I have an aversion to sleeping in a dark room. I often sleep with the lights on. Last night I tried using a little silly battery operated tea light to gently illuminate the room, and found it to be a perfect amount of light to wake up to in the early hours. Add to it the above mentioned snow, and it is a recipe for morning's soft landing.
Armed with coffee, with eggnog instead of milk, I sit down to shake open my mind and see what salient thoughts might pop out. I am in my art room today, with the usual bird chatter a few rooms away. Savoring the quiet. Theo the cat sits in his beloved cat bed on my sewing table to my left, watching the snow fall, too. Suddenly, a little chubby squirrel appears out of nowhere. He rests in a crook of branches in the tree outside my house, at eye level, and seems oblivious to the wet. Seems like he is watching me. I watch him. I wonder if it is "my" squirrel -- the one that I see all summer long on my porch railing. I think of the cold, wet snow.
He scuttles down the tree and crosses the street to the sidewalk outside my house. He stops in front of my house, stands on his hind legs and looks up at my window. He knows I see him. I go to my bread drawer and pull out a piece of Jessica's Brick Oven Tuscan White Pane and tear it up into shreds of a size suitable to a squirrel. I toss one his way, and put the rest on my porch railing where I know he (or she?) will find it later. MY squirrel has decided that my trash, including the rolled up newspapers with dropped bird veggies, is his buffet and that he his always welcome. I hope he doesn't mind that he bread isn't toasted today.
And yes, it is Christmas, The hubub has ceased, at least for a day. We treasure the people and things in our lives, the rich opportunities we all have, and extend supportive thoughts and actions to people we perceive as having less of what they need. We are so fortunate to live in this world, at this time, despite its craziness. And yet, as is human nature, we find things to call problems all the time.
I look around this cluttered art space and think how true, maddening, and rather gross it is that one of my main "problems" is that I have too much. Too much stuff, both physical and otherwise. Too many interests, too many art supplies, too many "pets" (though they are children, really...). Too many icons on my desktop and files on my hard drives. Too many goals, too many memories, too many books, too many beads -- ok, I take that one back as a genuine impossibility. Beads are crack to me! Too many storage containers and lids, too many medicines, too many cd's. Too much. Once we get all this stuff we need more stuff to organize it all. Bigger, more, bigger, more. It's a vicious cycle.
I am not thinking that I "should" get rid of it all and live like an IKEA queen. I love my stuff. It inspires me and comforts me, and keeps my mind off the never-ending pain in my body, sometimes. But there is something about a quiet snowy morning that makes it seem possible to do some erasing...and just let some "busy-ness" go, to forget all the things that need doing or have been done, or need organizing, and just watch a squirrel eat bread. I still remember the story I heard when I was 19 and went to Egypt. A native Egyptian that was selling alabaster vases talked about a busy professional red headed woman from England that came to Egypt and fell in love with the country and,eventually, a man. She left an Important Job and everything else and took up living in a rural village near Aswan, and lived happily ever after, getting water at the well and learning how to make her own bread. Not sure if that is truth or not, but there are times when it sure looks appealing to see life from a new point of view.
The sun is fully up now and the pretty blue haze on the snow has been replaced with a crusty, wet sheen. The big ugly plow comes down my street and reveals asphalt where my little squirrel just sat. Having and living "too much" is a good problem to have, but sometimes, just for one day, I'd like to be my squirrel. Maybe today. Peace out and Merry Christmas.