clinging to the light

so much unnecessary madness today, i am clinging to the last, golden rays of autumnal sunshine.

more tomorrow.

believe me, i have a story to tell...

100 happy days :: day 26

it was hard to narrow down today's happinesses, but finding this little guy on a desk i was using today rather sums it up. he's one of my favorite guys in animals suits and his presence made me smile today. but so did today's pleasant afternoon hours spent getting my hair cut and colored and eating cake. and this evening's gathering of creative souls. maybe we should all dress up in animal suits and smile a whole lot more. things are looking up. i think this happiness project is working.

while i am waiting...

waiting is seriously underestimated as a device of torture. they should use it on those guys at guantanamo, i swear they would crack and tell them whatever they wanted to hear within a month. while i'm eternally waiting, i thought i'd dig out some bright colors from my fabric stash and make a quilt. i always instinctively turn to anna maria horner's bright, cheerful patterns. they just brighten up these grey, february days. and there's something to sitting down with fabric and the sewing machine and making something tangible that you can have in your hands, or your lap, as it were, when you're finished. i chose a simple triangle square pattern. i hadn't tried it before and it seemed like it would sew up quickly and not tax my brain too much. because that's the other thing that waiting does to you. it rather heavily taxes your brain and renders you not very clear in your thinking. and moody. moody as all hell.  just ask my family. at least they'll soon have the comfort of a quilt to console them. or to hide under when the waiting storm cloud that is me blows through. stringing people along like this is just not right. but at least something bright and cheerful might come out of it.

i certainly hope this wait is worth it.

* * *

did you see that president obama made a buzzfeed video?
how awesome is that?

* * *

nice piece in the new yorker on jony ive and what's ahead for apple.

* * *

also in this week's new yorker, a new murakami short story.

* * *

and one more from the new yorker.
an interview with flemming rose, the editor who originally printed the muhammed drawings
that may have sparked the chain of events culminating in copenhagen last saturday.

* * *

dang, it is a good week for the new yorker.

what if?

what if....

~ you decided to let the petty irritations (irritators?) of life just wash over you? and decided not to react to them, but to just feel your reaction and go with the flow of it.

~ you gave people another chance, even if you were ready to write them off? and you actually tried to see the good in them, as difficult as it may seem?

~ what if the reason you were writing them off was largely due to how they looked? (and how shallow would that be of you?)

~ you could learn something from the experience?

~ those challenging people were placed in your path for a reason? even if you couldn't really see what that reason was. and you just trusted that it would become apparent with the fullness of time?

~ being able to to react differently meant a new beginning? and a new approach to life? and a new deeper sort of happiness?

i stayed up to 'til the wee hours discussing exactly this with a good friend the other night. it was precisely what i needed at that moment. amazing how you find your way to precisely what you need when you really need it. now to just remember it when the time comes. it's so easy to just revert to your fallback patterns and ways of reacting. but i think that this time i'm so interested in seeing what happens if i change that i'll remember our talk.

aside: i wish i could find my way to a lightheartedness with such posts that i once had. i wonder what's happened to it? i feel so deadly serious when i sit down to write these days.  i'd like to be fun again, but i can't seem to find my way out of the earnestness at the moment. i'm not sure why that is... but rest assured it's even more annoying to me than it is to you.