I took this picture on a windy day with my mediocre camera, standing in my backyard and zooming across two houses to the electrical wires, a squirming baby on my hip. It was in a moment of pointing at airplanes in the sky to my boy, and watching my girl twist branches of rosemary into bracelets and crowns that I spied those little birds across the way all lined up and facing the wind. It's the time of the year for making resolutions but what's more resolute than a tiny hollow boned creature clutching a wire and holding tight against what may come? I give up on slighter challenges daily. So this is a little reminder. My bones are solid and my hands are strong. I can hold on.
Here's the thing. We all will grow old and die someday. Some of us will die before we're old. But for right now, this moment, we're alive. I'm alive and if you're reading this, you are too. And this moment will jump to the next and then the next and then they all blur together and one can't be distinguished from another. It would be so easy to miss them and get distracted. How effortlessly we get mixed up in all the little details, all the tiny scraps of paperwork and people and obligations and expectations and miss the quiet reminders along the way, the subtle signposts that keep us grounded to wherever we happen to be Right Now. Because this, this Now, this is what we've got. So how do we remember to be watchful? How can we notice and appreciate and experience even the smallest seconds of our life? I think the answer is Ritual. If the word Routine connotates oppression and drudgery, then Ritual might describe something sacred and special, but I'm essentially speaking of the same things. Because the mundane details can be drudgery or they can be sacred. We are attached to this world, right now, whether we want to be or not and we might as well recognize it as an honor. Ritual tethers us in the moment, but stretches back to Memory and forward to Hope, providing a firm handhold when our legs our shaky, when our motivation wanes, when our emotions scatter. Ritual allows us to become a part of something bigger than ourselves, something that began before and will continue once we're gone. Something beyond the tenuous Now. Right now I might be tired and cranky, I might be short-tempered and cross with the children, but our Ritual requires that I read a bedtime story, that I sing a certain repertoire of lulling songs, that I say the same little rhyme and then bid goodnight, and I can plug into that, I can let the Ritual take over when my Self is inadequate and we are all encouraged. If we don't attach significance to the mundane, then our lives are pretty insignificant. There are simply not enough culturally important rites of passage to transfer all importance and meaning away from the actual, regular work of just Being. I think it's all important. I believe in honoring this space we are in right now, in recognizing that it's an essential part of whatever lies ahead. I believe in Ritual.
I go to one of two (or sometimes, both) very nearby Goodwills every other saturday, when the whole store is fifty percent off. I admit to preferring to thrift in quiet, on weekday evenings when I'm the only customer in the store, for example, and I can lose myself and my tiring everyday thoughts in the racks I slowly scan for treasure. But I can't deny the extra thrill of finding My New Favorite ________ (which maybe I didn't even know I needed, but as soon as I spy it I wonder how I ever lived without?) for half off.
The first thing I do every morning is to set the kettle on the stove for tea. I look forward to my first cup of tea in the morning before I even go to bed at night. Yeah, sure, the caffeine boost is swell. I don't remember what adequate sleep feels like so I'll take whatever help I can get. But it's more than that. It's the whistling of my kettle, it's the steam, the smell of the tea in the cannister when I take off the lid. It's an important anchor in my day, a simple ritual of Beginning. And I am very particular about which mugs I will use. Oh, in a pinch, I'll use whatever is clean. And if I'm having a cup of herbal tea before bed, any cup or mug will do, it doesn't matter. I have several I rotate through and they've served me well over the years. I wasn't looking for a new one. But last Saturday, I found my New Favorite Teacup. It's surprisingly sturdy, slightly oversized, lovely to look at (bird graphic, hello!), and it has a lid! Secondhand perfection for a dollar.
let me count the ways:
I love the maroon tweedy sofa we bought to sit on when we watch tv. We have another room with a big, leather couch and a comfy chair for sitting which we use for talking and reading and living. But this room is where the girl watches Zoom and library documentaries and where the husband snores along to seinfeld at night and where I sit with hot tea and watch movies from my netflix queue.
I don't know what I'd do if I had to limit my acquisitions to the retail world.
My grandfather spends his spare time roaming the hills of New Mexico with his metal detector. So, it seems, that I come by my predilection for rusty scraps and otherwise useless but interesting items naturally. When I visit my grandparents, I never know what I will find lying about.
While I was cooking dinner/chasing the baby (he crawls now! quick as a wink! and into everything, oh my!), Freya marched around in the courtyard with an umbrella singing this song. It's catchy! I bet you'll be singing it, too. Fans of They Might Be Giants (which, you know, is our family theme band) might find the bouncy, slightly hokey but endearingly educational melody a little like that in "Why Does The Sun Shine." The songs were written originally by the same folks and they're all available for a listen here. We didn't end up getting very much rain tonight, but the flashing light and sound show was impressive.
if you know me at all, you know i have a thing for bird graphics. i also enjoy sharp and simple sillhouette pictures. so you can imagine how much i like a bird sillhouette (so much so that if you know me from livejournal, such a picture is probably synonymous with my username to you).
Anyhow, this little fellow is quicker than you might suppose from this picture. I snapped this in his tiny two second respite on the mexican bird-of-paradise bush out by my swimming pool.
even very quick and busy things must be very, very still sometimes.
How much television do I watch? Not much. A few times a month, the husband and I watch a dvd. I will admit to watching television programs on dvd (like Lost and arrested development). But straight-up teevee? Rarely. He has a before-bed snack and seinfeld habit, though, and we might turn on the news, depending on whether the children are tucked away or not. So I watch enough to see commercials. And, okay, have some favorites. like this one. It gets me every time. My whole parenting-a-baby philosophy, in a nutshell, represented in one thirty second ad slot! Distract and Amuse! I always joke that my dancing style is two parts elaine benis (you know, referencing the late night syndicated seinfeld and all) and one part The Blob. But, I guess there's a little of the crazy street corner cheerio dad in there, as well.
There aren't a lot of activities I enjoy quite as much as thrift shopping. I pop in as often as I can, and have halfprice Saturdays written in ink on my calendar. It's practical. I buy things my family needs for cheaper than new. But it's more than that. I support giving new life to old things. I am inspired by seeing a vast array of colors and textures and shapes. I love the surprise. There's nothing so enchanting as stumbling upon some little piece of secondhand ephemera that seems to have been waiting just for you. It clears my head, to methodically scour every item on a clothing rack, dutifully checking size and fabric and maker. I come home after a jaunt at the goodwill feeling calmer yet more alive.
So with that, I introduce you to this little quintet I scored last Saturday. Five perfect juice glasses with the most charming gnome-ish characters marching about mushroom houses. Aren't they sweet? $2.50, total for the whole set.
I have a non-public livejournal. I clog up that space with personal ramblings and tedious details. And that's not likely to change. But this is going to be my "hello, world!" space, totally fit for public consumption. Just the Good Stuff. The stuff that makes me glad.
