“Every act counts….This is all the path we have.”  Pema Chodron

Harry, Marlene and Bob, Car Whisperers

Harry would like me to have a better car, but he knows the Maxima and I love each other;  Bob always tells me I did the right thing, which I genuinely need to hear; and Marlene, like all divinities, tends her plants and people with a wry smile and fearless hands.

See the hearts?

“Pointing directly at your own heart, you find Buddha.”

Bodhidharma quote, courtesy of Pema C., hands courtesy of Barb D. and Marv B., shamelessness courtesy of me.

Has this ever happened to you?  You find something you think is a heart, but when you get it home and take a closer look, you’re not so sure anymore.   It isn’t as much of a heart as you thought at first.  You wonder if you were imagining things.  But then you decide it is a heart, after all.  No hearts are perfect.  And then you love it all the more.

Patron Saint of the Perforated Paper,
Keep my wooden heart in your tender gaze.
Grasp the Lamb and palm frond –
weapons meant to bring us heaven on earth.

Cut steel shields your radiant brow with
glory rusted from devotion long since exhausted.
And my prayers are all in silk laid side by side
by hand.

It seems obvious that once you have made small heart shaped snowballs, you would put them in a cup, and take a picture of them?  Right?  What could possibly be sweeter?

Only one thing on earth – that rarest of confections, Pink Snow.

Don’t act like you don’t want it.  We both know better.

things i can do with my hands:

give me some yarn, and i’ll knit it.
give me a camera, and i’ll point it.
give me your heart, and i’ll hold it.

rearrange these words as desired.

Today, le mot juste goes to our friend Nick, who arrived at the cafe in party spirits, announcing, “It’s as if there’s been a truce!”  Just so.  A snow day is like Christmas, only better.  The rules are etched indelibly into our hearts, and even though we may be adults at work when drifts wave like white flags along the trenches of streets and sidewalks, we are loathe to break them.   The day’s mission is understood:  fun, pleasure, mischief.   Like Scrooge we discover it is not too late; through no merit of ours, we have been given a second chance.  Perhaps Secret Snow Santa has plowed our sidewalk or, greatest of pleasures, our very own shoulders lean in to help in some way so ordinary and unremarkable, we really don’t deserve a reward, but there it is anyway, just for us: a cup steaming hotter than our breath, and sweet.  Here is the power of snow:  to burn as it makes you shiver; to make being the target fun; to burst, on contact, into powder and laughter; to level the playing field, for on this day, children rule.  And later, as the snow blushes in afternoon sunlight, and the shadows point farther and farther across the yard, if your fenders are fine, and bones unbroken, there will be no regrets.  Not one.

I made a terrible mistake today, and actually told Ben that I intended to make 14 pictures of hearts in 14 days, as my contribution to the Holiday of Love.

Sigh. (Eeyore-ishly) Now I suppose I’ll have to.

Thanks alot, Ben.