Posts Tagged: joy
it’s 2011 and I’m glad you’re here
The other day my friend Lynn posed the question to her facebook people: “what one word describes your 2010?” My experience in expressive arts tells me that the only way to answer such a question is to answer it quickly. If you respond quickly and think about it later, you can open the door to some unexpected personal insight.
I answered with “New.”
I think it was a good word. In 2010 I changed strategies in a number of realms. Early in the year I re-vamped my blog and moved it to a platform that I think better reflects the spirit behind the writing. In turn, I started photographing more and began to pull together some shots that have further captured the theme I’m going for. I spent a good part of last winter documenting my ideas of “beauty” and the sources of it around me in my daily travels. I was rewarded, again, to find how one step leads to another – and these steps led me straight out of a funk – personal as well as creative.
Later in the year it occurred to me to stop looking for “home” and just to live in a fun spot and let home come to me. I get all over my writing students for resorting to clichés, but it’s a lesson I seem to learn over and over again: get out of the past and the future and get living in the moment. THAT’s when the change happens – not when I'm thinking about it, mourning it, planning it, hoping for it, wishing for it.
Still later in the year, pretty recently, I decided to revamp me. I vowed I would try more, trust more, BE more and stay devoted to reflecting the authentic me. I carried that focus on authenticity around with me as I shopped, in the books I chose, friends I found, and in the ways I approached my jobs and free time endeavours. I knew that the most important part of this personal revamp was to drop some walls – particularly because it also included the return to the pursuit of romantic love. I explored the opening of some chakras and worked at smiling at strangers more often and (sorry another cliché) being the change I want to see. Again with the small steps leading me in directions I never imagined.
So the end of the year arrived, and some wonderful surprises have presented themselves. For different reasons, I’m not writing about them yet. But I can say that I have more than one reason to step forward into 2011 anticipating much more NEW. And I’m filled with optimism and hope that some kind of ball is rolling and that you’ll join me in its path.
It’s day one of a new year. I don't know what the word will be for 2011 – but it doesn't matter. I'm sticking in the now and rolling with the rhythms. I do know that I'm really glad you're here to discover it all along with me.
my wish for you
I hope you have a very Happy Christmas. And whether or not you celebrate the day, I hope it's filled with lots of love, good cheer and peace in your hearts. And I hope you carry that peace with you in the new year to come.
grins
It’s cold again this morning, but not as cold as the past couple of days. When it’s above 0° C, it’s tolerable. Nevertheless, when I get to Don Mills station this morning, I wait inside for the shuttle to my office. As I’m standing there looking out, a young couple walks up to the door on the other side. The mom is pushing a child, under two, in a stroller. I know it’s a part of growing and aging and every year the phenomenon gets more remarkable, but I’m stunned at how young this mommy and daddy look. They're teenagers.
The mom is small and round – little more than five feet tall. She’s fair, childlike and pretty. And smoking a butt. She stands for a minute outside with the child to smoke it while the dad walks inside to play with his phone. Eventually she pushes the stroller inside, instructing the dad to take him while she finishes her smoke.
The dad is a little taller and slight, of mixed race, with cafe au lait skin and long, relaxed curls pulled into a sloppy pony tail. He continues playing with his phone, occasionally talking to the child: “it’s cold out there huh?”
The child is a darling combination of the parents: cherubic face of his mother, crowned by his father’s chocolaty curls. He’s a picture of patience. He acknowledges his dad’s occasional dragging himself away from his cell phone to speak to him, but doesn’t seem to require it.
He spots me and gives me a grin. It’s the grin of a self-assured old soul. He’s not playing coy with me, or making shy aversions with his eyes like so many little kids do. He seems to just like my face, and gives me another closed mouth grin – not looking away but just grinning a little more when I smile back and give him a little wave.
That grin has me thinking that this tiny boy seems much older than his teenage parents. As I’m considering that, the mom comes in and they whisk him off toward the elevator which will take them down to the subway.
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At the other end of the work day, I’m sitting in a subway car, heading down to meet up with my sister who is working near Union Station. I see a woman come on. She’s cute, artsy looking with that marvellous look of having thrown a random collection of clothing on her body and it just working. She’s smiling to herself. The smile doesn’t wear off – in fact it undergoes a number of variations as her thoughts carry out. Her eyes meet mine and the smile is erased for a moment, but after a few seconds it’s back. I bandy about a number of reasons for the smile. I hope it’s because she’s in love.
I turn from the woman and down the way I see a man. In a suit. Not her age. Not with her or like her in any way.
But he’s smiling to himself.
everything’s strange and everything’s the same
My girls and I leave the city Saturday morning and head southwest to my hometown for an oft-lauded wine festival and visiting with old friends. We listen to classic rocks songs on the radio which instigate one memory after another - a nice accompaniment to the flat, boring stretch of highway. As we get close to Essex County, the sky gets more and more overcast and we curse the imminent rain for intruding on the much anticipated party.
Navigating the once-daily haunts due south of HWY 401 is like I always say: everything’s strange and everything’s the same. I drop the girls off at their dad’s and go to Debbie’s where we catch up over a Guinness. I hope you have a friend like her.
The rain is coming down hard and steady and we carry on cursing it over a drive to the grocery store to pick up what will become the beautiful spread of a breakfast the next morning. Once we’ve all gathered back at the house we pack up golf umbrellas and plastic sheeting to cover wet picnic table seats, and the rain lets up just then. Even the weather gods shouldn’t mess with serious wine drinkers intent on a good time and happy homecoming.
The grounds are a bit mucky but certainly not “Woodstock” as some grim souls had predicted. As soon as we walk into the place and before I can get some wine into my glass we start running into old friends. I didn’t send out a “facebook blast” saying I was going down, thinking that with the short turnover in time I’d be content to bump into people as the fates would have us do.
There are lots of long hugs. I don’t know if I can describe my gratification in the love I got from my old friends – to still "belong" to them. I make my home in Toronto now, but despite a number of moves around different neighbourhoods I still don’t feel as if I “belong” anywhere. Maybe that’s related to my single, empty-nester state. But whatever it is, these wonderful old pals can’t possibly know how easily they filled what has been a rather empty vessel for quite some time.
Next morning at Debbie and Len’s we all sleep late, maybe a little groggy from all those bottles of that excellent D’Angelo Foch. After the big breakfast, Deb and I sit out in the backyard with spiked orange juice and admire the day – particularly the clouds.
Not willing to waste the weather gods’ change of heart, we go back to the festival site and see some more people, and try some foods. It's such a beautiful spot beside the river, and it is great to look around the town and all its changes.
The Detroit River – such a feature of that town, fundamental to the peoples' sensibility. My father sailed tugs on those waters for many years.
As I told a couple of my colleagues about the weekend Monday morning, one said she thought I looked particularly happy. She’s right. This sort of weekend is one of those reminders about what exactly it is that sustains us. I don’t care what they say. You can go home again, and they will all love you as much as they did the day you left.
feel the waves
“There’s no secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves”
~ Frank Herbert
I've had a couple of conversations with people lately about a yearning I'm feeling this summer – that some sort of change is wanting in me. I'm not exactly sure what that is, I need to get with a journal and paints and do some serious reflection about what the hell it is that I want.
I've been here before – and it was summer then too. Maybe it's just a desire to hang on to the summer, or to engender in me the feeling of peace and "slowing down" that comes with it. It's summer, but there's peace missing.
Something's off balance. It's not a particulary bad feeling – if one weren't up for changing or growing or enhancing, life would seem pretty dead-end, wouldn't it? Or maybe that's just the ever restless me. I don't feel balanced unless I'm moving, otherwise some sort of vertigo sets in.
Face forward, that's my strategy. If you're always looking down you might miss the signs.
"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving."
~Albert Einstein
another week around some beautiful moments
Maybe we should all be really thankful for winter if only because we get to experience such an appreciation for the onset of spring. My world is readying for the grand re-birthing of nature in all her glorious forms and we're celebrating already. Here are some moments of beauty from a sunshiny week in which sits the fifteenth day of thirty in posting such:
- A whistling bus driver who barks me good day: “Have a great one darlin”
- Air that no longer bites my skin but touches it. (In a month or two it will be kissing it.)
- A really good cup of strong tea, made for me by a colleague with herbs sent to him from his peeps back in East Jerusalem
- Bright and real smiles from strangers in the street – if we could just bottle this sunshine…
- An expanded network of lovely and talented blogland people, because I took a risk with some creative play in Magpie Tales
- Birdsong. The birds are going bonkers, just like humanity, with the spring-like weather
- Longer days. Going outside at the end of the work day and finding sun setting everything under it aglow and lighting the very air around you in purples and golds and blues
- Long walks. I'm once again enjoying the spiritual and psychological as well as healthful benefits of extended walking on sidewalks that were laden with snow and ice only a few weeks ago
- Planning two summer vacations, one with an old and dear friend and one with a special niece and thinking about another summer season spent outdoors
published in the beautiful Bella Grace!
