blossom bliss

amidst a grove of cherry trees

jefferson memorial across the tidal basin

no crowds!

On Monday, the entire family ventured into Washington D.C. to partake in the Cherry Blossom Festival. We were hoping to avoid the crowds by not going on a weekend, so when I awoke on Monday and discovered that it was COLD (in the 30s) I knew we were golden. There were very few people to contend with on this blustery, Monday morning. We bundled up and enjoyed our adventure.

The trees were lovely. Beyond magical.

As I strolled amidst the cherry boughs, it made me happy to think about the throngs of people - in the midst of our technologically overloaded culture - who still make the time, set the intention, to go and enjoy a bunch of trees.

Happy.

#6

Another one down!

I have submitted my quilt essay to five different publications.

Now, I wait.

#20

Finally.

Finally.

Finally.

Should I say it again? No? OK.

Well, I can finally cross #20 off The List. It doesn't seem like such a remarkable accomplishment, reading a camera manual, I know. But, it is one of those things that has been on my to-do list for 4 years. 4 YEARS. And today I finally finished reading that manual and crossed that beast off my List.

The relief is sweet.

beauty matters

I was just reading as article in the Boston Globe that discusses Cornell professor Brian Wansinks' work in trying to improve school food. In part it reads:

"But it turns out that students are susceptible to the same marketing strategies that grocery stores have been using for years. Several experiments have shown that children will be more likely to eat items if they see them early in the lunch line and find them attractive and convenient to pick up. Putting fruit in a good-looking bowl works. So does putting a salad bar in a prominent place. Calling your carrots “X-ray vision carrots” can double sales."

I am struck by the idea that putting fruit in good-looking bowls increases a students' chances of actually selecting that fruit and then eating it. The irony is delicious.

As we cut, cut, cut school budgets across the the country, art and music are usually the first to go. But this simple example shows that these "frivolous" concepts of beauty really do matter. They aren't just a nice little add-on, a bonus.

If an apple doesn't look appealing, a child won't take it, won't eat it. Does it get any more fundamental than that?

Read more about this subject here.

love after love by derek walcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

there may be some nudity

Since I started my drawing class, I've been all about drawing small shelters: airstreams, tipis, little cabins, tents. It's what I've been attracted to lately. And this practice of drawing shelters has been very satisfying.

Then, I missed last week's class because I was so sick. I'm better now: I'm functioning at about 80%. I can get through the day, keep up with the basic tasks, but I am regularly blowing my nose into my hanky and a certain sharpness is definitely missing.

Anyway, I went to this week's class totally unaware of what was in store. We started with a 5-minute demonstration about figure drawing and then because our model was late the class members took turns "modeling" and generally just being really goofy while the others were busy catching that person's body gesture.

I was having a lovely time, so lovely that my instructor made a comment to me that she could tell I was really enjoying myself. I did not see this emotion coming and frankly I was so enthralled with drawing that I was too close to my own experience to be able to say, "I love this! I am having so much fun!" But, I was.

And then our model arrived. And somewhere between me blowing my nose and getting a new piece of paper ready and finding a new chunk of charcoal, a naked (oops, I mean nude) woman was all of a sudden sitting about 10 feet away from me.

For some reason I hadn't made the connection between model and nude. And there were about three minutes of my brain repeating, "that woman is naked, that woman is naked, that woman is naked."

And then we started drawing and I forgot that she was nude. She was just what I was drawing. And I tell you, it was a lovely experience: to see a body without judging, to see a body as a thing to render. I was a little disturbed at how quickly I objectified her: she was an object that I was drawing. But, objectifying seems so negative and harsh and judgmental. I did not feel that way toward this woman. I guess I'm at a loss for words.

I was enamored, awed and wowed by her total body confidence. To stand, sit, twist while nude in front of a room full of people is courageous in this culture of "you are never thin enough." And this woman was not an anorexic twit. She was round, full-bodied and lovely.

And at this moment I am feeling so grateful for my own body, with all its flaws and shortcomings, puckers and rolls. I am feeling less judgment and more kindness toward myself and others. Our bodies our beautiful, whatever their shape, whatever their size. Amen.

off the wagon!

Two months ago I decided to give up coffee because...

Wait. Why does anyone ever give up coffee? Oh, yes. I gave up coffee because the caffeine was getting me really wired and goofy. I had a sinus infection at the time and was sticking to drinking herbal tea until things settled down. And I just realized that now would be a good time to stop drinking coffee. So I did. It was no big deal.

Let me be clear. I was not weaning myself off drinking a gallon a day. I was weaning myself off of about 8 oz. per day - give or take 2 oz. No big deal.

A few weeks ago I started getting up really early (too early) to write and have some "me" time and I started drinking coffee again. I missed my coffee so I started drinking it again. There is something very nice about selecting my mug for the day, holding that warm goodness in my hands, smelling the coffee aroma and just enjoying the ritual.

So some new friends come over and I offer them coffee or tea. Everybody wants tea except one lady who sidles up to me and says, "I'm going to be bad and have the coffee. I had given it up..."

I turned to her and said, "I gave it up, too. And when I started drinking it again I wondered why I had ever stopped. Drinking coffee was like strapping a rocket booster on my butt! I actually got things done."

Of course, now I have another sinus infection. But, I don't blame that on coffee. I blame it on Virginia. I'm pretty sure that I'm allergic to this place: three sinus infections in five months. Yuck.

a moveable feast ~ by ernest hemingway

"You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalks so that you saw and smelled the food. When you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the Luxembourg gardens where you saw and smelled nothing to eat all the way from the Place de l'Observatoire to the rue de Vaugirard. There you could always go into the Luxembourg museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cezanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry. Later I though Cezanne was probably hungry in a different way."

a delicate thread

I just reconnected with a friend from graduate school. It's been 8 years (gulp!) since we'd last seen each other. We had not spoken on the phone during that time. We did send an occasional e-mail, Christmas card or hand-written note.

Between the two of us there have been many, many moves, i.e. changes in contact information. We've been busy with husbands, jobs, local friends, family obligations, children.

The thread that has held us together has been very delicate at times.

Miraculously, gloriously, it didn't break.

On Saturday, I heard my friend's voice for the first time in 8 years. I saw her beautiful face. And it was as if no time had passed. The connection was fierce, remembered, very present. And so strong.

Talking with her was like giving my fire more fuel and oxygen.

I share this not to brag. (woo hoo people like me!) I am sharing because I realize that we came so close, so scarily close, to letting this friendship fall by the wayside. I sort of gasp when I think of that happening.

The connections we share with people vary: close, distant, obligatory. But when you have a connection that is very powerful, well, you just can't buy that. It is either present or it is not. And we all know it doesn't happen every day.

I can count on one hand the people with whom I share this kind of connection.

So my challenge to you is to call, write, e-mail, hunt down, contact that person with whom you've lost contact. Make a plan. Reconnect. Life is too short, too crazy, too busy, not to keep those whom are the most important to you in your life. Not to bring that person who connects to your soul back into your life.

You won't regret it.