beauty in contentment

Today I've been thinking about contentment.

I remember one day when I was getting ready to move off to Seattle for school my mother said to me, "I don't think you'd be happy no matter where you were."

At the time the statement (which I'm sure was made in reaction to some emotionally charged comment I made or was said in the pain of her last child leaving home) felt very hurtful. Unfortunately, today as I was thinking about my own tendencies to not "count my blessings", or my frequent feelings of worry and stress I realized that she may have been right. Is this the human condition?? The inability to hold oneself together and really appreciate all we have? I know that I spend a lot of my time and energy trying to feel positive for friends and family because often they have a hard time harnessing that for themselves. I also have a hard time maintaning a healthy respect for just how wonderful my life is. But this last year or so something's been floating around in my brain that was put there years ago--something that my Grandma said, "You just have to wake up and decide that you're gonna be happy. Not everyday is gonna smell like roses.". Now maybe it shouldn't be hard to see how a kid like me, who really did have a rough time of it in so many ways just heard that statement in bitterness, but roughly 16 years later it's starting to seem like that attitude should really just be second nature. (i'm not there yet!)

Not every day is gonna "smell like roses," or creosote after a good storm if you're a desert dweller, but maybe you and I should pick a little bit of the metaphorical flower and rub it between our fingers and bring out the smell ourselves. Maybe reminding ourselves, counting our blessings, is exactly what we have to do. At 8 when my grandma said that to me I dreamed of so many things, big aspirations; now my biggest aspiration is to become an elegant and contented woman content in love and life, but unwilling to rest until all those around her can feel as contented as she. I feel like having that aspiration is a wonderful blessing in itself. so count: 1.

AND here's a little mixed media of counted blessings in no particular order and perhaps a little abstracted:

I feel my bones. They are small and concentrated within my body, making up a frame that only I am privy to. The delicacy of my own constitution starts here—erect in a strait back and long neck—the features of something elegant, smooth as pearl or bone.

There is a picture of me on the eastern coast with my mother, my four year old body crouched close to the sand. We are looking for the skeletons of dead sea creatures, the shells that were their homes. My baby suit hugs my body tightly, slippery, salty-wet. It moves with me and my little girl eagerness. I remember the freedom of my bones then. They were not so hidden. In that picture you can see my small shoulder blades pointing out to openness as I lean to point to something in the sand. My ribs line my core, openly protecting the vitality of youth, life. From such a picture a mother might gawk at the potential of such a child. Long legs, smooth elongated lines. I might do the same or feel regret. But I still know those bones. I still feel their fine construction and careful movements. These days they rarely reveal themselves. They coil and compress. But I still see myself stretching and contracting wryly, elegant in the freedom of movement.

just to name a few...

peace and love-christine