WHAT WILL PEOPLE THINK?
“This is an excellent question to ask continuously if you want to live on the emotional equivalent of a Turkish prison. What other people think is none of your business. Ask yourself what you will think on your deathbed if you spend your whole life worrying about other peoples’ opinions…
MORE MORE MORE, or NOT…
“How can I get more? If you are hungry and you eat a square meal, you’ll feel better. But you won’t feel ten times better if you eat ten square meals. Our culture instills in us an unfettered lust for more more more… that lust doesn’t know when to stop. Ask, ‘How do I make do with less?’ — you will find yourself headed for the even-keeled moderation that leads to real happiness…” — Martha Beck
PASS ON THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE…
“Broken hearts happen through us, not to us… People can correct and heal only what they are ready to acknowledge, accept, and release… No one else can mend your broken heart. You do not need anyone’s presence, input, or permission to heal your own broken heart. You are responsible for yourself… you have work to do…” — Iyanla VanZant
ART AND FEAR…
“Ordinary art means something like: all art not made by Mozart. After all, art is rarely made by Mozart-like people — esentially, statistically speaking, there ARE NOT any people like that.
“But while geniuses may get made once a century or so, good art gets made all the time. Making art is a common and intimately human activity, filled with all the perils (and rewards) that accompany any worthwile effort.
“The difficulties art makers face are not remote and heroic, but universal and familiar… Making art is about committing your future to your own hands, placing free will above predestination, choice above chance.” — D. Bayles and T. Orland
KNOW WHEN YOU ARE WELL OFF…
Someone in the neighborhood said they were moving. If I were to nab their apartment, I would have twice as much space as I do now, for only a little more rent.
“Everybody wants the most they can possibly get / for the least they can possibly do…” — Todd Snider
Ahh yes, need or greed.
First, I was chomping at the bit, thinking of having more studio space, more storage, more real estate, period. I made a list of things I would like to know about the place:
- How much rent?
- If I could have the apartment, when could I move in?
- Does it have a washer/dryer hook up?
These points became moot when I realized it was just greed driving me. It is a simple streak of greasy green monkey dicks greed discovered like King Tut’s tomb. Years of excavating my consciousness to purify the inner water table tells me that just because I feel needy and greedy doesn’t mean I have to ACT out my lust for real estate.
- The space I am in is the one I have been looking for all my life.
- I regret leaving my spot in the Beaches across from the Fox Theatre in 1985. I regret leaving my spot in a Victorian house on St. George in 1979. It had a wood burning fireplace. If all these years later I am still kicking myself for leaving these tiny perfect studio/living spaces, it is probably the BIG FEDERAL CASE in my life that I would REALLY really really regret leaving the one I have now a studio/living space which suits me right down to the ground and really is perfect for me in every respect — except not having a swimming pool — you can have it all, just not all at the same time…
- There is no need. Some people are such rolling stones, they might forget to notice when and where and how they are superbly and supremely well off. Me, for instance.
Turn your nose from pressing against the glass of other peoples’ windows.
After I got well from being sick, I had a huge release of energy. I walked all over town doing chores. I cleaned out my pantry and rearranged all my cans of peaches and tomato soup and garbanzo beans. I separated my teas into each their own jars. Red teas, Earl Grey, chamomile, peppermint and what have you. I moved the plants and mopped the back porch, gave my lounger to the neighbor. I vacuumed, I did laundry, I made lasagne. When I came home on Monday from tearing around town, my lounger was propped beside my front door. Well, what is this? Guess he didn’t want it. Fresh hell. It is not trash day, I have to wait until tomorrow to take it up the cobblestoned street to the trash wall where we dump our garbage on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.
Then I thought of how I had already started worrying how the faux Victorian loveseat would fare in the rainy season. Even though the rainy season is not expected for three months. Should I buy a tarp at Home Depot and cover it when the rains come? Oh for God’s sake, give it a rest. How about this. TURN AROUND. Put the lounger back on the back porch. Return the faux Victorian loveseat to its spot at the end of the bed. I have never in memory gone back on getting rid of something — once I give it the black mark, it is dead to me. Now, am I getting some sense? Can I say, I made a mistake?
These are hard lessons. Only pride stands in the way of me learning them.
As to need and greed, I threw out my list of questions about the quasi-available two bedroom apartment. And I bought a new studio easel. Then I factored back to the last time I had a sturdy, suitable for large canvases studio easel. It was the one made of rain forest wood that ensnared me in lily hearted guilt. When I moved from Vancouver to Toronto, never to regain the lovely simplicities and location location location cheap price rentals of the Beaches across from the Fox theatre and the old Victorian with the wood burning fireplace on St. George, I packed the rain forest wood studio easel in two boxes. The shippers lost one of the boxes. It never turned up. When was that? 1990.
1990. That is how long it took to replace my beloved studio easel. 1990 to yesterday. I just went to the art store, paid my money and made my choice. If you have the money, you can afford it.
This is what aging is to me. I have moved past what my parents did, past how my grandmother and grandfather lived. And now that the heavy studio easel is in place beside my writing table, I feel like I am on my way. Bye bye city limits. Road trip into the future on the wings of a new easel. You have to believe you are moving ahead to something wonderful. I do believe this. I believe, I believe. Doo dah dippety.
Think new thoughts. Make new karma. Love is all there is. You gotta love somebody. Let us be love. And be love.
Out of the Armchair 