Please don't confront me with my failures, I have not forgotten them

The gardenia plant on my balcony has burst into a strange array of blooms at the end of long, leafless sticks. It's very minimalist. I kind of like it, and it fits in well with my little Garden of Misfit Plants: a flowerless geranium, a pot of leggy blue lobelia, and the pink-and-green house plant I tried to give my boss, which wilted in days in its place above his desk. That one's doing fine out on the balcony, so perhaps it just needed to be where it could see me. Hello, little plant, yes: Hello. I'm waving to it right now. (In between keystrokes.) Hello.

I'm doing what I can to embrace the world today, to love it as it deserves to be loved, whole-heartedly, and not with arms crossed and a wry nod of withheld approval. Love. It's my driving force for today. In cleaning out a drawer here at work, in the interest of efficiency, rather than under the watchful eye of a security guard waiting to escort me from the building, I found a quote I'd copied down at some point in the past. It reads:

Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love.
--Tolstoy

I don't remember copying it, or ever being aware of it, really. My reading habits tend toward the florid prose of Judith Krantz, so Tolstoy seems a bit rich. But there it was, in my handwriting, showing up to give me a little lesson on loving mankind. Or something. Actually, it seems to be giving me a lesson on the idea that Tolstoy's love is the cause for the Universe. No wonder they drowned him.

So... I am trying to love, today. Specifically, I am trying to love the person from whom I purchased the Dangerous Shoes on eBay, and whom I paid instantly for that privilege, and who, as near as I can figure, sent them to California (where I live) tied to the back of some slow-moving or irresponsible animal, perhaps an armadillo, or an indifferent squirrel. Because these shoes have not arrived, and I have been rabid for them ever since the timer counted down to zero and I won that auction. Goddammit! I want my Dangerous Shoes, for all they represent, and all the promise they hold, and the well-engineered curve of their four-inch heels. NOW!

And I love. I love. I love the seller of those shoes.

Look at my gardenias, and how they bloom even without the benefit of fertilizer or leaves. Perhaps my love inspired their blooming.

I will contemplate their beauty and stare at them, only incidentally watching the street below for the arrival of the mail truck.

Because I love. All is possible because I love.



Star of the day. . .Jayne Mansfield
posted @ 2:07 p.m. on August 18, 2006 before | after

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She lay awake all night,

zzzzzzzzzzz......