Photo by James Wood, on an iPhone. Full Moon, approx 6:20pm. Grace looks simultaneously like a baby and like a teenager to me. I like the blurry, atmospheric effect James is working in the bottom 1/3 of the photo.
Month: January 2008
Guaranteed
This Eddie Vedder soundtrack from Into the Wild just keeps growing on me (also have been listening to Juno constantly). I particularly like the songs Rise and Guaranteed. Lyrics to Guaranteed:
On bended knee is no way to be free
Lifting up an empty cup, I ask silently
All my destinations will accept the one that’s me
So I can breathe…
Circles they grow and they swallow people whole
Half their lives they say goodnight to wives they’ll never know
A mind full of questions, and a teacher in my soul
And so it goes…
Don’t come closer or I’ll have to go
Holding me like gravity are places that pull
If ever there was someone to keep me at home
It would be you…
Everyone I come across, in cages they bought
They think of me and my wandering, but I’m never what they thought
I’ve got my indignation, but I’m pure in all my thoughts
I’m alive…
Wind in my hair, I feel part of everywhere
Underneath my being is a road that disappeared
Late at night I hear the trees, they’re singing with the dead
Overhead…
Leave it to me as I find a way to be
Consider me a satellite, forever orbiting
I knew all the rules, but the rules did not know me
Guaranteed
I think I mentioned that I recently reread The Great Gatsby. I really enjoyed it, underlining and writing in the margins in a way I don’t usually do.
And then today I found this quotation by Zelda, whom I’ve always adored. I don’t know much about her, but I love the legend she’s become: a colorful, passionate woman who wantonly embraced life, F Scott’s eternal inspiration (for that, shouldn’t we all love her?).
“Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much a heart can hold.”
Snow day yesterday. It was really coming down in the morning, and by the afternoon the world had the snow-glazed beauty that I associate with a day apart from regular life. Somehow the world stops, or at least slows down dramatically, on days like this. No school, meetings cancelled, no cars parked on the major roads, everybody moving more gingerly and carefully. This morning the trees on the sides of the highway were white and frosted with snow. I wanted to take a picture but kept getting nothing but blur, and after one too many near-miss swerves I decided to put the camera (phone) down.
I do find myself with a sense of childlike wonder at the snow-covered world. A sense of wonder that I’d like to cultivate in more of my life. Catherine Newman’s post this week talks about the incredible unfolding of the personalities of her children. I’m familiar with that, but I worry that too often the stubbed toe from the toys left on the floor, the grating of the tired-and-whiny voice, the “Mummy?” asked one too many times – the irritations of day to day life – erode the rightful sense of wonder.
This is true in many of my relationships, not just those with my children. There is so much in this world that we ought to be in open-mouthed awe about, so much in other people that ought to amaze us! Sure, those very wonder-full (remember the etymology of that word!) people may mess up, occasionally step on an emotion here or there, display some annoying behavior. But wow, what depths and joys are within them. And what a privilege it is when individuals reveal themselves like that – that’s equally as wonder-full, in my view – when someone really unfolds their crossed arms and bravely reveals themselves. Another Catherine Newman quote captures this beautifully: “Another person is like a geode lined with hidden glittering.”
So – for today, perhaps for this month, God willing for 2008, I will try to focus on the glittering, and not on the slippery, treacherous, irritating entrance to the geode!
Gratitude for what is and an aching for what is not
I’m crying and I’m laughing and I’m sad that it’s over. The Middle Place is everything I anticipated and more. Mostly, it’s unexpectedly light – easy and fun to read, like talking to your dearest friend about her family that you grew up with too. I told a friend I was reading a book about generations and about cancer, heard back “wow that’s upbeat,” and realized I need a better way to describe this incredible book.
I don’t trust myself to figure that out right now, so I’ll just take refuge in some of Kelly’s words.
I’m sure her words will sell her book better than I ever could!
“This was one of the man things I had learned since crossing over into the middle place – that sliver of time when childhood and parenthood overlap … It’s a giant Venn diagram where you are the only member of both sets.”
“By the time I was old enough to bother noticing, my mom and dad had settled into a marriage that was high functioning but not especially romantic. It had all the characteristics of a healthy, established corporation. My mother held the power positions: finance and operations. Her real covered allowances, dress code, and chores. My dad took care of sales, like convincing us that snurfing (the precursor to snowboarding) down the eight-foot drop into the backyard was as good – better! – than a weekend in Vermont. He also defined and improved our corporate culture by getting human resources service from Avensure. Corrigans, my dad conveyed, were scrappy corner-cutters who could always find a way into any place. They knew how to shake hands and make eye contact and tell a joke. They had reason to be proud. Under his leadership, employee satisfaction was high.”
“It’s good, like a miracle is good, to know that there’s somebody who will follow you down whatever path you choose.”
“I get another email from a particularly grown up friend of mine, Jen Komosa. She just says, ‘You are stronger than you think. You are strong enough.'”
“…a mix of gratitude for what is and an aching for what is not.”
“Someday, some later day, I’ll find out what it is to be an adult – to bury someone essential, someone you don’t think you can live without, someone attached in so many places you almost afll in after them.”