It’s Not the Journey, It’s the Destination…wait that’s not it.

We, and by we I mean HIM because if I had done it the house would probably need to be torn down, recently hung a big, old-timey-lookin’ chalkboard in our kitchen.  Last night I watched our kids draw for ages, totally unselfconsciously.  People, trains, animals, forests, I believe I saw a surfer being eaten by a shark at one point, but never mind.

What is the exact moment that children lose that unselfconsciousness about creative expression?  And how the hell can we get it back?

I am not aware of consciously thinking it, but I know for certain that when I read some books or essays or see some movies or look at particular photographs or paintings or mosaics or watch some tv shows (hello, The Wire, I’m looking at you), some part of my internal critic says, “Well, you’re never going to be able to do that, so why bother.”  There are those totally amazing creative enterprises that blow your doors off and make you want to try and inspire you.  And then there are those than just shut you right down because, screw it.  Or maybe they’re the same and it just depends on who you are at the time you experience them.

Keri Hulme’s The Bone People

REM’s NightSwimming

the aforementioned The Wire

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window

a perfect creme brulee

White Christmas sung by Bing Crosby

to name a few.

 

 

 

 

Lucky Stars

Today sucked.

Well, most of it anyway.

There’s nothing much to be gained by going into a whole lot of detail about why, and I don’t even really know that I could adequately explain it, so let it suffice to say that I got my feelings hurt right out of the gate at work, and pretty much felt like crying (and did, when nobody was looking, because I’m all grown up and professional and shit) all through until, uh, now.  I don’t actually think that the hurt feelings can account for the all day weep-a-thon, and the real source of my fragile mood was elusive; I just couldn’t pin it down.

Tonight was a Wednesday Spaghetti night.  I don’t know how many people came over to eat dinner at my house, but whatever the number….40?  50?  It was the perfect number.  You could say any number to me and I would tell you it was the perfect number.   I know a little bit more now, after everybody who was here – my friends and neighbors  – has gone home, about why I was undone today.  But more to the point, I know why I’m going to go to bed slightly more put together.

I am so lucky, lucky to have this house that holds these friends and neighbors, lucky to have this food to feed them, lucky to have these people in my life who will come out on a rainy Wednesday and be with each other and in a very ordinary and unremarkable way made remarkable in its simplicity and, for me, in, always but especially today, the comfort that it brings me.

It doesn’t have to be a spaghetti dinner, but some days you need to make sure to find your people and let them surround you with their ordinary and unremarkable ways.

I am so lucky.

 

Wedgie Patrol

My son and his friend were sitting in the audience of the High School auditorium, I don’t know if they were in high school or just visiting; details like that are frustratingly fuzzy in dreams.

I was up on stage, standing at the podium, hyper aware that the speaker was ready to start his presentation.  He was inching toward me, impatient, and his people were not too subtly hinting that it was time for me to wrap it up.  I was trying to finish making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for my son and his friend. It was very important that I make them and hand them off to the boys before the presentation began.

The bread was tearing because the peanut butter wasn’t spreading correctly, I got jelly on the podium, I was trying to gather up the jars of PB and J and I put the wrong lids on the wrong containers; it was a mess.  I was frazzled.  I finished the sandwiches as the speaker actually began to speak.  I took everything into my arms, hands full of sandwiches and started to make my way off the front of the stage in front of a packed house when I realized:

I was wearing a too short  nightshirt, and as if that weren’t bad enough, I had a massive wedgie and my butt cheeks were hanging out.  Too late, I realized that I didn’t to need give them sandwiches just then, I could have backed off the stage and forgotten about the whole sandwich making and delivering enterprise and spared everyone, most of all me, the entire fiasco.

That was the end of the dream.

Before I woke up though, I very clearly thought to myself, “This one is a no brainer, you cannot spend this year trying to do everything all at once.  That doesn’t work for ANYONE and you will end up with your ass hanging out like a fool.”

May all your neuroses be so easily diagnosed.

And may your hands not be full of peanut butter and jelly so that you can pick your wedgie.