Stream of Consciousness

My Word for 2011

 

I've spent some time -- inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love I suppose -- trying to come up with my word for 2011. I meant to do this last year, and the year before, and never got around to it. Then today, this appeared in my e-mail as my Daily Peace Quote—words from a favorite poet no less.

                                                                                
Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure.
                                                               - Rainier Maria Rilke

 

So I knew the time had come and I (of course) instantly knew my word: fearless.

And even though its definition is simply lacking fear and a number of its synonyms veer into the language of battle and war -- bold, brave, courageous, intrepid, valiant, valorous, gallant, plucky, lionhearted, heroic, daring, audacious, indomitable, doughty; unafraid, undaunted, unflinching; informal gutsy, spunky, ballsy, feisty -- I've decided I still want to keep it, for now, to try it on for size as I venture in the creative and West Coast Fitness waters of this my 56th year on earth.

Maybe it will inspire me (or at the very least remind me) to reclaim some of the derringdo and pluckiness I once exhibited (in spades) when I was younger, more optimistic, and, of course, thinner. Maybe it will simply help me have more confidence and know that there is nothing to fear even as my right knee shows signs of arthritis and my hands turn psoriasis-prone. Maybe it will give me the perspective I so often lack -- and truly need and want -- to be able to use my writing to tell my truths.

 

 

 

 

Here We Are in the Years...

...when the showman shifts the gears, lives become careers, children cry in fear, let us out of here.

—Neil Young

A dear, dear friend from my long ago past life was found this week. What a gift that is! I, who pride myself on not losing touch with those I hold so near and dear lost this person, how, I don't even recall. But now he's found, thanks to a mutual pal who braved the vagaries of Facebook to connect with him. And already, after a mere 24 hours of e-mail back-and-forth, man oh man, there are some people you just pick up with where you left off...

When was the last time I saw G.? 1978 or 1979? Before I moved up the road to Ithaca, New York? My son was 1 or 2; he'll be 33 this coming June. A life, a generation unfolding, days passing, so much time gone. G. said in an e-mail, and rightly so:

"Time eats us alive. Mozart died at 35 and Louis Kahn built his first building after 50. It's a minute by minute thing with no real boundaries. It's a dream."

Damn if he isn't absolutely, ineluctably right.

Photo: One John took of the damn coolest outdoor art exhibit: one-dimensional but stand-up photograph/cut-outs of African immigrants living throughout Italy. It was staged in Campo San Margherita, April 2008, when we were living in our Venetian apartment a short stroll across the Rio San Barnaba canal. Shortly after, it moved on to Roma.

Too Much Information?

I continue to be overwhelmed by the written word. It is simply everywhere and, of course, everyone seems to be increasingly pecking away on tiny keypads, the text message revolution that keeps us all in contact 24/7.  When does everyone find time to do all this reading of these words? Even as the online presence of the creative explodes, my truth these days seems to be that less is more. How can we find the poetry, find the words that will speak and sing, if we don't have moments of stillness, if we don't spend time quiet in unfolding time, if we don't first keep some of our thoughts to our private selves? Sitting, staring, observing, reflecting— like the branches of this spectacular madrone over on Willamette Boulevard. I remain a great believer in the need for us to take time out to simply remember to breathe, a faithful follower of the power we all unleash when we actually think our own quirky, highly individual, idiosyncratic and wonderfully present thoughts.

Photo of amazing madrone tree on the cliff above Swan Island, Willamette Boulevard, North Portland. We rode our bikes past it earlier this week...it really seems like a painting, doesn't it?

Good Day Sunshine!

There may be another inch or so of snowy slush on the ground but I am seeing blue skies and high white clouds so already it's a better day than it's been in a long, long while. I have been feeling so light-deprived, a winter mushroom trapped in an inch of pine bark and peat. That, coupled with fighting off a cold or living with forced air heat-induced allergies has been less than fun. The weather this past two weeks really made we wonder if I can live at this latitude with its low-light winters long-term.

Oh well, it's 2009 now and I have nothing much new to say. I feel talked out, written out, worded out for a host of reasons that I can't blame on much of anything except me not having enough of interest beyond words and writing to occupy myself in my daily life. Maybe that should be on the top of my personal agenda for change in the new year? That and working to stop so much fretting.

Freaky Friday

What a week.  Political feed frenzies, sleazy campaign mudslinging, the entire money system in meltdown (predictable and predicted by many) and my own lackluster, lackadaisical lack of energy to do just about anything except putter about and mostly unproductively at that. 

Today that has resulted in two sets of steps wiped and dusted, a mopped kitchen floor, a dry mopped living room parquet floor and a chicken to roast for dinner already stuffed with two lemons and waiting until it's time to turn the oven on. I can't seem to get my head interested in writing. Maybe it's been the distraction of the interesting and tres arty, Mad Men, this past week. I've watched six episodes so far—damn good! I did leaf through a book about Jenny Holzer's art again today. I really like the fact that she works with words. I'm thinking of using her Truisms series as prompts and/or inspiration for my upcoming October Collage workshop at Collage on Alberta Street. 

Not much else to report. The installation of a new and blue roof on the house next door began today. More leaves have fallen from the big leaf maples into the garden, the driveway and yards. It was darker when I finally crawled out of bed this morning—another sign of the waning light, vernal equinox times. One week back from Yosemite and southern California and I'm still feeling disrupted by the trip. Sigh.

Photo: A gingko tree on Holman Street, around the corner from our house. Or as John calls them, "stinkos."

What Constitutes a Good Day...

Today I made a conscious effort to change some of how I do things rather than fixate on what I do and be all crabby about not doing enough, being disciplined, etc. (my usual state). I tried to focus my morning journal pages rather than letting them descend into the negative and pointless. I wrote several post cards and even a few letters to friends. I sorted a pile on my desk which included an unopened letter from which I learned that a friend's mother had died back in March. Which led to another letter to that friend to offer condolences and explain my belated response to her news. I ate protein for a late breakfast (broccoli and leek quiche that I threw together last night—love those whole wheat frozen crusts at New Seasons) which meant I was then able to easily do the power walk to/from the grocery, the pharmacy (needed my Vitamin D supplements after learning about my deficiency on Wednesday) and Winston's to check in on their remodeling project.   

Then back to find two boxes tucked into the privet underneath the mailbox. Bamboo and a money tree -- feng shui housewarming/good luck gifts from L., one of my oldest friends from back in Plymouth, Pennsylvania days. What a delight. I unpacked them both. The bamboo looks super on the oak sideboard in the living room and the money tree in its funky vase found a perfect home in the teal-and-yellow bathroom. This led to writing another note of thanks to L. and her husband and daughter for this unexpected, thoughtful gift. Then I called a friend and gabbed with her while I weeded and scraped moss from the bricks that line the pathways in the garden that's our back yard. After that? Some newspaper skimming and Portland's 89.1 jazz station tuned in on the radio. 

I didn't write today, above and beyond those journal pages and letters. 

I didn't read much (yet) above and beyond the newspaper.

I ate two healthy meals (so far), exercised, and got through another annual mammogram exam. 

I unloaded and loaded a dishwasher. 

I stopped at the dry cleaner on MLK and the PO on Killingsworth. 

I watched a YouTube video of a guy popping on So You Think You Can Dance, sent by a friend along with a schtick about aging by George Carlin.

I read an article in the New York Times about our neighborhood here in Portland, and the attempts of the Restorative Listening Project to get folks to talk about race relations, gentrification, among other things. 

I ordered a yard sign from Obama '08 after I learned from the guy selling Obama stuff outside of the PO that yard signs are in short supply and people are even having them stolen from their yards! 

I'm not up at Last Thursday on Alberta Street this evening because I find I weary of the social, chitchat energy as the sun starts to set. Added to the fact that I am weary of venturing out into the world solo and alone. 

Part of me wishes I had more pep to make the scene, whatever that means these days. "When I was younger..." that's what I start to think. But that's not me anymore. I'm now this person who prefers solitude, and quiet, and lots of uninterrupted, peaceful stretches in my day. This slow-settling evening quiet time here alone with cats, inside this lovely home, after watering the New Guinea impatiens and dumping the weeds into the yard waste container in the garage. The person contemplating ordering a pizza from Hot Lips because I now live in the city and they deliver, wonder of wonders. 

Happy to share photos of our wonderful garden and home with a few friends. Glad to have landed, to be able to feather our nest. 

An Addled Brain

I'm not sure if I can attribute it to being too fond of books, as the Lainie's Lady sent to me from Brisbane, Australia, by a friend says, quoting Louisa May Alcott, but today my brain has been addled by sickness and general aching malaise.

It's nearly dusk. The clouds above our stretch of houses here on this quiet NE 22nd Avenue hillock up from Lombard toward Alberta Park are a soft mauve and gray. This is peace, you know, this sitting here with Billie Holliday on the iPod, watching the light leach from the day, the blue-gray of Roy's house next door become flatter and purely gray. Even as I flail about, questioning and wondering, feeling another day gone, slipped away, out of my hands because of a body not cooperating, not allowing me to feel well enough to attend an event I said two months back I'd go to. Lots of issues with that, my feeling less-than-perfect, a party pooper, a lackluster disappointment. Planes circle, pass overhead, prepare to land.

There are pink buds on fruit trees in back yards and on the median between the sidewalk and the street. Our own garden bursts with pollen, ripeness from the giant maples. We're here barely two months in this home, this place I continue to unpack, sort, organize, and arrange.

Bricking Ourselves In

We're closing in on our house closing. Friday morning we sign papers. The papers go somewhere Friday afternoon and the deed gets recorded on Monday and then we get the keys at the close of business, 5 p.m. Meanwhile, the first floor of this place is filling up with boxes, bins, piles of this and that ready to make their way 1.5 blocks in the back seat of our car, the bed of the pickup, or a small U-Haul if it's raining. I'm ready to start already! How to not have ants-in-the pants all weekend? I've seen nearly all the movies I wanted to see. No options for entertaining here now as even the dining room area has started to fill up. I guess the idea is to keep moving, to keep getting ready and then when we get the keys on Monday night, we can at least take a few items down to the house. Rugs might be a good first place to start.

Looking around at the piles today, knowing what is left to take out of cupboards, pack up, hustle down the street, and, eventually, unpack on that end and is it any wonder I feel a bit overwhelmed? I mean, we just moved in here...This is one of those situations where the idea of it—a new house, a home, one that we will own and be in for a while—is way, way better than the daunting physical reality between where we are now (boxes, piles) and where we want to be (settled, cozy, home at last.) One day at a time, right?

More Boxes, Bins, and Piles

I think it's hitting me tonight—after a spate of days spent socializing and the Arctic air and sun along with the piles steadily growing, day after day, on the edges of the rooms on the first floor of the house—here we go again! I am so longing to be settled, to be home; I know the desire for that will spur me on with the energy, the drive to keep going. To carry hat boxes and tins of rubber stamps and boxes of books to the back seat and trunk of the car. To lift then slide Rubbermaid bins filled with newspaper-wrapped kitchen crockery, plates and bowls and sifters, even a wooden cannibal fork into the back of the pickup for the short—and I mean short!—drive down the street to the new house. To make everything do double-duty: luggage filled with summer clothes, suitcases of art objects, backpacks filled with videos and DVDs, trash cans of cleaning supplies and extra bottles of Paul Newman's Italian, even the cooking pots have something (pot holders, dish towels?) inside.

I can already imagine that pristine, emptied-out basement filled, like a department store, with my carefully, categorically-organized stuff. But right now, it's just the weariness of anticipation that I can feel. Instead of the wonder that is my beautiful, oh-so-easy life with its wealth of good fortune and the sun shining bright. After a comfort-food sunchoke soup and a panini at Park Kitchen lunch with a friend, I come home to haul dresser drawers out of the car's back seat, empty liquor boxes from the trunk. The cookbooks are now packed and stacked; I start in on some of the poetry until I run out of empty boxes once again.

The cats sleep in front of the gas fireplace, unknowing, unsuspecting. The warehouse of our life, our possessions, our stuff stacks up around me.

Crisp and Clear

Arctic chill has blanketed our corner of Oregon. Winds are stirring the firs and sequoias, up from the Columbia River which isn't that far from our house. Even around the summit of Mt. Hood, it's so clear you can see the snow swirl. Bright blue sky by day, bright white full moon at night. The kind of brisk that makes you feel achingly good and tired after a walk. Chill that makes you glad to be able to stay in a warm inside.

A woman behind the deli counter at New Seasons is wearing a skirt made of knotted scarves, all different colors and lengths, tied to a belt or waistband and this get-up over tights or a pair of pants. A white truck spent a good part of the afternoon in the driveway of our new house. When I headed out to walk earlier, it was rumbling down the street past here. Rhododendrons are starting to bud, as well as other shrubs that I don't yet recognize along a few houses on my walk. How can it be the 3rd week of January and hinting at spring? That's what I love about living out here. The overall temperateness. Even with a few days, or a week, of temperatures that barely climb above freezing, a purple primrose and a red rosebud bloom.