Still Sundays

August 8th.

Heart beats—literally. To create with conviction. For a lifestyle?  For your clients? Line between self-exploration & self-indulgence? What’s the point of art? Of being strong?

If you would like to know what Still Sundays is about, please take a quick gander here and just read the third paragraph. Thanks.

Stillness is palpable through practice.

I was not expecting to write this from L.A. but instead from my parents’ ranch house in the village. Yet, here I am and, moreover, ready to depart for my beloved New York City in the evening. Life is unexpected sometimes, stillness is not. It remains a coating around all havoc. You are and are not of the moment.

Sometime last week I stubbed my left middle toe while helping lift a bench. The lower edge of the bench smashshoved against the left middle toe nail and almost uplifted and dislodged the nail. We weren’t near my parents’ farmhouse; we were in the suburbs in the next biggest city over. We couldn’t yet tell if the finger was broken or just the nail or both or just a horrific boo boo. We wrapped the toe around a gauze (my mother’s friend is a pharmacist) so as to take a better look once we returned to my parents’ home.

While my mother drove and I sat in the passenger seat of my brother’s truck—bench in the back—the pain shot through the toe nail to my head. In the silence of the drive I felt my heart beat all the way in the bleeding toe, an evident drumming vibration.

Modern science books and technology have unveiled much of the mystery behind how the heart functions. Yet there I was, still in awe, counting the rhythm of my heartbeat through my swollen toe. Red blood cells. White blood cells. Platelets. Blood being made inside my bones. The nourishment needed to sustain good blood.  The heart, responsible for pumping life-sustaining blood via a 60,000-mile-long (97,000-kilometer-long) network of vessels, pumping all the way right to the tiny ones attached to my nail. It doesn’t forget to sustain any part. I want to learn the rhythm of the heart. The heart works tirelessly whether we notice it or not.  My wild heart, size of my clenched fist, that is all figured out by science but still an enigma in many ways. I want to take better care of my heart.

For  my younger brother’s wedding my mother had hired a professional hair stylist to come to the farm house. The wedding did not take place in a golf or country club but one that looks like it or was made to look even better: my parents’ huge backyard in the farm or ranch house.  My mother and I wanted someone from the small town nearby instead of some big name from Los Angeles or the next biggest city over.  This woman remained at the house for at least an estimated seven hours at minimum. The bride, her mother, my mother, my sister, my mother’s friend and at least four others including myself had our hair styled by this woman.

We are still talking about this woman who did our hair. To say she was passionate about doing hair is a misstatement of her craft. Somehow the comb in her hand and whatever other required tool she was using would become an extension of herself and the individual sitting on a chair.  She repeatedly told us, “I love hair. I have loved it every since I was young. I had a plan. As soon as I graduated high school I got my certification in  cosmetology and hair styling. Then I worked for others. Then I realized my vision for creativity and satisfying the customer were different and I couldn’t betray my creativity. I decided to go on my own on the side.”

She filled the room—the frantic room with multiplie outfits laying around, jewelry to be sorted, clothes to be ironed, cell phones ringing, arguments over where do things go at the last minute—with a stillness borne out of joy and passion. She was convinced that what she wanted to do with her life was that significant. She was happy. She made us happy.

When I saw my brother and gorgeous sister-in-law, her hair done exactly how she had envisioned, sitting gloriously on the magnificent stage, tired as I was, I was still wonderstruck by the possibilities of a rare energy that results from certainties that come as whispers in the rush that surrounds: to create a lifestyle (personal or with another) with intention and conviction…

I received three very unexpected, kind and personal emails last week since I didn’t have the chance to write last Sunday. I was “still recovering.”  I responded. I write differently when I am responding to an email than when writing here and here is different than the stories which are different than the manuscript.

They all wished to see more of that writing in the email. This website was launched so as to share others’ stories and others’ articles. Others’ articles I have stopped sharing on here given now I do that via twitter, unless I have long commentary on something someone else wrote.

This Still Sundays was borne out of a coaxing to learn more about “me.” Where is the line between self-exploration and self-indulgence? I don’t know. But I know there is one. Self-exploration halts if it tips to self-indulgence.

Around 4 p.m. yesterday things in the world of my moment went upside down. It requires my having to return to New York City today instead of later on in the week. By the time things had resumed to normal, or what can be considered normal after peace has been rattled, I had already made my way to my brother and his wife’s place in LA.

What’s the point of being strong? I recall reading somewhere and my mother reiterated: to know what you are made of. Why? Strength for strength’s sake? Art for art’s sake? Art captures what we can and cannot quite see. Strength too reflects what we do and don’t understand.

Brunch with my lovely sissy-in-law and mother awaits then off to LAX to arrive in New York City, “home.”

You have to choose to love life despite all that doesn’t go your way.

~a.q.s.

Related posts:

Still Sundays Still Sundays Still Sundays Still Sundays