January 26th Challenge: Just Be Your Own Beautiful Self

What a full day:  a hike, a memorial, an evening of films by and about women raising funds for prevention of breast cancer.  I got to visit ALL the emotions.  So let's just take it easy Sunday, shall we?

Rosie's memorial was beautiful and quirky and full of her life and art in all of its manifestations.  There were elaborate pen and inks, her trademark archival sensual B&W photograp

hs, delicately crafted pysanky eggs, and just a tiny fraction of the boxes of natual materials (stones, leaves, branches, oak galls, silks and velvets) she collected for her photos.  We sang Cheryl Wheeler's Potato Potato Potato song, and that sweet kitty lullabye from Big Bang Theory.  Stories were told that captured her irrasibility and untenable kindness and the way she lasered in on every invididual as if they were the most important and fascinating person on earth, whether they were emptying her trash one day or she'd known them all her life.  There was nothing ordinary about her, and everything at the same time.  She'll be missed in the trenches but is now embedded in our DNA thanks to the visceral presentation of her essence in that service.  I saw her everywhere today-- in a luminous leaf dangling, left over from fall; in the marsh wren that kept following my hike and popping up to peep from the bushes, in the sun whose flare made a heart on my camera lense.

The closing words were strong, and I planned to pass them along as blog for the day, but no time to retrieve them so you get the very short version:

Honor those you love who have passed by bringing their and your love into the world.  Bring their curiosity, humor, desire and delight along with you for your ride.  BE NICE, BE INTERESTED, SEEK TO UNDERSTAND.  And shower love.

Quote of the day: “On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.” --Henry David Thoreau

So now I have flummoxed you.  Urged you to be fully yourself and to see through more and more sets of eyes over time, burdened you with a promise to carry out other's work.  See, I think we have the same work:  Be awake, be present, be brave, be kind.  Spread love.  Pay attention.  Be perfectly imperfect (be human).

It sounds like a lot and winds out where it started:  Just be your own beautiful self today.

And tell me stories about it.

Song of the day: