Back to Beauty of Being

4 years I spent without even once spending a tiny bit of energy to continue this exercise of finding and seeing the beauty of being. We are ten days into 2017 and it is a necessary exercise for me to do, so I am back. I have not yet mastered the art of jumping out of bed with joy early in the morning, shouting  'hurray, I am alive today', so for now a radiant winter sunrise will have to do. A happy Tuesday to everyone!

Lately I am stumbling across all sorts of old drawing, like this band of fierce pirate pigs that I drew to go on a t-shirt for a friend's son. He was so small that he does not even remember at all. It reminds me how extremely important it is for me to create, whether it be illustration, photography or carpentry. Of course I still feel that writing is my calling, but being the opposite of tangible, it is hard to stay on it. It is time to get my studio back to create beauty every day!

morning sun meeting the night

The moment when the sun is coming up, illuminating a tiny part of the garden, while the rest remains in the blue stillness of night, waiting for sun's kiss.

snow spiral

Just love how the melting snow highlighted the spiral pattern of our bonfire patio.

rose hip

My elementary school had a lot of rose hip bushes on its vast campus. In the fall the boys harvested these round treasures in orange and red, not to make wonderful rose hip jam, but to open them up and put their insides down the backs of girls. A very itchy memory, but kind of fun and maybe a perk of growing up in the greenest city of Europe.

house guest

Meet our house guest. He lives with us during every October. He is a great example for all of us, always sporting a big, happy grin despite the fact that he literally has two left feet (overworked Chinese factory worker?). I give him a new name and story every day. I think today I will call him Frederik.

14 years ago

in Pasadena, California, Johanna was born on Columbus Day & Canadian Thanksgiving. She was only a few hours old and I already knew she was going to be a singer.

 She very happily bounced off to school in her Sally Sparrow outfit (Doctor Who, Season 3, episonde 11: Blink) and I cannot believe I actually found something that specific. Johanna means 'gift of god' and even though I am an agnostic, I do agree that she is a blessing! Happy Birthday my little muffin :)

hot air balloon

Nothing cooler than having dinner interrupted by the familiar and deep, rumbling whoosh of a hot air balloon. We all ran out - barefooted children and mom just with socks - and the whole neighborhood was out on the street, staring at the majestic balloon and listening to the whoosh. The only thing better would be to be driving it :)

clouds

My imagination got caught in the soft layer of clouds above. Maybe I needed to take a time out and stand by the window, lifting my eyes to the sky or maybe it was the intangible beauty in the vast sky that plain and simple drew me in.

unexpected wow at Goodwill

Sometimes we see something so fantastic and unexpected, we cannot stop looking at it. That happened to me today at the Goodwill store. This is just a part of a big display in one corner of the store, everything done with so much attention to detail and care. I expect to see something like this in a big budget magazine, but not at a Goodwill store. Can you say amazing?

... and yes, this does have a little bit of a resemblance to my kitchen, after all, I do call it potions laboratory. I absolutely plan to be there when it goes on sale, mostly for those old editions of Dickens and Shakespeare and maybe some owls for the Soph.

Sunshine

The day started out dark, it is that time of year already. Then the sun broke through and it was glorious. When the clouds rolled in and turned the end of the day rainy and gloomy, I noticed that I still felt the glorious sunshine, because it resides inside me. Have you ever noticed that flowers look so much brighter and more radiant on a gray day? That is how I felt in the drizzle of dusk.

transitions

I consider the threshold between September and October the real transition between summer and fall, maybe it just takes about a week to grasp the change.

The photo (I encourage you to click on it to see it bigger, the little hairs on the green are amazing) is of my last sunflower, the others all succumbed to the heavy rains between dry spells. This flower symbolizes a big transition for me. I think life is life a series of books and filled with different chapters. Sometimes we get to the end of one and the last chapter is when everything has come more or less to a certain point and it transitions you out of this book and prepares for the next. Of course the next book often starts with a chapter that eases one back into the next part of the story. These transitional chapters are just like transitions in our life, it is just hard to see where exactly one book ends and the next starts, one only knows they are in the middle of the transition.

Last October marked the beginning of many transitions in my life regarding health and the end of a my marriage. I don't know yet where I am transitioning to, because I don't know the next book yet. But I am sure it will be a good one. In uncertainty we can also find promise, hope and chance.

Either way, it seems that this is a good time to return to my exercise of looking for the beauty of being in the nooks and crannies of life and blog about it to share with you all.

one hundred years

Today is the anniversary of Juliette Gordon Low's founding of the Girl Scouts of America. To commemorate that special day, Girl Scouts all across the country gathered yesterday at the same time to stand in a promise circle and recite the girl scout promise & law and to sing. Imagine what a wonderful world we would live in if we would all adhere to the Girl Scout Law:

I will do my best to be
honest and fair,
friendly and helpful,
considerate and caring,
courageous and strong, and
responsible for what I say and do,
and to
respect myself and others,
respect authority,
use resources wisely,
make the world a better place, and
be a sister to every Girl Scout.

father and daughter

Seeing a new dad and his daughter enjoying each other is something very special and heartwarming to see.

rehearsal

It is magical and beautiful when it all comes together and sounds great at the first rehearsal of chorus and orchestra combined. I am definitely looking forward to our concert next week!

doodle

Sophie's unfinished work for the doodle for google contest with a hypothetical trip to Pompeii (prior to earthquake and volcano eruption). After having been to the exhibit at the MOS and concluding that with the Dr. Who Pompeii episode, it has been on her mind lately and she also wants to learn Latin now. I just love it that she is so interested in the same things I was hooked on at that age.

silly

extremely silly, in a fun way,  would be a very good description for what is going on here a lot, especially when we are playing games like Bananagrams. My odd sense of humor rubbed off onto the girls*, who I like to call project two & three, while I like them to call me Lord Mama, Robot - first generation. I am trying to make them believe that they are robots of the second generation and that I wind them up every night. They are not going for it though - go figure ;)

2012

2012 so far has not been a great year for many, many people I know and if the Mayans had it right, this is our last year. I don't believe the world is ending this year, even if it feels like my own little world has ended in a way. But imagine for a moment it is the last year, it can be for any of us, right? There is no guarantee for life. If this would be your last year, what would you do? Are there things that you are always pushing into the future, even though you really want to do them? We are always waiting for things to be right and for the right moment to come. The truth is, that might never be the case and if we make it to one day be old and wise and looking back, what will be the most important things? Which moments will stand out? Let's make 2012 the year to look at our dreams and examine our priorities, who is with me?

I took this photo New Year's Eve right after midnight. It took a lot of sparklers and many photos until we got it right and we had a blast. 

ranunculus asiaticus

These are really filled buttercups - as difficult as that is to believe - and they bring beauty and color to our soul, which is yearning for spring and sunshine and waiting for nature to reawaken. I am ecstatic every time* I see them at Trader Joe's and have to bring some home.


* Well yes, when you are reading this you might imagine my house overflowing with vases of ranunculus since shopping at Trader Joe's happens rather frequently. So no, I don't buy them every time really, usually just once or twice, hyperbole just puts such a needed emphasis into the sentence ;)

Snow

Wow, snow - almost forgot what it looked like (no, not really), but it was a surprise none the less to start March with so much fluff. With a new month upon us in this still relatively new year, it occurred to me that there are new beginnings all the time. The first year of this blog has really changed my outlook and made me more positive in my thoughts and evaluations. Then my life has been changing so much that it took all my energy to stay afloat, but I want to embrace my new beginnings and reading my own words on the side of this blog, it became obvious to me that I - again - need to go out of my way to document those little moments of the beauty of being. I can remind myself that life is beautiful and that it is wonderful to be alive, even if we are dealt a really lousy hand when we were already down. Life is not fair, but there is beauty all around those bad bits!

polished shoes

My children love polishing their shoes as much as I do, it is a trait I inherited from my grandfather. Can the love of polishing shoes be genetically encoded? Anway, it was a happy Sankt Nikolaus Day in our house. The girls were quite happy with licorice gum and licorice Mentos from Denmark, erasers from Japan, chocolate from Germany, bath bombs and mini Klutz books.

angel and cherub in Venice

It is Saint Nikolaus eve tonight and five years ago I spent it in mysterious and magical Venice. This marble angel and cherub were found in the stairwell of the magnificent Museo Correr which wraps around the West and South side of the Piazza San Marco.

angel in Shrewsbury

Today is the day of Saint Barbara, one of the fourteen holy helpers and the patron saint of explosives and math. In honor of my name I picked an angel who carries a resemblance to me when I was in my late teens. I found her right here in Shrewsbury.

angel in Quebec

It looks like this angel is ready to join forces with some occupy movement, fighting for justice, doesn't it? But this angel - one of a pair - is guarding the entrance to the cemetery in St. Therese, Gaspe-peninsula, Quebec, Canada. A beautiful final location, high up on the cliff and overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. When my friend lived next door in her youth, she and her siblings would put wine bottles in the hands of the angels who probably at one time held some kind of trumpets.

We have been having blue skies like this the last days and it is starting to get cold now.

angel in the Dorsoduro district of Venice

This sleeping angel was found while walking around the quaint Dorsoduro district in Venice. It is a small statue in an art gallery and thematically very appropriate, since I am terribly sleep deprived due to insomnia.

angel in Boston

Advent and December arrived and I am slowly recovering, though my damaged occipital nerves might need a few years for that. I have spent a long time 'collecting' angels via photos for a friend and I am working on a calendar for her upcoming birthday. Given the season, I thought I might share some this month as I am not out and about with my camera that much.

This angel was found in the Boston Public Garden.

seize the moment

I decided to have the inauguration of my fire spiral tonight exactly because I am being in the midst of a medical nightmare, in terrible pain and inhaling painkillers like breathing. We had a bbq and bonfire with my mom, my best friend from Germany with his daughter and truly wonderful friends from here. And it was the best thing I could have done, being distracted by lovely and interesting company on a perfect fall night. We never know how much time we have: seize the moment.

paradis de pommes

Nothing comes in as many variety, except for humans I think. If a snake would offer me an apple, I could not refuse.

shroom

... and all of a sudden it was summer in fall, the leaves were resisting change, the mercury was rising and the sunbrellas had to come back out.

walden

"I went to the woods..." Well, I just went to try and have the crisp air clear my extreme headache. It did not work, but was utmost beautiful anyway. There is something very special at Walden Pond and I fail to put it into words.