Hello, Friends. I’ve just finished up a week full of mixing pleasure with business on Miami Beach and, as I sit here waiting for my plane back to Jersey, I’m thinking about all the things I saw over the past few days. During our stay, my travel companion and I talked about how we experience the places we are by noticing the little things around us and, last week, I wrote about the places we are from.
So, this week, I am from the warm waters off the coast of Florida, towering palm trees, white ibises in the parking lot, playful bright orange butterflies that swirl around the leaves of a giant banana tree, small lizards with spiral tails, flocks of squawking green parrots, spiky leaved trees that look almost prehistoric, small delicious red berries that fall from a tropical tree, peacocks that come to visit every morning, exotic flowers in pinks and oranges, pretty skies, full moons, sandy toes, the love and laughter of good friends and the rays of a big, bright hot sun.
Have a beautiful week, everyone.
TRY THIS WEEK: Take notice of the small things around you.
Dar's 52 Mondays Blog 
Have fun this week! Wish I were there, but someone’s gotta paint!
I love these last two weeks, Dar. Last week, made me realize that the sentiment about the importance of place to our identity is something that is ever-presently in the back of my mind through parenting my little ones. When I look back to the places I’ve been- the places I’ve grown- it is so clear that it is impossible to separate the internal landscape from the external one. Last week, I traveled back to MS where I was raised. It is a beautiful sprawling place. The colors of the grass and the great, big sky always harmonize so perfectly. It is really striking.
But I remember talking to a friend who was raised in neighboring AL. The landscape is the same. We love to go there now, but we both remember in our childhoods feeling so lonely there; like we were going to get swallowed up by that great expanse. We felt our creative energies were roiling within us and could choke us at any moment- an “almost bursting” sensation. Maybe it is because allowing those energies to pour out leaves you so vulnerable and there was no cover beneath that big sky. We prefer the mountains. There is something so safe about the little fortress it provides – about knowing that if you pour yourself out, you will be contained in a little dish of you, you won’t run off all over the ground to get gobbled up by that greedy sun. There is really no way to explain this feeling to someone who hasn’t experienced it, but she and I knew exactly what it meant. I think it is hinted at in so many coming-of-age stories and I can’t tell now if the state in which we grew up as on the map or in the heart. The two so deeply connected.
Your post this week makes me realize how much I love the details my current home, North East Georgia. The fiddle heads on the ferns, the loamy smell of the earth, the smooth, round stones shaped by the river, the river and all that it is, the smoke rolling over the mountains after the rain, the great red veins on the back of the begonias, the wild mint, all the different mosses and mushrooms, I could go on.
I am happy to know that when my children grow up, this is the place they’ll be from. These are the details that will be etched into their minds. I wonder if they’ll have that feeling here. There is a part of me that hopes they will. There was something so good about that choking loneliness- that feeling that at any moment I could burst -that there was something so big inside me that my body wouldn’t hold it. I wonder if these mountains will feel like this to them.
Thanks again for reminding us all of the beauty around us and for inspiring good thoughts.