“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim
or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’”
—Kurt Vonnegut
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| Image courtesy Always Well Within |
Guess what I’m doing today? I’m having a Field Trip Friday
with my partner in adventure, Laure Ferlita. Come back to this here space next week for photos and details.
In the meantime, I leave you with the thirteenth edition of
Link Love. I hope you find the following collection of Internet goodies as
interesting as I did:
This article, “7 Cultural Concepts We Don’t Have in the
U.S.,” intrigued me. I enjoy learning about what other cultures value.
Personally, I’m a fan of gemütlichkeit, and I wrote about wabi-sabi
here, and kaizen here.
One thing U.S. culture does have is an obsession with
personal appearance. As I get older, I’m becoming more interested in what’s on
the inside rather than the outside (which, let’s be frank, is not what it once
was and won’t be ever again). This article helped: “Aging With Grace: Myth or Reality?”
I often include posts from Dani DiPirro’s blog, Positively
Present, in Link Love, and for good reason. She’s always got something
interesting to say. In this post, she
writes: “Happiness in the general sense is what many people strive for, but
what they should be striving for instead is to cultivate a positive mindset
that will lead to more happy moments. Creating a positive mindset involves a
lifestyle change and a complete shift in how you see the world…. Happy moments,
on the other hand, can be created with small acts.”
I identify with many of Austin Kleon’s “33 Thoughts on Reading.” Especially numbers one, eight, 16 (sigh) and 18.
I especially like the first suggestion listed in “9 Mostly Free Ways to Spark Creativity and Fun.”
Some stories seem simple but pack a huge punch. Click here
to read “10 Lessons From the Story of the Mexican Fisherman.”
What would constitute a perfect day for you? This video, by
Brenden Burchard, discusses “How to Design the Perfect Day.”
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| Photo courtesy David Mao |
Introduction by Ted Kooser: I don’t think I’ve ever
sold anything that, later, I didn’t wish I had back, and I have a list of
regrets as long as my arm. So this poem by Melissa Balmain really caught my
attention. Balmain lives in New York State, and her most recent book is Walking
in on People, from Able Muse Press.
Love Poem
The afternoon we left our first apartment,
we scrubbed it down from ceiling to parquet.
Who knew the place could smell like lemon muffins?
It suddenly seemed nuts to move away.
The morning someone bought our station wagon,
it gleamed with wax and every piston purred.
That car looked like a centerfold in Hot Rod!
Too late, we saw that selling was absurd.
And then there was the freshly tuned piano
we passed along to neighbors with a wince.
We told ourselves we’d find one even better;
instead we’ve missed its timbre ever since.
So if, God help us, we are ever tempted
to ditch our marriage when it’s lost its glow,
let’s give the thing our finest spit and polish—
and, having learned our lesson, not let go.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2014 by Melissa Balmain, “Love Poem,” from Walking in on People, (Able Muse Press, 2014). Poem reprinted by permission of Melissa Balmain and Able Muse Press. Introduction copyright ©2015 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Today we are having all our carpets cleaned. This means the
whole house is torn apart, the animals are disturbed, it’s noisy, and my usual
Monday routine has been upended. That’s the bad news.
The good news is: our carpets will look like new and I will
feel like I got something major accomplished from my to do list (never mind
that I’m not doing the actual cleaning).
I feel untethered—without my usual Monday activities
performed in their usual order. Sometimes, untethered is good. Sometimes I
narrow my vision too much, and become inflexible. Routines can become so
ingrained that I lose all my creativity and joy in the doing.
I don’t want to throw all my routines to the wind, but maybe,
just for today, I will. Maybe today I’ll binge read Janice MacLeod-Lik’s blog.
Maybe today I’ll write a poem. Maybe today I’ll lounge around and finish
reading Rex Stout’s Death of a Doxy. Maybe I won’t do one more blessed
thing that could be considered productive.
After all, the carpets are clean… Isn’t that enough?
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| This is NOT what my office looks like right now... |
It poured last night, so I expected the air to be soupy this
morning, but it’s surprisingly cool and fresh. As I walk, hear birds chirping,
see cardinals, a catbird, and a blue jay flitting about. I also see a hawk
glide silently to a perch high in tree.
Since I’m alone and not walking for exercise (i.e., fast), I
notice things I frequently miss: the way the traffic along the main road near
us hums almost harmoniously; the large shell ginger plants outside someone’s
backyard, heavy with flowers; star jasmine scenting my own backyard. I see
places where wild hogs have rooted through the woods looking for food. When I
look up, I see spring green leaves forming a canopy over the path. Simple
pleasures usually lost in the hurry of daily living.
I’m lucky enough to have a quiet, safe place to walk right
in my community—I can walk right out my back gate onto a paved trail. I usually
take it for granted. Even worse, when I do use it, I almost always only use it
for exercise—making the loop as quickly as I can instead of taking it slowly, exploring,
noticing. As part of my focus on delight this year, I plan to take more
of these short, rambling walks. At least until the heat and humidity make it
impossible to enjoy. I know that day is coming, and soon, but until then, I’ll
indulge in a few more relaxed morning walks. Who knows what I might discover?
