Time is an illusion…

I’m sure some of you who read this are also fans of This American Life. Always original, never boring. Sometimes sweet, sometimes frightening, almost always enlightening. Well, the bandwidth costs for their podcast are through the roof ($10,000+ a month). Help support it by donating today. Even $1 or $2 will help. And I will mail you a surprise (in your mailbox, with a handwritten and personal thank-you note) if you do. (You’ll have to email me your address though. I’m terribly bad at keeping bits of information like that. I guarantee I don’t have it.)

Imprints.

I had the privilege of attending a wedding reception last week. I was tired, burned out from work. Wasn’t sure I would even really enjoy the experience, but I went, and I’m glad I did. The bride was beautiful, in her mother’s vintage dress, her wavy auburn hair pinned up, veil cascading around her. The groom was handsome, tall, black tux, smiling. I watched from across the room as an older man with a box in his hand, a wrapped gift with a shiny silver bow, walked up to someone and talked to them.

A small thing.

But for some reason, watching this scene, I had a thought about gatherings of people. This man had an Andy-Griffith smile, clapping his friends on the back, making connections with people he maybe hadn’t seen for a while.

Everyone in the room was sharing the experience, getting imprinted with this set of feelings, expressions, connections. Stamped. On their souls. Stamped with the imprint of the smiling man, the lovely bride, the sound of the music, smell of the desserts, the vision of the glowing sunset on temple hill that faded away into the night as they all, one by one, got in their cars and drove away.

Magic.

I can hear them now.

“So… first I’d like to thank you all for attending this conference call today. We’re here to discuss our core product—chips. People like chips. We all know people like chips, but we need some new ideas. We can’t just make great chips anymore… we need to really distinguish our brand from the other chips on the shelf. Ideas?”

“Well Rob, Chipotle is HOT right now. Why don’t we try some chipotle chips?”

“Chipotle. Great idea, Debbie. I’ll write that one down.”

“You know what Rob, I was just in California last week… people LOVE California.”

“California Chips! That’s great John. Thank you.”

“Ooh! Ooh! You know what else? In California, they like things to be ‘all-natural’. Organic.”

“All-natural. Okay. We can work with that. What else?”

“…creamy?”

“California creamy chipotle chips?”

-silence-

“That’s gold.”

Wisdom from my spam folder. Enjoy.

“gird sell.
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gird zoic bled.
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smelt emir bingo hubby.
bounty pink chalk bounty?
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mix sell scamp find!
gypsa sap gasper estop?
glover nopal fully.
swathe grouch sin cashew?
warble glover elan chose!
estop smelt.
farad tempi cashew tempi!
feel tempi foci keeker!
baboo flake palmy coatee!”

One of them: Writing. I haven’t been writing much lately. I don’t think this is a good thing . . . there’s something soul-opening about writing. Even if it’s a few snippets on a blog for some friends (and a few strangers) to read.

So I’m going to just start writing a bit, even though I don’t have a “topic” in mind. Maybe I’ll write a bit about what’s been going on for me lately? Maybe. So I went to Utah a week or two ago. It was a spur of the moment, no notice, throw the kid and the bags in the car and drive kind of trip. I had an absolutely lovely week, full of hiking and driving and talking. And . . . I’m engaged. I have a fiancé. I don’t want to write too much about it here, just a few words maybe. It feels new and strange, even though we know each other so, so well. I wish I were in a place where I could just enjoy it, enjoy the newness and strangeness and spend time talking and hiking and driving, but he’s still in Utah, and for the past few . . . I-don’t-know-how-longs . . . I’ve been spending most of my mental energy at work.

This is a problem for me.

I haven’t figured out what to do about it yet, but I’m having some difficulty with boundaries between work life and creative life and energy and I keep getting these headaches. I’m tense all the time, and I have a lot of frustration that’s being displaced. I’m finding that even relatively minor issues can cause me to fall apart right now. I need to figure out what to do about it. I want to be creative in my life. Not just “creative” in an abstract sense, but “creative” in the sense that I want to create things. Beauty where there was ugliness, music where there was silence, laughter where there was none. Soon. It needs to happen soon.

Enough about that. Let’s talk about babies. My siblings have adorable children.

So, while I was in Utah, we were driving around, stopping for gas, and there was an old man with a little red wagon and a sign, advertising a gourmet donut shop. We stopped and got donuts, partly because we love donuts, but mostly because of the little old man.

I think that’s about all I want to write today. I’m going to go enjoy the sunshine for a while. Peace out.

P.S. . .