I live in “lusquiver.” No it’s not a town in New England you have never heard of, nor is it a kingdom springing from a fairy tale. It’s a word I stumbled upon in my current favorite book, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. “Lusquiver” is
But what did I love so much about Toulouse-Lautrec? What drew me to his story, his art, besides the fact that I knew if I were alive back then, we would have been friends. (I never longed to be one of the “society girls” parading about in stiff silk skirts and spending my days swanning about, dressing for meals. No. I would have run away to the Moulin Rouge and spent my days practicing my high kicks in frilly knickers.)
These paintings were not of sunflowers, or starry nights, but instead they were of a family–another kind of passionate aching joy. Vincent had moved to the yellow house in Arles to paint when he became friends with a local postman and his family, the Roulin family. He wanted to work on painting portraits and each member of the family sat for him.
Knowing how Vincent longed for love, he wrote “It’s so easy to love, the hard thing is to be loved,” these paintings seem so poignant, especially the multiple paintings of the mother, Augustine Roulin. In his paintings of her she always has a rope around her wrist because while sitting, she is using the rope to rock the cradle of her newborn child. Van Gogh called the painting “La Berceuse” which means both “lullaby” or “she who rocks the cradle.”
Vincent wrote to his brother about this painting, “I would like to see this painting “in the cabin of a boat” where fishermen “in their melancholy isolation, exposed to all the dangers, alone on the sad sea… would experience a feeling of being rocked, reminding them of their own lullabies.”
When I returned to 8852 Sunset to show my children this summer, the logo on the side of the building seemed to rustle and quiver with aching memories, and I longed to tell them but what could I say? What could I tell them of
At any given moment, my brain is a tragedy jukebox, saying, “Hmmmm, which tragic moment shall we replay in elaborate detail for Marci right now?” Heart-shattering memories slice into my daily life with wild abandon, as I am forced to relive overwhelming loss. So I
It was quiet, with only the sound of the river. I have spent my life looking for miracles, so when Sharon and I were driving down the desert highway in New Mexico, with cell service long gone and our only entertainment the gallivanting tumbleweeds crossing
My daughter is getting her college degree in acting in New York City, and it fills me with endless delight to hear about her curriculum.“How was school today?”“It was great! We went to the Central Park Zoo.”“The zoo? Why?”“To pick out an animal.”“To pick out
Today I finally understood why Cinderella was transported into a magical realm by a pumpkin. I can’t believe these big round orange magical things grow from tiny seeds into sprawling vines and then sprout these incredible fairy tale globes, the very essence of growth and
I guess the point is that, even now, a million years later, books are my Orient Express, my journey into the Sultan’s Palace, my feet slipped into the upturned toes of a genie’s slippers, and my three wishes involve more books, the kind that feel like catching magic by the tail and making it into a kite, the kind that change minds and nourish souls, and of course, living, passionately, wildly, softly, and always always always, living “by heart.”
Everyone copes with the sorrows of the world in different ways– for me, I choose to play in what I call “a glitter cyclone,” aka my Magic Treehouse camp.
