves of our house in severe, jagged spikes get all round-tipped and melty. 

A tiny glimpse of Spring, no matter how fleeting, is like a little peek at the coming attractions.

But I'm a jaded Midwesterner, so I don't get too excited.

I've learned not to let my guard down. Not just yet. Not this early. 

Now's the time where I brace myself for Winter's sucker punch.

Because I know damn well that intermission goes quick. Winter is simply off freshening her makeup, spritzing her throat and taking a piss. The lobby lights are already flickering. The place will soon grow dark again and that bitch will climb back on stage.

What a diva.