Timbler on vacay

Timbler the traveling man is on vacay. He has been with my friend for several weeks now.
 

 

I'm glad he gets a vacation! Don't we all need one sometimes?

 

 It is hard to believe it is June. June! June is half the year has already happened and I can't believe it. June is summer is here and I am still working hard, but praying for time to be still and also to play hard, too. I've had some of those moments already and they have been sweet. There's something beautiful about the beauty that happens in summer, even if I am in the dessert and the intense heat seems to fight against the season.  

 

You can't stop the change that happens when school lets out and it is just a little bit quieter. Things move a little bit slower. Maybe the dial goes down just a bit on the chaos in and around. Maybe we can once again learn and relearn rhythms and habits of peace even as everyday life still happens.

 

Timbler and his summer activities are a great reminder to have a little fun and go on some trips and adventures! Away from home and at home. Maybe even in the comfort of a friend's home, someone who will love on you for awhile!

 



On friendship and improv

"The show goes on not because it's ready but because it's 11:30."

Please don't ask me exactly where that quote came from. I have a terrible history with recording quotes without stating the author (this from a former journalist!). I think it was Emily Freeman. Probably. Or Shauna. It's usually one of the two.

I found it in an old journal and liked it.

Speaking of shows going on, I met a new improv friend yesterday. As with most of my new friends in this new place, how is it that I often find myself sitting down with someone I have no connection with for coffee? It usually comes from a totally cryptic email conversation (typically on my part first) which in this case I can sum up by this:

'I am interested in doing improv in Phoenix.' -me

'Great!' -improv teacher who answers random email

'I also want to work with kids and teach them improv!' -me

'You should probably learn more improv first.' -teacher

'Right. Can I meet the kids instructor and take it from there?' -me

Fast forward to a few days later when I get to sit down with the total stranger who emails me that she has curly hair so I know who she is amidst all the dozens of people at the crowded coffee shop. It is such a fun time and I am reminded how much I get along with other people who like to make fools of themselves voluntarily. I invite myself to one of her classes that may not even exist yet. She invites me to help her with a possible support group/improv group that doesn't exist yet. Apparently, improvisers share the dreamers disease.

I met one of my closest friends in the beginners improv class I took in North Carolina. She's definitely another coffee. I am fortunate enough to get to have Skype coffee meetings with her often while she is living far away doing mission work. When I moved to Arizona, one of the reasons I knew it was going to be okay when it felt strange being in a new place was because this friend had gone before me, and she was real and true and had seen me when I made a fool of myself, on and off the stage. And there's something beautiful about that. That understanding that foolishness is a necessary ingredient in improv... and friendship.

I told my new friend yesterday that improv can still be scary to me because there are no scripts and it feels like a blank stage.

Then I told her how I moved here without too much pulling on my agenda -- you know how we people like to fill up our agendas with all sorts of things like meetings and clubs and jobs.

She laughed and said that if I could handle life in all its open ended blank state, I could handle a blank stage. Or something to the effect of, HOW IRONIC are you. You can do it.

Sometimes life empowers improv and improv empowers life and we muck through the fears and come out with lots of cool things, including friendship.

Yellow Light

"And what does it feel like?" we asked.
"Well," she said, leaning over to us like a secret, "it feels like a gust of wind blowing inside your heart. It feels like bright yellow paint." - The Persistence of Yellow

 

~~~

 

I do have a book that is called The Persistence of Yellow and the entire cover is yellow (obviously). It's a collection of recipes and poems about life (don't you want a recipe about life dedicated to the color yellow? Of course. Don't worry that most of them are fairly odd. Yellow has always been doing its own thing.

I went over to sit with my friend yesterday while she painted her new house. I am a good sitter. My friends like to have me come by while they do things like clean or paint, I've noticed.

I offered her to help but she said just pull up a chair. She wanted to paint, she wanted me for the talking.

The room we were in would have been her little girl's big girl room. Yellow was her favorite color. It's mine, too.

Yellow rooms just make things better. Painting over white walls, adding color, there's beauty in that.

As I typed the word paint, just now it came out pain..

Pain is everywhere, that's fitting. There are weighty situations at work. There's often pain in my body. It's inside my heart as I think of my friend's loss.
 
But through the visit, I push against what seems dark because the room is filled with light.

I try to find the paint in my heart.

It's there in our conversation, even if spotty at times. It starts to feel natural again to laugh at stories told while the white walls get covered up.

I leave from my friend and I have to get ready for a baby shower and a four year old birthday party.
 
Death and life are so mixed together and right now I hate it. The life part of this equation creates a sadness in me, thinking of my friends enduring now this side of heaven.
 
We are here not to live isolated but to live life together. 


That's the point of recording these visits, these coffees, I remind myself. To remember that it's true.

But what of the light here, in the mourning?

The light is usually easy to find in my coffee encounters.

I love adventure, and if I was seeking one out, I'd prefer lighthearted please, with all kinds of interesting strangers and characters to bring added humor to the mix and can we save the heartbreaking stories for another day?

But if I'm writing (let's hope!) a book that's supposed to be true to life and people, that's not the whole picture.

The good news is even the hardest stories to tell, thankfully, include some yellow paint..

*one from the archives