Birds and flowers of the four seasons, part of the paintings on room partitions in the abbot’s quarters (hōjō) of Jukō-in of Daitoku-ji, Kyoto, Japan. Ink on paper. This picture shows four of 16 panels on fusuma (sliding doors) in the in the ritual room. The paintings have been designated as National Treasure of Japan in the category paintings. 16th century. By Kanō Eitoku and his father Kanō Shōei [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
Do y’all know the musical Rent? Do yourselves a favor and go listen to “Seasons of Love.” It’s one of my favorite songs. (Dear family and friends: I would like to formally request that this song be played at my funeral. Please, one of you handle that, mmmkay?) (Original Broadway cast recording, please, not the movie soundtrack.)
Sidenote on Rent before we dive in to this post: The stupefyingly talented Idina Menzel — who is the voice of Elsa in Frozen — was one of the original cast members of Rent and helped create the role of Maureen. She’s so badass.
Now let’s begin for real, shall we?
Hi blogmuffins! I know, I know. It’s been … forever. I’ve barely touched the bloggity for months.
I can give you lots of reasons for why I haven’t been blogging, but I think the biggest one is that I just didn’t feel like it. I loooove writing and blogging, but the break gave me a chance to just live for a few months instead of trying to stick words to everything as it was happening … which is what my brain naturally wants to do. It was nice to power down for a bit.
Another really great upside neglecting the bloggity is that I had the opportunity to stare dreamily off into space for so, so many hours and think about … love. Yeah. That. And since I write about my life here, well, I guess I need to let y’all know that there has been a person of the dudely persuasion taking up a lotta my time for the past few months. I won’t go into tons of details about how smart and funny and sexy and adorable he is because then he gets all blushy and embarrassed (and then, yes, the blushiness makes him even more adorabley adorable). But I’ll just say this: I am so farking happy it’s ridiculous.
Ridiculous. In the best way.
Reluctantly sharing my idol
In other news, I saw my favorite writer, Elizabeth Gilbert, speak at the Philadelphia Free Library back in October. I got to ask her a question, which I was super excited and nervous to do … some people lose their shit over rock stars, I apparently lose mine over writers. Anyway, I asked her if she wrote all the time or if she devoted some time purely for research. She told me (and the rest of the people in the audience who insisted on showing up and intruding upon Liz and my special alone time) something veddy interesting. She said that she writes in seasons. She said there are seasons for research and seasons for writing. And when it’s writing season, she keeps “farmer hours.” That is, she goes to bed early so she can get up before the sun rises to start her work.
I like the idea of writing seasons. My writer head seems to need seasons for input and seasons for output. There are seasons to gather, to reflect, to let ideas marinate … and then seasons to arrange my life around my quiet, solitary work. I believe there are also seasons to throw open the windows and the doors and invite people in.
A time to wallow
Seasons of love seem like a pretty good thing, too. When love shows up in its rare and mystifying glory, I think it’s perfectly appropriate to let the laundry pile up, to run out of milk, and to stop doing any activities that aren’t directly related to personal grooming or seeing your new lover. Love doesn’t come along often. Might as well savor it while it’s new and startlingly delicious … life will demand your attention again soon enough.
Happy new year, peeps. Hope to see you around here again soon.
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