Words and Pictures

I started taking pictures so I could control the moments of my life and reorganize them into some kind of concise and clean revision of my memories, one in which even the bad parts contain beauty and vividness. For a while I was obsessed with the idea of taking 365 Self Portraits, a popular challenge on the photo website flickr.com. I spent hours browsing the self portrait photosets of other members, many of them astounding in their beauty and poignancy, and I envied that kind of neatly packaged record of a year in my life. I'm obviously not alone in this craving. Not only are photo websites like Flickr incredibly popular, but scrapbooking as a hobby is something of a craze these days. In fact, long before I discovered Flickr, I used to buy scrapbook magazines, not because I ever took up the hobby, or really planned to, but because I liked to look at the neat layouts of cherub-cheeked babies and smiling couples, surrounded by kitschy stickers and rubber-stamped lettering that put neat titles on life's shining moments. It's like the commercialization of life. All one has to do is open the scrapbook and then feel the relief course through one's limbs as each cheery page proclaims that yes! the baby was always smiling, the summers filled with trips to the beach under sunny skies, and Christmas a warm betwinkled blur of laughter and crumpled paper. And if the photos themselves don't convey this just right, there are always little notions and do-dads at the craft store to help drive the point home, and pretty printed papers to convey the right mood.

I like photography because I'm so mediocre at it. Unlike the written word, photography allows me to be satisfied with limiting myself to safe subjects. It doesn't force me to look at the memories so ugly that they lay crumpled like a dead thing in the corner of my mind. I'm okay with not being great at it, because at least I'm in charge of it. Those damn words, on the other hand, they don't listen. They are are naughty, always wanting to dash into the middle of a crowded street. They're a bit like children in their ruthless demands for attention and love, and like a mother, I know I'll never be quite good enough.

Rainstorm

It's storming all over California today. Between energetic bouts of rain, the wind blows in warm and restless gusts. My heart sings out to this weather--I've loved autumnal rainstorms all my life--but my soul feels worn and tired. I, myself, am as unsettled and groundless as the wind, looking for something to hold on to, waiting for the weather to settle. I'm desperate for change.

It all makes me rather melancholy. Last night the power went out, again, and for some reason I panicked, lying in the dark silence, listening to the wind tapping at the window. I felt alone in a void; not even the soft brush of Cali's hair against my cheek or the deep regular breathing of my husband next to me made me feel any less isolated. I prayed for the power to come back on, for the glow of the bedside lamp and the soft whirr of the ceiling fan.

For some reason all this darkness, of thought and feeling, is making me think back on my life's most contented moments. I sort through them, like a mental stack of photographs, as if looking at them enough will unlock the secret to happiness in my present.

Most of these memories are not extraordinary in and of themselves, they're simple moments, some even mundane, but they each hold a specific feeling of serenity that I would do almost anything to recapture.

Stepping off a curb in front of an antique shop in a little Texas hill country town, the notes of the Stones' "Dead Flowers" drifting on the hot evening air from a dancehall nearby.

Leaning against an overturned boat on a Spanish beach smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and watching the sunrise over the Mediterranean.

Taking a hot shower in the first apartment my husband and I lived in together, and having him bring me a glass of wine.

Driving home from work one evening back in Santa Cruz and seeing the bonfires dotted along the beach.

Making love on white sheets while gauzy curtains blew in the breeze.

I study these moments, trying to put a mental finger on what about them was so exquisite, while other, more outwardly remarkable moments, fell short. I wonder if I will ever learn to be happy.

Things that have happened since I last posted:

1. I gave birth at home to a beautiful baby girl.

2. I learned what it feels like to have your heart live outside of your body.

3. I lactated through my scrubs at work and had to walk around with a big wet spot on my boob for several hours--let's face it, the strategically placed name badge wasn't fooling anyone.

4. I have completed not a single knitting project.

5. I have become completely fascinated with the French Revolution after reading a biography of Marie Antoinette.

6. I survived a deep and debilitating depression that reduced my life to fractured and scattered pieces.

7. I found the strength to begin to put the pieces back together, and began to build something much stronger, more enduring, and beautiful than I had before.

8. I cried a lot, and listened to my baby cry a lot. Sometimes we cried together.

9. I've developed a whole new appreciation for sleep.

10. I became a mother (something which, while resembling #1 on the list, is not the same thing at all).

Happiness

A group of friends and I were talking the other day, and the question came up: are you happy? What does happiness mean anyway? Most of us agreed that it is not a state of constant bliss and excitement, but rather a state of peace and acceptance of one's life. Of not constantly wanting to move on to the next thing, or constantly wishing for something new and better.

I do not think I can describe myself as a happy person by these standards. It's not because I'm thy type of person who wants a lot of stuff; in fact I'm satisfied with very simple things. I'm rather a homebody and like most to be at home with my husband, or with close friends or family. I don't have lots of friends, but the ones I have are very dear to me. I like to putter around my house, cook and knit. I like my job, and I'm excited about becoming a nurse one day soon. I love my husband more than anything and can't imagine my life without him. And the baby--well, it brings tears to my eyes every time she moves. The very idea that she's here, that I'm able to actually grow her in my belly, that she will be my daughter, really and truly, is a miracle to me after more than three long years of waiting for her to come.

Yes, I know I have many blessings. and yet this constant cloud of anxiety and hopelessness follows me throughout life. In all honesty, we are in sort of a crisis phase, on of those periods where things are about to get either much better or much worse, and the anxiety is worse than usual. But this isn't a feeling unique to those difficult times in life. This is a feeling that is with me more often than it is not. And I'm starting to wonder if it is really the stress of life, or something inherent in me that is wrong. I'm tired of always waiting for things to get better, especially now that I have so many things that I've wanted for so long. On the other hand, I wonder why new difficulties have sprung up to ruin the sense of contentment I hoped to have. Most of all, I worry that my negative thought will somehow affect the baby, that she is doomed to some kind of melancholy existence because I didn't think happy enough thoughts when she was forming. I worry that my depression and anxiety will keep me from being a good mother. I worry about my husband, who is under his own stress, and try to be positive and not make things worse. I'm tired of being sad and afraid all the time.

I took the beach grass photo above almost exactly a year ago, on a walk on the beach with the Mister. It seems so peaceful and happy to be walking on the beach with my husband and my dog--I remember it as a good day. But was it? Did I let the day be clouded by thoughts and worries? Sadly, I probably did. Can I learn to get to a place where I feel at peace with myself, and with the present? I want a peaceful and open heart, and the ability to accept the bad with the good. Is this something some are born with, or something we have to learn? Is it something I can learn?

Living a Still Life

I've been wanting to write a post about the title of this blog for a while. Still Life With Roses. The truth is, the meaning behind the title is a little cheesy, in an inspirational-poster-with-a-soaring-eagle sort of way. Or a monkey hanging on to a fraying rope. "Hang in there" and all that. The thing is, I feel like I've been living sort of a still life. Stagnant would really be a better word, but then it doesn't have the cute double entendre that "still life" does, and thus the title of the blog wouldn't really work. Although it could be "Stagnant Pond with Lilies" or something. Anyway.

I live a perfectly adequate, somewhat respectable, existence. I'm married to someone I truly love, and that's nothing to scoff at. We own a fairly successful business, we live in a cute little house with a big front deck, my sister and brother-in-law come over on Sundays for barbecues, my brother and I go kayaking together on weekends. Really, I have nothing to complain about...except that I feel like I'm living someone else's life. Or rather, my own life, but a life that should have expired, or grown or transformed or something a long time ago. Nothing happens for me. I've been trying to continue with my post-graduate education (I won't go into the specifics of it just yet) for years, literally years, but something--starting a business, completing surprise prerequisites, bureaucratic red tape--always comes up to postpone it. From the outside I'm a well-educated, world-at-my-doorstep young business owner. From the inside I'm someone unqualified for anything relating to what I really want to do, helping with a business that was my husband's dream. I feel like I have no more of a career than I did when I was a twenty-year-old waitress who slept in until noon and rolled into work at six o'clock in the evening. This isn't me.

Of course, the biggest roadblock in my life, the one that hurts so much that I have to pretend like it doesn't exist in order think about my life a year from now, five years from now, twenty years from now. I have no children, and it becomes increasingly clear to me each passing month that babies are not anywhere in my near---or maybe even distant--future. This was bearable when only a few people we knew had children, but now, when even my six-years-younger and unmarried (at the time) sister is surprise! expecting, and when meeting your friend at the farmers market, or a couple you've known for years at a baseball game, now involves spending hours with the object of your most secret desires, it has become a dominant factor in my life. I pretend not to hear when people ask me when our little one will be coming. I try not to act insanely jealous when my mom talks about my sister's baby, everything she has saved for her first grandchild, the room at her house that she's fixing for it. I try not to think That baby should be mine. I wanted it first, I wanted it so much. But each month slips away, taking with it the likelihood that my sister's baby will have a cousin its own age. So I smile, and knit my niece or nephew all the baby things from patterns I've been saving for my own child, and go overboard planning the baby shower so that no one will suspect how resentful I am inside.

What does this have to do with the roses? After all, the name of this blog is Still Life With Roses, not Still Life with Whiny Barren Bitter Lady. Well, here comes the aforementioned cheesy part. I needed a project for this year. This yet another year where school has been postponed, where no baby is expected, where no fulfilling and high-paying career is being offered to me. Really, I need something to make me...well, get over myself. I mean who out there is living their dream life? (Please don't answer if you are.) So this blog is my project. Something to make me realize than even in a still life, there are roses. (Hey, I warned you about the cheesiness.) So I want to write about the roses in my own life: my husband, my family, my knitting and books and garden. Okay, not my garden, because I don't have one, but if I make one, I'd like to write about it.