A FEW HAPPY THINGS

 

Greenery--plants that freshen the air, watered and trimmed.  In the bedroom they help us sleep, removing airborne toxins and increasing humidity.  Like a night under the stars, or a walk somewhere freshly mown, plants are calming, slowing our heartbeats and relaxing our muscles. 

Airplane plants or philodendron need little care beyond water and succulents thrive on neglect. Asparagus ferns (not a true fern) grow fast and add a look of wild abandonment that I like.  Mine sends stiff shoots that rise a foot or so, then fall, finally tangling on the carpet. 

We are housesitting this month for friends in Santa Barbara, California mostly to take care of their lush greenery.  Family back in North Carolina is doing the same for me, watering and feeding my crazy indoor begonias that grow in the most haphazard directions and root in a jar almost before the water needs changing; my poinsettias that turn red as nights darken and grow cold, then green then red, year after year; the Boston ferns and snake plant, and money tree plant that's quite tall now in its 6th year.  

What can be happier than caring for indoor and outdoor plants? 

Books--stacked here and there.  Favorite ones or ones waiting to be read, scattered or alphabetized or grouped by interest.  Your own journals among them, your travel journals, sketches, scrapbooks. . . .  I read a saying, "You will be judged by your books."  Sounds good to me. Reading is the food for our minds. Our books are varied but not random.  Many are classics, like my favorite, Edith Wharton. Plus, rows of Barbara Kingsolver and Mary Gordon and Joyce Carol Oats.  Lots of poetry from the last century or earlier (I was an English major).  Theology and philosophy that my husband reads.  Then all the mysteries, Louise Penny and her Three Pines series especially.  Doesn't having enough books to read bring you comfort?  What else takes you outside yourself more than a good book?  Well, travel does.  But unlike travel, it takes no effort to plop down somewhere and read.  

 

So now we have two easy rewarding things, plants and books.  

The third is Blankets--lap rugs, throws, wraps, hand-made quilts (by my mom); old or new, fuzzy or soft, colorful or plain.  In baskets, on couches, by the fire pit, on the deck.  Waiting to enfold and warm.  If you don't have enough, check out thrift stores.  Clean and shabby is fine.  We used so many during pandemic outdoor get-togethers.  My new favorite is from warm Icelandic wool. An old favorite black-watch plaid Pendleton, my mom kept around her shoulders during her last weeks in a nursing home.   We can sit somewhere cozy under a blanket with a plant nearby freshening the air and read a good book.  Three happy things together.  

Crafts--for me, word collages, painted furniture, knitting.  A scrapbook of quotes and thoughts to quiet the mind and lift the spirits.  For my mother her quilting supplies. For my brother his art, his Florida patio home a gallery. Pottery, journaling (which someone called the soul's way of coping with reality), hand-made anything . . . I can't list all the creative ways to make our lives rich.  I think we would all agree that when we are creating something we are in a flow state, totally immersed, time passing and no distractions.  We feel challenged and content both.  That's a happy combination. 

There are many other small things that make life rich.  But these are the ones on my mind this California day, sitting at my computer amongst the tropical blooms on my friends' patio after a morning out, making my own life richer--and I hope yours--by sharing these thoughts.  

Thank you for sending your attention this way.  Nina Naomi

THE EXTRAORDINARY

"Olive Trees At Collioure," Matisse, 1905

 Where do we find the extraordinary? 

Seldom in black tie and tulle, behind news desks or in our palms.

Earbuds and head phones scare it away.

No, the extraordinary likes the outdoors best.

It likes waterfalls and geysers, old-growth forests and thumb-sized red mushrooms.

It's in shadows of cedars on snow.

Where children play and trains whistle.

The extraordinary doesn't like crowds and cocktails, 

Humble brags or dropping names, "likes" or thumbs up.  No not there. 

Sometimes it comes indoors where lovers keep their promises and lie entwined.  

Or into words that startle.

It's in the voice of Maria Callas and the soul of Puccini. 

Artists find it and poets.  And then like God they give it away.

                                                Nina Naomi

 

 

 

A PLACE TO STOP, THINK AND WONDER, PART IV

Still Life with Apples on a Sideboard, 1900-06, Cezanne

After all these months of pandemic fears, even the idea of standing before the great works of art in a museum has been like a Star Wars "galaxy far far away." But we're on our third sojourn in Princeton, New Jersey where my husband is a visiting scholar. And the museums here about have vaccination and mask mandates.  I won't harm or be harmed; it's wonderful!

 

I barely know where to start.  But start we have.  The first week we ferried into New York from Atlantic Highlands, NJ.  That's the place I go to scavenge sea glass from the flotsam of the city ("Hobbies are Wonderful," May 16, 2018; "Candles and Your Best Bone China," Feb 9, 2017). What a thrill to approach New York from the water.  I know, this is ordinary for many, but not for me. 

 

Showing our vaccine cards, masked and elated, we entered the worlds of modern and contemporary art. The MoMa (Museum of Modern Art) had an exhibit on Cezanne sketches.  I could live in those rooms.  We saw one sketch I had bought a copy of long ago from my college bookstore.  Over many moves, this little print survived from our first graduate apartment to our present house-but-one.  I wish I could find another reproduction.  We had never seen the original before.  How is it that seeing this piece became such a special moment?  It makes me believe in art as solace, as transcendent, as in some ways more alive than life.  

 

Olympia, 1875, Paul Cezanne

 

The next week we drove just an hour from where we're staying to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, you know, the one with the "Rocky Steps."   We spent the day in French drawing rooms and cafes with Renoir, dance studios with Degas, lovely papered boudoirs with Matisse and Bonnard, at sideboards with Cezanne.  What a wonderful visit!  I could linger and feed my soul forever. 

 

Girl Tatting, 1906, Renoir

 

After the Shower, 1914, Bonnard

This is not an everyday occurrence for me; rather a thirst intermittently quenched.  These days feed my soul, my heart, my mind.  The broad open curated rooms of a museum filled with the works of artists who have labored to record their vision, for me are as profound a place as the canopies of nature.  I wish I could express my gratitude in terms worthy of the gift. But I cannot.  With appreciation, Nina Naomi