Meri's Musings

Even with a house full of guests this weekend, I found a pocket of quiet time just for me. Blessed stillness while everyone else slept late. Just me, up early. Sunday morning, when I was putting off packing for the girlfriends trip to Mexico, I just had to play with images because I knew I'd get twitchy if I went too long without that kind of play. So here's the result. A new variation of the iconic fractal design I love, a warm and watery dreamscape. Enjoy. "Circling Time" copyright 2009 Meri Arnett-Kremian. All rights reserved.

With Brendan and Katie and Logan snoozing away early this morning, I was out of the house to find savory eats. Made it to the Proctor District's street market just as it was opening. What's your pleasure? Perhaps some beets or cucumbers or maybe some chard. Fish perhaps. Maybe you prefer baguettes with crackly crust and a soft inside, or ciabattas for sandwiches. I didn't photograph the crepe stand. I was afraid of lingering too long and standing too close, especially with a rumbling stomach. And the sweet cinnamon breads. . . well I bypassed those too until I went into the grocery market and they were handing out samples. Maybe you're choosing heirloom tomatoes with interesting shapes, flavors and textures, shown here mixed in with the more common kind. And don't forget peppers. Can you imagine the twisted tongue if the Peter Piper who picked a peck of pickled peppers was wicked enough to pick a peck of pickled purple peppers? Maybe you just can't resist these...

Here are some things I know for sure. Roses aren't worth growing unless they smell like roses. A cup of chai or caffe latté, no matter how pretty, will always taste better if a friend's feet are under the table. By the time you pick up your camera, turn it on and focus, the hummingbird is long gone from the vine maple outside your computer room window. Cats have an amazing capacity to make themselves comfortable, a skill we should all emulate. A full moon on a clear night will always be the best show in town. Eagles tend to hold still a little longer than hummingbirds, particularly if you're across the pond and they don't know you've got a camera in your hands. Even if you're past your prime you can still be gorgeous. What do you know for sure today?

Sometimes we need to stop and really focus in on what's important to us. Focus up close and down deep. In the place where your soul is in charge. The place where your longings to love and be loved, to create a secure and nourishing life for those you love, to heal the wounds of the Earth, to make sure the least of us isn't left behind, to use your life to make the world a place where lives are interwoven and peace is possible, reside. When you have brought your attention to that place, ask yourself, "Am I living my life in alignment with my intention to make my life count?" How am I using my time? And equally as important, how am I acquiring and using my money? What assumptions about abundance and sufficiency drive my decisions, and thus my life? Is there a gap between my soulful life and my interaction with money? Every single day of your life, you make an impact with your choices about how you live and how you allocate your resources: your time your talents your fo...

Even the most unartistic among us are makers of masks. "Carnivale" copyright 2005 Meri Arnett-Kremian. Because we want to hide ourselves from others or because we don't recognize our own truth, we create the impression that we are stronger or weaker than we truly are. We lead people to believe we are brave when we are quaking in our boots. We imply that we are helpless despite our actual competence, often to make others feel stronger and more capable. We disguise our acute intelligence with shallow thinking, with reckless behaviors that belie our thoughtfulness. We create masks with layers of misleading words, inauthentic gestures, veneers of half-truths overlaying our real selves, worrying that we're not good enough as we are. While these masks may be colorful, they hide our light from the rest of the world, keep all but those closest to us (and sometimes even our intimates) from encountering the gift of our deepest selves. What would happen if you faced the world w...

Steven of The Golden Fish recently talked about a meme in which he decided to participate, one in which the assignment was to choose a book, turn to page 161, find the fifth complete sentence and cite it on your blog. He'd been tagged by The Road Less Traveled who referred back to someone named Susan at Stony River Farm , who had tagged her, and well you can see it can get complicated in this blog world trying to figure out where a good idea originated. (But it's fun to follow the trail, visiting places you've never gone.) Deciding to play along, though I hadn't been tagged, I chose a book of blessings by the late John O'Donohue called To Bless the Space Between Us . Here's what I found. So at the end of this day, we give thanks For being betrothed to the unknown And for the secret work Through which the mind of the day And wisdom of the soul become one. "At the End of the Day" copyright 2009 Meri Arnett-Kremian How many of us fight the uncertain...

Don't you wonder sometimes about those people up your family tree? This young woman, Wilhelmina Blomgren, was my great-grandmother. She was almost 81 when I was born and died in her 90s when I was a teen. She lived in the town where my mother grew up. a place where we visited a few times a year. But as for my great-grandmother, I really have few memories of her. Except that her hair was white and thin, she wore old lady shoes, she wrote phonetically spelled letters to my mother, giving away the fact that she'd come to the U.S. as a young woman and gave up speaking her native tongue to become an American. Oh -- and the place that she lived always smelled like coffee. We went to her funeral. I don't remember the funeral particularly but I remember the wake that followed, primarily because my grandmother's elbow got bumped when she was carrying a lemon merengue pie. I happened to be next to her and wore the pie on my head. I was the only person who didn't think it was ...