Swooning

This morning, sipping hot coffee on the couch, I announced to Barry, “The Winter King kissed us with snow again last night.”

He eyed me above his coffee mug, raising his eyebrows only slightly.

“What–are you taking some online poetry class now?” he asked.

“Hmmmphhh!” I replied. “Nah, I wrote a blog about the Winter King last week, and am just continuing the theme. I didn’t tell you about it because I didn’t think you would be interested in poetry and metaphor and analogy and such.”

“Thank you,” said he, and I did not dump his coffee on his lap inadvertently because, well, you just know what interests a person after forty-some years of sipping coffee on the couch. And poetic ramblings are not his thing, even though his wife swoons–yes, swoons–to dream deep into fairytales where intangible things become reality, thank you, Stacy, very much for those magic words.

Many of my dearest friends love art. They love creating this and that, dreaming the intangible into form. Their heart guides their hands and they draw, paint, sculpt, collage, Zentangle, glue, create. They take what’s burning or brewing inside and express what mayhap feels inexpressible. And–oh–I imagine the delight of this. The swooning.

Which is what I feel when words trip up out of the unconscious. Doesn’t matter if they’re singing words or painful words. They burst upward in unimaginable colors and something deep inside goes ahhhhh. Later I might go back and wonder whether anyone else felt even a hairsbreadth of the joy that blossomed out of the paragraphs, but in the act it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Because the heart is thrilled in just the knowing/being of This.

Taking what’s impossible and finding beauty in it. Like the photo of my Valentine’s Day bouquet surrounded by the Winter King’s snow. The bouquet is twelve days old, all the old blossoms fallen away, arranged yesterday in a new vase to prolong its sweet passing. The flowers are 99 years old in flower-years and drooping with hairy stamens and fallen petals, even though they’re trying to stand up straight like teenagers, but I can still see the beauty, can’t you? Barry brought home the bouquet almost two weeks ago, so you can see by his actions that poetry does sing in his soul, even though he would never call it that in 100 human years.

Beckoning

The Inuit, apparently, have fifty words for snow. Can you imagine? Can you imagine seeing in that detail? Having senses so awake that you truly see fifty shades and textures and colors and appearances for snow?

I have heard it said thus–if we’re bored, we’re not really looking. Not truly seeing at such a fine level of perception where the ordinary reveals itself as absolute magic. I don’t know about you–but I want to keep learning to see this way. To remember this when I feel bored or restless. Because then the world presents itself as dazzling connected energy, not just inert dead matter separate from ourselves. It’s simply swoon-worthy.

Wishing you magic today and always. May you swoon sometimes. Over crocuses or snow or homemade cards. We all deserve some swooning, don’t we? ❤