Just some stuff I've been thinking about

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“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.”
— Jonathan Safran Foer

I read that quote last week and it said exactly what I've been feeling. I'm struggling with it a little.

Sometimes I think I must feel more than most people. Maybe I'm very soft and fleshy on the inside or something. Perhaps the inside of me is cavernous- with an enormous capacity to love. Either way, I just want more. I feel greedy for life, and it makes me feel different. Last week, in a deep conversation with my brother, he kindly pointed out the difference between he and I by saying I was "dreamy" (in a "you've-got-your-head-in-the-clouds" sort of way). He knows me well. 

I abhor complacency. I'm not interested in run-of-the-mill. Monotony feels like a slow and painful death.

I want to ski on all of the sunny winter days, I want to have a picnic in a different place every Sunday. I want to write a book(s) about birth, and ballet, and the different ways to cook an egg. I want photograph all of the damp green places in Ireland. I want to marvel at every sunset, every snowflake, every kiss, every exhale!  

And yet... I am here. I am in my life. There are dishes to be done, noses to wipe, relationships to work on, groceries to be bought, and Mondays every week.

 I feel thankful, I do. But I also feel my bones strain. 

I haven't reconciled this divide yet. I know there has to be a balance between the magnificent and the mundane. Still searching...

I'll share more as I discover it along the way.

baking as therapy

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Sometimes, a lot of times, I need to bake.

I need beautiful, simple ingredients...

I need to be able to add them together, one after the next ...

I need to mix them up... 

and I need to have it all turn into what it is supposed to be-- something that I want it to be...

something good.

Yep. Sometimes I just need to bake.

Be there

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Does it ever happen to you? Do you ever catch yourself? Do you ever suddenly become aware that you are standing, breathing, absorbing, loving, and living in a moment that will be imprinted on your memory forever?

Sometimes it's just the way the blinding reflection of the sun on the river warms your cold winter cheeks.

Or the way the bread and the butter and the honey melt.  Together.

Or the way the mud gathers water under the weight of your boot, and breeze carries a scent that is green and hopeful.

Or maybe it's the way the morning sky appears early, blending and arranging colors unseen by you before.

It's not always the big stuff. It is the sum total of how you feel as you drive away, the way the clock ticks as you think deep, the swirling of the cream in your coffee as you stir, the sound of your voice when you say something new... and you ask yourself "How can I remember it all?" and you ask yourself, "How could I ever forget this?" All of it. It all adds up to a life lived fully awake.

Be there.