A poem for your thoughts

It's funny, I never figured I'd be one of those people that get's behind on blogging. After all, not much is going on in my life. I don't have kids to give updates about and share their cute stories, I don't have a husband to brag about his accomplishments or sweet actions, I don't even have a consistent hobby to take pictures of and show my improvement. And still, I have somehow managed to get behind in my blogging. You know what that means.

Life is pretty good.  

In honor of life being pretty good - let's pretend I didn't just remember the nearly 3 feet of snow outside making driving a major hassle - I'm going to share a poem with you, by Derek Walcott. Back in my days of graduate studies, I had a professor who had wisely chosen to focus his area of humanities research in the Caribbean. Brilliant! Who wouldn't love traveling there for research? One of the people he worked with closely was a Caribbean poet, Derek Walcott. Professor Handley talked about his poems a lot, yet I never really read any of them back then. For some reason, though, I felt inspired to check him out this week. The following poem was one of the top search results, and what a great poem it is! I feel like it captures a lot of what I have been feeling lately in my journey to self-recovery and self-discovery.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life. 

Derek Walcott

Secrets to Happiness

Happiness. It can be elusive. For me, I'm always on the lookout for what makes me happy. Lately, I feel happier than ever, and I also feel like I am able to realize the why behind it. So here is today's secret to happiness...

Celebrate your successes! After work, today, I stopped by WalMart to get some necessary items..... For my car. Windshield wipers, fluid, fuel injection cleaner, auto wipes. Bam. No help from a guy, just me and the automotive section. I felt like a million bucks as I walked out of the store! And I successfully did the fuel injection stuff, popped the hood, got it to stay up, and filled my wiper fluid. Bam.

Celebrate those moments of victory in your life! You will feel happier. :)

Academic Chops

I decided to enter my thoughts into the HERA (Humanities) Conference for 2013. Why?? I don't know. I guess because parts of me miss academia and I knew my prior research fit will with the topic of sacred site/secular spaces. I may or may not be accepted... I'm sure they give precedent to actual scholars in school. And with the fee's I'd pay as a non-student... not sure I'd accept the invitation. But, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Here is my conference proposal. 

Ancient and Present Rhythms in Tap and Irish Step Dance

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. The body lives in a steady beat, drummed daily by the heart. It moves in rhythmic cycles, regulated by the beat and rhythm of nature. Humans have historically moved and been moved by the rhythms of the world. Urges to replicate, manipulate, and appreciate those natural cadences resulted in some of the greatest, most innovative works of art. Dance places rhythm and time at the forefront of its creations; the now mundane pulse of life becomes beautiful once again through dance’s interpretations. American tap and Irish step dance epitomize the expression of sacred rhythms in secular spaces, drawing on a heritage steeped in spiritual roots and thriving in the material world of entertainment.

The percussive dance stylings of tap and Irish step dance offer a rich comparison of how acoustic space can be utilized to shape histories. Shelley Berg notes the link forged between past and present through dance performance, stating, “[t]he past is shaped by the present and the present is reshaped by the past. At any given instant, we both live history and live in history” (225). Performers presenting tap or Irish dance simultaneously express the present – the rhythmic expressions created in the moment and existing in real time – while conjuring images of the past. For both forms, the sound expresses a much older beat, born of deeply ancient heritages. Tap and Irish dance use complex rhythms that evoke powerful cadences from the past, made relevant through present-ing. 

So true

There certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.
Jane Austen (1775-1817)

Belated Holidays

I'm a little behind with my holiday pictures. I blame Blogger... this whole thing about not being able to upload more pictures . Although, given the two I just tested and posted below.... it seems to be working again??? 

So, my mom came out to visit her Utah chillens and grandchillens at the beginning of December. I was enjoying my final days of unemployment and got to spend several days just enjoying my family and the holidays. Chad and Michelle hauled all of us to see the Festival of Trees, a first for me, and later we went to see the lights on Temple Square. That was my first time ever seeing the lights with my family! We had a really great time enjoying the warmish weather and seeing all that the Festival and Temple Square had to offer. 

The trees sparkling on the south side of the temple.

My mom and I! 

Cars Tree

Chocolate tree

Upside-down tree

Cute red and turquoise tree

This is what it is all about, of course!

I love the red trees

Pop bottle tree

Not the greatest picture, but here we are at the end of our busy day of Christmas-ing.

It was a great way to start off the month of December. I have some pictures from the Christmas Concert too... not sure how many of those I can legally put up on here for now. But I need to download them first so... I will get to work on that, lol. And then perhaps I can get my mom to share the pictures she took at Christmas, since I left my camera in Utah. (Mom: hint hint - Dropbox!) 

Merry Christmas!

Funnies

I don't frequently post items on Facebook trying to get a response. That's what I use my blog for, lol! But this picture has made the rounds and I thought I'd share it here, along with its companion picture. These were not staged. I plopped stuff down after work, spent a few hours upstairs with the grandparents, and was honestly a little shocked myself when I saw what this all looked like! So here's to not putting things away immediately and getting surprised in your own bedroom. Happy laughters!

A bit of 2012

I had great intentions of writing more over my Christmas holiday. Of course, I left my journal and my laptop back in Utah. The journal.. well that's hard to replace. I could have gotten on any computer to blog, but I didn't. I definitely did some reflecting at home, thinking over the many ups, downs, twists, and turns of 2012. I was absolutely happy for the last bells to chime its death, closing that chapter and turning to the unwritten pages of 2013. You know what makes me really happy about my prospects this year? It is guaranteed to be better than 2012!! After a year like 2012, there really is nowhere else to go but up. I started off last year with various ailments for the first three months. I'd lost weight due to stress. I wasn't happy in my relationships or in my job. I wasn't happy much at all, in fact. September was the beginning of turning the corner, but that process still took time. But as of the waning days of December, I'm healthy, have some jiggly bits back (which I hope to eradicate through exercise instead of stress), have a job, and am really really happy. I've had several people say that 2013 will be my year. 

I was driving home tonight from visiting with Chad/Michelle/kiddos/Jeff/their neighbors the Wards listening to some great music. (I've been having family withdrawals since coming back to Utah.) It reminded me of one of the cute girls in my 1st grade class last year: Katina. It was towards the end of the school year and my life was basically unraveling by the moment. She was a trendy girl, always up on the latest songs and cool pencils. I remember one day when we were outside at recess, she came up to me singing the chorus line of this song. I'm not sure if she was singing it to me, or just singing the song, but every time I hear this song, I think of her. 

                                  

Of course, once I think of Katina I am reminded of her best friend, Maddy. I feel a little bad about how the end of the year went with Maddy. She was a bit of a favorite... She really latched onto me as a teacher and I enjoyed her as my student. She was a handful quite often, but mostly because she was very bright and creative and friendly. Anyways, I felt bad when the year ended because she left school a week before classes ended. And I was at home canceling plans and making arrangements for my newly upturned life and crying on the last day she was at school. I never got to say goodbye to her. I just hope I remembered to write a note in her yearbook. She'd left it at school for the class to sign... of course, that last week of school I was in such a mire of my life that it's a miracle I managed to teach and maintain the classroom. I'm so thankful misery doesn't kill people. Anyways, when I think of Maddy, I instantly think of the gift she gave me at the end of the year. 

Maybe one reason I felt so close to Maddy is because she reminds me of myself when I was young, in some ways. Blonde girl, a little tomboyish at times, loves reading, loves horses, loves school. I'm not sure I was as spunky or mischievous (hey that was one of our spelling words!) as she was, but I think those similarities were part of our bond. And who doesn't love to feel loved by a child? I have maybe two regrets from 2012,  and one of them is that I wasn't able to love my students as much the second half of the year, through no fault of theirs. I sincerely wish I had been able to break through whatever happened that changed so profoundly once the new year kicked in. They were all beautiful, intelligent children. I'm really thankful I had the experience to teach them. For months I struggled with trying to understand why I was going through this challenging teaching experience (though I doubt now that it had anything to do with teaching), and I distinctly remember the day I got my answer. Circumstances played out for me to be a teacher last year so I could learn to love children more and prepare to be a better mother. 

I hope 2013 is the year I realize some of those dreams -- marriage to the RIGHT guy, finding fulfillment in a career -- but it's okay if none of those happen. When 2012 comes down to the end, it reveals me as happier than I have been in years. Perhaps a little more sensitive, a little more aware of others, a little more in tune with the Spirit, and definitely happier. I know 2013 still holds challenges, tears, trials, and hard days ahead, but it will be my year. It already is. I am back. I am happy. I am more the person I know I am meant to be. And I'm looking forward to the journey through this new chapter and new year.