Somewhere in Morocco

I dislike coasters. I don't really see the point of them because I like coffee rings - specifically when there is only one because you always put your mug in the exact same place every time, but lots of rings are fine. It gives an otherwise inanimate thing character. Which is important because it isn't as if that inanimate thing has a personality that can inform you as to it's character, you must inform it.

I like paint on canvas, but appreciate it less on walls. Unless it is spray paint and outdoors, but that is another topic. I prefer wooden walls and open beams. It makes things a bit bigger and a bit more drafty, but also smaller and homey all at the same time. Paint seems to only muddle or bore due to the fact that most walls are white or beige or someplace in between. No one likes the color beige, it's just fun to say. If you painted on walls as you painted on canvas, that would be something magical. Because paint on canvas is a doorway to the unknown. Imagine if all your walls were doorways, each leading someplace different. That would be lovely.

It's funny, your past builds you to who you are while still not defining you at all. Life is a developing picture. You can take it out and look at it one moment, then let it settle longer for a clearer image. It's almost the same, but it isn't at all. The past is like that. Who am I now is not who I was then, but it still made me who I am and is making me into who I'll be. I think that's a riddle, but I'm not sure. Riddles always seem so much more clever than I could ever be.

I find cliches to be boring and most love stories are cliches, but I find love stories to be wildly wonderful. I think it's because of the details. The big picture is what matters in general, but in a love story the big picture doesn't matter at all. You are not two people in a room full of people in a building in a city in a country on the earth, you are just two people. One entirely enraptured by the other, so ardently that nothing else is of any importance. And that is what makes them.

My preferred method of communication is "in-person," then blog. And maybe email. But the phone is too loud and text messages are too short and Twitter is for hashtags and Facebook is for self-absorption and I hear there are other methods, but I don't participate. Face to face is perfect. You can appreciate the person. The affect in their voice and the motions of their hands, the way their face contorts with emotion or remains still with apathy. You can use all 5 senses and know them the way we have forgotten to know people.

Do you think clouds get lonely? Those dark wisps drifting alone while cumulus collect together at the edge of the foothills. I think they do. Alienated because they're different, isolated drops of water wandering together, blown about by the wind. I wish I could hike up into those distant clouds and whisper into their very center how much they are appreciated, if only by me.

I'm watching Casablanca again, for the thousandth time. It's a coffee ring and a canvas, a riddle and a love story, honest in all 5-senses, a whisper into loveless clouds. There is fresh bread in the oven and a sweet little boy asleep in the canvas hammock hung from the ceiling, my husband is away at work and I miss him. Sam on the piano makes it all seem easier than it is. Idealism and romanticism spun into a web around my heart. I'm worried spring will never come, but I know that all things pass. Life is a constant complicated slur. But then, so am I.