You've Got Mail

It's not the best movie ever, but it holds a lot of sentiment for me. As my dog and I watched it tonight, these are a few of the things I felt sentimental about:

+ Cardigans. This movie is what sparked my love for them.

+ Short hair. Meg Ryan was a long-time inspiration for my stylists and I.

+ Living in a city.

+ The dream of having a job that I love to go to every day, and that I can walk to while drinking coffee and enjoying the weather, whatever the weather may be. By the river would be even better.

+ Daisies. They're my mom's favorite.

+ Handkerchiefs. I think I'll make some, at least for the girls.

+ The sound of a computer keyboard being typed on. I do love it.

+ Pride and Prejudice.

It also reminded me that I had a dream the other night that I was using dial up (I think I even chose to use dial up) while everyone else in the room was using whatever else it is that the kids use nowadays.

This Weekend

So far, I've had lots of laughter, hugs (which doesn't happen often enough, and I love the ones that I don't even see coming), knitting, Christmas lights in our living room, good music, and lots of good friends. And it's only Saturday night. There's no reason to believe tomorrow won't be lovely too.

Note to self: don't let your quiet paranoia get in the way of just enjoying these things for what they are - gifts.

The light in my room

I bought a lamp for my new bedroom today. It's quaint and made to look like an old oil lamp, but it's electric and still cute.

I've been hesitant, ever since I left home for college - or maybe even since the day I understood that I would one day leave home to go to college - to really settle in to a place like it is my own, like I'm going to be there long enough to make it worth my while to do the work of settling in. I've resisted acquiring real furniture, or an exquisitely warm comforter, or anything that might make moving harder, as I've always imagined I would spend much of my life doing it.

I think of this as I consider spending eighteen dollars on a cute lamp that I'm not even sure works because I'm at a vintage store and the bulb is blown. I consider that maybe, at some point, everyone will go their own direction, even if that wasn't the original plan. Maybe I won't know who to follow, if anyone, and maybe there will be no one who could or would follow me. Maybe this extra thing will make it all the more difficult to pack up and move when changes happen, as they tend to do, and I'll just regret spending the money and becoming attached to it. Maybe maybe maybe, what if what if what if, ah cuss it all! Take a relational risk for once in you life and buy the D lamp!

I did.

And it works.

And Words are Futile Devices

I keep listening to this music that makes me long for something that I can't seem to identify. From my bedroom two nights ago, I listened to it play in the living room downstairs and even that muffle was almost too much. My heart ached and yearned and the only thing I could think of to do that would help quiet it was to knit.

And so I knit.

"We need sensuality, and we can get it from attentiveness to the world." Elizabeth Seward was quoted saying that in Zen and the Art of Knitting, a good book to read if you like to knit or if you wonder how in the world knitting could ease my longing. Melissa lent it to me.

I still don't quite know why I feel that way when I listen to those songs, or why knitting helps me feel a little saner. But thank you Mr. Stevens for writing amazing music. Thank you Ms. Seward for your precious words. Thank you Mrs. Sartin for helping me stitch.

Speaking of Which

The only thing that would make this rainy morning more perfect would be a cup of coffee, but the coffee grinder is too loud with everyone asleep and I can't bring myself to walk to the coffee shop (one block away) to buy a cup.

Some of us went to the annual Friends of the Library Book Sale yesterday. Here's an excerpt from one of the books I got:

The Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat:
If you offer him pheasant, he would rather have grouse.
If you put him in a house he would much prefer a flat,
If you put him in a flat then he'd rather have a house.
If you set him on a mouse then he only wants a rat,
If you set him on a rat, then he'd rather chase a mouse.
Yes the Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat -
And there isn't any call for me to shout it:
For he will do
As he do do
And there's no doing anything about it!

That's from T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, though Mr. Rum Tum Tugger doesn't sound very practical.

Speaking of cats, I dreamed last night that I held a sickly little kitten for a long time, and we just loved each other, and as time went on it got more energetic and healthy. I don't remember how that dream ended. I think it started playing around and went off to be with it's siblings again. I mostly remember how warm it felt to hold that little kitten.

Speaking of love and affection, I am continually grateful for the friends that I have and the support and freedom I find living in community. I was thinking of this while talking with some of the girls last night as I worried and they doled out their sage wisdom and unending support. What would I do otherwise?

Maybe that's the little kitten I held.

I'm also sad that I can't seem to feel the same way around my parents, but can find no way to blame them, so I wonder what stubbornness it is that keeps my mouth shut when I'm with them.

Speaking of . . . just kidding. I'm off to get a cup of coffee.

Good Morning Starshine

I need something to get me up in the morning. Something to get me up sometime between 5 and 5:30. Yoga doesn't seem to be enough of a motivation anymore. Not looking cute. Not even breakfast.
What to do, what to do?
Knitting and tea? Perhaps.
Reading and/or writing? I kind of already tried that, for about a week. Somehow it's not as appealing as sleep.
Maybe reading something different, like poetry, which I usually don't read.
Maybe going somewhere for tea or coffee.
Maybe going to bed earlier. Just kidding.
Maybe getting up to a certain song on my clock radio.
Maybe waking up, then deciding how it is that I want to start my day. Whether by knitting or reading or writing or eating or yoga-ing or looking cute.
Maybe I would like to find a different job, though that's no guarantee that I won't be getting up as early or earlier.
Maybe getting my mom on the east coast to call me at 8:15 her time to wake me up.
Maybe I'll just start with tomorrow: tea and the Barbara Kingsolver book of essays I've started. Yes, that sounds nice.

At dinner with friends tonight, I looked at family pictures with the hostess as she says, "We try to enjoy life."

"You seem to do a good job of it. I know there are hard times, but . . ."

"We see them as learning experiences. I don't see my first marriage as a bad one, just as a learning experience."

I myself am quite unlearned. I feel I shouldn't complain of such a thing in this context, so I won't, and I'm not going to complain of all the goods things I have, as that would be a silliness that I hope even I would not stoop to. I wonder, though, if it's wrong of me to want more life experience. Not that I wish for bad things to happen, just for something to make me stronger, wiser, more capable of living a great life. (Ah, vanity.)

It will come, I know. I won't have to ask for it. Maybe I'm in it now, and won't realize it until I have a group of younger people over for dinner and tell them that I try to enjoy life and all its learning experiences. Then I can show them pictures of some of the best times and tell them stories of some of the other times, and they can go away from it with the feeling of wonder and beauty of living this life, as I did tonight.

Until then, may grace be granted to me, and anyone else who needs it, to live as I should (Monday mornings and all) and have faith in the bigger picture. May Grace remind me that it's there, and that I'm in it.

For starters

I'm starting a blog because I need an outlet, a creative one, and I like writing letters, so I'm trying the blog. I probably won't tell anyone, at least for a while. I almost didn't even start it tonight, but I opened the bottle, so I need to finish the drink. Literally.

I read a little something from Madeleine L'engle about ten minutes before writing this: "The moment of inspiration does not come to someone who lolls around expecting the gift to be free. It is no giveaway. It is the pearl for which we have to pay a great price, the price of intense loneliness, the price of that vulnerability which often allows us to be hurt . . . "

I don't have many expectations for this venture, but vulnerability is one of them. It's ok, I'm not as fragile as I seem.