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Some things are better forgotten than lost.
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Love doesn’t change you. It reveals things you never knew.
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Until she stops hating you, she’s still in love with you.
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Women hunger. Men just want to be fed.
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Until you escape the chatter, you can’t hear the voices.
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How Many Birds Have You Watched Dance Today?
“Why can’t we all just stop and look at each other?” cried Emily’s ghost in Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” when she came back, as a spirit, on her birthday, an ordinary day like this one so chockful of beauty and poignancy she could not bear it.”
The above is from a clipping I saved from a newspaper article about 15 years ago. It’s yellowed and I don’t know who wrote it. I have it taped on the inside of the kitchen cabinet where I keep my coffee cups so I can see it every morning. I placed it there to remind myself of a very important life lesson I learned while attending a local theater production of “Our Town”. It’s a lesson I buried, but have recently dug up.
I’ll never forget that play. That sweet amateur production full of mediocre actors made me look at life differently. The first act was unbearably boring. I thought to myself that this was the worst play I had ever seen. There was barely a plot to speak of and it moved so slowly I had to fight to keep myself awake. Then it happened.
A character in the play unexpectedly dies. She spent the next act sitting on a folding chair while the entire first act was reacted. The difference though was that during the second act the audience hears her thoughts. Her “spirit” is speaking to her past self. It took but a moment to realize the significance and almost painful beauty of what I was seeing and hearing. That boring, mundane, little life of a boring, mundane, little existence was so full of unimagined joy and beauty. The problem though was that when she was living it she couldn’t see it. She had to die to realize the utter beauty and deep love that surrounded her on a daily basis.
Her spirit self is sad and frustrated with how she lived her life. She screams at herself to look at the faces of those she loved a little longer, to not let pettiness destroy friendships, to look at the flowers in the garden, not just merely tend to the surrounding weeds. I cried throughout the second act because I was that women sitting on the folding chair. It forced me see my life through different eyes. Appreciative eyes always see things differently.
Boredom only exists if we let it. Every moment has something of value if we allow ourselves to sit on that folding chair and examine our lives. I don’t want to have to die to realize I never should have stood under the night sky and not taken the time to look up at all its wonder. I don’t want to have to die to realize I should have loved the people in my life more completely. I don’t want to have to die to realize that every moment I had on earth was to be cherished not squandered. The time we lose we can never regain. Sunrises deserve to be seen not just read and written about.
The older I get the more value I find in the words, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” There’s too much beauty to see, too many hands that need to be held, too many shoulders to lend to crying eyes, too many books that need to be read, too many stars to try to count, too many birds to watch dance in the sky, too many faces to make smile. We only get one chance at this thing we call life. Why not choose to make our time on the folding chairs a satisfied one?
I’m going to stop writing now because I hear the birds calling me to join them in a dance.
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Crazy Left Turn My Ass
Sometimes the road less traveled has the greatest view. Sometimes it’s shit, but until you take that crazy left turn… you’ll never know.
Moral of this story is don’t be afraid to get off the road you’re on and travel down another path.
It just may lead you in the right direction.
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Life My Ass
The question isn’t… Is there life after twitter?
The question is… Was there life on twitter?
Of course, one must define life to answer that question.
Honestly.
And so…
the journey begins.
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Gone With The Wind My Ass
Now, if you’ll kindly excuse me, I’m off to pretend that I’m writing the next Gone With The Wind.
But, first I think I’ll go make some tea.
Then, perhaps, bake some cookies.
Then maybe organize a few closets…
Oh, dear, does anyone know where I can buy a crate of self-discipline?
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Heads Up My Ass
Heads up, vagina owners. When you surprise your husband with the news that you deleted your twitter account he gets sickening sweet and bizarrely lovey-dovey.
CONSIDER YOURSELVES WARNED!
