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I enjoy uploading pictures to Flickr. It's a wonderful place. |
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...a soaring melody, an inscrutable, whimsical lyric, and so much musical imagination that it almost can't be contained inside the song. I adore this man.
— January 8, 2005 |
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The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself. — Anais Nin
The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.
— William Sloane Coffin
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I can be reached at romanlily ~at~gmail.com. Or you can join the notify list here. |
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January 14, 2006
Sketches
I'm stting here on the tan and blue striped couch in my apartment, soaking my feet. Yes, the part about soaking my feet is meant to be understood literally, because the feet are aching terrifically. It's just the side effect of getting back to work with a "real company" again. The year is off to a propserous start: I am at the beginning of a two-month contract for a Very Large, Multinational Corporation. I interviewed on a Tuesday and started work on a Thursday and so far things are going well. I mean, I'm way behind on replying to email, and I desperately need to go grocery shopping — but other than that, things are going well.
I wore these shoes to work this week:
The shoes have a very cute shape, but they're a stupid choice for someone who's going to be on her feet for six or seven hours, scurrying about constantly. These Very Large Multinational Corporations sure know how to make their employees hustle.
I'm glad for the chance to do some "steady work." For me, the hardest thing about being a freelance designer is constantly wondering what I'm going to be doing in two weeks. (That's how it works. I usually have work to do each day — it's just wondering what's around the corner that keeps me hogtied.) If I had a fold of very regular, stable clients, I probably wouldn't have this worry, but I haven't reached that sweet spot in my journey into self-employment yet.
The new year has already offered some beautiful moments that fell into my lap like rose petals.
• R and I made collards and black-eyed peas on New Year's Day. I have never prepared this traditional meal before (which is supposed to bring money and luck—so far it seems to be working!). R. makes it every year. I was put on biscuit duty during our meal preparation. It's the third or fourth time I've tried my hand at making real biscuits from scratch. I wouldn't say I make amazing biscuits, but I'm getting better. Melting some butter and drizzling honey over my homemade biscuits is really quite a pleasure.
• One night last week, I got on the train after a long day at the Very Large Multinational Corporation (hereafter abbreviated as VLMC). I boarded the train at the midtown stop, and immediately noticed a tall white man standing by the door. The first thing I noticed were his eyes. They were wide and slightly transparent and a little wild. Then my gaze moved down and I noticed his hands resting on a tall walking cane. Suddenly I realized that he was visually impaired.
I've written before about my impulse toward those with visual problems — probably the result of the childhood years I spent living with my blind grandfather. As I gazed at this man I realized that he was listening to some sort of music on his headphones. He wasn't behaving wildly — but his behavior let me know that he was listening to music that he loved. He was gently letting his body enjoy the music. He leaned his head back, he worked his shoulders a bit. My destination was approaching, a couple of stops down the line. As I watched him, I tried to make a plan that would let me follow him and ask what he was listening to. But he exited at the next stop, before I had a chance to ask him. Days later, I am I still wondering what sort of music was coming through those headphones.
• The people at the VLMC are friendlier and less vacant than I would have (arrogantly) expected. The quality of giant corporations suggests that they would necessarily be filled soulless, dead-eyed, card-punching employees, right? So far, I have not actually met any of those soulless employees.
The other afternoon I was at work in the big reprographics office where managers and artists and secretaries send documents to be printed and bound. I was doing grunt work, collating and hole-punching and binding. I was sharing work space with Fred, a tall black man who works on the reprographics staff. He's in his late 40s, athletic. He listens to sports talk on the AM radio and makes wisecracks and escorts heavy boxes upstairs on the freight elevator. He's the kind of man who was probably a star athlete in high school and is always in charge of organizing the football betting pool each fall. And, therefore, the kind of man with whom I automatically assume that I have nothing in common. (I'm better at that than I'd like to admit.)
We were making small talk as we worked. We were talking about Christmas gifts we had bought ourselves after not receiving them from family or friends. He told me about a purchase he had made for himself last week. "I really want to concentrate on some of my artistic goals this year," he said. "So went into the bookstore the other day, and I walked out with this great book called The Artist's Way."
I think my jaw fell open when he said this. The Artist's Way is a book that has meant to me a lot over the past five or six years. I never would have expected this man to know about or appreciate the book.
He looked out the window into the setting sun as he spoke. He said he had a greater awareness that he was getting closer to the end of his life — "the years are just flying by," he said. Running out of time. He didn't want to wait until the end of his life to explore some of these goals. He wants to get into acting, voiceover work. He wants to get "unblocked" as an artist (this is a concept that Julia Cameron talks about a lot in the book).
I marveled at the smallness of the world as I stood there at the work table with Fred. I was not expecting to feel any kinship with this man. But there we were. Both of us trying to overcome our own "blocks," reach out to share some part of ourselves with the world, see some glimpse of the world just beyond the curtain.
Who knows how long we have, anyhow? Naomi Shihab Nye captures the sentiment beautifully in the poem I just posted to Ephemera. I feel compelled to savor these words at the start of the new year, hold them close to me as I move through the wide world:
Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.
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