Sensory Delights on New Year's Day

Treasuring the Early Moments of 2013

Delights of the Senses on New Year’s Day

Making a Conscious Choice to Pay Attention

Moments to savor the awakening of the senses on New Year’s Day 2013:

Mint flavoring the air when the weed whacker hit the edge of the herb garden after nicking the wayward mint leaves struggling to break free of the boundaries of the bed. Cilantro piquing the olfactory nerves when that same weed whacker hits the other edge where the cilantro also has stretched free of its boundaries.

Spying a ladybug busy, ever-busy as they are, feasting on aphids and others that to me might signal blight, but bring her simple delight.

Being blessed by the beauty of an eggplant blossom. Anticipating the marvelous veggie to come.

Marble-rolling and Lego house-building with a child. Oh, the joy of crafting a sofa for three Lego people!

Collard greens cooked by a real Southerner, born in Georgia, rich with ham hocks, meat grease, and generous portions of the wild hog that also accompanied the meal. Corn bread, fresh from the oven, sweet, warm, and slathered with butter.

Snuggling and reading bedtime stories at day’s end: The Napping House, No Roses for Harry, and The Man Who Didn’t Wash His Dishes.

Rich, abundant joys of a full, blessed day.

Dancing with Love in the New Year

Love Like You Have Been Hurt

Dance Like Nobody’s Watchin’, but

Don’t Love Like You’’ll Never Get Hurt

Making a Conscious Choice About Love

“You got to sing like you don’t need the money

Love like you’ll never get hurt

You got to dance like nobody’s watchin’

It’s gotta come from the heart”

                                            From “Come from the Heart”

                                            by Richard Leigh and Susanna Clark

Dance like nobody’s watchin’? Oh yeah. Love like you’ll never get hurt? Not in a heartbeat. Or, as the French would say, “Au contraire.” It’s less than wise to approach love and loving like you never have been or never will be hurt. Loving with a sense of freedom, abandon, and a full heart—unconditional love—is a fine emotion. However, it’s a mistake to forget about that love that wasn’t quite right or was foolish, even dangerous. Disregarding such experiences and opening once again to love like you’ll never get hurt or never were hurt is not the best path. Doing so means your former hurt produced no knowledge, no realizations, that hearts broken, emotions tested, and even lives lost were in vain.

To love like you’ll never get hurt or like you’ve never been hurt means that the next time you hear that small voice, you ignore it. That’s the voice that speaks with wisdom and experience, the one that tried to steer you away in the past, saying, “No, not this one. Don’t let your heart go there.”

Loving like you’ll never get hurt means you continue to defy that voice and deafly, deftly, say, “Yes, this one.” It means any pain you ever felt following that defiance was for naught. Loving like you’ll never get hurt or you’ve never been hurt means that after the brokenness, you forget the voice that spoke your own inner wisdom.

I believe we ignore that hurt at our peril and invite yet more hurt into our lives. The better way, the wiser way, if you’ve loved and been hurt (and haven’t most of us?) is to use that experience. Go ahead and love, but love like you have been hurt. Love like you have been hurt, but don’t view love with fear. Love like you value love enough to listen to the voice of wisdom and experience.

The wounded heart, rightly so, realizes the cost of pain; yet when choosing a wiser path, the healed heart doesn’t close up or close off. Instead, it opens with tenderness and simple gentle care to caress what is most dear about life—love. Loving like you have been hurt means you realize just how precious is this thing we call love. Love like you have been hurt and you will know when the love you choose is the right love.

Where Words Have Been, Where Words Will Go

Looking Backward, Writing Forward

Writer’s block is not the problem. What I have is better defined as writer’s pause. Visions of stories dance in my head and notes, ideas, sit etched on scraps of paper scattered on desktop and writing table and on to-write lists.

My writing soul seems to have slipped into the calendar and is suspended between the old—2012—and the approaching new—2013. At this late date in December, my pen, like my psyche, looks back, but at the same time peers forward, and hesitates.

My pen, my paper, my thoughts, and I pause and reflect, yet also project. I sense where my words have been in calendar days and moments gone by and wonder which path my words will write in the days of the year to come.

Rolling—and Rolling and Rolling and Rolling in the Deep

“Rolling in the Deep”

And Rolling and Rolling and Rolling

Dancing with Abandon

Living Without Abandonment

From 21 by Adele

“The scars of your love, remind you of us.

They keep me thinking that we almost had it all

The scars of your love, they leave me breathless

I can't help feeling

We could have had it all

Rolling in the deep

You had my heart inside your hand

And you played it

To the beat.”

I danced riotously, joyfully, without limits, having no fear of anyone watching. Rocking out. Another person was present, but enveloped in the emotion of her own dance, she wasn’t watching, and I continued my own.

“We could have had it all. . . .” At the song’s end, she added a name, a single name of the person who had her heart inside [his] hand . . . .” I, too, sang a name aloud, but didn’t stop at one, and added at least a few more, going back to ____, who “played my heart to the beat” when I was 16.

Failed love—a failed relationship—left singer Adele at age 21 rolling in the deep. Here I am at 60, looking back and seeing how I placed my heart inside too many hands, the wrong hands, and rolled in the deep far too many times.

“We could have had it all

Rolling in the deep

You had my heart inside your hand

But you played it,

You played it,

You played it

You played it to the beat.”

I stopped that roll ten years ago and said, “I’ll take my heart out of your hand, thank you very much,” and started my own roll away from that deep, dark place of another failed marriage, another heart played to the beat.

Hearing, feeling, Adele’s words awakened that anguish from years ago, and it was re-felt, re-experienced. Voicing those names also made me pause and led me to question why I gave my heart so often to those who “played it to the beat.”

In answer, I realize that it’s a mistake to give one’s heart over to another and allow it to be “played to the beat.” From this vantage point, scanning the horizon of the past, I know it’s an error to give one’s heart over. A wiser course is to open one’s heart; and rather than let someone else “play it to the beat,” the more heartfelt path is to find someone with whom one can listen to the beat, and sing together, rather than make separate songs.

Adele’s 21 CD can be found at Amazon.com, where you also can listen to part of “Rolling in the Deep.”

http://www.amazon.com/21-Adele/dp/B004EBT5CU/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1356525955&sr=1-1&keywords=21

Cold Comfort in Central Florida

Cold Comfort—

Seeking Warmth on a Rare Cold Day in Florida

Ice-crusted windshields are rare in Vero Beach, Florida, even on December 23. Winter’s icy grip holds fast in this part of the country for only a few days. Sunshine beaming from these southern skies then warms the earth, melting the frost and beckoning our return to the green outdoors.

An abundance of meteorological data means we Central and Southern Floridians are warned in advance of the cold air’s reach from northern climes. Thus advised, we prepare to warm ourselves.

As part of that preparation, I brought the down comforter from the garage and placed it on my bed yesterday. Stepping from beneath its feathered layers early this morning, the chill in the house stunned me awake. At 61, the thermostat announced that it was far too cold inside for these Florida bones. On went the heat, and I tapped the up arrow higher, to a reasonable 72.

Ice on the car was no surprise at 5:30 when I walked the dogs. I was grateful for my wool overcoat, which I buttoned up after retrieving it from its dusty closet perch.

Once back inside, cocoa-enhanced coffee accompanied me on my journey toward warmth.

As the sun rose, shooting swaths of pink against the blue skies, I had heat and warmth and light—cold comfort, indeed.

Ready for the Raptor?

Getting Ready for the Raptor

Not to Be Confused with

The Rapture

Raptor, rapture, they sound close enough, and I imagine more than a few folks would feel the rapture coming on should they face a real-life Jurassic Park experience. However, I’m neither a Biblical scholar nor a paleontologist, so I make no attempt to explore the important distinctions between the two, although meeting either probably results in the same gruesome conclusion.

So what is this raptor for which I ready my home? The raptor arrives in its splendid finery about this time each year and perches in a prominent place on my property.

It goes here, but months of Florida rain and semi-tropical growth have taken over the space.

The gardener has been busy editing and writing.

After only 45 minutes of serious trimming and cutting, the raptor’s reception area is ready and waiting.

Ah... space for growth and my raptor buddy.

I did get a little carried away, but cutting and clearing are so satisfying. And everything grows back so strong and healthy. I decided to keep the Zombie Hunting Permit in the front window. Things have calmed down in Miami over the last several months, but you never know what might head north on I-95.

I wonder if I can take out a rogue raptor if necessary.

The Raptor makes its annual appearance in a day or so. Stay tuned.

Correcting My Reading List

Closing the Book on

The Corrections

No More Turning the Page

“You will laugh, wince, groan, weep . . . ” so begins the cover blurb on The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. I’ve reached page 203, and I haven’t cracked a smile. Wincing and groaning I have done. Page 566 marks the book’s end, but all I’ll see of it is the number. I’ve closed The Corrections a final time, leaving the characters to wallow in their self-serving, self-absorbed shallow existences in fiction land.

It’s not often that I put a book aside, pages left unread, people dangling in the Limbo of plots unfurled. But I don’t like The Corrections. The players and their petty concerns fail to resonate. I wondered, “Does this book get any better?” I read the reader reviews on Amazon.com. One critic likened the book to a movie you sit through to its end, “hoping” it gets better. But when the credits roll, you realize it didn’t and you wasted precious time in the dark, the odor of cheap buttered popcorn clogging your arteries from its sickly smell.

Reading time is precious time. At day’s end, my greatest pleasure is my chamomile tea and my book, both of which gently nudge me into dreamland.

The Corrections is no longer part of that routine. Unfinished it will stay. It’s now relegated to the books that go away, perhaps to Goodwill, perhaps to the paper recycling bin. Because my reading time is so treasured, I won’t waste another minute on those pages. It’s hard to step away from a book, but in this case, it’s the best choice—for me. I don’t like this book. I’m not compelled to finish it and obey some unwritten rule that I must “finish what I start.”

* * * * *

Have you ever stopped reading a book, putting it aside for whatever reason? Did you feel as if you had to finish it? What made you continue slogging through it? Was it worth the effort? These questions are ones I’ve asked myself in the past regarding books I've stopped reading. I’ve learned it’s much more satisfying to walk away rather than continue to “The End.”