| A Cottage by the Sea |
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 Observed on a truck parked in front of someone’s home today during my walk. I’m trying not to judge, so I won’t comment other than affirm the old adage that a picture’s worth a thousand words, and admit that this disrupts my sense of silence, solitude and simplicity.
We Scoop Pet Poop: Doody Calls.
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 What does it mean to live in a bubble? For me, it means living in the comfort zone that I have built (and have been privileged to be given) to protect myself from anything that doesn’t make me feel good, confident, comfortable and righteous. Those are pretty egocentric words, aren’t they? All under the all-about-me rubric.
Any day now the world situation might burst my bubble, and the more desperate I am to remain in that bubble, the more explosive and destructive the burst will be. So how about moving out of that bubble, or perhaps expanding it to include everyone? I just signed up to work at the Open Table, a soup kitchen in the area. This is a tiny shift, but a worthy one. The irony is that I know I’m going to love adding the soup kitchen to my bubble. What a lovely evening sail around Boston Harbor on the Liberty Clipper last night. Silence, solitude and simplicity was present during a recent visit to a friend’s home on Lake Winnipesaukee. In some ways I felt I was back at my cottage by the sea—coffee on the deck over looking the water, no news, a daily walk, and a clear meditative mind. And yet, there were beautiful differences—summer temperature, a lake, and companionship and conversation. Silence, solitude and simplicity comes in many forms, and can be renewed in many ways. Very grateful.  moya pringle Reflection on William Stafford’s poem,“The Way It Is.”
This tread that I’m trying to follow at a given moment isn’t just any thread. We can all weave ugly fabric using immoral threads. Stafford’s thread is pure, holy, good, soul-filled, something we’re all given, but how we follow it depends of myriad factors. Whatever our circumstance, we can never let go of the thread; but how we hold on, and how we weave, is up to us. People watch us and wonder what kind of a person we are by the way we weave our life; they look for our explanation. We want them to see love. There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can’t get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding. You don’t ever let go of the thread.  This morning’s Boston Globe, front page no less, featured an article about the new trend of “she sheds”. Men have their ‘man caves’, women are now creating their ‘she sheds’. Has it taken almost ninety years, since Virginia Woolf published A Room of Ones Own in 1929, for this idea to take hold? I think not, but now it has good public, or as the current lingo, gone viral.
I’ve had my Angel Room, with all my special book,icons and Italian memorabilia hanging all over the walls, for close to thirty years. When I first moved my soul into the room after my son moved out, I named it Lo Studiolo after 15th-century Italian writing rooms, specifically those in Urbino and Gubbio (now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), created by intarsia, an elaborate form of marquetry using inlays in wood. The room still features Italian memorabilia, but it was renamed The Angel Room by my grandchildren when as toddlers they would spend early mornings with me in the room. It was the angels hanging here and there that drew their innocent attention.  I submitted “How about a Writing Vacation in Florence” to the Travel Bloggers forum of Lonelyplanet.org, but it wasn’t accepted. I’m not disappointed; just glad I put it out there as an offering to the wider cyberspace universe. Their monthly contest selects approximately eight blog posts, so I’ll try again for August. Regardless, it motivates me to write something more substantial than a quick blog post, which is somewhat random and casual. An article, on the other hand, is deliberate and intentional.
So what to write? I’m thinking about my many trips to Scotland and the challenge it is to get from Glasgow to Iona. I don’t have a working title yet, but here’s a start: “Iona: Train, Ferry, Bus, Ferry and You’re There.” I know, it’s too long, and not snappy enough but if will get the writing started.  I wrapped up that article, settling on “How about a Writing Vacation in Florence?” for the title, posting it on the Solitary Travel section of this blog, and adding the link to Face Book. Much to my surprise, friends replied that this was the first time they really knew what I did on my trips to Florence, and what the impact of going alone was for me. Hmm, it seems that the informal and personal style of blog writing offers transparency not afforded through more formal writing, or even face-to conversations.
I want to say a little more about the timing of publishing a piece writing. There is a rhythm to each piece, which includes a beginning, middle and end; you get an idea and know it is time to begin; you also know when the piece is finished. It is never perfect; there could always be more to add or change, but you know deep down when you have done all you can, when it is finished for you . So wrap it up, and send it out, make it public, whatever that means to you. |