lextopia

“Love of beauty is Taste. Creation of beauty is Art.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’m stealing the use of this quote from a beautiful blog I found courtesy of someone on Twitter.

This morning I slept late. Really late for me. 9:30am. I’d gotten up at the customary 5:30, but was having trouble opening  my eyes. As I padded to the bathroom in the gray light I felt the walls so I wouldn’t fall down the stairs. I felt heavy. Really, really heavy and knew I was going to go back to sleep. I was so happy at the prospect because that hasn’t happened in well over two years.

When I crashed, I crashed hard. Heavily. It was the grounded, in the ground, rooted sleep of a changed woman. Evolutionary change always happens for me while I’m doing something else, and so I don’t ever realize what’s happened until later. The sound of the TV was what finally got me up, my eyes to reluctantly open. My show was on and there were people in my house watching it. I went downstairs to join them.

Each week Dad & Sarah have generously sat and watched the show and graciously given feedback afterward. In the last couple of weeks, though, they haven’t given any feedback, and the reason is because the show is good. As I sat beside everyone today, watching them watch, I could hear them listening and it was awesome. And when a specific, funny moment happened, everyone chuckled, unaware that they were sitting with the producer. For them, they were just watching an engaging show.

It was a good start to what has been a deep day. I didn’t do any soul searching, rather, I did a lot of soul listening. I meditated for over an hour with the intention of finally letting the Universe flood into my mind. Well, she did, and with her came answers. A letting go, a courage to be quiet, and a bunch of ideas for how to finish the coal film. From there the day was like those days I used to have before I got into relationships: present, comfortable, mine. I looked hard at my tendency toward self-criticism and knew there was a lot more work to do there.

I took a short walk into the open field on our property and turned to look at our house from a different perspective. While sitting in the hammock, a place I frequent every weekend, I was struck by an urgency to see things differently. I thought that if I shook up my visual comfort, more changes would follow. They did.

I looked up at the trees, the scrub oak that I love so much, that surround our house. And I realized that God, Mom, all life, and all the answers were in the trees because they were beautiful. I realized for the first time in decades that Beauty is the portal to happiness and understanding, but you’ve got to have the balls to try to make beautiful things.

My silly little lifestyle show is beautiful, and all I need to do now is to stay out of it’s way. If it gets bored and needs something new to liven it up, I’ll develop a new segment. The show and I are one and each know what’s best for the other. Similarly, I will honor the coal film, and my own life and capacity for love. I will get out of my own way. Via Beauty.

It’s not because I just watched the trailer for the much-anticipated ‘EAT. PRAY. LOVE” starring one of my original girl-crushes, Julia Roberts. It’s that I really need to fucking get away. But not away from the island or even away from Boston, I need to get away from comfort. I need to barter with life outside of the constant care-taking nature of the first world. And I need to do it before I fall in love again because once I shack up my heart it’s much harder to leave at a moment’s notice to go to places that might be dangerous. Plus, whoever she is, I’m just not the type to want to leave my squeeze. That’s why breakups are such a bitch for me… Ugh…

India with Molly was amazing. Third world and my best girl. But I was still buffered by Alison, Bryan, David, and especially, Nandini. I made “Soma Girls” in a brothel in Calcutta, yes, but I was literally and figuratively looking at those lives through a lens. My next challenge has to be without recording device or the internet. Just a phone, money, my wits, food and friends are what I need at the moment, and so I’m officially putting that out into the universe.

I feel unchained for the first time since I was very little. Unchained from Mom, unchained from a relationship. Now all I need to do is get rid of my ex’s cats and rug, and get someone normal to live in my house for a year. Will it be only one year? I’m old enough to know that length of time is all too short, and so we’ll see.

And where do I wish to go, you ask? I have no idea. All I know is that it’s probably going to be someplace I’ve never thought of and know nothing about. I’ll have to master a new language, learn to cook the local fare, and take a job I’ve never done.

The feeling of finally being unchained is incredible. It came with my fantastic co-worker and boss at the gig here on island leaving to move to New York to work in the corporate office of the same company. It gives me comfort that we’re still attached in some way because I think we need to work together again because it went so well here, but I’m thrilled she’s not in charge of me anymore. I’m happy taking over the show–it feels organic to be making something like this–but it’s not the last stop on the train. This isn’t the way I want to grow, necessarily. And so I’ve got to crank on the coal film and the others I have in mind. If I’m going off on some big trip “The Dirty Truth About Coal” and “18 Months” have to be done and living their own lives before I go.

I think a lot about Egypt. Probably because it’s one of the places Mom always wanted to visit, but never had the guts to. I need to make that trip for both of us. It’s not such a bad idea: going to the places my mother didn’t get a chance to.