One of the things I love about Christmas (provided I've granted myself enough time and funds) is the gift-giving.  I love spending time thinking about the inner-workings of another living soul, what it must be like to BE them, what kinds of things give their life meaning and pleasure, and how to express to them my admiration and affection.  

Recently, the saint and I were talking about how to find ways to prioritize each other in this phase of life.  The longer we are married, the harder it seems to be.  Marriage is so strange, don't you think?  It becomes second nature to see a person every day, to know their foibles, tastes, jokes, pain.  We must put forth a continual effort to infuse the relationship with novelty.  One of the things we bemused about was writing.  We almost never write each other and yet written words (or any positive words) are the way I receive love.  

This all got me to thinking about gifts of the soul.  Maybe you've heard of the 5 love languages...a theory that we are all built to receive love in a specific way and give love in a specific way (often, these are two different things).  I have known for some time that I receive love through positive affirmation or words of encouragement.  Joel receives love through physical touch and it's interesting to see how this has played out in our dynamic.  If we fight, the way he knows we are recovered is if I touch his knee or hug him.  Oppositely, if we can again speak peacefully or give each other compliments, I feel comforted and ready to move past the conflict.  

Similarly, my best friend Jackie has recently been reminding me of these love languages.  She has been trying to find ways to discover how to love her family  (3 children and husband) as they would receive it best.  I love talking with her about each of them, observing her observing them is really quite amazing.  It takes a rather big heart to decide to extend love not as naturally as it might come to your own giving language, but to extend love how those on the other end will most deeply internalize it.  

I am serious when I say that if everyone decided to forgo giving me gifts this year and in its place wrote me a letter about their lives or their daily details or anything at all...how that would make me feel like I could conquer the world.  This got me to thinking about how I give...and what would make my friends/family really KNOW how much I care for them.

In the last few days, I've been newly acquainted with the following:

• A vintage PomPom aluminium Christmas tree.  It's gonna be friggen fantastic (and will arrive next week).  Happy Kitchmas!  Sidenote: this kind of campy tree is the only tree I could sacrifice the smell of a real tree for...just so we understand each other.  This is not about convenience.  This is about style.
  
• Great new friends with women at work that make me laugh.
  
• The perfect black Prada flats that I found reused for only $50. They were my size AND already stretched for my wide feet.  I almost cried.
  
• A new painting.  I am so beyond excited about this.  Nothing feels better than investing in soul.
  
• A sad new kind of internal isolation.  Despite a plethora of meaningful and deep connections (I seem incapable of casual relationships), there are times I feel so stuck inside myself.  I've recently been privy to several breakups and it gets under my skin, I suppose.  Then, the very people I want to know the most become seemingly impossible for me to really reach.  I believe this is a quick remedy. Saint, take me on a date.  The moment I lecture him on how we need to prioritize our passion, or express the fear that we are not impervious to breakups,  his lips will turn upward with feelings of endearment at my dramatic flair; his eyes will water with admiration and he'll stare down my flailing, isolated soul and capture it again.
  
• Words (all courtesy of Ted Hughes):
• caryatids - a sculptured female figure used as a column
• friable - easily crumpled or reduced to power
• palanquin - a passenger conveyance consisting of a covered box carried by resting poles on the shoulders of men.

I hope your weekend is, at the very least, an education.

Just as I suspected, December has started in 5th gear and maintained this steady, exciting, and dangerous speed.  Unfortunately, when things get fast, this musing lady simplifies her usually copious and rich thought-life.  Instead of staying awake nights pondering my way through life, I am envisioning spreadsheet after spreadsheet of christmas gift ideas, christmas craft ideas, birthday gift ideas (mr. saint turns this month - as well as many others),  menus, meal plans, family get-togethers, outfits for art-show openings...all of this on top of maintaining my regularly active social life AND my recently busy full-time job.

But there are many moments where my brain seeps through these cracks (gross), and I hear a wee voice ask me when I am going to get back to writing...to reading...to taking photographs...to blogging...to eye brow waxing.  All of these things contribute greatly to the luxury of my soul, and I wonder how long I can possibly exist in such a neglectful state.

My heart begins to thrash around in my chest like a caged bird, my breathing stops remembering that it is an autonomic response.  I suddenly cannot think of an outfit or manage to put together the simpliest of weekly menus.  It is in this pre-nervous breakdown state that I speak from the mountain tops to myself:

"DO NOT PANIC."

And then I feel better.

Because there is THE ISSUE.

and then there's the PANIC (feeling/judgment) about THE ISSUE.

The later is ALWAYS, always worse.

 

Joel had to check my work.  He approved.

(But he always does ;) )

Do you hear it?
 That would be the sound of November rushing by.

Bienvenue Décembre.

What do you hold?

I asked you last night.

Thus far, you've answered with:

Time passes on the right,

Cuts me off.

Doesn't bother to signal.
I curse.