The other day, I was reading some posts by a work colleague of mine about his wife's diagnosis, treatment, and recurrence of a brain tumor. It moved me to tears, though I've only met his wife one time, and recently. And I had no idea when I dined with them at a firm holiday dinner party that she was undergoing chemo and awaiting results regarding recurrence. She was joyous and charming. It's amazing what lies inside of us that we don't show to others. And in one of his posts, he talked about being so overcome with tears that he had no words. And how the tears were holy tears. He is devoutly Jewish, so his post had many religious references that I didn't fully understand. But, he spoke of "the gates of tears" being open and the experience of crying being holy. That, I intimately understood.
My Mom has told me before, but recently told me again, that she believes crying brings us closer to God.
Holy tears. I suppose that concept resonates with me. I cry easily when I am moved deeply. In those spiritual moments when the entirety of the universe is just so very close. I think that's what my Mom means. And, like my friend who found himself with tears but no words at his wife's suffering, that wordless tearful state is one I have found myself in on more occasions than I could possibly recount during my life. Crying is a release and a relief. It removes tension. It lets us get underneath the facade we force when we have to push through other things in life while the unspoken things underneath lie in wait.
Crying is the only thing that evicts the elephant that likes to sit on my chest sometimes.
My Dad tells me I am the most tender-hearted person he knows. I think having plentiful tears just goes with that territory.
I've also been told my tears caused rain to fall outside. One of the most beautiful sentiments. Sometimes, I even believe that to be true. There have been too many thunderstorms beating on my windowpanes during bouts of my crying for me to overlook. Serendipitous crying along with the infinite sky. An unearthly symbiosis that comforts me in those moments.
I cried in front of a friend not too long ago, and I was holding it together as much as I could while hot tears just streamed down my face, and she told me to just let go and ugly cry. It's a tremendous act of love and sisterhood to genuinely remind someone to stop holding it in when it's leaking out in front of them.
I reminded another friend to cry when he was feeling vulnerable and afraid of doing something important just last week. And I hope he took my advice. I have a feeling maybe he did.
There is nothing more vulnerable than crying. Those of you who have seen me cry... well, just know I love you.
I also read something that said that we don't cry because we are sad. We cry because something is more beautiful than we expected it to be. How profoundly true that is. Of course we cry when we are sad. But in light of this wisdom, I think it is because we realize in moments of sadness how utterly beautiful something was, and tears fall as we soak in that realization. Sometimes we even cry at beauty in the moment. When we are present enough to fully comprehend it before it passes. Happy tears, as my daughter calls them. When we feel overwhelming love. When we see a baby born. When we feel relieved at an accomplishment being reached after working so very hard. When we see a face we have longed to see after too long of missing them. When we hug someone goodbye and we know it will be too many whiles until we can reunite. When we hear a song that stirs the deepest parts within us. Sometimes, tears flow when we don't expect it at all. I think in those times, our minds are subconsciously focused on some deep swirling beauty, but our tongues have not yet awakened to what it is. If we sit with the tears, though, understanding comes.
I know it seems odd to be writing about tears just before Christmas. But, for the record, I know my cheeks will be lined with tears watching my kids open their presents. Singing Silent Night (always makes me cry...). And probably other times, too. Because, as I said, I'm a crier. And I wouldn't want to be any other way.
Saturday, December 23, 2017
Thursday, December 14, 2017
That Perfect Not A Phone
This is not about a phone booth. But it was.
I remember phone booths. When they were all over the place. It's kinda funny, isn't it, that we carry these cellular devices in our pockets and purses with us literally everywhere these days, and yet I am certain I spent way more hours talking on the phone when they were not nearly as accessible than I do now. I guess there's a reason we call them mobile devices now rather than phones. I mean, they are phones, but it's almost like a diminished secondary function. But I vividly remember when I would have to stop somewhere to use a phone. Where it was physically located. Stuck to something. Where I would actually pick up the receiver ("I'll make you a believer..."). And literally hang it up when I was done. Physically, on a knobby hook built to hold the phone receiver.
I also remember old melamine rotary phones. I still have the mustard yellow one that once sat on my mother's night table when I was a child. It still has the typed phone number (still my parents' phone number, in fact) on some yellowed paper slid beneath a yellowed-clear cover in the center of the dial. I told my Mom I wanted it in case there were hurricanes and I lost power (when I lived in Louisiana), and so she let me have it, but really I wanted it for sentimental reasons. I'll never get rid of it. But I digress.
Phone booths. A relic of the time when we called each other. When talking was how we communicated instead of typing. I deeply miss that.
Apparently I'm not the only one. There are a couple of competing metaphors in my mind with this one, so I'll just dive into the first one that came to me....
See, there's this phone booth that became special recently. Because somebody had an idea and acted on it. And missed phones, too. Like me. And it moved me. I was driving on my way to work this morning, singing appropriately, in fact, as I dodged the too many potholes on my commute ("... I’m driving, here I sit... cursing my government... for not using my taxes to fill holes with more cement..."), and I decided I needed to share this very special booth.
Like flowers on a grave site, someone in my neighborhood did this to an old phone-less booth adjacent to the parking lot where I always stop to get gas. So I pulled over and stole this little glimpse of it to share here.
In a way, it laments the passing of not only the phone booth as a physical thing, but also the passing of verbal communications we all took for granted, which were once so much more personal and intimate than text on a screen. Not that text on a screen isn't majestic in its own right (hello, I'm typing this and you're reading this... which is pretty magnificent in the grand scheme of things if you really think about it). It's just that voices back and forth -- giggles, sighs, gasps, overlapping excited stories, free flowing tangents, pregnant pauses... those are all lost in the everything-typed world in which we now live. I'm grateful for the ease of communication typing bestows, but I miss the intonation. I miss voices. Phones that we had to use because we had no other choice gave us a different kind of richness. Now phones, er devices, that are forever at our fingertips pretty much forget they can do the same thing. So these roses mourn the passing of the voices unheard these days. Because typing.
The other metaphor that came springing into my mind when I stared at the phone-less booth: all those intonations, whispers, laughs, stories that come pouring out of actual phones... each of these is a precious bloom in and of itself. Temporally limited, but bright and beautiful in its vocal blooming and fading, crescendos and silences.
Man, we should use our phones more. I mean, we don't even have to pay outrageous long distance bills anymore. It's all included. How is it that the ease and convenience of phones has somehow endangered the existence of actual, real phone conversations? It's not that I never talk on the phone. That's not true. When I do, and when I'm lucky, phone calls last hours. But they are infrequent, which I lament. But I am moved to do it more and more. To reap the blooms that fall on my ready ears and to cast my own voice into the receiver, to be joyfully received.
It's not quite time for new years' resolutions, but I'm beginning to think mine might include more good phone. There's nothing quite like good phone. Roses, indeed.
I remember phone booths. When they were all over the place. It's kinda funny, isn't it, that we carry these cellular devices in our pockets and purses with us literally everywhere these days, and yet I am certain I spent way more hours talking on the phone when they were not nearly as accessible than I do now. I guess there's a reason we call them mobile devices now rather than phones. I mean, they are phones, but it's almost like a diminished secondary function. But I vividly remember when I would have to stop somewhere to use a phone. Where it was physically located. Stuck to something. Where I would actually pick up the receiver ("I'll make you a believer..."). And literally hang it up when I was done. Physically, on a knobby hook built to hold the phone receiver.
I also remember old melamine rotary phones. I still have the mustard yellow one that once sat on my mother's night table when I was a child. It still has the typed phone number (still my parents' phone number, in fact) on some yellowed paper slid beneath a yellowed-clear cover in the center of the dial. I told my Mom I wanted it in case there were hurricanes and I lost power (when I lived in Louisiana), and so she let me have it, but really I wanted it for sentimental reasons. I'll never get rid of it. But I digress.
Phone booths. A relic of the time when we called each other. When talking was how we communicated instead of typing. I deeply miss that.
Apparently I'm not the only one. There are a couple of competing metaphors in my mind with this one, so I'll just dive into the first one that came to me....
See, there's this phone booth that became special recently. Because somebody had an idea and acted on it. And missed phones, too. Like me. And it moved me. I was driving on my way to work this morning, singing appropriately, in fact, as I dodged the too many potholes on my commute ("... I’m driving, here I sit... cursing my government... for not using my taxes to fill holes with more cement..."), and I decided I needed to share this very special booth.
Like flowers on a grave site, someone in my neighborhood did this to an old phone-less booth adjacent to the parking lot where I always stop to get gas. So I pulled over and stole this little glimpse of it to share here.
In a way, it laments the passing of not only the phone booth as a physical thing, but also the passing of verbal communications we all took for granted, which were once so much more personal and intimate than text on a screen. Not that text on a screen isn't majestic in its own right (hello, I'm typing this and you're reading this... which is pretty magnificent in the grand scheme of things if you really think about it). It's just that voices back and forth -- giggles, sighs, gasps, overlapping excited stories, free flowing tangents, pregnant pauses... those are all lost in the everything-typed world in which we now live. I'm grateful for the ease of communication typing bestows, but I miss the intonation. I miss voices. Phones that we had to use because we had no other choice gave us a different kind of richness. Now phones, er devices, that are forever at our fingertips pretty much forget they can do the same thing. So these roses mourn the passing of the voices unheard these days. Because typing.
The other metaphor that came springing into my mind when I stared at the phone-less booth: all those intonations, whispers, laughs, stories that come pouring out of actual phones... each of these is a precious bloom in and of itself. Temporally limited, but bright and beautiful in its vocal blooming and fading, crescendos and silences.
Man, we should use our phones more. I mean, we don't even have to pay outrageous long distance bills anymore. It's all included. How is it that the ease and convenience of phones has somehow endangered the existence of actual, real phone conversations? It's not that I never talk on the phone. That's not true. When I do, and when I'm lucky, phone calls last hours. But they are infrequent, which I lament. But I am moved to do it more and more. To reap the blooms that fall on my ready ears and to cast my own voice into the receiver, to be joyfully received.
It's not quite time for new years' resolutions, but I'm beginning to think mine might include more good phone. There's nothing quite like good phone. Roses, indeed.
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
That Perfect Sign
Sometime early this summer a new roadside a-frame sign board popped up on my work commute. It's gotten me thinking every morning. There's a little shopping strip near my house I drive through (yes, through, not by) each morning. It almost feels like the street I'm on devolves for a short stint from being an actual street into a mere turnaround for the shopping center traffic, but it's, in fact, actually the street (even if cross traffic doesn't always realize it). There's also a little median with some plants in it and a brick walkway alongside the street. And the a-frame sign board sat on that brick walkway each morning until very recently when people finally didn't need the sign anymore because the shop had been there long enough for people to know and remember it. Including me, I guess, though I've never been in there. In any event the sign caught my attention because it was bold and looked like this:
Brass tacks. Every morning on my way to work. For months. I always picture old antique chairs - specifically some specific ivory striped ones that used to be in my parents' living room when I was a child with brass tacks lining the edges where the fabric met the wood. I remember running my fingers over the line those brass tacks made, enjoying the feel of the inconsistent but smooth surface as my fingers rode along their bumpy track. Small rounded hills with teeny fabric ravines in between. It's a comforting memory. Childhood things tend to be like that.
But this sign speaking to me with its bold font at the start of each new day, well, it got my attention, and it got me wondering the origin of the phrase. And tonight, as I passed it on my way home, I was especially tuned into the concept.
Turns out, we think we know what things mean when we hear them, but looking them up always gives a little more depth. And frequently yields something surprising. (If I'm good for nothing else, it's researching and diving deep....)
Webster's has a definition for "brass tacks": "details of immediate practical importance —usually used in the phrase get down to brass tacks." And The Free Dictionary lookup yielded this: "Deal with the essentials; come to the point. For example, Stop delaying and get down to brass tacks, or We really need to get down to bedrock, or He has a way of getting down to the nitty gritty, or Let's get down to cases. The origin of the first phrase, dating from the late 1800s, is disputed. Some believe it alludes to the brass tacks used under fine upholstery, others that it is Cockney rhyming slang for 'hard facts,' and still others that it alludes to tacks hammered into a sales counter to indicate precise measuring points. The noun bedrock has signified the hard rock underlying alluvial mineral deposits since about 1850 and has been used figuratively to denote 'bottom' since the 1860s. The noun nitty-gritty dates from the mid-1900s and alludes to the detailed ('nitty') and possibly unpleasant ('gritty') issue in question. The noun cases apparently alludes to the game of faro, in which the "case card" is the last of a rank of cards remaining in play; this usage dates from about 1900."
So it's getting to the bottom of things... the essentials. Oh, essentials. Ah. Of course, that. I've written about those at length before in an earlier post having to do with flowers. So I can't help but go here: "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery. The invisible, the essential: brass tacks. Apparently everything leads me back to here. This quote was even mentioned in a novel I read to my children this week. I think I'm sensing a pattern. Or patterns. But I guess I wouldn't be me if I didn't.
Brass tacks. Every morning on my way to work. For months. I always picture old antique chairs - specifically some specific ivory striped ones that used to be in my parents' living room when I was a child with brass tacks lining the edges where the fabric met the wood. I remember running my fingers over the line those brass tacks made, enjoying the feel of the inconsistent but smooth surface as my fingers rode along their bumpy track. Small rounded hills with teeny fabric ravines in between. It's a comforting memory. Childhood things tend to be like that.
But this sign speaking to me with its bold font at the start of each new day, well, it got my attention, and it got me wondering the origin of the phrase. And tonight, as I passed it on my way home, I was especially tuned into the concept.
Turns out, we think we know what things mean when we hear them, but looking them up always gives a little more depth. And frequently yields something surprising. (If I'm good for nothing else, it's researching and diving deep....)
Webster's has a definition for "brass tacks": "details of immediate practical importance —usually used in the phrase get down to brass tacks." And The Free Dictionary lookup yielded this: "Deal with the essentials; come to the point. For example, Stop delaying and get down to brass tacks, or We really need to get down to bedrock, or He has a way of getting down to the nitty gritty, or Let's get down to cases. The origin of the first phrase, dating from the late 1800s, is disputed. Some believe it alludes to the brass tacks used under fine upholstery, others that it is Cockney rhyming slang for 'hard facts,' and still others that it alludes to tacks hammered into a sales counter to indicate precise measuring points. The noun bedrock has signified the hard rock underlying alluvial mineral deposits since about 1850 and has been used figuratively to denote 'bottom' since the 1860s. The noun nitty-gritty dates from the mid-1900s and alludes to the detailed ('nitty') and possibly unpleasant ('gritty') issue in question. The noun cases apparently alludes to the game of faro, in which the "case card" is the last of a rank of cards remaining in play; this usage dates from about 1900."
So it's getting to the bottom of things... the essentials. Oh, essentials. Ah. Of course, that. I've written about those at length before in an earlier post having to do with flowers. So I can't help but go here: "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery. The invisible, the essential: brass tacks. Apparently everything leads me back to here. This quote was even mentioned in a novel I read to my children this week. I think I'm sensing a pattern. Or patterns. But I guess I wouldn't be me if I didn't.
Saturday, December 2, 2017
That Perfect Supermoon Photo
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