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My faith resides in my absolute understanding that I know nothing. I may be intelligent and clever but whatever the meaning of this life, I am clueless. I don’t even profess to know. I would appreciate getting clued in, getting a heads up, maybe some advance warning, but I accept my ignorance and innocence. Humility springs from this space. Humility is how I find peace. I have been faced with a few weeks of total uncertainty regarding something personal, something that means a great deal to me. This situation arose after facing and dealing with a scare over a lump in my breast. And while many people are shaken to their core when faced with cancer, I was absurdly calm, logical and unemotional about the whole thing. I figured that once I had true answers, I could then address how it made me feel. This new situation isn’t logical, it defies rationality and because of that, the emotions evoked are unpredictable and difficult to categorize.At the center of it all is the feeling that I want someone else to give me answers, make it all better. But that is a childish feeling. And I am not a child. I don’t want to be a child again, either. And so, I move forward. One small step (or half step) at a time.
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It doesn’t require a declaration. The smallest choices define us. I once read a demographic factoid that said if you live in Texas, bought bottled beer instead of canned and have more than two varieties of mustard in your fridge, you vote liberally. I am not sure if canned beer and mayo mean you are conservative but it got me thinking. In life there are simple gestures and preferences we do automatically that define and divide us. A simple example is keeping ketchup in the fridge or in the pantry, cold vs. room temperature. No one is willy nilly on this. They have a distinct preference. When you put in a new roll of toilet paper, does the paper hang down the back or roll over the top and hand down the front? Do you prefer a window seat or the aisle on an airplane? I like asking people these innocuous questions for a few reasons. Do they actually have a preference? If the answer I get is, “That is silly. Who cares?” Then I am conversing with a person who has gotten a few decades into adulthood and remains undecided. And in my opinion, you gotta decide. Do you like jam or jelly? If you answer, “What’s the difference?” then I know you aren’t a foodie. If you answer, “Neither, I like honey.” then that is acceptable. If I ask, “Do you like fiction or non-fiction?” and the answer is “I don’t read.” or “I prefer movies.” then I have a knowledge of you; I begin to form an opinion. Sure, people have opinions about the big issues. They have political opinions and religious opinions. They lean one way or the other. Those kinds of opinions are actually more malleable than buying the store brand of catsup or the brand on sale. WRONG! I can’t abide a person who buys generic catsup. Even the most frugal person often has brand loyalty. I can tolerate, even accept, differences in faith, politics and cable news networks. I am not sure if I can tolerate someone who doesn’t have a favorite song from the 70′s, 80′s or 90′s. It is all the small and simple selections in life that compound into the development of an identity. And like The Runaway Bride, at some point, you have to decide how you like your eggs.
I must buy the walking foot for the Singer Curvy as my old walking foot does not match this machine. Then I will quilt the pillow top and assemble the pillow. I am not sure I enjoyed this process of paper piecing, but now I know how to do it and I understand the value as it allows you to make things smaller. It also allowed my to really highlight the white fabric in each square, which is a swatch I love but had only a small remnant remaining from the other two quilts I made. I was early to rise this morning, although I slept very well. Foam earplugs help me escape nocturnal cats sounds and the outside world. I made a variation on Martha Stewart’s banana bread, adding pecans, dates, coconut and large red grape raisins. It took an extra 20 minutes to fully bake but was a yummy mid morning breakfast with coffee. Once my younger son arrives for an unexpected Saturday stay over with me while his older brother goes south to Naples for the cousin’s sweet sixteen party, we will head out to the Chickadee Quilt store and to run a few errands. I wish I could diagnose why I am avoiding opening my novel and working on edits. Truly, it feels as if I’d rather go to the dentist than open the document files that contain my novel. And knowing my sheer terror of the dentist, there is pathology in such avoidance. I think I have lost my punch, my verve, my oomph. I’ve lost the point. I ended on bended knees today, lost as to why I am so lost. I asked for guidance. No, I asked for very clear directions. Can’t I just follow for a bit? I really don’t have any more answers, honest and if you’re depending on me to know where to go, I wish you luck, because frankly…..I am totally and completely lost. If you’re following me you might be wandering for a really long time.
This is a very tedious and time consuming method of quilting but when finished, this will be a lovely pillow. Almost finished. Well, after a few day of stillness….and frankly boredom….I want to do something crafty. I need my hands at a task so my mind can run play-options. I watched the Saints vs 49ers game last night and yelled so hard at the TV screen in the last 3 minutes of the game I pee’d a little. What a disappointment. I wanted NOLA and Drew Brees to advance. I’d like Mr. Brees with a box of crackers, honestly. Then as is the requirement of Gainesville residency, I watched the Broncos vs Pats game….or at least started to until the point margin seemed beyond the Blessed Mother. I think a Pats vs 49ers game would be a hard fought game. The Broncos and Tebow just took a beating last night. I suppose I should really check the AP and verify no miracles occurred….. So today, my intent is to cut fabric and sew. (oops, typo….I mis-typed ‘cut fabric and sex four times). Sew not sex. I’m gonna sew today. I have a quilt top unfinished I started three years ago for a bestie after her wedding. She and her lovely husband have bought their first house and what better gift than to finish that quilt? It requires a run to Joann’s. Of, whatever shall I do with such a burden? I also joined the Sparkle Quilt along. And so I have to pick my fabrics today. I am wondering if this might be a good pattern choice for a niece getting married in March? Time for some investigative work.
I am a princess-in-training and must adjust and acclimate to all things sparkly, glittery and pink. I missed the princess training in childhood becuase I was far too interested in kicking Scotty, Chris and Greg’s asses over in the park. Plus I had kick as “boy toys”: the actual toy variety not the Madonna variety……a metal push petal car, stilts and a toy machine gun that sparks ejected from the nozzle. These were toys the boys wanted and I think….well, I am pretty sure, I was a bully. My mom couldn’t have gotten me in girlish finery if her life had depended on it. Easter Sunday pictures are the extent of girly-girl for my childhood.
So, I am taking remediation lessons now. Its fun. Am I supposed to tell you when I am acting the petulant brat? Or the pouty baby? Hmm….I think you’ll figure it out. And true to my tendency to bite off more than I can chew or exhibit classic ADHD symptoms……oh shiny!!!! I also intend to cut fabric for the friendship pillow tutorial and buy fabric to make my own shopping bags.
“If you love something, let it go free. If it doesn’t come back to you, you never had it. It it does come back, love it forever.” When I went searching for this quotation, I discovered its author was Doug Horton, a name I have never seen. Pastor Horton was an American clergyman in the Congregational Church; I love Wikipedia. I went searching for this quote because I was full of sorrow yesterday and realized that my grief arises from my loss or the fear I may lose something. I am not angry or indignant or outraged. I am sad, utterly sad. The sadness gives testimony to something truly grand. My restored ability to hope and love. Some may argue that you cannot love a ‘thing’, but Pastor Horton knew otherwise. The quote does not say, “It you love someone…..”. My sorrow, my bereavement is born out of my loss, the loss of a dream. The significance is that I completely and absolutely opened myself to this dream, this notion of building a house, a home, my home. I drank in the splendor of the dream, visualized it down to the way the sunlight will come in the window in the afternoon. I can imagine myself waking in the morning and see the light fixture above my bed. I can walk around the yard and see my daylilies and hydrangeas in bloom, smell the Confederate jasmine and see the red buds in full bloom. I can see the full moon rising in the east. And the dream is likely never to happen. The economy, the value of land, the inability to get funding for construction all result in the probability that I will not be able to build this house. To add the insurmountable, even if all those factors could be scaled, the bank is likely going to refuse to lend to a person building a custom home simply because I am the FIRST to build in the development. Someone has to be first but no matter. The whole affair will likely have been for nothing, a grand fantasy. And yet…..I realized this. I am utterly and completely sad, bereft and inconsolable. My emotions overwhelm me and I am weeping. I am not angry or enraged or fighting. I am just sad. I know the logic of it all. I understand the economy. It doesn’t change that I fell in love. And in that….I have a miracle. I fell in love. Completely and absolutely invested myself emotionally to this idea, this hope, this fantasy. I took a colossal risk with my heart. There was no assurance that I could pull this house building off; yet, I committed myself to it. It’s sheer madness and folly. I held nothing back, nothing. And this morning, in realizing that, I am also utterly and completely grateful. My heart can love with abandon and recklessness. I can go all in with fearlessness. If this house building my the therapeutic path to mending my heart, then it worked. And so, I can give the house up. I can let it go. I can allow myself to consider buying an existing home, a home once occupied by another person’s dreams. I can let go and know that if it comes back, I will love it forever. But if it doesn’t it was never meant to be for me.
Breathing is subconscious. That is to say, inhaling is usually an unconscious act. Most of the time, we do not think about breathing. It just happens. We must breathe, need to breathe and breathing just happens. Its control mechanism resides in the deepest part of our brains. Inhalation requires muscle contraction. The diaphragm contracts and air is drawn deep into the lungs. Exhalation is totally passive. The lungs empty simply because the diaphragm relaxes. The heart is similar in some ways. Blood fills the heart chambers passively and then when the heart contracts, blood is pushed out into the other organs. At the core of human life is the see saw of action and rest. Breathe in. Breath out. Heart beat. Heart rest. If the heart fails to rest in diastole, then over time it stiffens, the chamber deforms and the heart’s ability to do efficient work is lost. The mind likely has a similar systole and diastole, inhalation and exhalation. There is time to focus and think, to decide and process, to ponder and problem solve. There is likely a counter mechanism, an absence of thought. One might consider sleep such a space, but my dreamscape is so lucid and vivid, I am not sure I would consider this passive or restful. If anything, sleep and dreaming is more like trash day, a time to clear out the garbage that has accumulated in the subconscious mind. Instead, during my waking hours, I believe there is time to have blank or passive mental space. It doesn’t have the rhythm of a pulse or a respiration, but it cycles Fail to give your mind a period of rest and it can become stiffened, inflexible and inefficient. Mental diastole can be meditation or prayer. It can be exercise or contemplative tasks. But, into that space comes the energy needed for healthy living and thinking. Like inhaling deeply, it brings the cleansing breath. This morning I did silent cleaning and allowed my mind to clear. I intentionally avoided thinking or processing. The problems that need solutions are currently unsolvable. Devoting time to ponder them is fruitless. It there is to be a solution, it will arrive from an outside source. Focusing on them only foments anxiety which is anathema to relaxation. Instead, I focused on unclogging my vacuum cleaner hose and baking muffins.There is no rush. There is no need to push. Applied energy is equivalent to revving and engine of a parked car. I will breathe. I will stretch. I will let my mind empty and I shall wait. Here is a quick list of new discoveries and things I like:
On Saturday afternoon, I walked slowly through the rooms of ‘the little house’ at the Phillips Collection in out nation’s capital. Duncan Phillips loved art, studied art and after the death of his father in 1917 and his older brother from influenza in 1918 he started collecting works of art as a memorial to them both. From his grief emerged a passion of art and paintings. He later married an artist, Mary Acker and through their shared love of art, our nation benefits. I visited the Phillips Collection to see the Degas Exhibit. What I got was so far beyond the ballerinas drawn, sculpted, sketched and painted by Edgar Degas in the 1880′s. I saw Paul Cezanne’s less than flattering self-portrait. The large Renoir painting titled Luncheon of the Boating Party hung not far from Honore Daumier’s The Uprising, a 1848 painting capturing the rebellion against the French Monarchy. It was dark and disturbing with faces that looked alien, almost science fiction even by 2012 cinematographic standards.
And then I stumbled upon a painting title The Meditteranean by Gustave Courbet, painted in 1857.
I read the monograph beside the painting and was suddenly and profoundly overwhelmed. And then I wept harder from sheer and utter gratitude for having the experience. This was the ultimate reason and value of art and the artistic works: to MOVE us, the effect our heart, our emotions our sensibilities. Art is meant to evoke and provoke and assuage our senses. And yet, we can stand safely in the gallery, illuminated brightly and surrounded by hushed fellow onlookers and peer into the heart and mind of another man’s vision. We can accompany them into that inner space that is their vision. And the artist is so profoundly astonishing that they can invite and capture us as if pulling us through a looking glass. And so I agree with Gustave Courbet’s words:
Washington, DC captured my heart many years ago. IN high school, I cam to DC on Close Up trips twice. Riding the underground shuttle between the office building and the Capital Building with then Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neal, shaking hands with then Senator John Glenn, listening to Congress in session, touring the Library of Congress, riding the Metro for the first time….I was captivated. Then I came to DC for undergrad and I left part of myself in this city. I have returned many times over the subsequent decades and it never fails to please me. I landed at Washington National, now officially called Ronald Reagan Airport, and the day could not have been prettier. Not a cloud in the clear blue sky and the sun shining brightly. Glorious. It is a chilly 30F this morning but will rise quickly to afternoon temps in the low 60, Perfect walkabout weather. And so off I go to see the Degas exhibit at the Phillips Collection. Art, like a good meal, is a necessary part of my life. Beauty and beautiful things are a personal mandate. But sharing a spectacular meal or the canvass of a long dead master artist with another person is even more so. Nothing can compare to the shared experience.
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