Lists, naps, and a month of living ‘perfectly’
I wake up from dreaming of the Arizona desert and a professor and his wife I don’t actually know in real life. The phrase “sand frills” sticks in my mind, something I’ve invented in sleep: as in, the canons and mesas give way to sand frills. It almost works to describe the way the sand is funneled and scarred with gullies and rivulets, flash floods scraping rivers into dry mud and red rocks. I wake up with an ear ache, the pain sucking at my right ear like altitude.
I slip away from the others, still sleeping: my small boy with his arms flung side to side like the oars of a rowboat, a contented sleep smile staining his face rosy; and my husband who was feverish last night and who wears and orange t-shirt and twitches inadvertently. It is the last day of vacation and I wake up mid day from napping with the sun slanting through the slits of the wooden blinds, dust motes rising and twirling in the air.
Yesterday I napped too, alone with the cats. Both of them curled nose to tail on the flannel. When I joined them, the apricot one chirped a welcome to me. At night she follows me around the house as I turn off the lights, bank the fire, get ready for sleep. She meows plaintively then, wanting one thing: a pinch of cat nip that makes her whirr like a summer fan and fall to the floor like a dervish in a state of ecstasy.
Today I wake up at 2:37 p.m. dreaming of people I don’t know. For the longest time, or what feels like the longest time, I am convinced that I do actually know the man, who in my dream was a professor, we both were it seems. I try to pull my mind from the shallows of near sleep, where thoughts dart like the shadows of trout, illusive and just below the surface.
Gradually I stir, hoping that if I move, inhabit my body again, feel my fingers and toes, I’ll be able to place him and his wife, dark olive skin, but I’m only more confused and the pain from my ear creeps down my neck. When I put my hand up to my throat I find the glands on that side are swollen. Everything participating in the purposeful choreography of falling ill just as vacation is ending, of course.
When I climb from the bed I move the covers, I move my knees, and my ankles and the soles of my bare feet make contact with the wood floor. I can feel the grooves between the planks. The round circles where penny sized tabs of wood cover screw holes. For a minute I sit there at the edge of the bed with the dust motes circling my tangled hair like a halo and am stricken.
I think of all the screws. Thousands, maybe a million, although I can hardly imagine what a million screws would look like, each one made of dark metal, machined somewhere in a plant in Idaho or Tennessee or Mexico or China. I am astounded considering all the people who contributed to my floor in this way: the workers in protective goggles and gloves sorting and correcting package weights; the fork lift driver; those at the shipping yard and at the hardware store, and also the men who likely knelt a million times or more to place each screw, thankful to have an electric or battery operated screw driver.
The floor is old, and when we bought the house, the finish was almost black with age. It didn’t gleam, and by the windows in my studio, a lot of water damage. Someone left the windows open more than once during a summer rain. Now it gleams, sanded and finished twice over. Our sweat. Our bending knees. My feet make contact with the floor. I pull myself to standing. I pull on jeans. I pull on a white terry sweatshirt that I’ve just put through the wash with a few tablespoons of Chlorox.
In the dryer I added a Mrs. Myers Clean Day geranium scented dryer sheet. The smell made me happy. It spelled clean and not cloying, though not natural either. The house is clean now, at the end of vacation. My life feels in order. I’ve spent the week putting things in order: paints on the shelf in my studio, carmine and cobalt and cerulean. I’ve scheduled things: doctors appointments, dental check ups, hair cuts, meals with friends. I’ve crossed things off my list: updated accounts, passport papers, green peppers and Irish oats and oranges for squeezing. On the bag they say “Take home and give us a squeeze.” Like some sort of huggable small trolls nestled together there in the orange webbed bag.
I’m reading Don DeLillo’s book White Noise, and am fascinated with the way he uses lists to tell the story. Lists spiraling and deepening, a little the way Tim O’Brian did in The Things They Carried. This month, March, is a month of lists. It’s a month I’ve decided to live contentiously, focusing on the small things like replying to emails regularly and packing my lunch for work the night before. I get so outside myself, tilting towards the big picture, towards the hungry heat of my passions, that I forget to be here much, and here has a way of getting crowded and overwhelming as a result.
In O Magazine, someone wrote an article about “A Month of Living Perfectly” and I laughed, because it was my idea, the very thing I said to DH. “What if we spend March living the way we always say we want to live? No waffling.”
He nodded over toast. He wasn’t really listening to me. It was the end of February and the snow had numbed his brain. It keeps falling, by the way, falling nearly nightly. Making the woods white and glittering and the driveway slick when it melts and then turns to ice in the dark. But now March is here, and I’m going ahead with my proposition, ready, set, go.
If you were to live “perfectly” for a month, what are the top five things you would do every day?
A sense of place, List obsession, Bookshelf, Thoughts & observations |22 Responses to “Lists, naps, and a month of living ‘perfectly’”
Leave a Reply
What a wonderful blog! I look forward to digging in a bit deeper than just a few posts so far. I found you via “dispatch from LA”.
my list:
1) sing
2) kiss someone
3) eat a ripe avacado
4) do the dishes after each meal
5) turn off the TV all day
A beautiful idea. Every day - a walk (ideally it would be relatively cool and perhaps breezy), reading (of course), time with my sister (who lives 1500 miles away), focused creativity (writing or visual), and, well, ideally it would all happen in my home state. Hopefully someday!
Hmmm. Meditation, every day. Concentrating at work and not checking my personal email every 15 minutes. Real dinners that I cooked, not Mr. McDonald. And keeping to my running schedule, no excuses.
There would be NO rushed mornings - every morning would be taken at a slower pace and would feel enjoyable.
I would not drive to work - I would be working from my home.
I would be home to provide a snack for my son after school (even if he IS 16-years-old). This was a ritual I’ve really come to love. Its a time to really connect with him.
I would walk the dog on a regular basis.
We would eat at the dinner table -we ALWAYS eat dinner together, but it’s ALWAYS in front of the TV!
I love your photos and your amazing ability to pull us in with words. A month of perfect? Hmmmm….
Thank you for being such an inspiration.
a.
1. I would spend at least 15 minutes one-on-one with each of my three children having “special time” playing by their direction (not mine) and really being there.
2. I would stop procrastinating and do it NOW!
3. I would spend an hour at the end of each day writing, scrapbooking or doing something creative instead of collapsing.
4. I would eat to live instead of live to eat.
5. I would spend planned time to finish reading, reflecting and praying as directed in the book Breathe by Keri Wyatt Kent.
And I would continue to eat something chocolate every single day!
* Write, and write, and write, filling long, beautiful hours with pure creativity
* Like Kerri said, focused playtime with my girls, “really being there”
* Look deep into my husband’s eyes when we sink into bed together
* Cook a little gourmet surprise
* Say “yes” to the little things that truly enrich our lives, even if that means saying “no” to the impolite demands of laundry or dirty dishes
i love the train of thought that your entry leads me on. nestled here in the perfect curves of a retro, recently-acquired chair, soaking up the silence of napping boys, i feel restored and wonderfully provoked by your words. to say you’re inspiring sounds so trite but i can’t think of another word. you always do this, capture the things that elude me, often failing to even make my consciousness until i read them here, and then i go away happy, the desire for something more somehow satiated, the urge to reach for more stoked. thank you.
Me? (Thanks for asking.) I would:
- spend time exploring outdoors (regardless of the weather or my laziness)
- swim early in the morning (If I knew how to swim. Must learn how to swim!)
- reach out to my neighbors
- whine less
- make more time for snuggling/smooching with the Mr.
I was just telling my husband that it has been SO LONG since I have been able to spend more than an hour at a time on any given ANYTHING since Porter came along. It’s something I never realized would happen - my time not my own. Now another comes very soon who will need even more. The thought of ‘living perfectly’ sounds so sinful, like food I have never tasted, only read about. I hesitate to think of those five things … what would I do …
I love the way you write … every phrase painting a picture. I can’t wait to read a book from you.
Your words are my “pinch of catnip.”
1.Paint or Create some sort of art
2.Spend Quality time with my husband
3.Exercise
4.Learn something new
5.Be awed by something
6th-have all the pending things be completed and done with so I can move on with new things, not worring about the old.
Every single paragraph of this post made me glad. Glad to be alive, glad to have a friend like you, glad to have joy in living even when things seem overwhelming. Glad to see the details and the beauty around me and glad that I can read your words and savor them.
As for living perfectly for a month and how I would do it, honestly…I have no damned idea.
1.write
2.play (with my daughter and then later with my husband)
3.keep up on cleaning (doing the little things)
4.read
5.photograph
The sad thing is how accessible this list is and how hard it seems for me to just do it!
exercise.
eat very very healthy & lots of cooking with my girls~
photograph each moment every day.
laugh.
read.
nap.
play.
could not stick to just 5!
tara
1} walk with my dog in our woods
2} sing
3} eat great home cooked meals
4} snuggle
5} spend an inspired morning in my studio
p.s. love these photos!
Ahhh, so beautifully written…thank you.
Only 5…
1. Be creative every day
2. Spend 15 minutes in the morning engaging in mind/body practice
3. Learn to take a breath before reacting
4. Laugh and play with my little ones without thinking of anything else
5. Be outdoors
Top five things I would do everyday…
Journal.
Read.
Listen.
Create.
Laugh.
All against a backdrop of sharing love and music with those I love…
yoga practice
cook dinner
write
read something that sets me ablaze
dream
It must be something in the air, as I have been thinking of a similar concept. I swear there was a quote I read once, something about the person who you wish to be and what are you waiting for, start being that person *now*. So I have been pondering just that — what self-definition do I wish to live by, and what *am* I waiting for? Start living that way already!
Hmm, my top five…
1. spend my day at home, time divided between the art studio + outdoors
2. eat wholesome foods (avoid the processed junk)
3. yoga/meditation
4. so something thoughtful and ‘just because’ (random gifts, phone calls, etc)
5. spend quality time with my family, fully focused on the moment
Interesting to see that there is really nothing stopping me from doing at least 4 of those 5 things, if not all of them…
p.s. a visit here *always* inspires me to live more mindfully. Your words always have a way of reminding me that life is indeed worth living fully! xo
Belated, but mine:
1. Be outside every day, with or without the dogs. Close my eyes and listen.
2. Read at least one hundred pages. Read more. Devour books whole.
3. Have dates with my husband.
4. Cook something new.
5. A poem, every morning, renewing that ritual.
See the world with new eyes, somehow, through art, through writing, through living.
The perfect day must include:
1. Tea
2. A cuddle with my husband.
3. A cuddle with my dog.
4. Body-movement of somesort: yoga, running, walk.
5. Laughing with a friend.