Full and happy

Los Angeleno by birth, Northwesterner by choice, Second-hander by nature. Librarian, housebound chef, father, and lowly subject ruled over by the needs and whims of a very old house.
Partial to Mexican, Italian and Vietnamese cookery but will eat damn near anything. Collector of many strange things..the result is chaos and anarchy and a very pleasant place to live.
There is pleasure in accumulation, not just "collecting": music, books and film, in all their multi-formated glory. Outsider artists and those kinds of prints you would recognize if you took liberal studies classes in college. Cooking implements and gadgets for recipes still untried or those ventured. Glasses for most types of libations. Flowers in the garden, herbs in the pot.
It's a life of the senses and a good home life reflects that. Walking helps take in all the rest. Requires no special equipment, opens up the pores, brightens the taste buds, clears the decks for further adventures, puts on the miles, widens the eyes and helps fuel the imagination.

Live boldly, play graciously and love with all your heart knowing that true love comes only once or twice in this lifetime. Speaking of which..donde estas, Empress of my Heart?

Salud!

"Lack imagination and miss the better story" Yann Martel

"Life is a great adventure and I want to say to you, accept it in such spirit. I want to see you face it ready to do the best that lies in you to win out. To go down without complaining and abiding by the result....the worst of all fears is the fear of living." Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.

"Not I - not anyone else, can travel that road for you
You must travel it for yourself" Walt Whitman


And above all, friends should possess the rare gift of sitting. They should be able, no, eager, to sit for hours-three, four, six-over a meal of soup and wine and cheese, as well as one of twenty fabulous courses.

Then, with good friends of such attributes, and good food on the board, and good wine in the pitcher, we may well ask,

When shall we live if not now?

-From Serve it Forth,
M.F.K. Fisher


Wednesday, October 23, 2013

The gold standard

We don't come from wealthy stock but our stock is running high. We seem to be more like a going concern than a couple that you would see going out, arm in arm, at the local mall. We treat the duo-ness of the two of us more like a company with stock options than as a pair of turtle doves with no options at all. We see the world as a place where our errant dreams can find a home rather than a place where all we can do is shop, eat at the newest nosheries and have little things to do and see just so we can talk about them later on.

We are an industry of sorts, manufacturing good will, honesty and devotion as opposed to widgets and gadgets and geegaws. Somehow we stumbled upon each other, not so much with stardust in our eyes but our eyes filled with much too much. We've seen too much hardship, heard all too much blather. We tasted bitter fruit, found out the that grass isn't greener on the other side, endured all that could be humanly possible to endure from silly people and for a while were content enough to leave well enough alone.

Funny how a road trip to Sacramento on the county nickle to attend a work related workshop can change the way you look at things, redirect the wind the wind in your sails, take your paradigms and shift them anew.

So now we now doing things that seem so normal yet have outrageous implications to take this sweet business of ours into the stratosphere. I find that busting kindling is a dandy thing to do again. Taking The Boy over the hill to doctors and dentists is a stroll through the park instead of another errand to run. We find that current movies and books and social networking tools are shunted aside to make time for picture books, meals made on the fly and to coyote listening sessions deep in the night.

We, this company of two, this growing concern of interest to a few and the idealized ideal of many, are doing great things. We take long country road walks on sunburst fall afternoons and in the midst of those country miles are finding ourselves taking those long dormant dreams of ours off the shelves and onto the road, too. We are eating well and finding ourselves, in all that wellness, eating a few too many gluten free desserts and are perfectly happy with the end results.

We are not knocking down the java but are doing what Starbucks' new tea venture recommends and are drinking way too much tea, never in my mind a bad thing at all. We are finding second hand champagne glasses to drink California sparkling wine out of, are working our way through home work assignments while gingerly discussing moves to far away places and are finding that pictures torn out of Dwell magazines are just as good a source of home decorating ideas as a Crate and Barrel store ever could be.

On some days we seem to build foundations out of cotton candy wishes but more times than not, after lots of hard thought, difficult conversations and a bit of time curled up by the side of a bed, find ourselves with trowels in our hands, our elbows deep in cement, putting the finishing touches on yet another layer of what seems to be a pretty dandy platform for the basis of a mighty fine relationship.

We are living the life, one filled with not a mountain of things but rather one graced with with more than just a taste of stability, durability and hope. Where that hope will take us remains to be seen. Will it be New York or Seattle or someplace in-between? That part remains unclear but in the meantime we have Long Beach, Disneyland, Seattle and Reno to discover and enjoy. Right now we are not being too picky or choosy about where thsi long range vision is taking us, just careful in our approach to the larger idea of the thing. You see, for us it's not the fanciness of the digs, the ritziness of the job, the high faluten-ness of life that matters. We found that it's how you treat one another that makes the difference, and when you treat someone with respect, dignity and love, it helps to set the standard that you live by. With that kind of standard we can do anything.

And right now, as far as I'm concerned, our life is being lived on the gold standard, indeed.

Muchos besitos, Mi Novia.

Salud!

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