Today I did something I've wanted to do since I read "Franny and Zooey" (J.D. Salinger's other teenage angst novel) when I was sixteen. My partner helped me hang a giant piece of drywall on the wall of our bedroom and I attacked it with my son's ancient, crusty markers. I can't wait to cover every inch of it with quotes and art. I've done various collages over the years, but never on an whole section of wall... mostly satisfying myself with large pieces of butcher paper that eventually tear or curl off the wall or fray and crease and leak and dissolve. This is a four foot by eight foot piece of drywall. Bolted to the wall with stucco screws. Thirty two square feet of inspiration. Yum. Chris would have let me just paint and mark up the wall I think, but I want to be able to glue and spackle and tape things to it, and not have to worry about having to spend hours, days, weeks, pulling it all off with a paint knife and heat gun some day in the far off future. Just four screws in, four screws out.
The first thing I wrote in big flowing purple letters was, "You are so loved." This is what I want to wake up to in the morning. Why shouldn't every person, plant, animal, flower, tree, wake up to that reminder? I want to feel it in my bones, in every cell. I want the whole of my life to reverberate with the song of love so that every gesture, every thought resonates with that sense of connection. The second thing I wrote, in dying orange and pink (definitely putting new markers on the grocery list today) was, "You are so beautiful." These words are especially hard won for me, and some days, some moments, still hard to believe. But most days I can remember them, believe them, and feel them. I was born beautiful, and so were you, and so was every being. What has changed since then, really? Sure, our bodies grow, we have experiences, our hearts and bodies are broken, then mended, then broken again, but what really has changed? The essential beauty of who we are never changes, no matter how many footprints have stained the hallways of our heart. Why don't we believe in and see our own beauty? We give our power to see our own beauty away... sometimes to others, but often to our own judging mind. The quote "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," means so much more than simply you find pigeons beautiful and I find them ugly. It means you are beautiful because my eyes are beautiful. Because my soul sees clearly its own beauty. My beauty sees beauty in you. May your beautiful eyes see beauty everywhere... in the mirror and in the mirror of the beautiful eyes of every being.
And now, back to the book proposal... I hope to have the first draft of it done by tomorrow. Wish me luck!
