Art Food Soul

Been more offline these days than online — my eyes were getting a bit buggy as I was getting too deep in a virtual world again. I crave strong, visceral, real time connection and it is just so damn hard to find these days. I don’t take it personally — I just realize many people are not in the same place I am and aren’t yet ready to make real time connection with people a priority. This is not a criticism either. I haven’t had a steady job for about a year now and when I did it was not pleasant (a synchronistic, supportive boss is huge in the world of work). Work or kids in school or church and so on all provide a social structure in which we can get our people fix. Take away that structure though…and we struggle to find (or create) connection. I haven’t given up on trying to create connection. I’ve been deep in Po Bronson’s book What Should I Do with My Life? and Carol Lloyd’s book Creating a Life Worth Living.

I’ve also gone back to a project I had started before my retreat adventures. It’s a Cape Cod Survival Guide I had started writing — it’s for when the bridge isn’t an option. Many people totally get where I’m coming from with this book as they have experienced the same frustrations living here that I have. Especially, after living in a more open-minded, progressive place (for me Vermont, for someone else Brooklyn, Portland or California, and so on) that can crack the word possibility wide open for those of us who are seekers. I suppose this has nothing to do with the video I’m sharing here today (or perhaps it does, I’m just too lazy to make the connection at the minute). It’s via Laura via Marlene and I love it. As a scribe with an editor’s keen eye, I noticed the typo right away, but I couldn’t let that oversight stop me from sharing the work here.

And besides, isn’t there some sort of philosophy that sports the notion that in every creation there should be one thing slightly wrong or off? So that it’s not perfectly perfect in every way?
Unlike Mary Poppins.

Style Statement — Julie Arkell — Evelien Berger — hm graham crax — jam and jerusalem — creating a life worth living — few eggs and no oranges — 1920’s and 1930’s

No, not the weather. Cool, huh? From here.

Leave it to London…I’m still dreaming of the underground cable TV show I’m envisioning. A take on Ab Fab meets Wayne’s World.

And totally f***ing awesomo — discovered it yesterday via Dottie Angel (thanks Corinne for reminding me about Dottie!). Art, Culture and Education — yay, ACE! Three things that rock my world!

I had another photo edited for today’s blog but a friend sent me a whole slew of forgotten photos and this one got a guggle (a cross between a giggle and a chuckle), so this one it is.

Today’s a much better day –A. (my boy) stopped by unexpectedly last night and stayed for dinner and catching up. I haunted various artisan chocolatiers on the the web and checked out their blogs (my latest fantasy is to have a wee artisan chocolate business, do an internship with one I admire, or at least attend this).

Needless to say, between my kids and chocolate daydreaming, I can perk up pretty quickly (just have to switch the thinking from brooding to daydreaming mode). I finished the eve with Marty, watching the rest of 1949’s Golden Earrings, a super B grade movie with Marlene Dietrich and Ray Milland, the last on her Glamour Collection. They’ve all been far-fetched but fun to watch.

And as Jen mentioned in her reality blog post, if you ever feel perhaps uncool, unpopular, geeky, a misfit — don’t worry. George’s photo above can give one hope.

Reality blogging — I like that (as long as it doesn’t become a television show). So let’s see, the hair on my legs is getting so long that it was blowing in the breeze this morning (I was wearing cropped pants for my morning walk). I made macaroni and cheese, tofu curry, veggie-bean soup and brownies already today…because I had all the ingredients for them and they’ll last for many meals, thereby stretching the food budget (saving money while eating yummy food, some of it from local farmer’s markets, perks me up).

Went to Swirly’s site today and found a link to a David Foster Wallace speech that made me feel a little better about regrets I still need to let go of.

(I’d been crying this morning, the first time in a long time, for not having a home for my 19 year old son when I moved in with Marty, for not having my own home for a long time period). Oh yes, pity party here. January’s not the darkest month for me really — it’s usually around mid-February through late March/early April that I go into my funk. Jen’s black and white photo of a NYC park soothed my soul a bit.

De-cluttering the other day, I discovered some apple-picking photos from when Anthony was about 15 or 16 and Molly about 5 years younger (you do the Math, my brain’s in language mode at the moment). Seeing how close they were, what an awesome big brother Anthony was, and what a little trickster Molly could be always brings a smile to my face. Hmmm, so maybe this reality blogging is okay. In the darkest days of winter for me, I’ve managed to find some bright spots. The perkier days of April should be just around the corner.

Isn’t that the name of a book? I think so, one I read back in my college years. It’s true you know. You can’t go home again. It stays the same and yet it’s never the same.

We sometimes search for an entire lifetime, and perhaps never find our true love. Not necessarily a person either. In my case I was lucky, I found my love in not just one lifetime, but in two. When I met her in this lifetime, we already knew each other so well, we just picked up where we’d left off previously, and many times we didn’t need words to communicate. We could read each others’ thoughts when we were together (and sometimes when we were apart).

She died when we were in our late twenties, and that was the first time I knew the raw physical ache of emotional, psychic loss — and I howled, keened, beat myself as the deeply grief-stricken do. I pulled through to the other side, as she was pulling through to the other side. We still communicate wordlessly to this day as we once did a long time ago.

“The dream was always running ahead of one. To catch up, to live for a moment in union with it, that was the miracle.”
~Anais Nin

Yes, I feel free — of BEAR. It was smothering me. The process was great, but the lack of reception wasn’t. I feel a surge of hope though. That the path led me further along the way to my dreams, my self, who I am, my destiny. Destiny and destination — one and the same or two different beings entirely? What do you think and which one becomes who you are?

This is what I ask myself. My gut tells me I become my destiny. That they are not one and the same, but are they two facets of the same coin? Again I don’t know. I’ve always been a know-it-all for various reasons (one being I am a voracious reader), yet I truly love asking questions and hearing others’ answers. It gives me more insight, and it’s how I get to know you. Can our destination change our destiny? When we change our destination, does the destination change our destiny?

Life’s decisions. I have made heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, soul-searing decisions in the past (some that can never be undone, some that are not undone easily). This was not one of them and for that reason I am grateful.