Here's a dandy little playlist called Sunday for today - Saturday. Because it's how I like to think about time these days, as a mashup. 10am is 3pm. 8:24am is 4:32pm. Wednesday is Monday. Etc..
Lucky to have lists
I'm a privileged mammal. I have an incredible family, high-fiveable friends, clothes to wear, food to eat, a job I like, the ability to make stuff, I can read, I can write, I can cook, I have two cats that I can also feed. I can spend time dancing, doing yoga and pumping iron. I live in a house and have a garden filled with food I cook with. In fact, I'm so privileged that I'm able to sit here and type these very words onto the interweb.
If I were living as a woman in Yemen, on the streets of Portland, in Côte d’Ivoire, or in The Congo I wouldn't have the privledge of doing most of the things mentioned above. Nope. I'd more than likely be fighting each and every day to survive.
Things to do with this privilege:
Sponsor a woman on Women for Women International
Make things that say something, that teach something, that somehow bring mindfulness and peaceful action into the world.
Talk to the neighbors.
Eat and talk with strangers.
See what it's like to sleep on the street in unwashed clothes - without a blanket.
Collect "art and things" from friends who make "art and things" and donate the "art and things" to people who don't have access to "art and things."
Bring someone who has never been on a vacation on a vacation.
Give overworked people in the community a much-needed break by learning their skill and working a day for them - for free.
Teach myself and my 2.5 year old to be mindful and empathetic towards all living things.
Spend less, consume less, have less + give more.
Be one with nature and not one to exploit its many offerings.
Fall in Portland - Felicity Fenton - 2014
A drive
It's Sunday morning at 11:13 am. We are on our way back to Portland from Seattle in a pickup truck carrying a stack if Michael's paintings. Last night he showed his work to The Linda Hodges Gallery and they (unsurprisingly - because his work is exceptional) asked him to do a show this coming February.
Beckett is in the back seat watching an episode of the incessantly smiling Barney on the iPad. The sun is settled in warm pools on Michael's denimed lap. Windows are down and the hair that flies into my eyes, nose and mouth, is an aggravating reminder that I've just started shedding my uterine lining.
There are bright red cars, colbalt blue cars, taxi cab yellow cars driven by people who pick their noses, who passively listen (or not) to their passengers, who glance too much at their phones. Like us, they have left somewhere to go somewhere else, flanked on a highway between what was and will be. They are coming from fishing trips, great uncles' funerals, Rifle handling workshops, teenage sleepovers, baby shower brunches, grocery store shopping-sprees, drive-throughs, red-tail hawk-watching, binge drinking, Zumba and Starbucks. They are headed home, to the rodeo, to Kinkos, to a toddler's birthday party, to Taco Bell, to cousin Fred's annual BBQ, to sleep with Anthony's wife, to put their last 100 dollars into a slot machine.
I smell horses and coffee, dust and stale panties. I hear the wild combat of tires and wind. I'm thinking about what I should make for dinner this week - chickpea crepes and tarragon tomato soup. I picture the overflowing laundry basket in my closet and the crusty sheets on our bed.
I think about not having any time and whether it's even possible to possess such a thing. I think about the pleasure and privilege of time and the time involved in thinking about time. Time spent in cars, in waiting rooms, the few seconds between taking steps. Time spent flanking between what was and will be.
