Day 9 or 37: What is Real?

Both walls and the beadboard floor are securely in place in Mike’s closet, the one next to north wall, a.k.a. the red wall.  Now it just lacks the back wall, shelf pins and shelves and, of course, doors.  Putting doors on will be really exciting for me.  I love the hardware and the design for the plywood doors.  I think I won’t need to start getting excited until February.  If I have to wait that long, I may have to replace the door hardware with Hearts. 

“Our task is to say a holy yes to the real things of our life.” – Natalie Goldberg

If that is true, then our task is to discover and uncover what are the Real Things of our particular life.  We do not have to figure out what are anyone else’s Real Things or what are the Real Things in general.  But OUR Real Things.

Respect.  That’s high on my Real Things.  For me, it is higher than Love.  It is the Real Stuff of interacting with people, nature, and life.

Hope.  It is a Real Thing for me.  I must have at least a small silver thread of hope.  To catch the wind.  To unravel the chaos and stitch up the tears.  To string the lights of my life into shiny new day.  To wind around the moon and launch my aspirations.

Day 7 of 37: Looking Back to Go Forward

Tomorrow we’ll screw on the panel that covers the red wall inside this first closet.  We had to create a 2×4 wide spacer against the end wall so that the door would have room to open and not hit the wall, and also so that the conduit encased electrical line would be concealed. 

My mom would have been 90 today.  She died in February of 2014 when she was 87.  I have the cornflower blue winter scarf she was crocheting.  It is still unfinished.  Her life was unfinished.  The pneumonia that killed her came on quickly and strong.  Stronger than the antibiotics.  She was not ready to die.  I am not referring to what was betweenher and the Almighty; I mean that she had more life she expected to live, more scarfs and flowers to crochet, more game shows to watch, and more telephoned discussions about whatever was going on, personally to world-wide. The blue scarf seems inconsequential when tallied as part of one’s life work.  For mom it was an act of creating.  It was fulfilling.  She could sit in her recliner with her feet up, listen to “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader,”crochet a pattern she had half made-up, and have a one-of-a-kind gift to make someone she knew happy.

Like the 37 days Patti Digh’s stepdad had between diagnosis and death, mom’s blue scarf is a reminder to live now.  Life fully.  Live doing what causes your heartlight to glow.

There are no unimportant days.

 

Day 6 of 37: Picture This

What was the sculptor wanting to say with this goddess at the base of a war memorial?  A small sword in her right hand and, perhaps, a flower rests in her other hand – what do these symbolize?   To me, the laurel leaf crown with star indicates a victory, but the face, the face shows the cost.

Photography.  Ah, how I love to make photos.  Not snapshots, although those are fun, but to capture something or a bit of something that pleases me.  I like to photograph statues and interesting designs or gargoyles on buildings.  Water, Sky, Fields, and Creatures are also a joy to me.  I used to carry my camera around just in case something captured my imagination.  A cellphone camera is not the same.  I want to fill the frame just so.  I’d rather not crop and Photoshop.  I want what I see to be in that frame and nothing else.

I am going to take the time to do photography.  I like how my soul soars when the image is matches my vision.

“Photography is the art of observation.  It has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” – Elliot Erwitt

Day 5 of 37 Days of Living Intentionally

Music.  I have been missing Music in my life.  To live mindfully, I need music.  I need to listen to it, play it, flow with it.  Not as background but as ground itself.

I identify with these words from The Motzart Effect by Don Campbell, as quoted in http://www.superconsciousness.com/topics/art/how-music-affects-body:

“In an instant, music can uplift our soul. It awakens within us the spirit of prayer, compassion, and love. It clears our minds and has been known to make us smarter…Yet it is more than all of these things. It is the sounds of earth and sky, of tides and storms. It is the echo of a train in the distance, the pounding reverberations of a carpenter at work. From the first cry of life to the last sigh of death, from the beating of our hearts to the soaring of our imaginations, we are enveloped by sound and vibration every moment of our lives. It is the primal breath of creation itself, the speech of angels and atoms, the stuff of which life and dreams, souls and stars, are ultimately fashioned.”

My favorite song about living intentionally now:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bY585-fzSs.  That’s singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer who will be in concert here in Ponca City January 28, 2017.

 

Day 4 of 37: Friends

One of the heart-happy, important stuff of life is Friends!  We have kept our project time minimal to squeeze some friends into our RiverRoom.  We do a frenzied preparation, then sit, sup, and relax.

We are storing up sweet memories to warm us as we construct the “banks” of the RiverRoom this winter.

“We cannot live only for ourselves.  A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among these fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions ran as causes, and they come back to us as effects.” – Herman Melville

Day 3 of 37: Writing

This close-up of the 15-foot muse more fully reveals her curls and beauty but hides her wings and writing feather.  Sometimes when we examine lives too closely they lose their distinctive  details.

Most writers are also readers. It is easy to say, “I am a reader.”  People will ask for recommendations for their next read.  To say, “I am a writer,” brings queries of “What have you written?”  According to Merriam-Webster, a writer is “someone whose work is to write books, poems, stories, etc.”  The third definition is ” someone who has written something.”  I fit the third definition.  I have written two feature articles for a local newspaper years ago.  It didn’t feel like work.  And I didn’t get paid like it was work.  I don’t recall the exact amount I was paid, but it was something like $.15 a column inch.

I have written many “somethings.”  Research Papers, School Newsletters, Obituaries and Eulogies.  Notes of Congratulation and of Sorrow.  Sermons and Speeches and Notes to the Teachers.  Love Letters and Letters of Complaint.  And a 100 Day Blog.

“To be a person is to have a story to tell,” wrote Isak Dinesen (pseudonym of Karen Blixten).  I have a story or two to tell.

“In the degree that we remember and retell our stories and create new ones we become the authors, the authorities, of our own lives.” – Sam Keen

Day 2 of 37: Reading

The Recording Angel outside the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Nashville TN.  Sculpted as one of the nine muses who inspire humans to create works of art.  Artist: Audrey Flack, 2006.

It feels like I was always a reader.  Of course, I wasn’t.  Like many my age, I learned to read in First Grade of elementary school.  Before I read, I made up stories for my dolls, either paper or plastic, to enact.  “Let’s Make Believe that…” was the beginning if I were interacting with another.  Playing school with my older sister wasn’t really playing.  I was always the student; she was always the teacher.  And I was always in trouble.  When I finally went to school, I was only in trouble once.  The class clown in second grade told me to pull his chair away from the desk.  Then he pretended to fall to the floor. I was surprised.  Everyone laughed.  But The Teacher.  She would not listen to my explanation, and the the clown just grinned like a frog who had just swallowed the fattest fly.

After I learned to read, I found stories to escape into.  I became one with the story.  Once, during reading time at school, I could hear kids out on the playground and wondered why the principal had let them out in the bitter cold.  The boy in my book was lost in a snowstorm but the reality outside the classroom was warm sunshine.

In the summer I would walk to the public library for a new stack of books every two weeks.  I am surprised that my over-protective mother let me walk alone that far.  I suspect it was almost a mile.  I imagined that my arms were stretched out from the load of books but I continued to check out the maximum number.  After elementary school, I had a baby sister to enjoy, so reading was limited.  In high school, I worked one class period a day in the Library.  Oh, how I love the organization and rigor of a trained librarian.  And she introduced me to the finest stories.

Recently, I found an old jewelry box with my old treasures inside.  Along with a few pieces of costume jewelry were my library cards from all the cities we lived in when Mike was in the Navy.

“Reading without reflection is like eating without digestion.” – Edmund Burke

Day 1 of 37: Pondering

The last piece of wood we put up before Thanksgiving was the trim board above the pocket door entrance to the River Room.  I was not pleased with the results of my hand-written words but they will remain for now.  I will probably sand them (and the 4 coats of poly) off sometime in the future. I intentionally wanted the writing to be subtle, just discernible.  My words are:  “A River of Hope Flows Through Our Home.” – A.M. 2016

I  have had a break from writing since the close of our 100 Days of River Room Projects.  We have done a little work there but mostly have been settling the chaos in the other parts of the house.  I find it difficult to keep up the every day maintenance and cleaning while working on building projects.

I chose 37 Days for this blogging set because of the Patti Digh book I have, life is a verb: 37 DAYS TO WAKE UP, BE MINDFUL, AND LIVE INTENTIONALLY. 

According to Amazon.com commentary on that book,  “In October 2003, Patti Digh’s stepfather was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died 37 days later. The time frame made an impression on her. What emerged was a commitment to ask herself every morning: What would I be doing today if I had only 37 days left to live? The answers changed her life and led to this new kind of book. Part meditation, part how-to guide, part memoir, Life is a Verb is all heart.”

The book is a workbook, overflowing with Challenges, Actions, Movements and thought-provoking life questions and quotations.  My intent is to use those words in the title, “Be Mindful” and “Live Intentionally,” to do so.  Being focused on the RR meant that I was not intentionally mindful of what gives lift to my spirit and provides hope for my life.

For the next 37 days, I intend to be as intent on bits of time for personal joy as I am with extended time for leaps of progress on RR projects.

One of my joys is writing.

On Stories:  “A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.  You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate.” – Flannery O’Connor, writer.

“We create stories and stories create us.  It is a rondo.” – Chinua Achebe, writer.