Sitting at the Lake watching the moonbeams dance reflecting on the water, listening to guitar ballads, fireflies – the coolest insects ever – illuminating their lazy trajectory, with spartan distant fireworks and the blue-black night's canopy over the verdant slopes to the water, I revel in the sublime moments off the grid.
Roman candles across the lake, the subtle sizzle of the neighbor's grilled fragrant goodness wafting through the screen porch of the log cabin, hand hewn walls from the land on which they stand, I delight in how connected I am to it all when I disconnect from the cloud that's responsible for 90% of the items on my task list that I need the vacation from in the first place.
As the momentum for Art of Possibility has accelerated I'm again leaping outside my comfort zone and the holiday break has been a great chance to renew, restore and remember how damn much fun it all is. Anyone reading this, feel free at any time to remind me of the fun of it all. I get caught up in the doing and forget how deeply I love my life – all of it.
Tomorrow we pack up coolers, kids & dogs and drive on the two-lane ribbons through the corn fields, across the one-lane iron bridge, easing ourselves toward the Interstate that leads back to the airport, as we gently close the story of the 4th at the Lake and catalog its moments of delight, laughter, minor annoyance with a slathering of SPF 45, I'll take home a joyful collection of stories and snapshots of the spaces opened for sharing love.
I'm off to corn country shortly to enjoy friend and fellow artist Tamar Assaf's participation in The Fields Project. Tamar is Hebrew for fabulous and the selection of her work for this annual celebration of art and agriculture creates not just beauty but also an excuse for me to road trip (via commercial airline, naturally. I'm a lot closer to hip replacement than I am the hip college scene) to the Land of Lincoln where I shall eat tomatoes and corn from local farmers all day every day while talking about how good the food is, which is the way of my people. We are a people of Grammas offering seconds, of long, lazy discussions of string bean varieties (go, Kentucky Wonder, go!) and of watermelon slices so sweet you'll weep with the glory of the divine mystery that is summer eatin'. Art and agriculture belong together. The smell of grilling burgers and sunblock, the sweet nectar of a peach, sleeve-wiped and juicy fresh from the tree, the moments sublime and cuisine exquisite, will kick off hot fun in the summertime for me. See you there.
"The Call" usually comes with a lengthy Latin-based diagnosis, a medical mystery shrouded in grafted syllables of a dead language. Anyone who's done any amount of living has gotten "the Call" and has paused.
Work can wait. Errands will keep. Inhale. Listen. A nearby spring bird declaring its sole right to the elm. A distant motor accelerates and fades. The fabric of the draperies lets loose a gentle shimmy in recognition of the invisible force of the wind upon it. Email will be there later. It's not going anywhere. Inhale.
Elle's surgery is scheduled; what dates are we available for a pre-surgical party to give love? Calendars, usually the boss, can be cleared. We'll be there. Y'know, we have a guest room if Elle needs a recovery place; I work from home; I can be here; feeble, desperate bids for uniting against the C word - recurring at 46 - inhale.
I'm much more comfortable with my own mortality than I am the mortality of friends. It's a control thing I guess. I joke with my husband on lazy weeknights as we Tivo through commercials that he can just put me down like Old Yeller if I crumble.
The crumbling of others, though, digs deep into my gut, into that adolescent stick-girl obsessed with fairness, fists clenched, ready to show you all when she grows up. A call for justice, sunburned shoulders and scabbed elbows, lacking in life experience to see the big wheel, to know that fortunes ebb and flow.
Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty pass. I'll do the next thing, the next work of my workday. It matters. Being able to create a path for others to continue creating, that matters. Carefully formulating a way to connect the disconnected matters. Giving love through the difficulties matters.
Giving love matters.
Love matters.
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