Thrift store, angels cards, and seeing myself

Browsing through the books at the thrift store, I overhead an elderly couple while they were looking at knick-knacks. "How cute, look at this," she said, excitement in her voice. I turned from the books to look at a nearby table that held various items. I stole a look to see what the woman had found. "I'm going to get these."

"What are they?," her elderly companion asked. He peered down through his thick square glasses. "Why, there salt and pepper shakers. How much are these?" She turned one shaker, then tilted it upside down to find the price. She gave a laugh, "Only 99 cents!" 

I saw that these salt and pepper shakers were small. One was light blue and the other a  rosy pink. I couldn't tell what the shapes were, but I thought I heard the woman say Casper the Ghost. I continued looking through a little basket of cards and my eyes spotted a package of blank note cards. Four plump angel babies against a backdrop of sky with wispy clouds. One angel is drinking from what looks to be a golden horn, while the others fly through the air with great joy on their fleshy faces.

The face of the notecard also has six lovely sayings about angels. I felt uplifted at reading each one.

I was ready to checkout with two books and the angel notecards. Then I saw a pair of pants and while I was looking at them, I heard the woman say to her companion "Oh! Look at this!" 

"Try it on." Her companion was supportive and kind, his voice on the low end compared to her exuberance. 

She held the blouse up to her body and looked down. "This is too gaudy."

"Oh, it's just fine. It would look nice on you."

She begins noticing other little things and I am touched by her joy–humbled and inspired by this woman who could be in her late seventies to early eighties. I am drawn in to her energy and I can't help but smile. Her joy reaches me and fills me, and I realize I feel as though I am looking in a mirror; I am seeing my life flash before me.

When I get home, later that evening, I tell my significant other about my experience. I tell him that it was just like watching myself and that her companion was like him in that he was there by her side–then I hesitate and say, "Well, he may have been a bit more supportive." And we both laugh because we know...because sometimes I notice things too much and vocalize my excitement and it can tend to overload him. 

Older folks hold a special place in my heart and this moment was a gift to me and lighted my day just as the angel cards did.

"Angels are bright lights in the midst of our lives.

Nothing is hidden and everything is seen by angels.

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

Angels shine their light on us so that we may see more clearly.

Beautiful visions for the world are dreamt by angels."

Journal - Lost and Found

I have several journals that I write in, including the Notes App on both my iPod Touch and iPad. I was in search of a journal entry that I wrote within the last couple of weeks. I can't find it anywhere and wonder if I imagined writing the piece I seek–or if I wrote it in my head and it never made it to the page. That's what I fear about having so many journals, that something will get lost. It's not a fear, really...it's just that I feel like even when I write little bits, if I don't do something with them sooner rather than later, they get lost, maybe never get found.

I feel that my whole life has been a process of being lost and found and there were times when the waters seemed clearer. I'm a child at heart, but sometimes I wonder if I've a bit of the Peter Pan syndrome in my bones. Sometimes I feel as though I've gone through life backwards, not so much gone through as much as my mind and my ability to accept responsibility has gone backwards. When I was a young girl, I seemed mature to people for my age. I remember having philosophical conversations with my older brother at the kitchen table in my early twenties. I was always filled with questions and would try them out on customers when I worked in a burger joint. I was attracted to older men who had experienced life, who had something to share, who were deep thinkers. I always preferred to listen in on the boy's conversations during high-school. I was never much of a small talker. I'm still not, but I appreciate the usefulness of it now–the humanness of it. 

Lost and found...I've been churning these words around in my head over the past few weeks. One day during a working team meeting, we were talking about something and it led me to share a few odd jobs that I had, and I said to them that it seems my life is a process of elimination. As I sat with those words–I thought how true on so many levels.

When I was a young girl, all I wanted to do was work. I wanted a job so bad when I was ten. I put beads on wire and displayed them on a poster board and tried to sell my jewels to my grandparents. When my brother would take me to the movie rental store, I begged to have a job there. I don't know what it was in me that wanted a job so badly. 

Now, I don't necessarily have those same feelings. I don't mind working. I enjoy a good productive day, but I sense in myself over the past ten years that something shifted inside of me, and that to a certain degree, I do not like responsibility. I would rather have my head in the clouds, enjoying life, and to a degree I feel that I've been able to do that in the simplest of ways. But of course, there are always small things that bring us to reality, rent increases, uncertainty of our jobs, uncertainty of anything and taking the setbacks as they come. 

I've done enough self-analysis over the years and it gets exhausting. I feel that I've done some good work and I still have work to do. I have issues that I still deal with that I have the opportunity to develop. There will always be growth and learning and that is wonderful. 

Right now, I am writing in real time. Another decade is fast approaching for me. I will have been on this gracious earth for four decades. I'm a quiet celebrator, preferring to go quietly into the new dawn. This one feels more real because in another decade and a little over a half I will be the age when my mother passed on. In another three years I will be the age she was when she had me, after already having two sons that were twenty years of age. In some ways, I gage my time on this earth against her clock–or rather when her clock stopped, yet I know that anything can happen in between that time and possibly afterward. I must be honest. I have no desire to live into my 90s or even my 80s. I know my body will not hold up.

This is beginning to sound depressing and it's not meant to. Another thing that I realized over the past couple of days is that I am truly happy. I love life. I love the earth, the little gifts in nature. I am a child of nature. I belong to the moon and the sun and stars, the flowers, the dirt, to the rain–and I will return one day. But what I realized is that I will always have this something inside of me, a certain small little piece of melancholy that lives inside of me, that allows me to feel as I do, allows me to cherish every single moment of my life and allows me to feel everything to my core, allows me to feel the sadness, but to especially feel the happiness and the goodness that this world offers with open arms.

Sometimes I fall, but I always pick myself up. And sometimes when I need it most, there is a sparrow that flies down and tweets, catching my eye until I can't but smile. Or a crow flies overhead, making me crane my neck and soaking him in. Always, these natural beauties make me feel alive and real and like I matter. 

Chocolate Sin

Almond Joy, a Hershey bar with nuts, a See's Candy walnut square–these are a few of my favorite chocolates. I don't have a sweet tooth. Salty foods are my weakness and most of the time I prefer my palate to be finished not with a sweet but with a salt or vinegar note.

Now there is an exception.

Two year's ago for my birthday dinner, my signifiant other and I went to an Italian restaurant. When we were done with our meal, we studied the desert menu. He loves chocolate and we saw the perfect dessert: Chocolate Sin. It sounded divine. my mouth began to water reading the description aloud, so that we could both hear and relish in what was to come. 

We went back to this restaurant for a second time, this time, we had already had dinner and were craving Chocolate Sin, so we asked if it would be alright if we just ordered dessert and a couple of drinks. This time we were actually celebrating my significant other's birthday. The gentlemen who brought us the dessert also brought the check and asked the occasion and then said, "well, you shoudda told me." He picked up the check and took it with him. "I'll be right back." We looked at each other and finished the last of our cocktails. He set the check down and bid us a good night. We looked. He had taken the dessert off the bill. "That was nice of him. We can add it to his tip." 

Then came Valentine's Day and I wanted to prepare dinner at home and also prepare a dessert. But then at the last minute, I decided I wasn't going to make dessert, even though I had found a recipe for what sounded a possible match for the Chocolate Sin. My dear signifiant other, when he came home for dinner, had gone to the restaurant to bring us home that dessert for which we fell in love. Surprisingly, it was not on the menu that evening, so he had brought something else. 

So since this past Valentine's Day, I have been waiting for the right moment to prepare the recipe I found online. The description on the menu was that it was a flour less chocolate cake served warm, with strawberries and a small dab of vanilla ice cream. 

Really, I don't know why I procrastinated. Maybe it was the amount of butter. Maybe it was all the chocolate. Maybe it was going to be too sinful!

This past weekend I told my significant other that I was just about ready to make the cake. He was eager for me to follow through. I also finished the book by Joanne Harris that was made into the movie: Chocolat. And that is what brought Chocolate Sin back to the forefront of my mind. I devoured the book, setting aside the other books I've been nibbling away at, and read it in a couple of days. I want to see the movie again. But the way Harris writes is so sumptuous and the story and characters are so real–and there is sin (according to the priest); oh yes, there is sin!. And the irony of it all.

And so, here is the link to the recipe for what I will always think of as Chocolate Sin and I will gladly enjoy every bit of it.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Flourless-Chocolate-Cake-14478

It turned out just as I was hoping. Served warm and just as good cold. 

The warm, thick, yet airy chocolate, melting in your mouth, then a small spoon of vanilla to compliment and balance the rich chocolate goodness, followed by a strawberry to clean the palate; pause to take in the deliciousness–warmth, coolness, creaminess, freshness–and then start all over, bite by bite, savoring each morsel. Heavenly!   

I read through some of the reviewer's tips and hints first and followed a few.

This is the easiest dessert recipe I have ever made. I decided to make it really easy and did not use the double boiler method to melt the chocolate. Instead, as a reviewer did, I placed the butter and chocolate in the pan directly. I have a nice set of teflon coated pans and didn't have any sticking problems. I used a 4 oz. bar of semi-sweet Ghiradelli chocolate. I didn't have a 8 inch round pan, but remembered that I had an 8 inch square pan and used that. I took the cake out of oven about 3 minutes shy of the 25. I didn't sprinkle extra coco on the cake. I prefer it plain and served as described above.

Simple

delicious

warm– 

chocolate goodness!

Moody Day/Moody Moment: A Day in May carries over to June

Sitting at Wendy's, staring out the window. Class will be in two hours. Conversations start and stop.

Two times this week I drove past where I wanted to go because I was in my thoughts so deeply. In one case, I had to keep going and go around the block. In the other case, I had to turn into another street and back track. Both times, I was headed to a fast food joint. It's not like me to be so out of it.

Today feels like a mentally hazy day. The weather's in between–wanting to be hot and cold and that's how I feel at the moment: in between–in some sort of limbo, trying to stay focused, in the now, but being pulled toward: what could be and when.

I keep looking up, aimlessly placing pieces of food into my mouth, staring out the window, cars driving somewhere, always cars, people trying to get somewhere. Where? Why? How? When? It seems that we spend so much time going back and forth, back and forth like water lapping on the shore. So many people have a clear direction, a clear purpose and can actualize that; others of us are in some sort of spinning inner tube, a little less direction, hoping the tube keeps afloat and...well...

**

And today is today; so far a good morning, a new day, yet with remnants of that May day. But that's alright, it keeps me thinking, keeps me moving forward, keeps me wondering, and exploring.

Little Somethings

birch trees

stand like white ghosts

their leaves sway

whispering secrets to the wind

&

A little brown bird swoops in, pecks daintily at the earth, scratching his feathers, not minding my presence one bit.

&

A crow off in the distance staring into the grass, looking for some treat.

The trees continue their conversation with the wind.

The crow swaggers along the path to a different patch of grass. His beautiful, black body holds my gaze, he shimmers in the sun's light, as the image melds–the breeze, the grass, the little bird, the stranger who has joined me on this bench. We sit in silence.

the silence breaks by the caw-caw of the crow; 

he flies to his tree, 

sounds his siren again, 

echoes ripple back;

the scent of dry earth and bark perfume the air–

caught by the breeze.   

hummingbird

hummingbird zooms in

drinks nectar–

all thoughts vanish

Life and Death ~ Symbols and Signs

I never imagined that I would part with my desk, but then again I hadn't anticipated that there would be two of us living here at the time. It happened so quickly. It was a sign–a sign that I had been asking for, a sign that I was ready for love after having lost...I was prepared to live a solo life; then one day something shifted within my very being and I sat with myself and I spoke to my late beloved and I asked him for guidance–and the signs–they came. 

One day, I decided that I was ready for love, that I was open to the possibilities and I set my intentions, I kissed it to the wind, didn't brood on it, only let nature take her course. And I feel blessed, blessed to have gotten through the grief, to have a strong spiritual foundation and strong connection to nature, held together by something beyond myself, yet very much within my reach. Everything that I had ever come to believe in life–everything that I had become was put to the test. Losing a mother at a young age, then my grandmother, grandfather, two uncles. The most confusing and shattering to my very being–that tested me to the very core was of losing my late beloved to a sudden and unexpected death. 

But, I got through it. His death brought me closer to myself, life was held up to me, offered in the palm of my hand, and pushed me to do a few things that I may not have had I not seen the fragility that life is and how moments must be seized.

It's not something that I talk about very much, of course, and when I started writing on this page this morning, it was about the desk, and somehow he slipped into the page. I'm not sure what it is about the day; perhaps it's the grey clouds–the contemplative rustle of the breeze against a primed sky, ready for anything–for any thoughts to reveal themselves. 

I wasn't using the desk. It was becoming a clutter magnet and so one day I stood there looking at my options, what could I reshuffle that I hadn't already reshuffled? The only option I had never considered was parting with the desk. It was the constant. It was supposed to be my writing desk, but in the years we've lived here together in this cozy apartment, I can count on my two hands how many times I've sat at that desk to write. I need my own space when I write, and that tends to be in the living room, so I make do. Sometimes I sit on the couch, but I seem to do most of my writing on the low coffee table. I prop myself up on a pillow, lean back into the couch and write away. I've been sticking to my paper journals lately and have not been doing much computer writing.

Death is a strange creature. The very word, death, seems to conjure negative images and feelings, but as far back as I can remember, I have dedicated a small portion of my life to befriending death, of welcoming him into my life, of learning what I can of him–death in its many guises. Death not only of human flesh and beingness; death as parting of something or someone, death from the past–parting with anything that has such a hold on you that it makes you sick to think of what it would be like without it.

My older brother used to cause me great stress in my twenties when he would tell me how he wouldn't know what he would do if anything ever happened to me. "Move on. Live life." That is what I would tell him now, but back then I just told him that he would be fine and that we can't dwell on these things. And now I'm thinking, if we do dwell on these things, it's best if it's in a positive light. It's best if we ask ourselves how can we live life, so that death, whenever it/he/she arrives is greeted in peace.

I've always had a fascination with death, not in a macabre way, rather as a way of life. With life comes death and sometimes death is life. 

The desk is gone. I miss what it symbolized, but in its place we have moved the chest of drawers and it brings the needed order and balance that was lacking in our bedroom. Since then, over the past few weeks, we have let a few other pieces go and have found new ones–again bringing harmony to our little abode. I still have a bit of work to do, to work through some more of the clutter, but it feels as though, it's coming together and I feel that the first step was imagining the space without a desk, without an object that I so identified–that represented a part of who I am. 

I realize though, that what that desk represented is within me and that it can manifest wherever I am. I carry the symbols and the signs within me.