Words’ End

Yesterday I spent about four hours making chicken soup, complete with roasting the chicken parts I got for it. Hey, there was nothing else to do – no job on the horizon, which is wearying – and chatting with friends dealing with random illnesses inspired me to go buy soup makings, including enough meat for two batches. Of course, instead of the intended one-batch-and-leftover-chicken there ended up being more soup. My entire household, and then some, seemed to approve; and I felt close to my grandmother, who’d spend entire days in the kitchen cooking stuff up for the sheer joy of the process, and of feeding people with the results. I joked with a friend that one day I’ll get a dozen friends to make a kept woman of me, and will feed them in return.

(But no, srsly, a job – preferably an interesting, challenging job that pays me enough for me to feed friends anyway – would be way better. You hear me, multiverse?)

Then we drove to the wilds of R’dale with soup, getting astonishingly lost for, like, half an hour within a mile of the place we were going to. Classic Boston adventure. I’d intended to drop off soup and friend, but ended up staying and chatting and laughing with folk in a room painted a pleasing shade of orange.

Last night I dreamt of having a good, loving and kind and familiar conversation with someone I don’t talk to much these days. Waking up to reality is a bitch sometimes.

But it could be worse than a sunny day, ice cream for breakfast (because what’s better when you burned your tongue on hot chicken soup yesterday?), and a small black cat curled up beside me.

The last couple of weeks have been, let’s say, challenging. My experiences during this time have spanned from some of the worst of my life to great.

The worst was bad, a fast and furious storm. But I have amazing friends, and the good thing about hitting bottom is that everything after is going up, and I feel stronger and more balanced now, and that’s as much as I’ll be dwelling here on the worst, which is now past.

The good! There’s much more of the good. I have a floor, for one, and soon I’ll have molding around it. The bedroom is transformed by the lighter walking surface; even today’s grayness is not as oppressive as it would have been two weeks ago. I’m making fast friends with some [more] foodies, which has already resulted in delicious meals. (Oh, I’ve been eating better, have I mentioned? And cooking. There’s a joy rediscovered.) Reading, too: am only a few chapters into John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things, but can already heartily recommend it if you’re into magic realism.

This weekend an important memorial event will take place in my larger community. I’ve gotten more involved with it than I’d anticipated, given that the person remembered was not someone I knew at all well. But it’s community, and I’ve been meeting great people, and most importantly I get to organize the food. And, well, you know how I feel about that. It’ll be good for the soul.

Life’s swinging pendulum aside, right at the moment I feel good, centered, purposeful. And powerful. This may have something to do with having started my day with a dear friend, delicious coffee and weight training. Who knew weight training could be this much fun? Now to stick with it: I’d forgotten how radically working out changes my internal state for the better.

This weekend I’ll be giving away a lot of my stuff. (Are you local, and did I fail to send you an invite? Comment on Words’ End or email me.) This includes six bookshelves’ worth of books, and other miscellany besides. I feel lighter [on my feet] already, an unusual sensation in this season of weighty skies.

…is a treasured rarity. After a three-hour (or so) conversation over food and drinks and even dessert, I came home with a light shining somewhere near my solar plexus. Excuse me while I go savor the feeling of a good-people day. (Or is it a good people-day?)

Snow tends to stick to the skylight in the bedroom (which is one of only two windows in the room), cutting back on available light quite a bit. On the other hand, turning up the desklamp’s gooseneck so that it shines at the skylight, a trick I often use in general, makes light reflect brighter. Which is especially useful towards the evening. Score!

Coming back from the T after lunch with a loving friend, I walked through that magical moment where each branch of every tree is covered with fluffy snow. The trees are starkly black and white. Soon the snow will settle and weigh itself down from the branches. Fleeting moments like this are good reminders of the value of daily mindfulness.

Cures for what ails ya (or me, anyway, specifically today, more specifically when the ailment is wintertime depression and life’s turbulence):

Long walk with a good friend, conversation, laughter and groceries. Ocean’s Thirteen. Making a good-hearted effort to connect with someone, even if it brings no result. Getting things out of the house that need to be got out of the house. Reading fluffy sci-fi. Napping with the cats.

Mental and emotional clutter: successfully reduced. Though at a price, as it’s 3:30am, and I get up in five hours to go listen to a lovely Tibetan man tell me about meditation and related practices. On the other hand, there’s nothing quite like the delight of middle-of-the-night quiet. As quiet as we get around here, anyway, what with Nochka tearing around the room in feline ecstasy (this is one of her three or four usual states). Aki watches her indulgently – such behavior is beneath him except when it’s not – and bats her away when she gets too close.

Yesterday I took down one of the shelving units in the bedroom. There’s a great book purge going on (good excuse to host a party sometime soon!), and the shelving units are stacked two high, and this one was blocking the radiator. Its lower half is still blocking the radiator, but I’ve discovered that corner – the farthest corner from my bedside vantage point – is where the sunlight lands when it enters through the slanted skylight.

In the old country we called these sun bunnies. They move around the room, and if they’re made by something in motion – the face plate of a watch, or the little crystal hanging in my skylight and throwing rainbows onto the walls – they move quick like bunnies. This almost never fails to brighten my mood; if nothing else, it means that the outside world is full of inviting sunlight. After yesterday’s downpoury drear, a clear shiny day is particularly welcome.

Today I will wear a dress, and stripey tights, and take a walk, and sing. What’s with the spring-like weather, anyway? Does this mean we get winter until May? And yet, New England has me by the heart.

This afternoon the sun was shinin’ like there’s no tomorrow. Barely out of the door on my way to the only open nearby coffee shop, a car pulling out of the neighboring driveway blocked my path so that an elderly couple could get in. I didn’t feel like climbing over the melting snowbanks to both sides of the walk, so stopped and waited. The old lady looked at me with a slightly apprehensive smile and said, “We’re going to delay you for a while here.” I assured her that it was ok, and looked around at all the gleaming-clean houses.

They took their time with the complicated affair of one getting into the front seat, the other in the back, unable to do so simultaneously because of strange car-door geometry. “Merry Christmas,” the car people called out. “And to you,” I said, and meant it. I don’t like Christmas, but I liked the old lady and her partner with their slow ways and their festive sincerity.

I walked to the coffee shop wondering about what Christmas might mean to those people. Davis Square was ghostly-empty and, if not for the cold and the snow and the barren trees, if you only looked at the light and the buildings, felt like deep spring. Everything bathed in light.

Then there was a pumpkin spice latte by the dancing fire in the gas fireplace, and a book. By the time I came outside again an hour and a half later, clouds had moved in and the light was whiter, less expansive.

Then out again in the twilight, and the blue houses stood out among those of all the other colors. There are at least half a dozen blue ones between my place and Davis Square, and they’re all different glorious colors. If the house I live in weren’t a pleasing shade of purple, I’d be jealous of all those blues. As it stands, I get to look at them in the changing light of the sun.

Coming back home, it was dark enough that the strings of tiny lights on our porch were already lit. Whenever I open the front door in the dark, I feel like I’m entering the secret center of some deep-playa Burning Man installation. And speaking of Burning Man, if you haven’t yet, do check out Neil K. Guy’s photos from this year’s event. He is easily one of my two favorite BM photographers, the other being Bucky Sparkle.

Dinner of tiny quiches and raspberry vodka. Conversation with beautiful women. Cats sleeping on me for hours as I do my thinking and writing. The blissed-out quiet of a house large enough to make it seem like we’re all impossibly far away from each other. Aaand an 8:30am interview tomorrow morning. Nothing like job search to bring a girl firmly back onto the ground.

Winter solstice is come and gone, and yesterday was a minute longer than the day before. Not a moment too soon. Events conspired to make this the sucker-punch winter, and lack of light hasn’t been helping any. –.– I love Boston for its seasons, not least because it reminds me that everything has a limit. The night is on its way out; it too will pass. Things I want to spend most of my time on – home, work, food and other arts, my Buddhist studies, hopefully further research on Roland – will settle, become more defined. Upheaval will give way to silent blue and yellow sunrise again and again. Rain droplets on my window don’t occlude the life-giving star, about the only thing I worship steadfastly these days. –.– It’s so quiet in the early morning. Just the rain falling. Or maybe the rain’s in my head.

I must be the last kid on the block to find Holy Tango of Literature by Francis Heaney, available in its entirety at the linked site. Brilliantly executed, authors’ names anagrammed and used as titles for pieces parodying original works. (For example, the title of this post is a line from “Is a Sperm Like a Whale?” by William Shakespeare.)

Not only is this good reading, it’s a good metaphor for my days, which of late have been spent rearranging the insides of my head and heart for a healthier, happier result. It’s mostly working, all things considered. But (and?) it’s a process far from finished.