I Love Fall!

There is so much beauty in my mountainous Utah home; early dawn, awakening morning sunshine filtering over emerald mountain peaks and valleys; azure skies and crisp clean air. Little birds like to greet each other and peep as they hop in the grass looking for their breakfast.

I love it when it is stormy as well, roiling dark clouds with intermittent rain and sunshine, the dark gloaming in the streets, the fresh smell in the air. Splendid!

Then the glorious fall! How crisp the day's, how refreshing! For some reason during the first week of school you can simply feel the change in the air, it is less intense, so much more relaxed than summer. There is still some uncomfortable warmth but it isn't like the scorching heat of Summer. Each day the tips of the green leafed trees slowly take on different hues and die away, until one day you realize that the leaves have fallen and the musty smell of mulching leaves permeates the air and then one day the air holds winters bite and the season has turned again.

There is just something about the fall, I love fall!

SG

Live like no one's watching!

How many people out there really enjoy their lives? How many people on Wall Street get up each day with a feeling of well being, that their lives matter, that this world is good?

When you focus on those things that are important like, good health, good friends, good music and family. Then no matter how much money you have you will have a good life.

Good health, I want to postulate that it is very essential. Yes if you have other things then you can try to enjoy them, but view my world for a minute when I eat the wrong foods. . . I am dizzy, half awake, my logic is disrupted because my mind is cloudy, I am grumpy, and I feel a general sense of malease. (Imagine the song Away From the Sun by Three Doors Down)

Contrast that to how I felt Monday, refreshed, calm, clear headed, with a feeling of well being. I had been eating a very good diet for the past week. There is a big difference in the world between the two. Right now I am slightly dizzy and sleepy because I had maple syrup on my Gluten Free waffle, I am going to have to walk it off or sleep it off. I have got to find a way to replace sugary syrup.

Good friends, family and music can also come and go but I find that without them my world is not as exeptional.

I also like a good herbal tea, Roobios (Roy Boss) tea or i.e. red tea from Africa is absolutely my favorite right now. I have enjoyed mint teas in the past, but found out that I am sensitive to them so I am trying to avoid them for now.

Also, how can you enjoy life if you have no one to talk to? Friends and family are the spice and color to life. Sure I am an artist in my own mind, I enjoy solitude as much as the next person, but I also enjoy cooking with my friends and good conversation. My good friend Tanya moved away and I miss her deeply because we were able to cook and talk together.

Enjoy Life, even if you have poor health, no friends or family. Even if your world is bereft of music, there is a way to have meaning to your life. Viktor Frankle a survivor of a Nazi Concentration camp, endured the worst conditions to life in human history. Yet he said that even under these conditions there were people who went around lifting others, giving up there last piece of bread and showing that they could choose to find dignity, even in suffering. Then there were others who's spirits were broken, I don't know that my own spirit would stand up to that test. But it gives me hope that there were people who did rise above their conditions, how inspiring. If they died, and most did, even then there lives had meaning. They, through the eyes of others, have given us all a glimpse of the better way of being. I am so grateful to have learned about them. The Nazi Concentration camps seemed to me only places where broken people were made, but even Viktor Frankle shows me that you can survive and change and have a better attitude then you had before.

One of my favorite things about this book is what he wrote about love. His young wife was killed, though he didn't know it. During some of the hardest parts of his internment he imagined her, and talked to her and felt her presence there. He had a beautiful love for her. Not the crass baseness of the physical, (for that drive disappeared under the unique stress they were under)but he loved her essence.

Oh to be so loved!!

In any case, I am through for now with sitting in front of my computer. There is very little of beautiful enjoyment here, although I did find a beautiful You Tube video of Peruvian Pipe music. I am going out to enjoy the day.

~Strawberry Girl

Word Painting

Hi Everyone!!

I feel like trying out an experiment. I want to create a mental image of some things that I have seen, smelt, and may be some things I have heard.

First of all, the mountains near my house. I looked up at them the other day when it was a clear bright morning. The peaks stood out in stark contrast to each other and you could see back to the furthest reaches of the mountains. Two stood together like sentinals or like gates and one stood behind like a majestic giant. They were all covered in a verdant green yet you could still see places were the granite rock outcroppings were poking through.

Yesterday I glanced up, after a light rain, and saw lush clouds hugging the tops of the mountian. They looked like fluffy cotten strung out accross the peaks. The sky was a steel gray with even darker overtones, yet there seemed to be a lightness to the air like the dawning of a new day.

Hmm, smells

I love the smell of fall, musty, fresh, like a sigh of relief over the summer finally being over. The air has a crisp light feel to it. You can breathe deeper and more fully. You can appreciate ther contrast between the dark green grass and the reds and golds and still even greens of the leaves. The dark earth, loamy and fresh smelling is attractive to me. I took a walk down to the park and found a secluded spot were I put my feet up on the bench, an eagle project completed when I was about five, and I rested there. I was listening to the small stream that runs behind it and hoping that the dog who was running around in his lopping, happy manner would leave me to my solitude. I can still smell the fresh earth and grass beneath me, and the clean quality of the air.

Emotion - Surprise!!

I was peeking around in my garden, looking to see what had grown, when a sudden movement and the indication of brown fur made me jump back in surprise. Furitively I peeked back under the squash leaves and saw a little mole sniffing around and blinking, blind in the open air. So I ran and got a plastic jar that had contained bubble wands and was suitably sized for such a little guy and then I scooped him up in it and observed him. His little soft looking claws, his squat little body. His eyes were goopy, from disease, I know not. I showed him to all of the kids around, who cried out with delight over the little creature. However I didn't know what to do with him, so I had the kids set him somewhere until I could figure it out. Unhappily however he died an ignominous death and the kids gave him a suitable funeral in the back yard.

I will write some more word paintings later, right now I have to get going.

~Strawberry Girl