This Life of Mine

Just some thoughts…and being thankful for the simple things in life…

1) I love walking at sunset. The softest peach and lilac sunset is the greatest background for a walk home from work, with the albums “Rush of Blood to the Head” and “X&Y” serenading the first stars.

2) It is so lovely walking past jasmine pouring from a brick wall. No fence or wall can trap that fragrance. It must escape!

3) I love waking up to the before 6am and listening to the music of Australian birds. They seem a bit cheekier than Cali birds. Really. Even that one annoying bluejay in Sweetbriar who scats the theme of Jaws.

4) I am a perfectionist in every area of my life, so having the opportunity to “turn off” my brain and just let myself paint without worrying about not being perfect or not attaining the correct technique, or not accurately representing a landscape or person, is very freeing. I find great pleasure in blending colors, feeling them move together and become something that surprises me.

5) I feel like I was born in the wrong century and that I’ll never really belong, but I am thankful that I am me–really old fashioned and all. I honestly would be happy to live near the mountains or the ocean and just write, edit, paint and run for the rest of my life. It’s the simple things…

6) Do you ever have seasons in your life where you feel on the cusp of something you aren’t quite sure yet, but you know if you keep pushing, the answers will come? That’s what I feel like. Cusps are exciting and scary and wonderful. It’s like watching for the first night stars to show up. You just keep searching the sky, because you know you’ll find that first star. It’s just hard waiting, but it is always worth it.

7) I love random childhood memories that settle on the palm of my mind like a soap bubble. On our farm in Missouri, my sister and I used to loop garbage bags around our arms and run, ecstatic, down the steep pasture hills hoping that the wind would pick us up and we would be able to fly. Sometimes I still want to do that for the heck of it.

8 ) I am thankful for the crazy, ever changeable Melbourne wind. One of the reasons I love getting to the tops of mountains so much is because the wind up there is unhindered by anything. It is just the rocks beneath my feet and the sky above and the wind restless all around me.

I’m going to be more proactive about finding and listing things I am grateful for on a daily basis. The list will be 5 things…

Today, I am grateful for:

1. I am thankful for the email that Christine sent to me, telling me about her hopes and dreams for the future.

2. I am thankful for the delicious, tart plum that my housemate shared with me that she, in turn, received from an old Croatian man who lives on our street. He gave her a whole bag of plums when she was walking home…just because. I want to be able to do that for someone, someday, if I ever have my own plum tree. What a nice way to make someone’s day! The plum also reminded me of my dad’s fruit trees and the memories of growing up on the farm in Missouri…how I used to love going to the garden and digging my bare feet in the warm, soft, freshly tilled soil around the huge fruit trees…and how sweet the air would smell with that summertime plum sweetness.

3. I am thankful for finding http://ohsheglows.com/, because those recipes actually make me excited about cooking!

4. I am thankful that I get to march/dance in the Australia Day Parade tomorrow (even though I am a bit nervous, too).

5. I am thankful for the stars I can see…like the Southern Cross…and how I have this opportunity to live in another part of the world to study subjects I truly enjoy. Something about looking up and seeing wisps of the Milky Way makes me feel as if I am being hugged somehow. I love how the stars seem to float in the heavens.

I could definitely go on, but wow, it really does help to stop and think about how everything really is connected…and how easy it is to get too busy and too rushed to really savor such moments in life.

Would you care to join me, if you wish, in exchanging things you are grateful for?

As I was walking home from class tonight, a tired sort of chilly wind swept huge yellow pollen balls from the budding trees around me. I think even the wind knows that winter has had its time. 

Head down, pushing against the onslaught of yellow fluff, I almost forgot to look up at the sky. A mauve haze enveloped the curves of the clouds, turning the edges the softest peach and gold. Nature seems to give the best embraces.

Spring will come soon, but every morning I wake up and wonder…will it be warm today?

‎’In the midst of winter, I found there was within me an invincible summer.’
-Albert Careb

No matter what happens, I’ve found that I am an eternal optimist…though a quiet one. My sun sits within me. However, being an optimist does not mean that I am not deeply affected by what others say. Words are so powerful and they can injure so much.

I mean everything that I say with my whole heart. I cannot change that aspect of myself. That’s also why it is hard to put my writing out there, because so much of me is invested in my craft. I HAVE to get over it somehow.

Maybe you get a little braver every day…and you raise your blinds so your light can shine out a little more.

SILENCE

What sweetness rests in silence,

When such freedom can be found.

The sweetest peace I’ve ever known

Is silence.

I don’t feel prepared for anything, but I have to figure this out…this life of mine. What is living but a succession of events glued together by your relationships with those around you?

*sigh*

What is a sigh, but a feeling uncut by teeth and lips searching for the words to frame it?

SHIP IN A BOTTLE

 Of all the moments that matter,

Why does this one stand out

Like the beacon saving the ship of hope?

How I listen for that call

To raise the mast

In the full wind of progress

Towards a destination I long to be.

Tell me that this isn’t a ship in a bottle.

COOK SOMETHING

 Pots of thoughts,

Bubbling rind,

And framing bone,

A steaming mind.

Clicking off,

Fading fire,

Shut the lid,

On that desire.

Peek inside

And poke around.

An empty pot

A hollow sound.

HEAR THIS

 I thought you heard the silence

As your heart dove into mine.

No beat it found,

But shocked and still.

Happiness—divine.

When you are a shy, deeply introspective person, it is easy to get trapped within yourself. I feel everything so intensely and I can never express it to anyone. Only the white sheet of paper or canvass feel the touch of my soul reaching out. Sometimes feelings echo around inside like a sort of symphony-always contained, but never tamed. When I go hiking or when it is softly raining and an other-worldly sheen of color spills from the sky, a longing resonates within me, almost exquisitely painful in its intensity. How can I see such beauty and not feel?

Have you ever written down bits of memories that changed your life? I have been thinking about moments in time that branded themselves on my heart and this is one of them…

I spent one spring break back in 2006 backcountry kayaking on Lake Powell with four other girls from the UCLA Outdoor Adventures Club. Every day I would paddle forward into the unknown, so eager to see what was beyond each curve of the shoreline. One day, it started raining. March storms in Utah are amazing. The wind was so strong that it was difficult paddling to shore. Wind ripped white tips across the expanse of the lake and I felt thrilled by the power and danger of it all. Lightning stabbed in the distance. There were patches of bright sunlight to my left, and hail coming down on my right. It was so odd, but beautiful. We set up a tent and huddled inside our sleeping bags, our bodies keeping the tent anchored. It was so cold outside, so we just stayed there for a few hours, talking and listening to the cry of the night storm. At one point, I was finally so warm and drowsy that I fell asleep. In my dreams, something heavy was pressing against me, trying to squash me. I thought it was a cow trying to lay down on me (I’m such a farm girl). It kept pressing harder and harder until I woke up. It was the wind pressing the side of the tent against my sleeping bag.

Sometime after midnight that night, there was such a stillness, I unzipped the tent and peeked out. I’ll never forget what I saw. Millions, no, trillions of stars. I was in a bowl, 180 degrees of stars all around me. I could have been tipped into the sky, falling forever into those stars. It was like the wind called them from their hiding place.

On our farm in Missouri, my sister and I used to loop garbage bags around our arms and run, ecstatic, down the steep pasture hills hoping that the wind would pick us up and we would be able to fly. Sometimes I still want to do that for the heck of it.

One of the reasons I love getting to the tops of mountains so much is because the wind up there is unhindered by anything. It is just the rocks beneath my feet and the sky above and the wind restless all around me.

Painting is the best therapy. Through it, I find out things about myself I didn’t even know existed until that moment. I never know what will end up on the canvass. I just start with colors and somehow something always shows up. It is something so personal, sometimes it seems funny that we can ever share it with anyone else.