Now I become myself. It's taken time, many years and places...
- May Sarton
Maira Kalman! Whenever I see her name I pay attention. I saw her exhibition Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World) both here and and in New York and I'm equally charmed by her unique perspective and whimsical illustrations. I came across this video on Brain Pickings, to which I subscribe weekly and always find of great interest.
Hoping your summer days are some of your very favorite!
Summer afternoons in the garden with Rave, something cold to sip - the current rotation is asian pear and ginger kombucha, pineapple blueberry iced tea or pellegrino with slivers of tangerine and lime - and something to read until we begin to doze in the shadows and life is sweet and all is well.
Tonight the hovering aluminum moon
listens to your orbiting thoughts
the way you listened
to canyon echoes
in childhood,
transfixed and entranced.
The North Star looks you in the eye
finding each of your thousand selves,
the hollowed and diverted
the hopeful and enriched,
as glorious as its own reflection.
The murmuring waves of midnight
are as familiar as your own
undulating heartbeat.
The tide, as if it were
your last quiet breath
in the life before this one
when answers finally revealed
themselves and your spirit
soared back before time
diaphanous and undistilled,
a constellation of its own.
At the shore:
the same fisherman each day; white hair, red eyeglasses, wearing a yarmulke and chest waders
fingerprint sized sand dollars, the rarest still intact
a trail of discarded, sea soaked sunflowers
a pod of acrobatic dolphins cavorting in the waves
the small pleasure of flying a colorful kite on a blue sky day
twilight's translucent sailboats like sheets of vellum as they drift back to the marina
two labradors laughing, I'm quite sure, as they clamber from pier to pier
a treasure trove of tottering sand castles adorned with delicate seashells
When you die, God and the Angels will hold you accountable
for all the pleasures you were allowed in life
that you denied yourself.
- Roger Housden
Roger Housden here on the pleasure of not being perfect...
This afternoon I am at the kitchen table with a bowl of watermelon and a mug of vanilla jasmine tea, writing a few letters and working on cajoling a poem into form. The windows are open and an occasional spry breeze tosses an envelope from the stack beside me onto the floor. I've scratched out a packing list of things to take for an upcoming trip to Arizona to see my mom and have finished up the last bit of laundry, the air still holding the fragrant scent of lavender.
The warmth and hospitality of a kitchen often makes me linger, long after meals have been served and the dishes cleared. I am happy I will soon be in the familiar kitchen of my mother's house, my childhood home. We will celebrate her eighty-five years over good food, laughter, and clusters of fond rememberings.
* I love this magnetic poem on the fridge left by my friend Brooke.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012