There wasn't toast or jam, but there was coffee, and an article, and then an extra fifteen minutes alongside a second cup and a few pages of a book. It isn't always grand or explosive, this business of beginning, but it's often good and quiet and needed.
I'll take it.
“I am doing things I learned early to do, I am
paying attention to small beauties,
whatever I have - as if it were our duty
to find things to love, to bond ourselves to this world.”
And if the goal is to be part of the world, to love and be loved, to pay attention and to create, today was the best exercise. There were doodles on the iPad with a thumb that I could not draw anything short of square tipped, Shrinky Dinks that amazed me like they did when I was a child, squatting down in front of the oven, eyes focused through the blurred light of a tiny bulb and dirty glass, and the refusal to be taken over by the heaviness a Sunday can bring.
Monday is inevitable, it's coming and this holiday break is ending, and the realities I have been keeping at bay will be back sooner than I'd like, than any of us would like, I'd guess. But today, when the stresses of life knocked, I did something a bit different. In the spirit of beginning, I did not ignore the knock, or answer it and indulge. Instead, stress knocked and I asked it politely to go away - I've got far better uses for my time, like making my own Shrinky Dink yellow submarine.
Today was full of tidying and prepping, the getting ready to go back, and the steps for moving forward. Tomorrow there will breakfast at the table, maybe even a bit of reading, and just like that, there will be more to begin, again.
I know this to be true: I'm terrible to watch movies with, at home or in the theater. The biggest reason for this statement is the fidgeting as I most likely would rather be somewhere else, working on or reading something else, and for as much patience as I believe I have, it escapes me as soon as the film begins. The other reason, the one which spurred me to think about what I've come here to share is that once it is over and you want to know what I thought of the film, I will want to focus in on that one breakfast scene from somewhere near the middle and have a conversation on the merits of eating at the table and taking one's time.
Case in point: this morning we watched Hitchcock over coffee and banana muffins, and while yes, I did enjoy it as a whole, I was caught by one small moment that became a very big moment in our morning conversation. In the scene, Hitchcock and Alma are sitting at a small table outside eating breakfast, reading a bit, and having conversation, and as Alma spread jam on her toast, I turned to Andrew and said, "I want a life where we can do that - sit and have breakfast at the table and read and talk." It was out of my mouth before I heard the words, or I guess more accurately, felt the words. I'd just likened eating a quiet breakfast at the table to leaving all of our responsibilities behind and setting off for an apartment in Paris. It sounded impossible as it rattled out of my mouth, and I felt silly for setting it up as so unattainable. The only thing standing between me and "that life" is myself. Andrew, bless his heart, saw the look on my face and helped me with the excuses for why it wasn't practical - time, focus, habit. He mused on the reality that we would have to prioritize time differently, and that's just it isn't it - that it would be a shift in priority, but not impossible, not really even all too difficult. All it would take to have "that life" I'd just mooned over, would be to begin. How fortunate I am to be in the business of beginning this year.
And so, another small beginning is on the way, and I think this small one could lead to more and bigger shifts, because it's hard to reprioritize time, to decide what we value, without stumbling upon others.
I want to take time to make change in thoughtful ways, to remind myself that moving forward isn't a race, and that slowing is sometimes the best way to pace the route and to pay attention to all the possible finish lines along the way. We will finish so many routes within the larger scheme of things, have a thousand tiny victories to keep us moving, and I want make room for all of them.
So tomorrow I'm clearing off the table a bit, and tucking away all of the holiday baubles that might deter me from sitting and enjoying a slice of toast and jam at the table before the work day begins. I want to begin so that three weeks, two months, or even a year from now I can look back at this post and smile, remembering that scene, how my heart leapt at such a small moment, and how "that life" will just be "my life".
Beginnings are crowded with small steps, so I am taking each one by slowing a bit, and making it count. I want to see footprints from where I've been, and hopefully this time, they'll lead to the table.
“We steal the shiny bits, and build them into our own disorderly nests.”
It's usually words I steal away, like the ones above, the ones I've scattered below, but sometimes it's images, too. The screen shot of Angela Lansbury and Levar Burton made me smile, and so I joked I would get a large print of it for the wall - a reminder of their early nineties glory. But the more I came back to the image, the more it reminded me of who I am and what I love, the more I realized that this was something necessary for my nest. It's 18x24, a simple black and white print in an inexpensive frame, hung quickly next to my work table so that I can see it as often as I am back here, which lately seems to be all the time.
I love knowing that what catches my eye is not the same as someone else, and that this bit, shining and eye catching for me, might be trivial to someone else. I love that what I squirrel away, whether in my mind or physically in our home (tiny glass jars to hold objects, anyone?) is a collection of pieces that once belonged to someone else, and are now made my own by the sheer fact of their arrangement.
“If you begin and it is not the beginning, begin again.”
It's a little amusing that I started back to writing in this online space by titling the first post from this line. This line, an itty bitty thing from a story that's barely longer in length, but the kind that sticks with you. This line has been echoing through my heart and head for years, and when I paused a few weeks ago to think about what word I wanted to focus on for this new year, I immediately knew it needed to be "begin", and that this line would carry me through, reminding me that there is always time to start over. And so, in the spirit of beginning, my first act of this first day of this new year seemed perfectly fitted to be in connection with this space.
A friend asked me casually the other day if I planned to come back, to write again after the long lull between November to now. Normally, I'd make excuses, or have a thousand little reasons for why I'd been absent and why it really didn't matter - it's most likely only her and my mother are reading this anyway as I have not actively shared it with anyone I know this time around. Unlike my past spaces, I've been quiet here, nesting on my own terms. But her question came without judgment, and so I told the truth of the absence - I hated the name I chose for the site. It felt perfect at the time, and I still feel so much that I am wading around in this middle space slightly above average, but every time I came back here, with the clean design I loved, and my words and photos, it didn't feel like my own. It felt like the space of someone who was bragging that they were above average, and well, if I myself knew the story behind the title and was still bothered by it, well, what did I expect from someone happening upon this space and reading it for the first time? I admitted that I felt silly to care so much about a name, but my spaces are my homes, as much if they are for my words or my chairs, and this one didn't fit right. I admitted that I felt to silly to rename a website with so little traffic, to start over right after starting over, but she gently reminded me of the passage above, words I'd shared just days before, and she smiled at me, and I knew - begin again. If it's not the beginning, begin again.
And so maybe that's how this word is growing inside me for the new year, as a reminder that I need to be present, to own what I want and what I do not want, to take steps, regardless how small they may be, to have beginnings and to make my way. I write these words here in a very public space that very few may ever actually see, and I send the thoughts out into the ether and I I know that deep down, they are mostly for myself.
2014 was heavy and unyielding, and I wound myself up into a protective skein and I think I believed that if I stayed very still that the world would not find me, would not force me to accept the unacceptable, and I countered every idea with a reason why it wouldn't work or didn't matter. I shrouded myself in questions about what might be and took comfort in spending so much attempting to answer my worries that I had no time left to attempt any of the change.
It's now 2015, and I've no space for any of that. I'm too tired of being too tired, and I'm ready to lessen the reasons why not and strengthen the reasons why, with the main one being that it's just time, and some days, that's enough.
I want a year of beginnings, both big and small. I want to make more, share more, love more, own more, claiming this life and my choices each day. I want to be less afraid of speaking up about what I want and having those little confessions lead to beginnings. I want to want big, fat, ridiculous things that might not be possible, but I want to want them anyway, and to work toward making them happen. I want to want tiny, seemingly insignificant things without embarrassment, and to celebrate their existence when they come.
I want to begin the year by making a claim to the person I am beginning this first day of January as - a woman in her mid thirties who's half little girl and half grumpy old man, a voracious reader, a lover of lines - the poetic, the dotted, the direct and indirect, and the ones that spur us to cross them. I am someone who's discovered a love for documenting life with paper and glue, words and images, and I think, no, I know that I am getting better, that I might one day even be good at it, and I want to do more with it this year. I am someone who is often too sensitive and too cold, all in the same inappropriate moments, but it makes me love the world in a way that allows it to break my heart, and I am thankful for that, but I'd like to begin to be warmer and stronger when I need to be, or when others I care about need that from me.
“There is a list, I said nearing the end. It’s a list you make yourself, and at the top of the page you write, Things You Should Know.”
It's been fifty-four weeks since I began this project, two more than I'd promised myself I'd complete before documenting what its been like, and about fifty more than I really believed I'd have done in a row. In those fifty-four weeks, there were 648 pictures, more words than I'd care to count, pieces of birth announcements, cards, and post-it note hellos from friends, forty-eight lists, and one heartbreaking full page letter about a week I'd rather not relive. There are three full albums, and not a single missing week.
If you'd asked me a year ago if I'd be making albums - scrapbooks - let's just call them what they are - I would have scoffed. Art journals, yes, of course, I've got lot of those. Commonplace books packed with scraps, both of images and words, yes, again, of course, I have shelves of those, too. If you'd asked me a year ago if I thought maybe I'd be a scrapbooker one day, I would have said no without hesitation. Too many implications, too soft, too cute, too easy. It's for people who have children, or grandchildren, or are retired and needing a project. Of course, I know now that those assumptions are inaccurate, and the world of paper crafting and memory keeping so much larger than I'd imagined. Now, fifty-four weeks later, I realize how much empty energy I might have put toward that label, and if I'm being honest, how much I sometimes still do when I am trying to tell someone how I spend so much of my free time.
The reality is, a little over fifty-four weeks ago I returned from visiting my mother, from a week of waiting rooms and doctor's offices, tears and uncertainties, and as I flew back across the country, three thousand miles from where I felt I should be and where I wanted to be, to where I needed to be, I realized that my old way of making sense of my life wasn't working any more. I returned home to the latest of my half-empty commonplace books, unmotivated to complete another page, but needing to tell my story. And it wasn't grand, and it wasn't the story of my life in its summation, or of any big events or celebrations, but I knew it needed to be told differently, and I knew there needed to be more. In the middle of a life growing increasingly messy and complicated, I needed a bit of order, and habit. I didn't and don't have children, which by default makes grandchildren less likely, and though I hope to one day, I was not retired, but ... and this was the best but ... I needed a project. Enter: Project Life.
I bought an album, the simplest kraft colored one I could find, a box of page protectors, and a core kit full of cards. It was rudimentary at first, and I had so many photos misprinted as I tried to figure out how to make it all work that I think I could make an entirely separate album of only the oddly cropped, mis-sized images of those first few weeks. I had almost no supplies, which was probably for the best because I wouldn't have had any idea how to use them. Instead, it was about two very simply premises: take photos during the week, and write their corresponding stories on cards.
Since that first week, there have been holidays, promotions, and birthdays, and there have been losses, bad news, and heartbreak. There have been a myriad of big changes and seemingly unsurmountable obstacles, but there have also been thousands of tiny victories. In those weeks, there were new favorite socks, and pots of coffee, and new sheets, and different albums on repeat, and paint stained fingers, and postage stamps on packages, and dancing before bed, and it's those things that fill those three albums. There were also days with coffee forgotten at home, and unkind words shouted in anger, and misplaced gifts, and unresolved dreams, and bland soup, and tears from missing people, and guilt over choices, and tights with holes.
All of these things made it into the pages of the albums, and suddenly, without having to work to remind myself to keep doing this project, to find time or make time, it was just a habit that was as much a part of life as anything else, and for the first time, I wasn't losing steam or getting behind on where I'd hoped I'd be. Instead of sometimes writing things down, and sometimes taking a picture, and sometimes capturing the reality of my every days, part of those days went to the documenting, and now it's impossible to forget both the good and the bad.
And now it's become something more, and I've got a few more albums, some full of larger layouts, and some small, focused on one single premise, but each one houses so much of my story, of our story when I think about all the people who are part of these days I record.
It started small, but hopeful, and it grew, one week at a time, and for now, I don't see that slowing. Life itself is long and messy, but all that length, and all that width leaves room for so much seemingly insignificant beauty that, once passed, is almost as good when remembered.
And so though I'm nowhere near being comfortable with any of the labels for what I spend my free time working on - scrapbooker just doesn't feel right, Project Lifer makes me feel like someone jailed by memories, and memory keeper seems too simple (we all do a bit of this everyday, yes?), for now, I will just say I am someone who likes to pay attention, more specifically who likes to pay attention to the smallest pieces of life, and I just happen to take time each week to capture them so there's no chance I'll forget how good toast and jam can be with a mug of coffee on a random Thursday morning.
So, the week was busy, and documenting daily didn't happen, but I did work on the album every day, so here's a quick run through that week, captured. The video and I are fighting right now when I try to add it to this site in a size that isn't overwhelming, so I will ask you to follow this link instead, if you are interested in seeing all the pages.
Yesterday brought back the normalcy of the work week, with meetings and spreadsheets, coffee and dried mango (always coffee and dried mango). I love the dark morning walk to the bus stop, and the moments spent waiting for the bus to round the corner.
Also, pockets in every dress forever and always, amen.
And black coffee.
Movie releases have never been my thing, music releases only sometimes cause excitement, but book releases, oh my. Amy Poehler's book was released on Tuesday, 10.28, and I downloaded it one minute after minute in a rush of total glee. Thus, when it was time to run errands, I only agree because I could take her with me.
The day was long punctuated by stressful moments at work, but in the end, the routine of coming home, reading a book, puttering with paper and glue, and getting more sleep than normal made it all a little more possible to take on the next day.
