Quiet Musings



Close-up of a painting at Fruitlands, Harvard MA

 I relish the times when good music infuses me with pleasure. As I grow and mellow, though, quiet is a balm. I avoid most TV now and prefer books and 'doing'. With less time before me than behind and an appetite for so many activities, I need solitude to pursue my interests. Sometimes it is painting or writing but often it is the peaceful pleasure of sitting outside and just listening to my surroundings. Bliss.

A moment ago, I finished reading a post on A Design So Vast and added my comment to those of others who sound surprised at the changes their psyches demand as they grow older. A thread runs through each of their observations. Sometimes just being is the greatest solace of all.

Simplifying and streamlining, purging and organizing – many of us are looking at our lives with new eyes. I am fairly preoccupied with simplifying my surroundings. With so many interests, I don’t want to be using up my precious time cleaning and rearranging ‘stuff’ or letting it clutter the corners of my mind. Less stuff gives me a place for my eye to rest and an ease of home that is comforting. It is no less cozy but it is becoming calmer.

I’d like to feel the process will be done someday, but I know it won’t. Just as I have evolved from a cluttered, country décor, laden-Shaker-peg decorator to preferring a blend of treasured antiques and traditional accents, there will be more evolutions in my future as I downsize from the ‘big’ house to something, hopefully, antique and cozy in the center of a New England village. My favorite afghans and treasures will come with me and I will hang my paintings on the walls and scatter rugs on gleaming hardwood floors. If the season is right, I hope to bring starts from my garden to plant around the patio and front door. I like the continuity of bring a bit of the past with me, especially with living things. I have cultivated many a garden and plan to have the quiet time to dig in the dirt in my next incarnation.

Will my vision happen as I see it? More than likely. Affirmative visualizing often nets the expected results. A regular dose of quiet time to ‘see’ your heart’s desire will grow aspirations into reality. I should know. My early visions of my ideal home have come to fruition in this place on the shore of a lake in Massachusetts. The images in my head now show sun-dappled brick sidewalks and clapboard houses close to the cobblestone street. Compact but ample, the house is a cozy haven within walking distance of water, the library and small town shops where I can meet friends for breakfast. A flagstone patio in the small backyard is surrounded by color and a wide-branched tree shades the chair where I read.

Where is your ideal home? Who lives there with you? Walk through it room by room and visualize all the details, the yard, the street. Pick a day and describe it from awakening to end – the weather, what you are doing, who is there (it is startling to discover who is not) and write it down. Save your story and peruse it often. Make your vision a reality.

Ode to Summer's Mellowness

Summer is pure pleasure to savor and enjoy.  A video from Kinfolk, music by Sea Chant Production.


An Ode to Summer from Kinfolk on Vimeo.

One Tiny Ant

Yes, I know this is a cat but he is crawling

I am sitting in front of my computer on the third floor of the house where the walls are cozily slanted and the two shaded lamps close by are casting shadows behind me.  The windows are closed against an unseasonable chill and have been for weeks to keep out the bright yellow pine pollen which has blanketed everything in its path.  So why did a tiny ant walk across my thumb?

A different one walked over the back of my hand yesterday.  Maybe two - or was that on another day as well?  When I lifted the papers on the desk, nada - not an ant to be found.  Just one at a time, walking on the mountain ridges of my fingers.

Now the itchy phenomena begins.  I scrunch up my back against an imagined tickle along my spine and scratch my head above my ear which is momentarily sensitive to a pin prick of feeling.  I scratch my ankle but nothing is there.  Why is that?  Why am I squirming when nothing is really there?

We all do the ant dance from time to time.  Little prickles set off an avalanche of bothersome signals which claim our attention.  We imagine what someone is thinking about us when we pass in the hall or interpret a glance the wrong way and think we forgot to do something.  The pile of unread magazines grows and the folder which has two inches of torn-out recipes (and not one ever made) bother us. We squirm a little in our imaginings wondering what to do remedy the situation.

What we think and what is real can be as far apart as the ant and the itch. The itch is of our own making.  That person in the hall with the screwed up face was thinking about the meeting he was rushing to.  What is another recipe in the stash if it has possibilities?  It is all small stuff, minor annoyances which distract us for a time or, perhaps, gives us a moment of clarity where we see what is really there and what isn't...important.

Like the tiny dancing ant using the back of my hand as a stage.  All he wants is a little attention.

Much Ado About Something

Letting go of things can be difficult.  We amass in our early years - going it alone, setting up house, complicating things with children (wonderful), friends (so much fun), accoutrements (lots) and their subsequent drain on our finances which we replenish with the toil of our minds and body leaving little time to actually enjoy said treasures.

It isn't so much the tossing and burning and endless hours outside in the garage stickering our former treasures with dollar and two dollar day-glow dots.  It is the realization that the charm of the things we loved in our twenties definitely didn't travel alongside us into our thirties even if we did carefully wrap them in tissue to store behind the box of Aunt Agnes's dishes under the eaves.  That didn't stop up from moving them to the next house either.  Maybe, just maybe, we would need them. 

Now that I am twice that age I finally get it.  I am not going to open that box.  Or the others.  Some things are passed down (another reason to be thankful for children).  Some are stickered with day-glow dots.  Everything else is donated or trashed.  My buying days are close to an end, thank goodness - except for clothes, paints and canvas.  I am content in what surrounds me for now.  The next house will be smaller and the process of elimination will start again and it will be no less easy to do.

I wish I had listened earlier to the urgings of family when they advised from their lofty height on wisdom mountain that I would find more joy in doing than acquiring.  I could have saved myself a lot of time.  There is a chair in the garden calling my name.  I will answer as soon as I carry this box out to the garage.

Do You Hear What I Hear?



Life is Short via happythings.com

 Lately, there have been many opportunities to grasp an important concept and grow with it.  Most of these come from chance words in conversations.  Observations about someone's actions either applauded or reviled hit a chord and stop me in my tracks.  I rarely hear the rest of the sentence as I try to grasp the concept of why these particular words are so important to me and what I am meant to learn from them. 

For important they are and I know I am supposed to pay attention.

There have been many such moments in the past few months, some I have taken the time to contemplate while others are circling above me and my hands are outstretched to catch them but they elude me for the time being.  I suspect I have enough to think on and they can wait for another day.  I want to stop my busyness, though, and find a quiet place so I can give these observations their due.  I know it will make me a better person.

When someone is talking about a friend or spouse or acquaintance - or even a stranger - and a facet of that person's personality is revealed, it can be like an ah-ha moment of recognition.  It begs for acknowledgement.  There, but for the grace of God, go I.  Or ew, I do that, too.  These are big deals if we are paying attention.  Anything which makes us squirm or gives us pause to assess our own actions helps us grow. 

Other comments feel like some kind of preparation.  After almost losing Bob in December, I am ultra-sensitive to what my friends are going through as they battle cancer, illness and job loss.  Alan's death last Friday due to pancreatic cancer was an eye-opener as was Nancy's husband's death in January.  We are all ill-prepared for this finality and the rebuilding that must go on afterwards.  While I think I want to be super organized and prepared, what I really want is to make the most of each day and dust be damned.

One would have thought that by this time, all the growing would be completed and I would have graduated, maybe not with honors, but with a well-deserved diploma.  But the voices still sing their siren song and I still evolve along with the refrain.

Chipped Polish

Portobello Road

Everything evolves and there is a new manicure option available now called shellac.  I haven't tried it as it is a bear to get off.  It is a thick coating that is supposed to last longer and strengthen your nails by covering them with an 'invincible' coating. Doesn't make them appear longer, though.  Just think of it as a protective coating.

For years, as we grow and evolve into the person we will become, we develop our own veneer of sorts.  Some are so thick that you could knock and hear an echo inside.  Others are pretty thin - what you see is what you get.  Now, on occasion, that might come across as abrasive but so be it.  Others in their proximity just need to add a layer to their own coating to interact with them.

If they really want to.

Decades of experiences help us build and strengthen our outer persona.  If we are fortunate, we are guided by those who have been there before.  We grow.  We evolve.  We polish the surface.  Some facets of ourselves we embrace and revel in (quietly lest we be perceived as braggarts), others we abhor and hide.  We chip away at the edges in order to form a more perfect person.  This goes on for pretty much all our lives.  From pre-toddler to old age, we are encouraged to be the best we can be. 

The factors which influence this process come from family, friends, our intellectual environment and that person we saw on the train yesterday who was a perfect example of who we don't want to be. We devise our own views of how our world should be and then our viewpoint communicates with that of others and we all grow.  We evolve.  Amazing.

Will an isolated person grow into a person who can relate to the social butterfly?  Can a thoughtful one enjoy the vagaries of a spontaneous thrill seeker?  How do our differences enhance each other? A lot depends on who we pull into our embrace. Even more depends on what we do with the knowledge we gain from them.

Perspective in Creation

Toulouse, France

Recently I read a post on A Certain Simplicity where Diana questioned the challenge of change and the driving force behind it.  Whether creative or situational, change is fraught with dips and valleys and can just as suddenly soar you over the top of known experience.  It got me to thinking about it from my perspective.

It is our creative self which strives for more and that won't change as long as we live and think. If Michelangelo was not driven to improve his creations, painting and sculpting again and again, chasing the elusive perfection he craved, would he have grown? Would he have been happier sitting back and contemplating what was done, looking no further? When he took pause, what were his thoughts? Reflection or progression? What of the others? Our creative inner workings build on what we do now and what we did in the past and we have an opportunity to savor the process. That doesn't stop our minds from looking at things from different angles, imagining subtle adjustments which will be filed for future use. It is the foundation for our discontent with things as they are. We are c-r-e-a-t-i-v-e. This is what we live for. It comes with the territory.

In some matters, yes, good is good enough. The glaze may be a little off but it gives us food for thought for next time. Imperfections and repairs may be obvious to others (we imagine) but are in fact virtually invisible in the scheme of things. They are what gives our lives character. A little roughness in our physical surroundings hurts no one and allows us a place to rest without feeling uptight. I love to garden. In the past ten years, I have learned that perfection has no place in a garden. Now I carry that inside and know that, while I 'should' paint that wall and 'should' fix the trim, it doesn't change the pleasures wrought within these walls. The same goes for my art. As Diana so aptly put it, I can relax. My mind whirs with ideas and I would be so grateful if I could pursue even a small portion of the projects in my mind's stash.  Regrettably, I don't have a patron to foot the bills. I pick my battles, let go and enjoy what is. It doesn't quiet my mind, but it gives me more pleasure in the process.

And isn't the process of living what matters most?