Surfeit and Lack

My Thanksgiving weekend was spent basking in leisure, eating wonderful food, and relating with friends and family in several locations. It was wonderful! Highlights included an impromptu foot-stamping jam session with flute, guitar, bouzouki, and harp that resounded through my parent's old Victorian house, all the potatoes and gravy I could eat, and the manifest charms of a cat so sleepy she couldn't hold her head up.

It was lovely, but it is over--leaving me feeling sludgy from unhealthy food, sluggish from lack of exercise, and sullen from too much talking and interaction. Normally this state finds me puzzled and gradually dissipates, only to be restored around Christmas time. But this year I don't want to spend a month and a half of my life under par. So I'm taking action! Peaceful, contemplative action.

This week the McIntyre household will be avoiding sweets and meat, eating lots of veggies, and enjoying simpler meals, to counteract the excess of the weekend. I am also planning to study and read a lot, take naps and hot baths, and forswear the TV and internet in favor of making music, writing, and just sitting to contemplate this constantly-changing life. Pots of herbal tea, my harp, and my yoga mat will be my companions.

There's a balance between surfeit and lack which I want to learn. Life is a series of small moments, building upon each other to create the kind of internal and external structure we present to ourselves and the world. This week, this moment, I choose simplicity.

How are you incorporating your holiday celebrations into your own life?

Shattering Glass and Dancing in the Dust

Enjoy, even if you've heard this song a million times on the radio! I think this may be one of the most striking music videos I've ever seen, and Adele's authenticity and powerful voice give me the shivers every time.

Today I am Thankful For... My Husband

This Thanksgiving day I am thankful for my husband! Little did I know when we first met--and clashed with the clanging of cymbals--almost three years ago that today we would be living in harmony and anticipating a child together!

Thank you for your tidy habits!
Thank you for your sparkling eyes!
Thank you for your musical gifts and humility!
Thank you for always watching out for me!
Thank you for being so trustworthy!
Thank you for your honesty!
Thank you for embracing my family!
Thank you for your incredible cooking skills!
Thank you for being interested in my passions!
Thank you for accepting me as I am!
Thank you for choosing me!

Deathbed Portrait

I would like to look this peaceful when I cross the Great Divide.

I would not like to have pencil drawings made of me.

But then I'm not John Morris.

I wouldn't mind someone writing a poem.

Like this one by Dylan Thomas.

Or this one by Tennyson.

Which puts me in mind of this momento mori, commissioned by the great metaphysical poet John Donne not too long before he died.

This custom was common in his time. Donne, however, after his beloved wife Anne died, seemed to have anticipated the soft-footed arrival of Death far more than most of us! He preached on it, declaring in his last sermon that "We have a winding sheet in our mother's womb, which grows with us from our conception, and we come into the world wound up in that winding sheet, for we come to seek a grave."


Some of his most famous poetry was inspired by his fixation on death as well--the constantly quoted lines, "No man is an island/entire of itself... Therefore send not to know/ for whom the bell tolls,/It tolls for thee."


I liked him better when he was licentious.

Joy in the Little Things

Today I cleaned three beautiful houses with my mother-in-law. Christmas decorations are going up--one tree is easily ten feet tall, festooned with trendy white gold and dusty teal ornaments and a huge featherlike topper. Santas with quizzical faces peered out at me as I dusted, and stylized snowmen grinned from startling places. I enjoyed meeting each new character and decoration as I labored through the accustomed routine.

Cleaning is certainly not my favorite thing! I look forward, soon, to resigning my position. But I must admit that there are many opportunities to find joy in the work. Leaving a lovely house in perfect condition, tiptoeing across spotless floors, and closing the door on swathes of vacuumed carpet is rewarding. Being more likely to sweep dirt under a rug than pick it up in my own housekeeping, the much more rigorous standards of cleaning on the job bring me satisfaction.

I enjoy finding joy in the little things, even cleaning other peoples' houses!