My Confession – Patience

Saturday 24Mar07 11:04am

I caught the movie, Green Fingers, this morning. In it the old guy Fergus gets Clive Owen’s character to plant violet seeds in an area where no one could believe that they could ever grow. Come spring the violets have grown and Fergus makes a comment about finding beauty in the most unlikely places. He suggests that Clive Owen’s character (Luke?) find a way to learn how to embrace the adversity in his life even though they are prisoners.

Something made me think about the qualities we want to develop in ourselves. My latest quality of the last year or so has become patience. Not the losing your temper kind of patience but the long term patience of seeing things through. Of course when ever you decide on a certain quality you come face to face with it in a major way.

I am known for being uncommitted when it comes to relationships with men. Part of it is because I’ve been disappointed so often and for so long that I’d basically given up. If the truth be known. Why wish for something if it feels like it’s not destined to ever happen in your life? It seems ridiculous to me. So I stopped wishing and worse yet, believing.

I met a man in December 2005. We were introduced in passing by a mutual friend. There was something about him the moment I saw him that I liked. I can recall thinking, “He’s cute in a different way. I’d go out with him. He probably wouldn’t look twice at me.”

In February of 2006 our paths crossed again and over the last year we’ve become more friendly and have learned bits and pieces about each other. My original appraisal of him has turned into a full fledged crush. Of course nothing can be that simple in my life. With things not happening fast enough in my opinion I looked for other distractions i.e. other men to be interested in. I stayed away from him. I ignored him. I closed my thinking to him.

The male distractions never bore fruit in any substantial way. I was never that interested, my heart wasn’t in it. I could care less if it worked out one way or the other. I finally read the signs and dropped all the distractions.

Over the last five months or longer I’ve resurfaced admitting to myself finally that I can’t really get this person out of my head. I want to know more about him. I want to know if he’s a worthwhile human being. I want to know what kind of man he is. And I’ve witnessed some pretty consistent remarkable things. Nothing has developed still and yet so much has developed.
I always have all these questions I want to ask him and all thoughts escape my mind whenever I come face to face. He does and says things that are quite sweet and leaves me wondering when action will follow or if any action will action follow.

He has become my patience meter. There are certain people that come into your life and you just know what purpose your connection to each other is met. His purpose in my life is to teach me that long term patience (maybe even the patience of Job!) I’ve gone from running far away from him to that high school confusion of, “Does he like me?” Finally I’ve reached an inner calm (still with a sense of urgency) that acknowledges that whatever happens will happen. We could become great friends, something deeper, or we’ll disappear out of each other’s lives. Who really knows about anyone you meet, what your relationship could become?

Maybe it’s not how long a relationship lasts or what it develops into but who I become because of it.

EY

200 Pages still to print

I got my novel in progress all together. Found all the notes and pieces of paper of snippets I’ve written in the last ten years. I’m still in the middle of printing out the sheets that I don’t have in hard copy. Still have 200 more pages to print.

What is that? Absolutely crazy, I think. I just wanted to get it all together and then read through every piece of paper and dig for nuggets in my own writing.

I was reading an entry on Bookcritics.org today about Ian McEwan and his style of composition. I’m realizing that my style is to write like crazy and ten years later decide it’s time to read through it all. I hope I’m a little quicker on my next novel. I may have to live several hundred years to be a prolific writer!

I’m on the last chapter of Wabi Sabi for Writers by Richard R. Powell. Time to choose a new book to read.

SW

Six Traits

excerpt from the book Wabi Sabi for Writers by Richard R. Powell (an excellent book! If you want to be inspired, buy it!)

There was a wabi sabi man who struggled to express what he loved and who chronicled his struggles for his brother in a series of letters that allow us to see into his inner world. His name was Vincent Van Gogh. This artist was rejected and ignored during his lifetime but he kept painting through isolation, poverty, and illness. Van Gogh exhibited six traits in his life that are worth considering:

1. Perseverance. His art was unique and original but no one recognized it at the time. Nevertheless, he developed his own style through years of effort.

2. Wabi sabi… He understood the beauty of the ordinary, the hidden value of the everyday. He uncovered both its loneliness and the way it binds people to a place. He chose wabi sabi models for his art, simple farmers and miners authentically portrayed in their natural settings.

3. Simplicity. He lived simply and worked diligently to capture what he saw, forgoing a prosperous life for his art.

4. Expressiveness. He not only painted but he also wrote what he thought and felt about his work. He highlighted his writing with sketches and delighted in sharing beauty.

5. Independence. He lived his convictions in poverty, unappreciated and unrecognized, because he knew what he was trying to achieve. Like everyone else, he worried about his physical needs and wished he were in a better position financially, but his convictions and his strong sense of the value of his own perceptions allowed him to enter into the painting process with abandon.

6. Courage. He faced with resolution the exclusion he experienced from painterly society. He invited painters to visit him, sent correspondences to those he respected, and sought help for his illness, all while producing painting after painting.

Van Gogh lived a heroic life, and his story inpires me to continue writing when the rewards seem far away.

pages 105 & 106