HOW THEN SHALL I LIVE?

Thoughts at Thanksgiving

I have been aware for ever so long

of my mortality.

I don’t mean lately,

I mean since I was thirty.

Knowing I Shall die,

how then shall I live,

and what will I do

 with my one wild and precious life?

I will take photos from inside my bedroom

and outside

to remember this red dogwood in Autumn

to remember the lavender verbena

I will make an arrangement from

fallen coleus leaves

And be grateful for my life

especially at Thanksgiving

for the friends who support me

who cheer me on.

~ ~ ~ 

And I will be grateful, too, for one special person,

Steve Jobs

for his attention to detail and design

for his incredible life.

He is an inspiration

because owning a MacBook

has made all my talents

come to life.

~~~ 

Lastly,

The Prologue

 to the Memoir I’m writing

speaks to this theme

How Then Shall I Live?

~ ~ ~

"Confessions of a Blue Tomato"

Back in 1946, to me, the American Dream

was about being a hero of some kind.

I was sure, if you were a boy,

 you had to do some kind of feat.

Lindbergh flying across the Atlantic.

Get a Purple Heart.

Work your way up from the mailroom,

climbing some kind of ladder of success.

And if you were a girl . . . well,

I mostly knew what I didn’t want to do,

like be a teacher or nurse or secretary

and what’s left then?

How could you prove your worth?

Silently, I dreamed of being tapped on the shoulder

by a Hollywood Director,

at a lunch counter

in a white angora sweater.

I kept those dreams during my

Betty Crocker Years

~~~

In my mid 30’s I had a great fear,

 that I would be dead at 40.

That fear led to my making changes in my life,

 like getting a divorce.

~~~

As I neared 50

 I believed my life line indicated

 I was going to die at 55.

I was so disturbed by that,

I made changes in my life again.

 This time it led to walking out a corporate door

with no early retirement

no severance package.

I was 52.

I believed I could live off my savings.

~~~

I have come to know

 those fears were coming from my instinctual self,

 from the wise, intuiting woman

 in the knowing cave

  where the bones reside.

I was right to have heeded.

~~~

Gradually I began to relax

 to sense the rest of my life

 on the tip of my tongue, so to speak.

I had a great sense that my life

 had five distinct parts

and that the last part

would be the best,

if only I could manage to get there

 and discover what was around

 that last bend.

This book is that story!

~~~

and this blog is part of that story, too

stay tuned . . .

Once Upon A Garden

The wonderful thing about

taking photos of the Spring garden

is that you can set it to music

and watch it as the leaves fall


in Autumn.

I’m taking a break from writing every day,

and finishing a garden video


I started earlier.

If I didn't garden, I wouldn't have

poems and lyrics come to me.

I set the Spring Garden photos

to a song I composed

for the Musical: Silent Dreams

SILENT DREAMS is a

musical-within-a-musical,

 set in 1955, near Broadway.

It revolves around the death of a long time

boarding house resident, Nedra Valova,

who played piano for the Silent Movies.

She leaves a diary revealing an affair with Valentino.

~~~

It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye

(lyrics)

           

 WHEN I THINK OF YOU,

I REMEMBER

 THE GIFT OF YOUR LOVE,

AND THE WARMTH OF YOUR SMILE,

IT’S SO HARD TO SAY GOOD BYE,

THE ECHO OF YOUR LOVE,

LINGERS ON

 IN THIS SONG,

REMEMBERING THE TIMES

 THAT WE SHARED.

YOU ALWAYS GAVE ME HOPE

FOR MY DREAMS,

AND LISTENED TO MY SCHEMES,

AND YOU LOVED ME

JUST THE WAY THAT I WAS,

A LONELY SOUL,

NOT A DAY GOES BY,

THAT I DON’T WONDER WHY,

YOU BLESSED MY LIFE

WITH YOUR LOVE,

YOU LEFT US WITH SUCH SADNESS,

 IT’S SO HARD NOT TO CRY,

IT’S SO VERY HARD

 TO SAY, GOODBYE.

So now, view my Spring 2011 garden.

and listen to the piano solo


It's So Hard To Say Goodbye.

ONCE UPON A GARDEN


~~~


(if you can't access it here you can
hear it on the you tube videos at the
top of this blog)

stay tuned . . .

~~~

Enneagram Women's Workshop

I’ve enrolled in a Women’s Online

“Heart’s Desire” Enneagram Workshop.

I decided to make a blog post about it.

Here’s a photo of the book,

Wisdom of the Enneagram,

I’ve added a peacock feather

and a rose, symbolic of the

#3 Performer/ #4 Artist Wing

That’s my Enneagram Type.

We have twelve women in our group

I’ve added some art pieces

Sisters of the Moon, for all the

Intuitive Feeling women that have

helped open my heart.

 Sisters of the Sun

I’m choosing them in gratitude for this

 online community: Strangers in Good Company

(a great women’s movie)

Midnight Mamas

The pattern is done like paper dolls, with

different material and different arrangements.

Moon Dancers

I listen to the meditation tape here.

I do leg stretches lying on the rug

beside the white wicker bed tray.

My white bedroom looks out

onto the deck with pots of flowers

My Heart’s Desire is to write as 

authentically as I can on my Memoir

Confessions of a Blue Tomato.

stay tuned . . .

May this workshop retreat

bring each of us

what we need most.

~~~

FIVE POINTS IN ATHENS, GA.

I love this area of my home town

where I’ve lived for 40 years

ADD Drug Store still has a lunch counter.

That's my son, Troy, ordering a

BLT and grilled cheese

They have old menu signs

The lunch ladies can make you a milkshake

and there's even a P.O. in the back

 that sells stamps and mails packages.

Across the street is The Homeplace

where I can buy unusual gifts.

Here's The Local Jam,

 where I came for breakfast, 

and brought my journal and pencils 

The table in the booth is covered in brown paper

Great peach preserves!

I sketched a leaf I found on the sidewalk.

A real turntable behind the counter.

Local Jam - Get it!

When I chose U of Ga. for college in 1954

people said,

 "Oh, you're going to a Party School!"

They were right!

So what if it was a "dry county" back then.

Now, it's an updated party school!

An interesting new place

5 Points Growlers

for college kids to walk up and

get an assortment of beer in gallons.

Earth Fare is here, too, where I

shop for organic Food.

 I didn’t take any more photos.

But came back home

back to my cat Zsa,Zsa, who said,

"Why don't you ever take my photo?"

 So I did.

Ah, back to this room of my own

with a garden view

where I write.

~ ~ ~