View from the Couch

My dear friend Erika Sears is raising funds to help her go to Hong Kong for an artist residency.  Here' a link to her blog with info about it. GO ERIKA!! a tiny rocket: The Hong Kong Project : "I am so excited! I am launching a kickstarter project. I want to create my own artist residency in Hong Kong for two weeks and, at t..."

I called him Sol.  He was named for a character in my favorite TV Series DEADWOOD - Sol Starr.   I acquired Sol almost 6 years ago.  One of my daughter's housemates had found him and he needed a good safe home.  He was a Russian Blue, his fur a lovely shade of gray, and he was pretty beat up, his ears had been chewed on, he had patches of fur missing.  A check up at the vet found him covered with fleas, ear mites, and of course  worms.  He had several teeth missing, but overall, he was a healthy cat. When I brought him home, he howled in the backseat of my car for about 40 miles - from Forest Grove to SE Portland, OR where my little apartment had everything but a cat.  That first night, I woke up to find him perched on the top of the door.  Being up high would always be his favorite thing.  Well, aside from poking me awake each morning. Sol moved with me twice in the years we spent together.  First to a house that would come ...

I seem to be on the verge of making a choice.  Problem is, I don't know what I'm choosing between.  Everything that I would like to see in my life seems just out of reach, and if I will just commit, then I can have...something. I've been making small changes in various parts of my life; my health, my work, my creativity, my friendships and family; and while these small changes are making a difference, I feel that I have to commit, fully commit, to those that are the most important in order to actually attain my goals. So what is more important to me?  Do I work on my novel and forgo time with my friends and family? Do I fully commit to changing my health and avoid situations where I will eat too much, drink too much and be far to inactive?  Do I decide that getting back to Paris at the earliest possible moment is the most important thing to me and get a second job so that I can pay off my debts, save for the trip I really want to take, and again, forgo time with ...

I stumbled on this poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson - The Snow Storm.  I'm not going to post the whole thing, just the opening lines.  Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end. Part of me wishes, very much, that I was somewhere where the snow is falling today.  I've been very productive this week, and now today, I just want to lay about and doze and read and sip hot cocoa and write long letters to people I miss. I don't write letters anymore.  I used to be very good about it.  I wrote my mother and friends that moved away.  I wrote love letters to old lovers.  I wrote apologies to people I wronged.  I wrote angry letters to people who harmed me.  I didn't always send these letters, but something about the act of putting pen to paper released me somehow. ...