Out in the garden this morning, I found a tiny bird's nest, no larger than the palm of my hand.
I always love to discover a bird's nest--not that it happens often, but I've found a small share of them. There's something so pure, so simple, about a little creature instinctively constructing a safe haven for its young, without any frills or fanfare.
I think it's the perfect reminder (in this very noisy and complex world) to aim for a simpler life. What do we really, truly need? A soft, safe place to rest. A few bites to eat and something to drink. The warm comfort of loved ones. Perhaps a song now and then to lift our spirits.
Lovely how the quietest things can speak volumes to us if we listen. I am grateful for this morning's discovery, a secret message left behind by a mother bird, long-gone.
I'm currently teaching a photography course and taking another one, so I'm going to cut right to the chase: Here are some interesting and insightful finds for your weekend reading & viewing pleasure. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!
[Before I begin: I've always hated the telephone, except from about 7th to 10th grade, when it was somehow exciting to talk about nothing much on the phone with my friends. I think of my cell phone now as my smallest camera, and for that, I'm VERY grateful. It's also helped me on more than a couple of occasions when I had car mishaps or minor emergencies. But for the most part, I still don't like phones of any kind.]
What did we do way back then, before cell phones? (Or B.C.P, as today's texters might put it?)
We got lost--a lot. But eventually, we found our way. Usually with a rumpled map from the glove compartment and perhaps a nervous prayer.
We read with real paper pages to touch and to turn. Sometimes we got paper cuts. (Those were the worst!)
If we wanted something new to read, we went to the public library and wandered around in the quiet stacks that smelled (wonderfully) of very old books.
If we didn't know the meaning of something, we looked it up in Webster's or the Encyclopedia Brittanica, or we'd ask the librarian to help us find a book about it. She used the Dewey Decimal System, scribbling cryptic notes on little scraps of paper and leading us to our book like a mother duck guides her ducklings along a pond.
If we wanted to take a picture, we'd dig out the Kodak Instamatic, check if it had enough film, and hope the picture would come out the way we intended. We'd hope "the people at the lab" would develop our pictures soon and send them back to us, a thick envelope in the mail amidst the handwritten letters.
There were many awkward moments while waiting in long lines, staring up at the ceiling or pretending to think about our private concerns instead of our discomfort at standing so close to complete strangers. Occasionally, we might glance at them and say "good morning", or make a trite comment about the weather, or laugh about how men never had to wait in line for restrooms.
We thought our own thoughts instead of jumping from news flash to news flash about celebrities making questionable decisions.
Nobody took selfies. Daily self-portraits would have involved tripods and a rather embarrassing amount of vanity. We took photos of family vacations and random objects that did not include what we were eating for lunch.
We noticed our surroundings more, and things moved slower, although they didn't seem slow at the time because there wasn't anything to compare to it. The rest of the world stayed in the distance, like Mars or the Big Dipper--there, but very removed from us.
We played cards and board games and went outside to look for neighborhood kids who were also outside and wanted to play kickball or hide-and-seek. There was no such thing as a "playdate" pre-arranged by moms. Kids rang doorbells instead and asked if their friends could come out to play. Parents stayed inside and did parental things, or worked on their gardens.
Barbie Dolls were all the rage. So were tree houses.
We watched shows on TV sets that had wire antennae, channels on dials, and no remote controls.
If we wanted to play video games, we went to an arcade or to the cool kids' houses who had Atari systems in their finished basements. It was more of a loud social gathering, and potato chips were usually involved. Occasionally, a mom would come downstairs, proffering cookies and "checking on things."
For music, we played vinyl records on turntables, and we had to place a needle precisely onto a groove to get to the song that we wanted to hear. Sometimes, we missed the mark and gritted our teeth at the terrible scratching sound.
At restaurants, people who dined together actually spoke to each other and looked at each other. We glanced at the people around us at other tables, who were immersed in their own conversations.
We took long walks unencumbered by devices. We were unreachable for the duration of the walk. Imagine having to wait until you arrived home to call somebody! We turned a rotary dial instead of tapping out the numbers like a magician.
Imagine fishing around in the bottom of your purse or your pocket for a dime (usually covered in lint and gum wrappers) to put into the public telephones (which were often gross).
Imagine a whole day at the beach, undisturbed by the world outside the beach.
Imagine going to sleep and really going to sleep, not surfing around the world to follow petty stories from your pillow.
I am showing my age for sure, but in many, many ways, I miss life before cell phones.
It's a common plight of writers--of all artists, really: We never know with 100% certainty which work will resonate with people.
Which work will draw the "right kind" of reactions? ("Right kind" meaning positive, or anything the opposite of booing and throwing rotten tomatoes.) But more often than not, artistic work is met with the equivalent of chirping crickets: no real reaction at all.
Because the world is a very busy and crowded place, with a crazy glut of creative output. It's hard to make a noticeable ripple in the very large pond, especially with so many Kardashians taking selfies.
It should be enough just to create, right? To meet the elusive Muse, before she slips away on yet another badly timed vacation.
But I think we all (deep down) want to hear that we did a good job, at least now and then. At least on the things that really mean something to us.
It was over a year ago on a grey winter morning when I sat alone at the breakfast table, the words pouring right onto the page without effort. The blog post, called "All of a Sudden: Twelve", turned out to be a birthday gift for my son. I was pleased with how it turned out. My husband teared up while reading it. Most importantly, my son loved it, I think because he could really feel the love that helped create it.
And then, many months later, on a sunny summer morning, an email landed in my inbox. It was titled "Good news!" and it wasn't about a sale at Bed, Bath & Beyond. I had actually won something! The birthday post for my son had been kindly met with the exact opposite of crickets. Here's the official word: Announcing the BlogHer16 Voices of the Year Honorees.
So, for lack of a better way to say it: I'm honored to be honored! (Thank you so very much, BlogHer and Merck for Mothers.)
I've noticed something: It's the creative work that flows through us easily, like a sudden summer rainstorm, which feels the most rewarding. We feel so grateful after the long dry spell, the days of dry heat and almost ominous silence. With relief, we sit back and appreciate the rain.
