Merry Christmas, Everyone

From our sunny apartment filled with the smells of the fir tree, warm pepper cheese biscuits, the sounds of 4-year old Miles scooting along the floor boards with his new wooden train from Santa and the counter top bursting with ingredients for two bountiful pans of lasagne, we wish you all a Merry Christmas.

May I keep my eyes on the light that shines even in the darkest days.

alecia

Monochrome

Lake Harriet in living color. 

Along the pathway.

This weekend, I walked Lake Harriet twice. Yesterday, I was with my sister, Holly, and as we began our walk around the grayed December lake, ice forming like glass along the shoreline, trees barren, like iron weapons threatening the sky, a bald eagle swept before us and took perch on a branch. We were star-struck.

He was smaller than some I've seen, but elegant as always. He poked around, looking for food in the water below, then launched into the sky, swooping and diving, a potent brown and white and gray. Just the colors of the surroundings.

Today I walked with Lee and took these photos.

I love the color of these days. It is difficult to be INSIDE a home on a day like this, but exquisite to be OUTSIDE living within it.

This is the color palette that just makes my heart soar. I can imagine walls painted the white of the snow, wooden floors the color of the trees, a little worn, silk velvets or mohairs for a sofa the color of the water and silk pillows the color of the brush along the shoreline. I would paint the ceiling the color of the sky - milky blue gray. So, so divinely inspired.

What to look for in a guy....

I have a new theory that debunks some of the old ones....you know...marry rich, marry "up", marry a man who will take care of you...

Having lived through the last 18 years with a man who had less money than the man I was previously married to, who was socially and educationally an equal - not my superior (okay, now he's more highly educated....Dr. Stevens), who only "took care of me" for about 3 of the 18 years we've been together....the rest of it we've shared the responsibility...I would HIGHLY recommend that you look for this in a guy:

• Find someone who believes in you. Find a man who sees your talent. Find a man who knows who you are when even you don't know. Find a man who is never threatened by your success. Find a man who insists you support yourself. Find a man who only wants you to love how you spend your days. Find a man who doesn't let you make excuses and live for long with doubt - because he doesn't doubt you.  Find that man. 
• Then, return the favor.
• You will have more than you need, more magic, and more happiness than you can imagine if you live the life you were meant to live with the support of someone you love and who loves you back. 

That's what to look for in a guy...

you know you are in trouble when...

...someone says, "I can tell you must be busy. You haven't been blogging."

Yikes. It's true. Good news. Bad news. Life is full.

so... I am going to run something old. I've been helping Lee with some copy for his website and promo material and very much in touch with Depth Psychology (which is a HOT topic with the opening of several artistic pieces - the broadway play "Relatively Speaking" by Woody Allen, Ethan Coen and Elaine May  = which we saw and is hysterical!, the new movie about Freud and Jung called "A Dangerous Method" - god knows when it opens in MSP - it opened in NY and LA last week, and the death of James Hillman which brings his work to bear on the gestalt of it all.) Okay back to the point. So I am thinking Depth Psychology and yet am too busy to write because my days are filled with furniture plans and fabric samples.

But, here is a piece I wrote a five years ago and it is still meaningful to me. I continue to believe we must "go down" to find ourselves - go "inside" not out.  So... here you go: hope you enjoy. This is as good as it gets when I have to go quote a living room for a meeting tomorrow.....

Zan, standing, center with lifelong friend Oliver sitting at left.
Top of Highland Bowl in Colorado a few years ago.

The context:  I am in the middle of reading a book by a Jungian analyst, Robert L. Moore, which is knocking my socks off. It is called The Archetype of Initiation (subtitled Sacred Space, Ritual Process and Personal Transformation). Sounds suspiciously esoteric, I know, but I have been interested in Jung’s work for some time and especially the roles of myth and ritual in our lives. Moore’s position is that the need for ritual is hard-wired in humans. We will seek it, for better or for worse, in an attempt to manage our inborn grandiosity, which is overwhelming to us, and to find our place in the cosmos. 

My twenty-year old son, Zan, sent me this photo by email from a trip he had just taken to Colorado with a group of friends. Story has it they went to the top of the run and then walked another hour up the mountain, often careening narrow paths to reach this peak.  Zan stands in the center here. The young man sitting on the left, Oliver, has been his best friend since they were in first grade. They all seem to be looking around, as individuals, not as a group in this moment.

I don’t see just a bunch of guys taking a break on the mountain, preparing for the next run down the mountain. I see sacred space and young men creating a ritual, a tiny little hero’s journey, proof to themselves and each other that they are worthy…with the mountain peaks encompassing them, nowhere to go, but down.

Our infantile grandiosity carries us toward the heavens. It’s called “the Icarus complex.” But a maturing soul knows the real journey for a human - not a god - is down, deep and internal. And so, we create rituals that test us and carry us to our depths.  Some take physical form. All activate our psyche and soul. Even though this ritual may be unconscious in this moment, it is rehearsal for a later test, a greater one.

I love this image. How innocent and unwitting our youth…yet, how divinely inspired it can be. For me, even in mid-life, there are still mountains to descend.