Hummingbird Heart

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for hummingbirds, the little jewels of the bird world. There's something fragile about them that I understand in an intangible way.

Every year, I grow pineapple sage and lobelia in hopes of attracting hummingbirds to my back yard. Whenever I see one, I run to get my camera and attempt to take a picture. It shouldn’t surprise you that I’ve never succeeded.

A hummingbird is about the size of a cork from a wine bottle, and its heart the size of a baby's fingernail. Comparing the bird’s weight vs. heart size ratio, they have the largest hearts in the world. When you consider that a hummingbird's heart whirs at 500 beats a minute at rest, and up to 1,200 beats a minute in flight, you wonder if they experience time differently than humans. With exquisite eyesight that gives them an ability to catch tiny insects mid-flight, their experience of a second must be more like a minute to us.

All living creatures have approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime. Tortoises spend them very slowly, allowing them to live twice and thrice the years of humans. But hummingbirds spend them faster than any other creature, so they live only two to eight years.

Hummingbirds have metabolisms that I can only compare to the speed of light. Their little bodies, completely lacking fat cells, devour oxygen and calories faster than a jet engine. Ambitious in spite of their size, they live closer to death on a daily basis. They frequently die of heart attack. But when hummingbirds sleep, their heart rate slows to about 36 beats per minute, exhausted by the daily marathon.

So, the next time you fall, exhausted, into bed after a stressful and busy day, think of the frantic life of a hummingbird.

Little Birds

My apologies if I sound like a tacky chain email, but upon turning 40, I’ve realized a few things that have helped me over the years and I thought I’d share. My unsolicited advice on getting on in life:

1. Find something you are passionate about and master it.
2. Learn how to mamba. Or bake bread. Or fly a plane. Or play chess, or play the saxophone, or knit, or paint, or write, or speak French. Keep learning things, and whether you make a living from these things or not, they will be your dear friends throughout life.
3. Do something a little scary every day. Step out of your comfort zone. Paint a room magenta. Introduce yourself to someone you admire. Sing in your car. Apply for a job that’s a little out of your league. Write a screenplay.
4. Keep a few friends who are your friends because they like you, not because they want something from you.
5. Buy a garment you can’t really afford and wear it when you need a little boost. Whether it’s a leather jacket, a killer pair of boots, or a fancy hat – putting it on will change your perspective.
6. Be generous and honest with compliments.
7. Think with your head and feel with your heart, and make decisions accordingly. Had I learned this ten years earlier than I did, I could have saved myself an endless amount of pain.
8. Make friends with people who are better than you are at something or other and learn from them.
9. Look people in the eye when you talk with them.
10. Laugh out loud at least once every day.
    
    And keep these few lines I’ve borrowed from ee cummings in your mind:
    
    may my heart always be open to little
    birds who are the secrets of living
    whatever they sing is better than to know
    and if men should not hear them men are old
    
    may my mind stroll about hungry
    and fearless and thirsty and supple
    and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
    for whenever men are right they are not young

How We Met

You know when you hear stories about people who’ve had their palms read or do some past-life regression, they are told they were the Queen of Bohemia or a witch who was burned at the stake in Salem? Not me. I was a milk maid. A happy milk maid, but a milk maid nonetheless.
Concurrently, if my husband and I met in a past life, it wasn’t in Ancient Rome, or 17th Century Paris, or even 1920’s Paris, much to our mutual dismay. We met at the Buena Vista Social Club in 1950’s Cuba. Our eyes must have met in the smoky dinner club, and surely we danced together while Ibrahim Ferrar and Rubén Gonzàlez played Chan Chan for us. Once in a while, in our present life, we turn the lights out and dance in our living room, pretending we’re back at the Buena Vista Social Club.
If you don’t have any of their CD’s or the documentary made by Wim Wenders about them, run out and get one now. Add a little romance to your life.

Has it really been a year?

One year ago, my husband and I were in the midst of a home renovation nightmare that you would not have believed if you were sitting in a movie theater seeing a production by Paramount Pictures. We wanted to have a new roof and have all the aluminum siding removed to reveal the beautiful original wood siding, which we would then paint. Just a simple couple with a little dream.

We secured a roofing contractor who hooked us up with a subcontractor to do the rest for what seemed a reasonable price. The work began on a fine June morning. Upon waking, the outside of our house was swarmed with illegal Mexican laborers. Neither my husband nor myself speak Spanish, but we appreciated the gruelling labor these men performed on a daily basis in blistering heat, so we supplied them with burritos and pizza. The music they listened to while working was a little grating, but it kept them happy.

As the original siding was slowly revealed, we found that most of it was in fairly good shape, but much of it needed replacing. Our home, the work site, was visited by what we assume was the Coyote, a vile creature with gold chains, bad teeth and an ugly way of speaking about the opposite sex. The general contractor, who was on a perpetual verge of a complete nervous breakdown, was rarely present, so my husband acted as the GC - in addition to his full-time job. I put on my jeans and grabbed a paintbrush every evening in hopes of hurrying the work along myself. Then there was the small fire on our front porch. And the watered-down paint (at $50/gallon) to make the work go faster. The icing on the cake was the clash that ensued between the laborers when it was discovered that the lead painter was hording the cash draws instead of paying his team. When the police came to shut down what was about to turn into a violent scene, they were met by what appeared to be a street gang. They had to close off our street from traffic.

What was to be a two-week project stretched into July, when we expected a week-long visit from my sister and brother-in-law. I had failed to alert them about the war-zone that had once been our home because I had hoped to surprise them and assumed the work would be done. To this day, I shake my head in disgrace every time I think of that of that one omission and the less-than-stellar visit they had.

A few weekends ago, as an almost therapeutic gesture of closure, my husband and I repaired the paint that had failed.

I sometimes dream of updating the kitchen. Then I hear echoes of Party Like a Rock Star and shudder.

Put Your Records On

You heard Corrine. Go ahead and let your hair down.

The Muse

So, I've been haunted for years by this need to form concrete ideas about the nature of creativity. I've put far too much thought into pinning down the one discipline and style that calls the loudest or, at least, that I can follow the longest. An email from my old neighbor and good friend Ted brought this question to light once again.
First let me tell you a bit about Ted. We lived next door to each other for more than ten years. (And between the two of us, we should have the lion’s share of stock in that Chinese restaurant a stone’s throw away from our old apartment building because we lived on Phad Thai for at least a year. I digress.) He’s a delightful, intelligent and talented man who gave up writing for chess. He’s a great chess player and has taught me a few moves, though I can’t say I’ve ever beat him. He’s also taught me much about art, music and beauty. If you have people in your life who have done that for you, count yourself blessed.

So, Ted has all these creative juices that have been building up inside him and perhaps creating dangerous levels of serotonin in his brain. Mind you, chess is a very creative pastime, and I can understand where one gets to in life that he turns his back on the Muse. But the Muse isn’t going away.
For me, it is perhaps a stunt in my developmental growth that keeps me creating; the need to work on something and in the end, look at it and say, “I made this.” We humans have been doing this for thousands of years and I don’t see an end in sight.
If you look up the Cave of Hands in Venezuela, over 7,000 years ago the tribesmen painted silhouettes of their hands onto the cave walls. There are other scenes of hunting and of women making a refreshing raspberry sorbet, but for the most part the imagery says, “I was here.” The images may also have some ritual use, and isn’t that what artists today are participating in every time they begin?
My own muse has the same navigational troubles that I have and can’t make up her mind about which direction to lead me in, and the message is perhaps more intricate than I’ve made it out. Not only do I want to say, “I was here,” but that I’m here for such a short time and during my visit I've seen magical things that brought tears to my eyes and I want to use my clumsy tools and share these things with others, and hear them say, ‘Yes, yes I see it too.”
So Ted, your muse is still waiting. And I too will get back to the canvas as soon as I get this 6 pound purring beast off my lap.

When Life Hands You Lemons

I intend to get back into the studio soon, but this little lemon painting will have to do for now.

Confession

I’m a girly-girl. Okay, a reluctant girly-girl. Actually, there are probably ten or twenty other labels that I would prefer before that even. I even find the term 'girly-girl' somewhat vexing, as if I'm a child wearing ruffles and bows, which I am not. I would rather spend an hour at Lowe’s than the mall, yet I’ve been known to get up at 3am because there’s a sale on Vera Wang shoes. I say I’m a reluctant girly-girl because the concept is so loaded with preconceptions. Think of Paris Hilton; all glamour, no brains. Fashion is the considered the intellectual equivalent of donuts; delicious but completely lacking in nutritious value. If you care about fashion, then you must be an airhead, right? And it’s certainly not the realm of Feminists. Or is it? Is dressing like a man really a feminist gesture?

For years I battled this lust, exclusively preferring intellectual pursuits until I decided to come out of the closet, so to speak.

Months ago, I saw a PBS special called The Secret World of Haute Couture. It changed my life. Not because I was impressed by the unimaginable wealth of women who sit in the front row at fashion shows in Paris and habitually buy haute couture, but I was impressed by the reverence these women had for designers like Karl Lagerfeld for his genius and artistry. Isn’t this the same reverence late Victorians had for Monet? And if you care about esthetics, then inevitably you have to turn an eye to the art you wear on a daily basis. The shapes, colors and textures begin to tell a story about who you are. Not only are we following the basic rules of decency in covering ourselves, as well as protecting the skin from the harmful effects of UV rays, our clothes are a form of self-expression. The clothes you wear, sometimes in spite of yourself, send a message to the world. If you choose a pair of pink sweat pants with the word “Juicy” on your butt to go to the store, your message is one of woeful ignorance. But far more important than the impression you make on others is the impression you make on yourself. There is a kind of art and ritual involved in putting on fancy shoes and a spritz of fine perfume; and if you don’t believe me, ask a little girl playing dress-up.

If you think, as I once did, that you can somehow remain outside of the fashion conversation, I have to disagree. Clothing is a socioeconomic and heavily politicized industry. Universities have devoted entire quarters to this topic. If you live in the Western World and wear clothes, then you are a part of the conversation. Since you are, why not be deliberate about what you say in this conversation?

My childhood aside when my mother made clothes for us, I have had one garment made expressly for me and that was my wedding dress. Based on a design by Reva Mivasagar called ‘Belle Epoque,’ the dress perfectly epitomized the Edwardian era. Finished with a cloche hat covered in silk tulle and embroidered, satin Mary Janes with kitten heels, I felt like a princess for one day. A remarkable garment indeed, as Colonel Peacock on Are You Being Served? once ironically observed.

But I work for a living and every day can’t be your wedding day. I’ve discovered that in corporate America, I need people to take me seriously and believe me capable. Cargo pants or the latest frock from Forever 21 cannot communicate that point. As a creative member of the team, my range is broader than in, say, Accounting, but the lines become blurred when you consider the fading of Casual Friday and this new trend towards more formal business attire in response to the downturn in the economy. (It’s often been said that the length of skirts on the runway are a good gauge of the economy.)

I say all this with a big BUT, and this is about scale. I’m a reluctant girly-girl, but I’m so much more. But: substance matters. But: how well you do your job matters. But: how kind you are to strangers and whether you recycle matters. But: how patient and nurturing you are towards your children matters. But: how meaningful your life is with a loving spouse, an aging cat and young plants matters because at the end of your life, they’re not going to talk about how great you looked in that Armani suit or who gets those Vera Wang shoes.

But who wants to live every day as if tomorrow is their funeral?

Reward

I wish your monitor was scratch-n-sniff.