Articles by Colleen

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Nothing but Flowers. Do you know that song, by the Talking Heads? “This was a shopping mall, now it’s all covered with flowers.” It’s delightfully jangly, but when you listen to it, and kind of like Radiohead, who got their name from Talking Heads, there is a covert darkness in the lyrics. I don’t like it or them any less for it, however. Heck no.

I have been on a bit of a David Byrne bender, as of late. I subscribe to his Reasons to Be Cheerful newsletter, and then saw a 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper, which sent me off to the races. Greg and I watched Stop Making Sense in its entirety, after only seeing snippets but having owned the beyond stellar (interstellar?!) soundtrack since I was a whipper-snapping teen. That suit!

We also played our fave songs on a nice loop and watched True Stories, which is David Byrne at his sweetest oddball best. I could listen to him talk all day, peeps. Fact.

Fellow former Toyota Celica owners (or maybe you still have one, which would be massively wonderful), there is one, nearly identical to mine, in the parking lot of the mall. I did a couple happy rewinds, nostalgia in all its splendor. Hoot and holler!

As for the flowers, all of these are neighborhood grown, half in our own garden. It is looking beautiful in these parts, to be sure. Hoping the same for you, and prayers up for north-easterners suffering in the deluge and nearly the rest of us in the U.S. of A., boiling in the heat.

Bath

There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.

Sylvia Plath

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I have just said

Something

Ridiculous to you

And in response,

Your glorious laughter.

 

These are the days

The sun

Is swimming back

To the east

And the light on the water

Gleams

As never, it seems, before.

 

I can’t remember

Every spring,

I can’t remember

Everything-

 

So many years!

Are the morning kisses

The sweetest

Or the evenings

Or the inbetweens?

All I know

Is that “thank you” should appear

Somewhere.

 

So, just in case

I can’t find

The perfect place-

“Thank you, thank you.”

Mary Oliver

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Statement

Let me begin by telling you that I was in love. An ordinary statement, to be sure, but not an ordinary fact, for so few of us learn that love is tenderness, and tenderness is not, as a fair proportion suspect, pity; and still fewer know that happiness in love is not the absolute focusing of all emotion in another: one has always to love a good many things which the beloved must come only to symbolize.

Truman Capote

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Stella

Heaven greeted a sweet girl last Friday, my cousin Stella. She was everything a body could want in a human being: independent, funny, sweet, with just the right dash of mischief.

She had a rich interior life, nearly always joyously wiggling, flapping, laughing, and singing. The story, the thread, a near constant unknown, yet felt by all. Her joy, her curiosity, her wonder on full display, boisterously filling rooms.

I do not fully subscribe to the edict that everything happens for a reason, especially in regards to the death of a beloved child. I firmly believe, however, that Stella entered our lives for a reason. She arrived at just the right moment to show us how beautiful and vibrant a heart and spirit can be, regardless of ability. How we can simultaneously be in our own world while lifting others. How to seek delight in unexpected places and always manage to find it. How I loved her for it and will greatly miss her sharing it.

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