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WHERE HAVE I BEEN ALL MY LIFE?

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A user’s guide to living:

Listening for bells. (Image by Nicole Smith.)

Someone very clever once wrote: Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. Or, maybe it was: Life is what happens when you’re looking the other way.

Or, it might have been: Life is what happens.

Actually, I wrote that last part.

It’s been a long time since I last posted a blog, a long time since I wrote about waking up alive. I kept thinking I’d get around to it. And then half a year whizzed by. In terms of living I feel as if I’ve only lived half of the first-half I had, and I wish I had twice as much left for the last half.

I am morbidly fascinated by tales from the Victorian era, of people being falsely diagnosed as dead, so much so that many insisted upon being buried with a rope in the coffin attached to a bell above ground. In case they woke up alive. Hopefully also with brandy, a candle, and a good book to pass the time until the exhumation.

Premature burial practices continue to this day. “I’m buried under work.” “I’m swamped.” “There’s no time.” 

“One day, in my next life, I’ll live the life I want now.”

It isn’t easy for the introvert. My favourite thing to do? Stay home and wonder why I never go anywhere. (Having already declined to go anywhere.)

How do two introverts have a good time? Make elaborate plans to get together and see who can be the first to cancel at the last minute. It’s an art form. No self respecting introvert cancels plans ahead of time. The challenge is in getting down to the last few seconds before cancelling, knowing that the other person has been sitting at home in pajamas with ice cream and Netflix primed. We then immediately make elaborate plans for the next week. And so on.

Fabulous conversation between introverts:

Me:                         I didn’t go to the thing last night.

Friend:            No? I didn’t go to the thing either!

Me:                        Did you go to the thing this afternoon?

Friend:            No, I didn’t get to that thing either! Did you?

Me:                        No! That’s why I love you! We have so much in common!

Friend:            Let’s make a date to not go to something together!

Me:            I’m not sure. I’ve got a busy week coming up. So many things I’m not doing.           

Welcome to the Summer Solstice. Alone with you together. Write like a banshee. Live like a crone. Ring that bell.

Hello world, it’s me.

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Her loving gaze.

 

Hello world. It’s me. Bernardine. It’s been swell traipsing around the sun with you for another year. What a tough one, eh? Someone smarter than me wrote that no one promised life would be easy all the time. And yet we only get the one life to fiddle around with, so I have to say I’m grateful for the last 12 months of discovery. I’m not going to reflect on it too much, because it seems to me that looking back is the sure way to becoming a pillar of salt. On such a day as this, with so many birthday wishes coming my way, and so many thoughtful notes of support for my sweet Nishi, I am reminded of how precious and precarious all of this is. This tightrope called life. This spinning blob in outer space with all of us like specks of sand thinking we are the centre of the universe. Because we are! I love that you, world, celebrate my birth day with me every year without fail and put on all the fireworks and things. Not everyone is so lucky. I only hope I keep on waking up alive. I only hope I will be brave and deserving and kind on each day. I only hope none of us fall off this spinning blob and go floating away without a safety line but I also hope we can all jump into wonderful things with no safety net. I only hope that all my friends and family know how special they are and how happy I am to finally know if the jack beats the five. Or is it the other way around? Blessings on all our beloved furry friends who give so much and blessings on you, world, for keeping on.

The Life Changing Magic of Mess: Waking Up Alive!

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My $8.99 cutlery organizer.

 

My house is usually immaculately clean except for most of the time, when it isn’t.

 

Once upon a time I was fanatical about cleaning in preparation for the afterlife.

 

Mine.

 

I didn’t ever want to walk out the door without having cleaned, in case it was someone else who had to come back in and deal with the madness. Kind of like: Always wear the good underwear in case you get hit by a bus.

 

I didn’t want anyone else to have to clean up after me.

 

Today I have perfect confidence in the fact that the spotlessness is there, beneath the spots. The cleanliness is a subtext, for the discerning. I want very much for someone, anyone, to clean up after me, dead or not. (Me, not them. But, them too, if that’s the case. I don’t care.)

 

 

I used to think along the lines of a place for everything. Now I prefer everything in every place.

 

I wanted to live in a pristine white house with only one thing in every room: one dress in the closet, one book on the shelf, one chair at the window. But then I realized that wouldn’t represent the magnificent mess I’ve made out of my life. My office is stacked with all plays I’ve written, so many theatre programs commemorating performances, evidence of cats loved and lost, lives lived and begun again, and again, and again, from scratch.

Chair as closet organizer: priceless.

 

I was slipping a bit this week in my resolve to revel. I came home one day after rehearsal and vacuumed before I even opened the wine.  I washed the dishes in the sink while there were at least FIVE other clean plates in the cupboard, crying out to be used.

 

This is not a romantic whimsical mess. This is not a bouquet of dried flowers languidly lounging across an open book of poetry. There ARE dried flowers, but they are the plants I forgot to water. There IS an open book of poetry, many many open books, happy to be picked up on a whim, happy to be laid back down and forgotten about until another time.

 

There are two cats involved who generate their own universe of fur, hairballs, kitty litter and random hork matter. I do accept it is my lot to be their personal maid, but I draw the line at becoming a hostage to dust bunnies.

 

Usually when in a rehearsal process, the day off is thought of as the time to ‘catch up’. The precious hours spent tackling all the dreary things, catching up with them as if we are in a race and the dirty laundry will reach the finish line before me. If my dirty laundry reaches the finish line ahead of me I hope it will send back a limo with some champagne.

 

What will people think, is what I used to think. What will my personal untidiness look like when seen through outside eyes?

 

I paid $8.99 for a cutlery drawer organizer because I thought it was the key to something. It has cutlery shaped outlines in it, with forks meant to fit in the fork shaped space, the spoons in the spoon shaped space, and so on. No square pegs in round holes.

 

Will my house look like an alien landscape, to be deciphered with archeological explorations? Or will the works of it be loaded into boxes and bags and carted off to another finish line?

 

Artful display in hallway.

These are the things I’m pondering today, just having tripped over the whipper snipper in the dining room next to the folded stack of towels which fit so nicely on the bookshelf.

 

Also, for sale: one cutlery organizer. Like new.