Magazines

On my living room table: my laptop, my glasses, a phone, a notebook, folders in different colors, a stapler, a pencil, a black marker and a huge stack of magazines.

I am going through said big stack of magazines page by page, ripping out interesting tidbits and putting them in places where I can put them to use.

I like O Magazine’s recommendations on books - which go into my book wish list on Amazon - and movies, that I enter into my Netflix cue so we only get really good picks we really want to watch.

I make a note of good blog or website recommendations, check them out, and then put my favorites up on the list on the right - because what’s the fun in finding something good if you’re not going to share it?

I have a file for products I might try one day or pretty things I like to look at and at least four fat binders (subdivided by ingredient) of recipes that deserve a whirl. Another for things I don’t know what to do with now but that I know someday will save the day (such as Real Simple’s “new uses for old things”). Another folder is for things Luca might find useful or interesting: for example, he just downloaded an app with international etiquette tips so he doesn’t do something considered rude in another country (never slurp soup directly from the bowl in Korea.)

Sunset Magazine is a treasure trove. I have a file filled with beautiful backyards that have contributed to turning my former strip of concrete into a place we want to hang out in. Two files for vacations – one for day trips and another for long weekends, all with places to discover up and down the West Coast. A dream file, for the day we build a green, sustainable house or go live on a lake or grow our own vegetables or design a Japanese garden.

Once all relevant information has been extracted and put in its proper place, then I can take my big stack of magazines and throw them in the recycling bin and get a cup of tea and put my feet up on my now mostly clear living room table.

If only I had a magazine to flip through.

Photo: www.sunset.com

Another possibility

Forgiveness might be too ambitious pure intentional you could instead trip over accidental restitution walk into a course balance of all these mutual infractions contrived spectral maybe indistinct wrongs committed over the years can somehow cancel each other out

Photo: www.realsimple.com

Inevitable

It would be reductive perhaps offensive to pretend I could make out the shape your sadness it’s electric inalienable like blood camouflaged by your breath it mimics a vital organ it’s grown tendrils that coil around your spine my breed of gloom is small tight vertical defined locked it cannot spread yours is real an affliction it has dignity mine is feeble it crouches and waits until what happened to you happens to me and then there might be no containing it

Photo: www.asknature.org

Green glass tumblers

I am a terrible shopper. In the time that it takes to arrive at the cashier, I have already decided I don’t really need what I’m holding. At home, I favor empty surfaces and have a tendency to give things away (which often distresses my husband. “No, please! Not the couch! We often use the couch!”)

A few years ago, a box arrived in the mail. It held four tumblers made of recycled glass. My friend Cat had sent them. She said the fact that they were “Earth friendly”, and inscribed in several languages with the message “protect the Earth” made it impossible for her not to get them for us.

If Cat and I had been walking in the store together and she had declared “I’m going to buy you these!” I would have begged her not to. I don’t need more stuff! I already have glasses! I won’t use them! I’ll give them away!

I was right that I didn’t need the glasses. But, I did need inspiration. It was their sea green color that helped me choose the hue on my upstairs wall. They are at least partially responsible for us deciding to install bamboo floors a few years later. I also needed something pretty to hold. My ultra practical nature means most of what I own is a neutral (such as white dinner plates). It turns out green goes with everything. Most of all, I needed Cat in my life. She lives far away and yet, thanks to this gift, she's with me every single morning.

Photo: www.uncommongoods.com