this is what i have in mind...

 

The flaneur is an observer who wanders the streets of a great city on a mission to notice with childlike enjoyment the smallest events and the obscurest sights he encounters. Baudelaire, a resident nine-teenth-century flaneur, observed,

"For the flaneur it's an immense pleasure to take up residence in multiplicity, in whatever is seething, moving, evanescent and infinite. You're not at home but you feel at home everywhere; you see everyone, you're at the center of everything, yet you remain hidden from everybody."

This is one astute definition of the writer: an observer who ventures everywhere while remaining invisible...It is in Paris that the delicious, dreamy strolling of the flaneur can be perfected. Indeed, you may never become the poet of your dreams until you become a poet of flaneurie. It is the exercise regimen of the artist.

- Eric Maisel

* My bags are nearly packed and I'm off to Paris tomorrow!

absence and presence

The last few nights grief has awakened and carried me downstairs in the darkness of midnight. Anniversaries of loss are surrounding me and during these times the poignancy of grief is more pronounced. I used to panic thinking I'd be unable to find my way out of the pain of loss, but I've discovered that if I lean into it and give it its moments, it will pass. 

Of course, it will also return.

So I've come to call it sacred loss and do my best to treat it as such. For me this means recognizing its genesis is profound love I've been fortunate to experience.

It means lighting candles alone in the dark and allowing myself to feel vulnerability and sadness, while in the same breath feeling exceptional gratitude for the ones I love here beside me now.

It is recognizing the presence of lost loved ones even in their absence.

It is turning to nature for solace again and again and training my eyes and heart to find beauty wherever they can.

It's peeking out the window and looking for stars in my darkness.

harvest dinner under a hallowed sky

The yard was full of tomato plants about to ripen, 

and mint, mint, everything smelling of mint,

and one fine old tree that I loved to sit under

on those cool perfect starry California October nights

unmatched anywhere in the world.

- Jack Kerouac

diaphanous daydreams

 

For the last week the fog has propelled in from the Pacific and hovered along the coast. It wafts up our street enshrouding us in a dreamlike state. It enlivens my morning run with a supernatural quality and it encourages me to sit with a book by candlelight, savoring a pot of honey vanilla tea on the windowsill throughout the afternoon. When darkness comes and we walk Rave, the hazy effect is at its finest. We are completely alone and we focus on the incantation of the waves, the occasional bellowing foghorn, and the sea lions' windblown barks from a buoy where they gather in the distance. In the night along the shore I forget the city lights behind us. I want to carry our bed to the sand, close my eyes in the mist, and see where the waves have carried us by morning.

a little sparkle

 

After two back to back camping trips it was fun to glam it up a little last weekend. On an especially foggy Friday night we headed here and for a brief moment in time we felt a little bit like movie stars ourselves.