Category Archives: Writing

For the time doing

06 Tuesday Apr 2010

Posted by in In the Garden, Life at Home, Mesta Park, Soul Care, Writing

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Some questions come up every Spring.

They grow out of  desire for renewal, from seeds planted deep within my soul.   However, the changes I wish to cultivate are not usually ones to myself.  These are too difficult.  These require too much energy.  These would require me to really know myself.

I stumble for answers when I come up against questions of identity.  At best, I’ve learned that I can only get at knowing myself — that through spiritual direction and contemplation and even writing and other acts of doing, I  am able to uncover layers of my buried identity.  But in the end, I know that I can never fully know myself.  I am mystery.  I am mystery to myself and I am mystery to others.

It’s the same for all of us.  We are all mystery.  We are mystery to ourselves and a mystery to others.  No matter how much time we devote toward self-knowledge, for now, we must be content to scratch the surface, to know only bits and pieces of our personal truth, as “we see through a glass, darkly.”

So outside of Lent, I let go of those harder questions of “who” and unite with Spring by concentrating on my doings.  I involve myself in some new creative undertaking, like my sister’s home remodel.  Or I attempt to develop some new skill or improve old ones, as with my online writing class at Shewrites.com.

But the desire for change responds not only to the questions of ‘who I am” or “what I’m doing.”  Always, always the desire infects the question of  “where I am.”  Each Spring the question arises, with respect to whatever place I currently call ‘home,’ — Do I stay or do I go?

I love living in this old house in Mesta Park.  I really do.  But in the restless Springtime, I began thinking about new old houses to live in, I begin looking at home ads, the local MLS and even that wonderful website called Zillow.com.

I don’t know whether the desire to pull up roots and transplant myself is just a natural outgrowth of the renewal that comes with Spring — a sort of keeping up with the Jones’ — the Jones’ being the Daffodils and Creeping Phlox that decorate my Springtime garden like painted Easter eggs.  Or whether my desire for a new dwelling springs from my deeper most being — to turn a sow’s ear of a house in desperate need of tending, into the proverbial silk purse —  that somehow, has always been part of who I am.

But wherever the desire springs from, I know that it will lead my husband and I to drive around other historic neighborhoods in search of a better fit — as it leads me, for the same reason, to look more closely at other houses in our own neighborhood while on our evening walks.  And it will lead us to attend ‘open houses’.  And it will lead us to closely regard the homes featured on various historic home tours.

Of late, of Lent, I’m wondering whether the focus on “the wheres” and “the whats” of life are mere subterfuges for the deeper questions of identity, a sort of fleeing from the harder work of uncovering true self.  Or whether the desire for change is, underneath, a longing for a home that is not here but out there in the great unknown that waits beyond death.  These two questions are too difficult to answer.  Who but God can say?

What I can say is that I’ve never found a home I’ve liked better, in the last four Springs of looking.  And what I know is that this place I call home soothes my spirit the minute I walk in the backdoor, after being gone all day, as I was this past Saturday, when I went to work on my sister’s remodel.

And this too,  I can tell:  On Easter  morning, with coffee cup in hand, I looked out my kitchen window onto my lovely Springtime garden.  And I turned to my husband and said, “How could I ever think of leaving my garden?  How could I ever think of leaving a place so perfect for our needs?

So in two easy questions, it looks like I’m home.  For the time doing.

Blog Interrupted

26 Friday Mar 2010

Posted by in Life at Home, Mesta Park, Writing

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It’s good when friends catch up with one another after a move.

Already, I’ve had friends drop by my new web home.  And I must say… it really made me feel good.

After all, think about it.  How many times have  we let friends slip between our fingers because life has taken us in different directions?  How many high school classmates do we keep up with on a regular basis?  College buddies?  Bridesmaids?   Former co-workers? And the list goes on…

So to have friends think I’m worth the effort of tracking down really tickled me.  Of course, I had every intention of forwarding my new address.  And looking back on it, I probably should have waited to make the URL switch until later — but like a kid at Christmas, I couldn’t wait.

My new web address is AnEverydayLife.com — short for “Stories from AN EVERYDAY LIFE” — which was my original subtitle, when I began my blog, almost sixteen months ago now.

So you might wonder what instigated the move?  There’s more than one reason.

First, I’m not the best of Mesta — and to imply otherwise, with a name like bestamesta as my chosen website, was becoming a tad uncomfortable.

Second, I don’t plan to live in Mesta Park — or at least, in this particular lovely old house — for the rest of my life.  I want to live in a historic one-story, if my husband I can find one to fit our needs.  Because already my knees are a little arthritic — and my bones are growing thin.  Not a morning goes by that I don’t think of falling down the stairs, as I carry my Scottie princess down in my arms to begin a new day.

Third, when I began my blog, I imagined I would write more about life in Mesta Park than everyday life in general.  But it hasn’t worked out the way I thought it would.  Keeping a blog is truly an evolving process — even the name I began writing under, has changed with the times.

Some may recall that I wrote my first posts under my middle and maiden names — remember “Ann Pappas?” — because I thought it might grant me greater freedom to express what I wanted to say, perhaps even open the creativity coffers that I once enjoyed as a child.   But within  a few months, it didn’t feel right to write under anything but my real name.   So quietly, without fanfare, I made the change.

In the end, the best of Mesta Park is, and always will be, the old homes that fill the historic district that I currently and proudly call home.   It could never be my website.  So when my bestamesta.com URL subscription came up for renewal a few months ago, I began quietly pondering a new name.  And after two months of reflection, I opted to return to my original subtitle, albeit with a shortcut version.

The old URL subscription will quietly expire on April 5th.  And between now and then, if you drop in at good old bestamesta.com, you will automatically be forwarded here, to my new web address.  After that, I don’t know where bestamesta.com will send you… but I hope you’ll eventually find your way here.

May my new URL address stay the same —  even as I (and the place I call home) continue to evolve.

Life of Pi

21 Sunday Mar 2010

Posted by in Good Reads, Life at Home, Prayer, Soul Care, Writing

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My friend Connie couldn’t stop talking about this book.

That was seven years ago.  Yet, even now, I remember how Connie’s eyes shined and how my normally articulate book-loving friend stumbled for words when attempting to describe how this story made her feel.  Maybe it was this unfamiliar stumbling that caused Connie to pick up the book a second time.

But it was Connie’s third reading that finally garnered my attention.  Connie’s action, rather than her words, became  an enthusiastic endorsement that led me to plunk down fourteen dollars to possess my own personal copy of Yann Martel’s prize-winning novel, Life of Pi.

Like most of my book purchases, I promptly gave it a home on my bookshelves, to age and gather dust like fine wine.  The intent was to read it someday —  once I had aged and the words had aged, and once I came into an age of more time and less busyness.   My hope was that when someday arrived, once this book and I came to know one another, that my eyes too would shine and my tongue would stumble for lack of words.

Of course, my someday shriveled up and died.   There are always other words to read and enough tasks to fill any day.  Had it not been for the words of another “Connie,” my someday ship would still be off at sea.  It was three weeks ago that, words written by the author of Ripple Effects, stirred me to action:  I left my writing desk, walked down the stairs, across my living room to enter my book cellar of a library.  I scanned, I found, I pulled, I dusted and carried the book upstairs to place on my nightstand, to live beside other books of more serious intentions.

I had several books in front of it — I was finishing up one novel and had required reading for my Monday night class.  So I didn’t begin the story of Pi until a week ago.  Until yesterday, I read at the slow rate of a few pages a night.  But yesterday’s surprise snowfall offered me the perfect someday to finish the story, which I did in the company of three dogs, a soft reading lamp and a few hours of the clock.

“I have a story that will make you believe in God.” So Martel begins his story — or should I say stories — because two stories grow out of book — and we the readers, get to pick which version we wish to carry with us.  Is this a story about God and a young boy, a story about impossible miracles and providence?  Or is the story a simple human tragedy with a good ending?

My husband had to come up the stairs to remind me when it was time for us to eat.  The dogs had to remind me when it was time for them to eat.  I read right through the dog’s dinner bell, which thankfully, my husband answered.  And when I finished this story, I didn’t even bother to describe its impact on me.

Like all good stories, I don’t think we really know what seeds are sown from words freshly read.  It’s only with time and reflection and space and more time that thoughts of the reader and the writer integrate — likes seeds in soil — and either something grows from the planting or it doesn’t.  Perhaps like live seed, it depends upon how much nurture the seeds receive.

Yet there are twinges of thoughts that come as one takes in the words of a great story.  Mine was that the Life of Pi could be shorthand for a life of piety, for surely, the young boy Pi is pious in the best sense of the word — as one who has a heart devoted singularly to God, as one who punctuates his daily life with prayer, who has a heart for God that even allows him to love that murderer Richard Parker.  And is it not appropriate, that Pi’s nickname represents an infinite number, since piety and matters of the heart should be a never-ending story?

I can’t say whether this is a story that will make one believe in God.  But I know it’s a great story, and that it reminds me of other great stories in another great book — stories like the one about Adam, the first zookeeper, and Noah, another zookeeper and his Ark full of animals and Job, who was not a zookeeper, but suffered enough tragedy that led him to question the reasons for life and his feelings about God.

My friend Connie was right seven years ago.  The book begs a second reading.  Someday.