Day 251 is a Sweet Quote that I found in a Scientific American Mind article yesterday (article by Suzann Pileggi, January/February 2010):
“… positive emotions, even fleeting ones, can broaden our thinking and enable us to connect more closely with others.”
So here’s to even the most fleeting of positives…
A Poem of 4 Lines for the Sweetness of 4 days: Sweetness Is A Warm Beverage.
Sweetness is a warm beverage, a café-latte vice -
Chai latte (a Remedy for my soul)
Caramel macchiato, a ridiculous aesthetic pleasure while sitting, alone
Indulgence, an organic soy latte warmth, never decaf.
……………………………………………………………………………………………….
While writing this I had a few ruminations on cafés and lattes…. circling particularly around what makes one vice okay and another not? Why are some people so okay/not okay with alcohol? Caffeine? Mullets? Road rage? I know people who draw concrete lines – I have definitely been one of them – viewing the world, and supposed “vices”, in black and white, like “coffee bad, water good” – but, of course, things are never quite so clear in reality. There is a lot of water out there that can make you very sick, and coffee - well. Let’s talk about coffee, shall we?
The vices presented for coffee are, indeed, real: it contains caffeine (a stimulant/drug), it is exponentially expensive when purchase by the cup from cafés (which I do); it stains teeth, creates stale breath, and in purchasing some coffees from some cafés, one supports corporations with immoral histories, affiliations and practices.
What can I say in Defence of the Latte, and particularly of café lattes one sips in cafés, then? In a nutshell, I enjoy the aesthetic satisfaction and tangible pleasure of someone making me something lovely and then getting to enjoy it in a lovely place. How feminine of me, you may think, to want to be surrounded by lovely and “pretty” things – well…. hum. What to say? I am woman, hear me roar?
I can think of few things more important to the daily quality of my life (or more sweet) than beautiful aesthetics. For real. Ugly, or poorly constructed, architecture, industrial areas and their emissions, massive grey parking lots, electronic masses of wire, cold personality-bare and imagination-poor rooms, basically all things that have function without any attention to form, really hurt my eyes. And kind of make me feel like crying because they are so glum, made by glum people with so little imagination. I mean, since when did we let the Eeyores of the world take over? You’d think with Nature setting such a fine example we’d do a better job.
But – ! The aesthetic that the café has cultivated: so interesting, quirky, with attention to detail and often with lovely lines and colors, soft lighting, live music, local art. Edmonton is beginning to have independent cafés with organic products sprout up here and there too (like Credo and Duchess). A café is a place to meet friends, sit alone, read, people watch – it’s basically like a comfortable, tiny little community housed in a building that always has scones and chocolate-dipped biscotti. Basically what I picture heaven to be like except better (and am I allowed to say real?).
Also, in a café, you get to enjoy the pleasure of not feeling rushed. As my roommate Vance says, cafés are comfort. Lattes themselves are comforting in their physical warmth; I love their aroma, the frothiness of steamed soy milk and its taste when mixed with freshly ground and brewed espresso beans; I love the cups and the foam on top and the cinnamon sprinkles. I love sipping hot beverages. I love that someone else carefully makes them for me. I love that it allows me to stay up until 3am dancing.
And WHAT is life, if it’s not about the small, daily pleasures? Sometimes all you have is the small pleasures… no?
Day 246’s Sweet Quote – or, a Poem on Reality:
“If you have to love, let it be a love that is bittersweet: may your joys hold hands with sorrows, your warmth of heart lie side-by-side with an unfeeling cold. Let your love occasionally be constant, and your vows rarely promised, or your promises only sometimes kept. Let there be hope one day, little the next – then perhaps despair, then back to the former.
Why? Because, like Heraclitus is supposed to say, life is constant only in that it changes, and so any love other than the bittersweet is not real.”
- Sarah Jackson (but most bits probably stolen from the words of people I have read in the past, and most definitely stolen from real life)
This list of 4 Sweet Acts for Days 242 through 245 aren’t all acts so much as sweet somethings. But they’ll do. In fact, each one fiercely deserves the title sweet, as sweetness is so much harder to find and touch and see when life doesn’t feel sweet.
Day 242: Purchasing a vintage patterned wool bathing-outfit, while at an eclectic winter garage sale with Miss Wilde, that I realized (once I got home and washed it) somehow fits perfectly… 25 cents well spent.
Day 243: Remedying my heart with snow, chai and Noemie.
Day 244: A heartbreaking reading of a passage from Ranier Maria Rilke’s Letters To A Young Poet.
Day 245: Finding out that I have 20/20 vision and some of the best overall eye-health that the optometrist I saw today had ever seen. That, along with the fact that I’ve never had any work done on my teeth (I’m not just talking braces, I’m talking not even a single cavity, my friends) basically makes me evolutionary gold.
It’s that time again – time to catch up on my slovenly blogging. I’d apologize for it, but frankly I’m okay with it right now. It will get better eventually, things always do, so I’m not going to stress overly about it for the moment.
So Day 239, 240 and 241’s Sweet Acts: Regina Spektor’s song “Fidelity“. I’ve been listening to it on constant repeat ever since I heard it playing in the Duchess earlier this week and downloaded it from iTunes. It’s the only thing that’s made me feel like dancing in about 2 weeks. So, yeah. It counts for 3 days of sweetness because that’s about how many consecutive hours I’ve been playing it on repeat.
You can listen to “Fidelity” on repeat for 72 hours too, by purchasing it (then you can just hit “Continual Everlasting Repeat” instead of hitting play every 3 minutes and 47 seconds) or by listening to it on Regina’s MySpace page (give her page a looong minute to load, it’s slow like a snail): http://www.myspace.com/reginaspektor. Scroll through her songs until you get to “Fidelity”, then just play it on repeat for about 4 hours. The next song (“Us”) is pretty good too.
Day 235 – 238: 3 days have somehow gone by, and Sweetness and Blogging have been calling my name, demanding that I recognize their existence…
I thought I’d share (for 3 days) the 3 quotes that have themed my life over the past week. I find myself thinking, laughing about, and saying these quotes out-loud and often. It helps.
“Everything is terrible.” - Liz Lemon
“The problem is that women are too wonderful.” - Natasha Lawyer
“Oh to be young, and to feel love’s keen sting…” – Dumbledore
Day 233 and 234’s Sweetness…
My body aches.
Literally. I just started an aerial gymnastics class this week and many forgotten muscles throughout my body, like ghosts of strength from years past, are reminding me of their presence.
The “started aerials class” part of that, of course, being the sweetness… not the aching part. Although, aching can be sweet, in its own way: it promotes strength, resiliency, fortitude of mind and spirit, empathy, and at the very least, aching muscles are distracting.
Friends have been telling me that they have been missing my blog, and so I’ve roused myself for them: thank you for enjoying my little world of written words, dear people, and you know who you are…
On Day 230 my Sweet Act was to begin reading a book that has been sitting on my shelf for about a month, waiting, perhaps gathering a little bit of dust, although no more than the rest of my room: Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife, has written her second book and it is called Her Fearful Symmetry. Audrey is fearfully wonderful: the first chapter of Her Fearful Symmetry, on page 4, ended with these words:
He knew that soon he would have to open his eyes, let go of Elspeth’s body, sit up, stand up, talk. Soon there would be the future, without Elspeth. He kept his eyes shut, breathed in her fading scent and waited.
…
Sweet Acts of Days 231 and 232 involved living in Audrey’s world as much as possible, eating yogurt, and wishing that I could see my life through the clarity of an impartial third-person’s set of eyes.
Day 229’s Sweet Act was my younger (albeit taller) and only sister Emma’s baby shower, which she was having at her friend Jaclyn’s place, who is due on the same day as my sister – February 8th. The baby shower was lovely and it’s fun seeing my sister looking so lovely and pregnant. The one thorn of the day was the reminder that Emma’s husband Sabino still hasn’t been allowed into Canada for the birth: it’s heartbreaking and frustrating for our family, and particularly for Emma. To read more about their story, sign their petition and any other way you can help, go to www.emmaandsabino.com.
Me and my lovely preggy sister Emma :)
The February 8th Girls.
Day 228’s Sweet Act was an afternoon of cross country skiing with Noemie! Incredibly warm and beautiful blue day, incredibly great skiing partner (and teacher – my cross country experience over the past 10 years before Day 228 consisted of one afternoon trip with Kieran on Mount Mac in November: in short, limited), and incredibly sore hip flexors the day after.
And incredibly cancelled run the day after too… oh, the gloooorious Sunday sleep-in.
