Thursday, January 14, 2010

On Being Green

ART SPARKER was looking for things that are green. It's one of my favorite colors and I seem to veer toward it whenever it comes to furnishing our home with a new rug or chair.
In Oregon I find this color almost anywhere I go, and it appeared beneath my feet on a recent walk.
(Look closely! Do you see the metal dragonfly earring I lost? This is where I was soon before I noticed it was missing. It began to snow that day and then everything was covered in 4 inches of white fluff.)
I wanted to take a picture of a little green dress, handmade, that must have belonged to a little girl who didn't wear it for very long. It was in great shape when I bought it at a garage sale.
What was the story that Ernest Hemingway wrote in six words? "For sale: baby shoes. Never worn." Poignant.
I like to think the little green dress (with rick rack, I think) was just outgrown quickly.
I am still glancing through "Your Mythic Journey" by Sam Keen and Anne Valley-Fox. The book is open to a section on "Gifts and Wounds."
The authors say "Everyone alive has received some share of the gifts that make and keep human life human. The giving and receiving of gifts plays a large part in most cultures. Gift giving is rooted in the primal feeling that the world itself is a gift, a banquet already spread before us when we arrive on the scene. Something - chance, God, the trickster, or divine reason - arranged things to support human life."
Then, "Generosity is a recycling of the gifts of life."
And "Wounds are as universal as gifts: sooner or later suffering and death strike us all. The ancients wove myths around this basic ambiguity of life."
Along with me, remember the people of Haiti tonight before you close your eyes, and if you have the wherewithal, be generous with a gift of money for the victims - femminisimo

2 comments:

ArtSparker said...

Just got in, have posted your link. Lovely patch of ground.

Candace said...

Great post, Jeanne, soothing and thoughtful. Say, isn't that your earring up there in the top right of the photo? I see what looks like the "hook" -- although to me I am totally worthless when looking for stuff outside. I would have been loving on the rocks and moss too much...
Candace in Athens.