no rain

So, I feel like posting twice today.  May seem redundant, I don’t care, so there…humph…

I went to see Julie and Julia the other night.  You know the movie where the girl decides to cook her way through Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” cookbook and blog about it.  And that she would do it in a year.  There were more than 365 recipes, I think a little of four hundred.  It would entail cooking atleast one recipe per day. An undertaking, nonetheless. And for those who don’t know this is based on a true story. So, this women really did this.

That was about the only thing in the movie that I cared for. The fact she set her mind to something rather trivial, blog about it, and do it. Okay, so maybe it’s not trivial, but it’s something that she just wanted to do.

I used to be pretty active in blogging. I had one blog page before that I wrote in almost on a daily basis, but it was mainly about how depressed I was.  It got to a point where I felt it was time to change. So I started this blog with the intentions of finding beauty in daily life.  Didn’t exactly work out that way. I had a bunch of blog entries that I deleted (and wish I hadn’t).  This blog is pretty dull, let’s face it.

So I’m watching this movie and thinking about my own blogging (and serious lack of it this past year).  I love to write, it is more a part of me rather than a hobby or anything like that. But with my busy life now it is hard to find time to write and often I don’t know what to write about.  Much of my mind is preoccupied with work and business stuff.  I’ve been really busy, and when I am not working I feel rather drained, mentally and emotionally.

But if the blog had more of a focus.  I like the idea of trying to write about beauty in daily life.  But often times I find myself in a routine, a routine that I can’t exactly get myself out of. I have responsibilities, I have things I need to finish.

(Yes, I do recognize that the above is one long excuse.)

Routine.  I get up, I go to work. I make displays, create windows for shoppers to stop and go “ooooo and ahhh”.  I come home, I edit photographs from the wedding I shot the weekend before or the weekend before that.  (Right now as it stands I have two and a half weddings to edit).   I edit until about nine-ish, then talk to the boyfriend, then go to bed.  It all starts over the next day.

I know…excuses, excuses….

Is it possible to find some kind of beauty in a day of routine? And from someone who has spent much of her life in the throes of depression? (At varying degrees at various times).

To quote, Horace Walpole, “The world is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel.” Can someone who has viewed life more tragically learn to find beauty in simple daily things?

I sit here and write this listening to a playlist of musicians who incidentally are all dead.  Nirvana, “The Man Who Sold the World”, “No Rain” by Blind Melon, “Would” by Alice in Chains, Jeff Buckley “Forget Her”.    That isn’t exactly helping the cause. Right now, Shannon Hoon sings….

“All I can say is that my life is pretty plain

I like watchin’ the puddles gather rain

And all I can do is just pour some tea for two

and speak my point of view

But it’s not sane, it’s not sane”

Remember the video where he was singing that song in a meadow, a breeze blowing, the sun shining? And the little dancing girl in the bumble bee outfit?  She just wanted to be accepted, but was laughed at. Then finally she found a group of other dancing bumble bees and they all danced happily in the meadow together.

“I just want some one to say to me

I’ll always be there when you wake

Ya know I’d like to keep my cheeks dry today

So stay with me and I’ll have it made

And I don’t understand why I sleep all day

And I start to complain that there’s no rain

And all I can do is read a book to stay awake

And it rips my life away, but it’s a great escape

escape……escape……escape……

All I can say is that my life is pretty plain

ya don’t like my point of view

ya think I’m insane

Its not sane……it’s not sane”

Shannon Hoon died of a drug overdose back in the mid-nineties. He was beautiful.  I was crushed when I heard he died.

I relate to the song. I feel it today. So maybe the beauty I see today is how I love music, the melodies, the lyrics, the words, because words have such resonance with me.  Music excites me, moves me. And sometimes carries me to another world. I haven’t really been into music much in a long while.  Like I said, I work, and I’m out of touch.  I need to put music back into my life again.

I would like to make it a point each day to stop and smell the proverbial roses.  To find something in the moment. There has to be beauty in the midst of daily routines.  I just really have to make myself stop to see it. I always make vows like this.  And I never follow through. It’s’ terrible that I have, in my mind, accepted that I won’t stick to it.  Like there is one part of me that is an authority figure and the other a child.  The authority preaches to do it, the child rebels.

I just would like to do not because of the novelty, or because it’s cute. I just want to do it for my own sanity. Like Julia Cameron says in The Artist’s Way, you need to fill the well. It’s the things that you find wonder in that fills the well that is so important to creative people.

So today I find beauty in music and writing again.

And little dancing bumblebees.