Have an organized holiday

Someone on a chat board I visit recently asked the four "important" questions, below, about holiday gift wrapping.  Given that today is November 30, I was astounded at the answers she received,  since so many people said they were done shopping and wrapping, had color-coded their gifts and were completely organized for their holidays (whether Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, etc.) -- an entire month in advance.  Here are the aforementioned questions, and below them are my answers.

1.  Have you wrapped your presents yet?

2.  Do you color code your wrapping paper for different people, destinations, etc.?

3.  Do you buy new each year or use the leftovers?

4.  Do your gifts go under the tree?

And herewith my heretical answers:

1.  I wrap as I buy, so I have wrapped two presents.  In cute red paper with a tiny white floral print with a lovely gold satin ribbon.

2.  I never even thought of color coding.  How clever.  (And where were you when I had kids living at home and I needed someone to suggest this amazing idea?)

3.  I buy new wrapping paper and pay top price, because I have to wait for inspiration to move me to "wrapping action."  On the day after Christmas, when others are out grabbing up those fantastic gift paper bargains, I'm home savoring cookies, clementines and coffee.  

4.  No gifts shall appear under the tree.  The cat(s) and dog will occupy that position as long as possible.

Clearly I'm not a candidate for the "Holiday Shopping Person of the Year Award."  I really do admire those who are buttoned-up and prepared in advance; however, I've reached a point in my life where I accept that I'm not one of them.  It's all good.

Hallelujah

I'm so moved by music.  Really, and all different kinds, too.  I can't isolate a single genre or even an artist, though some artists really are more consistent than others and I tend to like the thoughtful, quiet songs more than the noisy ones.  I'm not writing much today because I want to share a music video with you, and that will take up a few minutes of your time.   I like this an awful lot.  Hallelujah.

Gratitude Journals

"If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is Thank You, it will be enough." -meister eckhart

My gratitude journal started when I was in my 20's.  I didn't actually call it a gratitude journal back then, but it was a place where I recorded all the  things that made me happy or inspired me or for which I was grateful -- quotes that struck a chord in me, pictures that made me happy, anything in my life that was especially uplifting and made my spirit soar.  I started compiling it at a time when I was particularly grateful for the spiritual help I had been given with a difficult problem -- one I couldn't solve on my own.  I asked -- prayed really, and I'm not a praying person -- for the help out loud, and the impossible was given to me.  It was really a miracle, and I was so grateful that I needed to find a way to say thank you.  That's when my gratitude journal began, and I've never stopped.  

These days I still put all kinds of things into my gratitude journal -- funny jokes I come across, silly pictures (dogs wearing hats, people  making faces), quotes that inspire me, anecdotes about things that at first don't seem gratitude-provoking but later remind me that I should be grateful for even the annoyances in my life.  I'm thinking of it today because tomorrow is Thanksgiving, the day when we all stop to think about things we are grateful for.  

I love Thanksgiving, (even if I do have to deal with the stress of trying to cook a reasonable meal), because I love to look at the faces of the family that I love all together in one place.  I think back to the many  Thanksgivings that have passed and especially those of my childhood, of my father's delight in saying "I have all of my loved ones with me!" and of the faces of my brothers and sister, mom and dad  and grandma as we were growing up, sitting around the dining room table.  I remember the year it snowed on Thanksgiving just as we were eating our dinner, and the walks I took with my dad after our meal.  And I remember my grandma Flora talking endlessly in Italian.  They are treasures that are just as much a part of my gratitude journal as the pictures I've pasted in there over the years.  Tomorrow I will be grateful for those memories and for having my own children with me, just as my father was with us.  Life is indeed a circle and love?  Immortal.

What's Your Holiday Tradition?

I'm feeling in need of some adult holiday traditions in my life.  Someone in one of my groups (and I can't recall which one) asked what adult holiday traditions we each have -- not the ones that revolve around being children or around having children, like putting cookies out for Santa, but actual adult things.  And people started naming all sorts of things.  Do you know there is a couple who happily decorate their turkey's wishbone every Thanksgiving evening?   This is true.  *nodding head with seriousness here*   They grab some champagne, glue and ribbons and glitter (I suppose) and decorate away.  They have a history of doing this every year.  My tradition is washing the dishes and falling asleep or watching other people sleep; namely, my husband and his brother or my son.   Once my kids got past the Santa stage I forgot about traditions altogether.  I didn't think I needed them, but now I'm wondering if I'm missing out on something.

So this year, with an eye toward trying new things,  I'm officially reinstating traditions.  However, I'm not really sure how a tradition gets started when it doesn't revolve around official things like the Santa cookies or the Halloween pumpkin.  Do you do something once and find that you  like it so much that you do it again, and after a while it's kind of a tradition?   And when is it officially "The Tradition?"  Hmmm.  But the thing is, (and I can feel myself veering off the path here) what if there is a year when you don't want to do it?  Or someone who was involved the first or second time can't make it or doesn't want to do the thing?  Then are you breaking tradition?  Here is the little twist in the path where my problems start to pop  their heads up.  This is exactly why my first five blogs ended after the first two entries:  the minute I started them, they felt like serious commitments from which I could not escape.  A net.  A trap.

Ok, maybe now I'm letting you, my anonymous reader know just a little too much about me. I'm not commitment phobic.  I have a mortgage, for God's sake.  So back to the topic:  traditions and how they get a stranglehold on you and choke the life out of you until you can't breathe and want to die, like a box of godiva chocolates on a Christmas table.  

I've decided this year will be our first Thanksgiving movie day; potentially the start of a tradition if all goes well.  So in this case, it will be Ally and Ben, Lou and me. We'll watch a new DVD at home:  The Clique movie because our dear friend Ellen Marlow happens to be starring in it, and how often do you get to do that?  Then dinner, and after dinner a movie out -- and I might even skip the popcorn if I'm disgustingly full of turkey and dessert.  And voila!  A tradition for this year at least.  If we want to see a movie again next year?  Two years of a tradition!   And if we have company on an occasion of Thanksgiving Future, and if the companeers want to join us, along they come.    If they are busy?  No problem.  No nets, no traps. It's not their tradition, after all.  And if I don't want to go, I won't go and they can go themselves.  The perfect tradition:  you can put it on auto pilot.    Tradition  It's a perfect thing, is it not?  

I'm practically feeling like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof.

Writing your own memoir

Excerpted from "How to Write Your Own Memoir" by Abigail Thomas, The Oprah Magazine

Writing a memoir is a way to figure out who you used to be and how you got to be who you are.  Still, as Raymond Carver once said, "What good is insight?  It only makes things worse."  Why dredge up a lost of dusty memories?  Why remind yourself that the old days will never come back?  Why remind yourself of your own mortality?  (The word memory comes from the same root as the word mourn, and that should tell you something.)  You will find there are many reasons to go look in the icebox or turn on the television, or reread Middlemarch.  But pay attention to the little voice that whispers, "This part was interesting."  Pay attention to everything.  But the jumping-off place isn't always so obvious.  You can't always find the way in.  Sometimes you need a side door.  That's where the exercises come in.  Here's the one I give all my writing students the first week of the class:  Write ... about a time when you were dressed inappropriately for the occasion.  What occasion?  Who thought you were inappropriate?  That's up to you.

Why bother writing at all?  Once in a while you come too close to a nerve, and your writing goes flat, and your first thought might be to change the subject.  But this is the most interesting of moments.  There is so much to be found out.  Hiding behind that paragraph is probably something worth knowing.  You can stare at the page and realize, "Hot dog -- this is a safe to be cracked!"  Or you can crawl under the covers and take a nice nap.

I originally posted this as the kicker for my Chicks on Writ writer's group at Goodreads, and I thought I'd share it here too, since many of us have an interest in writing our memoirs.  If you write a journal response to any of the exercises below or the one above, please post your blog address in the comment section so I can come and read what you've written.  

The full text of this article, including 10 "side door" exercises to get you started, can be found at http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200808_omag_memoir_how-to

Your Extraordinary Mind

I really do love these words...

And underneath this, in its original context on the website, are the following other words "Painting on canvas:  Extraordinary Mind.  16x20 inches.  Signed."  and on the next line..."SOLD"

Sold?  I'm in love with those words.  They express so much of what I feel, like a living thing. How can they be SOLD?

Ok, I understand it's merely the paint and the canvas, done by the artist (andre jordan, who is brilliant, I think) that was SOLD.  I have a son who regularly explains all about Intellectual Properties to me.  I get it.  I understand the concept, that the words are floating around out there in some cosmic void and can't really be shut in a box in a house.   And I know artists have to earn money from their work and of course have to eat.    Of course.  I get this completely.   I think it's just the sound of that word:  SOLD.    Before I knew they existed, actually.

But I've brainstormed a solution.  I think that underneath that painting there should be another line, and it should say the following. "This painting has found a new adopted home.  Its owners have agreed to provide shelter and safety for their adoptee at their own expense."  

There.   Really, it says the same thing doesn't it, without all that harsh "SOLD" business?    I think I can live with that. 

Does anyone really care what we write?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately.  We put so much time and love into our blogs, and personally, I find reading them very interesting.  I have a list of roughly 30 blogs that I peruse weekly for various reasons.  Some are quirky and fun, some are insightful, some offer freebies like art downloads that I can use in my collages and altered books.  Some are inspiring, some are slice-of-life vignettes.  The best of them are those that leave me with something I remember long after I click off my computer and leave the room or that come back to me at another time, in another situation.  Have you had those experiences?  

I thought of this today when I read a post called   "Two Simple (and sort of mean) Words Every Blogger Should Know"    It really struck home for me and reminded me that when I post something on my blog, I have to keep in mind that a blog is not a journal;  it's a public forum and it's meant to be read by others.   With that in mind, the first thing every blogger should be thinking when writing (if we hope to have readers, and otherwise we might as well journal rather than blog) is 'why would anyone care about this?'  And I guess, if the answer is that they wouldn't, we should be kind,  hit the backspace key, and start again.

book sculptures

If you enjoy altered books, then you might be interested in a different kind of artistic "altering" -- the actual folding of the book into geometric shapes or the arrangement of books into realistic or abstract shapes or designs. The clever window artists at Anthropologie's flagship store, Rockefeller Center here in New York City are currently featuring a display of such art. While it is under the radar of the usual gallery write-ups and reviews, I think it's an absolute must-see for every artist who likes to think not just between the lines but perhaps even beyond them. Not sure how long the windows will stay up, but if you go to Rock for Christmas, peek over to see if the books are still there.

    

Scraps of Magic

Every morning I get a little treat in my e-mailbox.  The artists at Storypeople send me (and I suspect a few others) an offbeat little eye-opener that sweetens my coffee and adds just the right amount of punch to my brain.  It's called the Story of the Day, short snippets of thought and art which I think are all done by artist/storyteller Brian Andreas (but maybe also by the other artists who work with him?).  Every now and then one of these stories reminds of of someone in particular the I know and I'll forward it to them with a little note and a smile.  And they almost always smile back.  (Unless they are in a hurry or they're not the smiling type, in which case I make a note to send them twice as many smiling notes.)

When I saw this particular Story of the Day, it reminded me of all the artists I chat with every day; the people who do this to earn a living, or as a hobby,  and even for those who say they don't feel worthy (and you know who you are) to consider themselves in the same category as "real" artists.  

Isn't it amazing that some people don't have to wait until they're 40 to see the magic?

If you would like to receive a Story of the Day from the StoryPeople, click here:

StoryPeople