A Simple Life

"I only want to live in peace and plant potatoes and dream!"

-- Tove Jansson, 

Moomin: The Complete Tove Janson Comic Strip

A simple sleeping potato 11-22-14

"When all things spoke, the potato said,

'Set me warm, dig me warm, eat me warm. That's all I want."

-- Irish Proverb

"Life is amazingly good when it's simple 

and amazingly simple when it's good."

-- Terry Guillemets

Someone asked me the other day what I've been doing with myself.

She's a busy someone. An accomplished someone. An ambitious someone.

And her question that put me off balance, because part of me wanted to tick off an impressive list of accomplishments and achievements and adventures to show that I could match her ambitiousness.

But I didn't.

I don't have a list like that. Because I don't have a life like that.

But how do you tell someone you sometimes spend entire days photographing Barbies. And potatoes?

I went with the vague truth. It was a short list.

I cook. I exercise. I write a blog. I take pictures.

"Otherwise, not a whole lot," I said. "I'm living a pretty simple life these days."

And I swear a look of pure jealousy crossed her face.

"That can be good too," she said.

It can be very good.

My life right now is extremely and profoundly simple. The demands are small. The expectations are few. The bar is low.

And I like it that way.

I realize that I am really lucky to have the luxury of living simply. I also know that things won't always stay this simple. Complications will arise and disturb the surface.

But for now, for me, good and simple is simply good.

Bubble Wrap

"Or maybe it's just that beautiful things 

are so easily broken by the world."

-- Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels

Bubble-wrapped China cup 10-26-14

"If only these treasures were not so fragile 

as they are precious and beautiful."

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 

The Sorrows of Young Werther

"Life is a lot more fragile than we think."

-- Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

Small Things Done With Love

"Not all of us can do great things.

But we can do small things with great love."

-- Mother Teresa

Wire hangers 10-20-14

"If I give all I possess to the poor 

and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, 

but do not have love, I gain nothing."

-- 1 Corinthians 13:3

When it's all said and done, my life probably won't leave much of a mark on the world.

In the grand scheme of humanity, I am a pretty damned small, insignificant potato.

When I see the Mother-Teresa-sized greatness of what some people do to inspire hope or elicit change or otherwise help the neediest needy among us, I feel very small indeed.

I'm not a humanitarian or a visionary or a hero.

The stuff I do isn't world-scale stuff.

This weekend, for example. Nothing I did was a very big deal. At all.

Here's a rundown:

I yelled and cheered like a damn fool when Leo busted through the line and sacked the shit out of the the opposing quarterback Friday night.

Big deal.

I ironed all my guys' dress shirts.

Big deal.

I made pancakes and sausage for Sunday breakfast.

Big deal.

I cooked my husband a big homemade steak-pineapple-basil pizza with no sauce, just how he likes it. It was all his. He didn't have to share it with anyone. He got the whole thing to himself.

Big deal.

I bought my neighbor, Rick, a six-pack of beer. We had a gas leak because the idiots who hooked up the new stove had their heads up their asses. Rick works for the gas company and came to the rescue and fixed the problem at no charge.

Big deal.

I wrote a couple of blog posts that only a very few people (and by few, I mean few) will ever read or care about.

Big deal.

I talked to my son Sam on the phone. He's at college and is stressed as fuck under the extreme weight of the intense course load he's carrying. He unloaded, I listened. I tossed in a little inappropriate humor and juicy gossip, and by the end of our conversation Sam was laughing -- like really hard snort-laughs. And he asked me to send him some homemade oatmeal cookies. I'll do that today.

Big deal.

I told you it was all small stuff.

But I can honestly say that I did all of those small things because I felt great love, or gratitude, or some other really good feeling, for each and every one of the people I did them for.

When it's all said and done and my life is up in smoke, I don't give a fiddler's fuck if anyone remembers a single thing I said or did.

What I do hope they remember, though, is how I made them feel.

And I hope I made them feel a little loved.

That'd be a really big deal.

Happy Being Me

"Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness."

-- Pearl S.  Buck

Smiley face toy  9-26-14

"It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are 

or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. 

It is what you think about it."

-- Dale Carnegie

"Just tell yourself, Duckie, you're really quite lucky."

-- Dr. Seuss, 

Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?

My life right now is super simple, tidy, small, uncomplicated and uneventfully predictable.

It might even be a little bit boring by some people's standards.

I don't give a fiddler's fuck about some people's standards.

I haven't felt this happy, this content, in a long, long while.

Maybe it's just the anti-depressants talking. Or maybe it's the fact that I'm routinely getting good sleep on a regular basis. 

Whatever it is, it doesn't matter.

 I'm happy.

But the even more remarkable thing is that I'm happy being happy. 

My life is my life, for once in my life.

And that, my friends, is the really good life.

Keeping It To Myself

"I keep a lot of shit to myself because in reality, nobody gives a fuck."

-- Unknown

Self portrait 9-17-14

"I have torn to pieces my robe of speech,

and have let go of the desire to converse."

--Rumi, 

Hush, Don't Say Anything To God: Passionate Poems of Rumi

I was at the corner store yesterday, headed for the checkout, when I ran into someone I knew.

He's a real chipper, cheerful guy. Nice enough. 

At another time, under other circumstances, I'd have called him a friend. Now? An acquaintance. Just some guy I recognized at the grocery store.

He was all smiles and "Good to see you!"  He reached out and grabbed me and hugged me heartily, right there in the grocery store, my arms straight down at my sides holding onto my celery and bacon, giving no indication that I wanted to be hugged at all.

Was I glad to see him? 

Meh.

Honestly? When he came around the corner I kind of shrank back and scanned for the quickest getaway, like I often do when I run into certain people from from a certain painful chapter of my life. Which he is. This guy didn't personally inflict the pain. But through no fault of his own, he is guilty by association. My mind and my heart automatically lump him in with the rest of it.

And so I went into self-defense mode.

I pulled back. I threw up a shield. I armored up.

After he monologued about himself for a few minutes, he asked me breezily "So what's new with you?"

There was a time when I'd have "shared," as they say, what's happening in my life. I'd have let myself get sucked into a long, time consuming, nowhere conversation. Not because I really wanted this person to know stuff about me, but because I was insecure enough to think I had to impress him, or prove that my life was valid, or important, or good enough or full enough of what I thought he thought it should be good and full of. I'd have confused a superficial, spontaneous, empty exchange with something real.

Not anymore.

I don't waste the energy.

All I said to him was "Nothing. I live a pretty quiet, simple life these days."

He looked a tad befuddled and said "Well, I guess there's value in that, too."

And the conversation was over.

I'd successfully barred the door.

I paid for my celery and bacon and headed home to my very happy, full, valid, good life which I was happier than happy to keep all to myself, lest I dilute its goodness by spilling it out all over the grocery store floor at the feet of someone who acted like he gave a shit, but who very probably forgot all about me the second we parted.

Which is perfectly fine with me.

Aging Gracefully

"... life is about losing 

and about doing it as gracefully as possible ...

and enjoying everything in between."

-- Mia Farrow

Rose 8-24-14

"I wish the time hadn't gone so fast, though.

And sometimes I wish I'd enjoyed it more on the way,

and worried about it less."

-- Neil Gaiman

I've never been accused of being graceful.

At anything.

So when it comes to aging, I'm not sure if I'm going about it gracefully or not.

I guess I'm sort of tripping through it.

Stumbling clumsily, gracelessly, inelegantly.

Oh, well.

This shit is new to me, so give me some slack.

I'm trying.

It's like when a little kid rides a 2-wheeler for the first time.

It ain't pretty, but at least she's doing it.

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.

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.

  

A Matter Of Life & Death

"The hour of departure has arrived, 

and we go our separate ways,

I to die, and you to live.

Which of these two is better only God knows."

-- Socrates

A matter of life and death (spray paint on paper) 2-5-14

"There are moments when a rope's end, a pole, the branch of the tree, is life itself, 

and it is a frightful thing to see a living being lose his hold upon it, 

and fall like a ripe fruit."

-- Victor Hugo

Sometimes death can be a good thing.

Death can be merciful, granting release to someone who has suffered long enough.

Death can be gentle, quietly creeping in on cat's feet during the night to claim its victim without disturbing them from their slumber.

Death can be patient, waiting until the end of a long and full life -- until the affairs are in order, until the apologies are made, until the final sweet words are whispered -- before exacting its due.

But sometimes, death is a bad thing, the worst thing. 

Sometimes death is a hard, cold, cruel son of a bitch. Sometimes death is a mean motherfucker that shows up uninvited and unexpected, barging in unannounced and way off schedule, and trashes the place.

My friend Maria's husband died a couple of days ago, suddenly and unexpectedly. His name was Raj, which, fittingly, means "royalty." Raj was young and vibrant and interesting and intelligent and active. Raj cultivated intricate, exquisite bonsai trees. Raj was not suffering. He was traveling in India, where he was born, visiting family, which he loved. Raj was a beautiful, elegant, caramel-colored man with a brilliant smile and waves of glossy black hair, who spoke with a soft, lilting accent that rolled roundly off his tongue like bubbles in a brook.  

Out of the clear blue, Raj had a heart attack, and Raj died.

From where I stand, nothing about Raj's death looks like a good thing.

Except maybe this.

Since I heard the news, which saddened me deeply, I've felt tenderer toward my husband and my boys. I've found myself feeling a little more patient -- a little gentler, a little kinder, a little sweeter. I laugh more. I say thank you more often. When there was news of yet another school closing today, I didn't bristle. I felt honestly glad that Leo and I get another whole day together and looked up movies for us to see. I offered to cook some of the goose that they hunted for supper -- without making a face.

Something about Raj's death is making me look more closely at my own life and the lives that are in it. It is bringing things into startling close-up and saying "Look at what you have. Take inventory. Because it could all be gone in a heartbeat." 

It's not hard to find. It's right under my nose.

But sometimes you have to look hard for the good.

It's like panning for gold when the prospectors have already carted away the big nuggets, and all that's left behind are flecks of dust and it's all under water and the water's murky and there's a gaping hole in your sieve and all you can do is hope that there's still a tiny speck of something somewhere under the mud for you to put in your bag and carry home.