It's Ok



Yesterday I was having “one of those moments” that come frequently when you are having “one of those days.” Someone said something to me in such a way that it made me feel approximately this big. Except. They didn’t make me feel anything. I did. And after feeling sorry for myself for about 10 minutes (and texting a friend and calling my mom) I decided I would go outside for a breath of fresh air. I walked to and around the park. I smushed my face into a bouquet of baby-soft blue hydrangeas and inhaled deeply.  I sat in the moist, warm grass in a spot of sunshine. I watched as a little toddler-aged girl ran back and forth and back and forth through the grass, from the bench where her Nana sat watching her, all the way up to the hedges that rim the park from the sidewalk. I watched her trip and fall onto her hands and knees. I watched her rise shakily, her voice breaking at first until she realized that Nana had not seen her fall (or atleast was not reacting to her fall.)

“I’m OK, Nana!” she said waving both hands in Nana’s direction, “I’m ok!”

And WHAM! It hit me. Chills, starting at my temples, around to the back of my skull, down my jaw, to the back of my neck and shoulders, to the outsides of my arms, to the outer edges of my legs. Tingling in my toes.The threat of tears prickling and stinging behind my eyes. A whoosh of warmth bursting in my chest. A smile tickling its way onto my lips. “Nana,” I smiled. A teeny sparrow as big as my palm flew from behind me and landed right in front of me – inches from my folded legs. I could have touched it. I saw every fleck of brown in its feathers . It looked directly into my eyes and hopped even closer jerkily twitching its head side-to-side as if to ask, “Ok?”

“Yes, Nana. I’m ok,” I smiled.

A year before she passed, my Nana suffered a severe stroke that left her almost entirely paralyzed and unable to speak. She used her eyes to convey emotion, used her good hand to squeeze yours reassuringly, she nodded and sighed, and repeatedly sang this three syllable song to us daily:

It-OH-KAY.

"It’s Ok," she would say, tilting her head down and up in one strong and swift motion, in what I imagine was her way of saying, "end of story."

Life Lately

Me & Stephina

Not-So-Mellow-Yellow

An apt and timley message from the steps of the Art Museum

Mom & I at the new Barnes Foundation location!

Peace bracelet from lou lou Boutique in Washington, D.C. from Taylor

Also this weekend? This. This happened.

An improtu photo shoot at another one of my favorite boutiques, Gingy's,

that just opened their second location in Stone Harbor, NJ!

(don't you love the Missoni-style bandage skirt and the breezy, grey silk shorts??)

 They sure know how to make you feel special over there! Thanks again, guys!

Shiny on the Inside

;)

"The world is made up not of atoms, but of stories" - Muriel Rukeyser

There are so many stories I want to tell you.
stories I made up,
stories that happened to me,
stories about the other side of the train tracks, 
stories I am afraid to tell,
stories that made me slip and fall,
stories that make my mouth water,
stories that freeze my insides,
stories that tell me I am no good,
stories that tell me I am awesome (*side note: I am neither. And I am both.)
stories that momentarily remove my face from my head and my head from my body,
stories that remind me I have blood and a pulse,
stories about the man I saw fishing for stars in the Schuylkill,
about the dragonfly - as big as a hand! - that we found stuck in the doorway,
the little girl who found her hips and her self at the Italian Market,
a man carving glass circles for a wood circle in the grass,
about the ball game and the Win and the brandest-newest pride I felt sputtering in my chest like a rusty old boat motor brought back to life,
the flowers - oh the flowers! - stuck deep in the soil, spilling onto the streets, climbing up walls, wedged in cement,
about the double Bowl of Beauty peonies who burst into life the same year their owner was diagnosed with cancer,
about the ashes of a leaf that were caught, suspended and held in a spider web,
that quiet grey morning on the train on the way into work,

about the peace, and the softness from a nothing-is-right-but-nothing-is-wrong-either-and-that-is-ok kind of moment

the view from the steps of the Art Museum and how it always makes me feel like I can fly,
about the naked stone woman who hugged herself and loved her thighs in front of every one,
about the masterpiece painting waiting to be painted but the painter is too afraid to try,
the butterfly who let me take her picture (she loved my brightness and jumped at my shadow,)
about the drive-by shooting,
the biker who I saw fall on his chest in the middle of a busy, city street -
(and how I dropped everything I was carrying to clutch my own chest,)
the two hours of Latin dancing on oily and slippery and sweat-laden floors,
the "right" words,
the "wrong" moment,
the kiss at the stop sign

“I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and your laughter until they bloom, until you yourself burst into bloom.”

― Clarissa Pinkola Estés

A Little Alliteration

Mirrors . Mare . Mallows . Molten . Melting .

How's that for some alliteration, eh? My 8th grade Language Arts teacher would be so darn proud. Ya know who would also be so proud? Harry Houdini (or Criss Angel or whatever) - by my remarkable ability to make it seem like I sliced my body clear in half in that first photo with the two mirrors. True story: I had a magic kit as a kid. Oh, and a doctor/dentist kit. There was a brief period of time where I actually ran around wearing a white lab coat, pulling out my own "half-loose" teeth before they were actually loose... (I figured that if they were going to come out anyway, I might as well get the pain over and done with on my own time thankyouverymuch.)

Unrelatedly, here are some things I got into this past weekend:

- saw The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - magnificent!

- went to FARMiCiA (and ate pretty much everything on the menu because it was all tremendously tasty)

- went to Frankford Hall where Mariana and I roasted marshmallows with giant steel skewers over a fire pit cauldron (Mariana wisely noted, "I can't believe they have these here with drunk people." She was referring to the skewers, not the fire pits - although I think the same could be said for those too...)

- visited a cool art shop in Northern Liberties that had framed songbooks from the turn-of-the-century that I am still dreaming about...

Well, that's all folks!

One Memorable Day

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

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