more specifically, get outside.  This morning, in spite of having many things on the to do list, I went outside just to look at and enjoy the amazing things right outside my door.  I swept off my new pavers, pulled up a few weeds, did some arranging of chairs and table, and suddenly felt so at peace and satisfied. 

I have a lot of artful paths through my gardens.  They are bordered by flowers and grasses that I call lovely and good.  They seed themselves and spring up here and there, sometimes in the path. From time to time I take stock of how they are spreading and whether or not I like them where they are. If I don’t like them, I pull them out. When I don’t pay enough attention to them they can actually obscure the path or make it hard to navigate.  This is just like life.  I can draw some kind of lesson from my garden anytime I go out there and so can we all.  Get outside, get peaceful, look around, think and figure something out.

“Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly, your wholeness when you are broken, your innocence when you feel guilty, and your purpose when you are confused.”

a quote from Alan Cohen but I would have said it if I had thought of it first.

Imagination. I’ve been thinking about it since watching Anne of Green Gables. I admire her devotion to it, and of course, her skill.  It might be a good thing to be more imaginative. It would certainly be easier to write interesting stories if I exercised my ability to think outside of the normal. I tried it recently to see if my mundande, everyday life would take on a new excitement.

For instance, one day at work I entered the bathroom to prepare some equipment and noticed a syringe on the counter.  We use them a lot to hold alcohol or peroxide to clean equipment.  On closer examination this syringe had something dark in it.  Strange I thought. As I worked my attention wandered back to the syringe and then my imagination kicked in.  The dark thing had legs and was really quite large.  It looked like a roach, in fact, it was a roach.  How desperate it must have been to have crawled somehow into that really tiny space. Roaches are ancient insects with a survival rate like no other.  Did this one know he was doing something stupid from which he would never recover? Did he do it on a dare? Did someone leave this item on the counter for me to discover with or without a roach in it?  Let imagination run.

So how much of this is factual?  All of it so far.  I haven’t written the imaginative part yet.