Wednesday's Word -- Miracle

I'm not really a die-hard, devoted user of Philosophy products, but I do like reading the product labels.  This miracle worker label caught my eye recently:  "find the miracle in every moment, the beauty in every day."  Good advice.

I've been thinking about how our lives are full of "miracles" if we are actually looking.  (My recent fire ant-scipade, for example.)

How fitting then that the word "miracle" means something that "excites admiring awe."  It comes from the Latin word miraculum, meaning "object of wonder."

But the best thing about the word?  Its indo-european root means "to laugh, smile."

Lately I've been thinking that sometimes the ability to laugh and smile in the face of the circumstances is a miracle in and of itself.  

Monday's Metaphor -- Fruit of Your Labors

This tree grows outside my kitchen window.  In other words, I spend a fair amount of time looking at it.  We have lived in this house for less than a year, and so the tree and I are foreign to each other.  I've been amazed to observe its transformation from dead-looking-thing to vibrant-lush-nothing-can-stop-my-growth-thing.

This tree is covered with some sort of growing fruit that I have not been able to identify.  I call it the "mystery fruit," and my children and I check it periodically, poking and squeezing and sniffing to try to classify it as something familiar.  For now, we will wait and watch.

Sometimes your life's efforts (too) will produce unrecognizable fruit.  Wait and watch.  Watch and wait.

Monday's Metaphor -- The Hunt

"I Don't Like the Sound of This" ,
Michéle Brummer Everett

I have a metaphor wall at home.  (Are you surprised?  I didn't think so.)  On this wall hang various paintings, prints, and drawings that have some metaphorical meaning for me.  Sometimes I will stand, staring at this wall to brace myself against the circumstances of the day. 

Here is one item from my metaphor wall.  It depicts a hunter holding a leaf in hand, with a bear on his back.  The print is captioned:  "I Don't Like the Sound of This."  Here's the artist's description:  "A mighty hunter and his favourite bear friend come across a suspicious leaf in the forest. Whatever he's saying, our trusty bear is NOT buying it!"

Now here's the beautiful thing about art.  It can mean whatever I want it to mean.  For me, I look at this print and am reminded that the thing I'm hunting for may already be on my back.  Or some days, I take it to mean that transition (the new leaf) can be a scary/suspicious thing, even to a bear and a mighty hunter.  Both metaphors apply in my life.  Yours too?

Choose Your Own Adventure

When I was a kid, I went through a stage during which I read every Choose Your Own Adventure Book I could get my hands on.  The first books in the series were published starting in 1979 when I was 7 years old, and they were perfect for my little inquiring mind.

Of course I cheated and would retrace back to the page with the decision point when I didn't like the outcome.  Sometimes I would make really bad choices on purpose just to see what would happen.  It was a book, and I could do that.   And pretty much anything could happen.  You could choose to visit friends in France where you might rent a hot air balloon and hop in.  Then you could choose what direction to fly, and when you met with trouble, you could choose to engage in peaceful negotiations or attack, swim for the shore or wait for rescue.  Depending on where your choices led, you might even end up drifting away into space, where the lack of oxygen leads to your demise.

Anyway, I've always been interested in choice and consequences.  In possibilities and change.  In hope and regret.

Along those lines, here are a handful of photographs of some of the beautiful doors I chanced upon while traveling in the Mediterranean this summer.  I like to think about what might be on the other side of each.

Tunis, Tunisia

Amalfi Coast, Italy

Cinque Terre, Italy

Tunis, Tunisia

Malta

Bulletin Board Wisdom

A friend shared these words with me years ago,

Ever since, they hang pinned near a window.

Reminding, chiding, advising.

What appears to be,

May be temporary. 
It may be hiding what's next.
Or perhaps what always was.

What good advice.   

"When you come to something, stop to let it pass 

So you can see what else is there."  

Here's the full text of the poem, by Kenneth Koch (born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1925 and died in 2002 of leukemia.  Koch  received degrees from Harvard and Columbia University and many awards and honors for his writing).

One Train May Hide Another
(sign at a railroad crossing in Kenya)

In a poem, one line may hide another line,
As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.
That is, if you are waiting to cross
The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at
Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read
Wait until you have read the next line—
Then it is safe to go on reading.
In a family one sister may conceal another,
So, when you are courting, it’s best to have them all in view
Otherwise in coming to find one you may love another.
One father or one brother may hide the man,
If you are a woman, whom you have been waiting to love.
So always standing in front of something the other
As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas.
One wish may hide another. And one person’s reputation may hide
The reputation of another. One dog may conceal another
On a lawn, so if you escape the first one you’re not necessarily safe;
One lilac may hide another and then a lot of lilacs and on the Appia Antica one tomb
May hide a number of other tombs. In love, one reproach may hide another,
One small complaint may hide a great one.
One injustice may hide another—one colonial may hide another,
One blaring red uniform another, and another, a whole column. One bath may hide another bath
As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain.
One idea may hide another: Life is simple
Hide Life is incredibly complex, as in the prose of Gertrude Stein
One sentence hides another and is another as well. And in the laboratory
One invention may hide another invention,
One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows.
One dark red, or one blue, or one purple—this is a painting
By someone after Matisse. One waits at the tracks until they pass,
These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses. One identical twin
May hide the other. And there may be even more in there! The obstetrician
Gazes at the Valley of the Var. We used to live there, my wife and I, but
One life hid another life. And now she is gone and I am here.
A vivacious mother hides a gawky daughter. The daughter hides
Her own vivacious daughter in turn. They are in
A railway station and the daughter is holding a bag
Bigger than her mother’s bag and successfully hides it.
In offering to pick up the daughter’s bag one finds oneself confronted by the mother’s
And has to carry that one, too. So one hitchhiker
May deliberately hide another and one cup of coffee
Another, too, until one is over-excited. One love may hide another love or the same love
As when “I love you” suddenly rings false and one discovers
The better love lingering behind, as when “I’m full of doubts”
Hides “I’m certain about something and it is that”
And one dream may hide another as is well known, always, too. In the Garden of Eden
Adam and Eve may hide the real Adam and Eve.
Jerusalem may hide another Jerusalem.
When you come to something, stop to let it pass
So you can see what else is there. At home, no matter where,
Internal tracks pose dangers, too: one memory
Certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about,
The eternal reverse succession of contemplated entities. Reading A Sentimental Journey look around
When you have finished, for Tristram Shandy, to see
If it is standing there, it should be, stronger
And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa Maria Maggiore
May be hidden by similar churches inside Rome. One sidewalk
May hide another, as when you’re asleep there, and
One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs
Hide the beating of drums. One friend may hide another, you sit at the foot of a tree
With one and when you get up to leave there is another
Whom you’d have preferred to talk to all along. One teacher,
One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man
May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass.
You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It can be important
To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.

Happiness Delivered

My children and I love Frog and Toad.  Do you know Frog and Toad?  If you don't, you should.  Arnold Lobel wrote some wonderful stories about them back in the 1970s, and they're just as wonderful today.

Today, I'm thinking of "The Letter," which is included in Lobel's Frog and Toad Are Friends.  Here's how it goes:

Toad was sitting on his front porch.  Frog came along and said, "What is the matter, Toad? You are looking sad."  "Yes," said Toad.  "This is my sad time of day.  It is the time when I wait for the mail to come.  It always makes me very unhappy."  "Why is that?" asked Frog.  "Because I never get any mail," said Toad. "Not ever?" asked Frog.  "No, never," said Toad.  "No one has ever sent me a letter.  Every day my mailbox is empty.  That is why waiting for the mail is a sad time for me."  

 Frog and Toad sat on the porch, feeling sad together. 

Then Frog said, "I have to go home now, Toad.  There is something that I must do.  Frog hurried home.  He found a pencil and a piece of paper.  He wrote on the paper.  He put the paper in an envelope.  On the envelope he wrote "A LETTER FOR TOAD."  Frog ran out of his house.  He saw a snail that he knew. "Snail," said Frog, "please take this letter to Toad's house and put it in his mailbox."  "Sure," said the snail. "Right away."

 Then Frog ran back to Toad's house.  Toad was in bed, taking a nap.  "Toad," said Frog, "I think you should get up and wait for the mail some more."  "No," said Toad, "I am tired of waiting for the mail."  Frog looked out of the window at Toad's mailbox.  The snail was not there yet.  "Toad," said Frog, "you never know when someone may send you a letter.?  "No, no," said Toad.  "I do not think anyone will ever send me a letter."  

Frog looked out of the window.  The snail was not there yet.  "But, Toad," said Frog, "someone may send you a letter today."  "Don't be silly," said Toad.  "No one has ever sent me a letter before, and no one will send me a letter today."  

 Frog looked out of the window.  The snail was still not there.  "Frog, why do you keep looking out of the window?" asked Toad.  "Because now I am waiting for the mail," said Frog.  "But there will not be any," said Toad.  "Oh, yes there will," said Frog, "because I have sent you a letter."  "You have?" said Toad.  "What did you write in the letter?" Frog said, "I wrote 'Dear Toad, I am glad that you are my best friend.  Your best friend, Frog.'"  "Oh," said Toad, "that makes a very good letter."  

 Then Frog and Toad went out onto the front porch to wait for the mail.  They sat there, feeling happy together.  Frog and Toad waited a long time.  Four days later the snail got to Toad's house and gave him the letter from Frog.  Toad was very pleased to have it.

On Saturday, I went to check the mail, feeling (much like Toad) that I never get anything -- at least not anything worth getting.  But low and behold, there was a white and green little package from someone dear to me!  Totally unexpected.  It made my day.

So, today, I sent a little something to someone I care about.  Paying it forward.  The snail mail may take a while to deliver it, but I'm smiling at the thought of surprising someone with some happiness delivered.  Sending that package made my day.