Salt.

It has a way of indulging us in the simple things. Things that punch through our monotony. Things that make our senses real and alive.

Things like watermelon, a bath tub, a steak and an ocean soak are best with a tiny grain having much meaning: salt. It's as ordinary as the girl holding the umbrella and it always pours too fast from the spout. The irony of flavorless salt the Word makes perfectly clear: it is good for nothing because its meant for everything.

From Matthew 5...

"You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men."

Ordinary means in every way, important, in terms of objects and individuals. Water is ordinary and water is life. People are commonplace while they are also eternal. This makes for a miracle in even the easiest people to ignore. C.S. Lewis put it this way:

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit— immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

Perpective is necessary when being the salt of the earth starts to get boring, or when we marinate too much our own ideas and opinions and the rest of the world starts looking bland. Then we've lost flavor. Then the banality of selfishness and the ugliness of narcissism appear. If ordinary is good enough for God to use, then we all have plenty to bring to the table. 

Productive suggestions for the wildly disruptive coffee shop "talker"

• Look up the word logorrhoea
• Learn sign language
• Breathe
• Eat a banana
• Consider the benefits of a tonsillectomy
• Consider a career in telemarketing
• Take a vow of silence
• Host a community forum where others come willingly to hear "your life story"
• Avoid microphones
• Make a grocery list
• Do a crossword puzzle
• Check your blood pressure
• Check the weather
• Count coffee beans
• Tip the barista
• Read that book in front of you

Summer bounty

.........


The rows were worn by footsteps. I batted my bowl next to my side, hunting and tasting. Strawberry Swing soundtracked my thoughts as I glared into the sunlight: "Which spot is best?"
My arm itched and I wasn't planning to get my knees involved. A lazy balance suspended over the green sprawl was the aerial method used to pick from the lot. I shouldn't have been that careless: the strawberries were free after all.

Much of the little I know about farming is consistent with life--its droughts, bounty, loss and life. Maybe that's why Jesus wrapped his parables in the rich, solid language of earth and its seasons. 

Zora Neale Hurston once said, "There are years that ask questions and years that answer." 

I love the idea and yet I cannot figure which is more thrilling, knowing that a question has been answered or that the answer, though hidden for a time, exists. This is the glorious chase of wisdom. The marvel that fills my head as I read passages from Proverbs 8 is born of words like these:

"While as yet He had not made the earth or the fields,
      Or the primal dust of the world.
        When He prepared the heavens, I was there.."

I, wisdom? Personified wisdom.

"When He marked out the foundations of the earth, 

      Then I was beside Him as a master craftsman;^[b]
      And I was daily His delight, 
      Rejoicing always before Him, 
      Rejoicing in His inhabited world, 
      And my delight was with the sons of men."

Wisdom dancing, clapping, sounding off joy? What an event for my eyes to attend to. I wish to understand what it means. I wish to have a little for myself too.


I looked at the strawberry lot and smiled with a bowl half full and a stomach at ease. This was a good yield for a cold summer. Though not all the berries were sweet, delight was in the hunt.

Not all things lovely are always in plain sight. They must be sought, dusted off and treasured. My bowl bounced at my feet as our car turned off the rutted path and onto highway. They probably wouldn't make it into jam and I was glad not to preserve them. The full glory of their moment had come. I was just there to appreciate.

........

Vitamins and lipstick

Nordstrom.com

God is in the details.--Mies Van der Rohe

For  inspiration, sometimes a woman is in need of lipstick. Read this: Beauty and the Brain and get yourself a shade darker than pink, preferably something fiery or if you're into summer trends: coral. In the spirit of the election season ramp-up, look for Sarah Palin "red." Never mind.

"Nectarine" by Estee Lauder is also lovely if Sarah Palin "red" doesn't quite suit you. Go ahead now. And if by wondrous default your lips solicit you male attention: your welcome. Please send me a tip on what to do with it.  

 I need a situation to wear my new pair of Jeffery Campbell pumps or they may very well create a situation of their own. But if I can't find one, I'll make one. It's pretty simple: I like them and they like me. 

We may have wandered far from the essentials but what makes for elegance is often that one item of luxury. Employment with Nordstrom will likely welcome more than a few luxuries into my wardrobe, posing an indefinite exercise in self-control. I hope it does not implode my savings plan.  

I  also think it best to continue taking vitamins. In lieu of cardio, vitamins are magic, especially D as I believe the sun has "left the building" this June. Due to lack of sunlight, this unashamed nerd-out moment actually happened en-route to the mall:

Jamie: Do you think Victoria Secret has swim suits in yet?
Me: Recalibrating thoughts in silence. (Avoidance)
Jamie: ?
Me: Holman Illustrated Bible dictionary is on hold for me at the library. Can we go?

In any case, my vitamin-enriched, exercise-deficient body and I will soon accept that it is summer and find motivation to come out of hiding. Maybe the lipstick will help. Until then, I'm testing my luck with the library. How many books will they let me have for free? I'm up to seven.. 

Clint Black and thunderstorm nostalgia

I shouldn't have been surprised at the thunder. The pavement tried to warn me with its fuming scent and the air was uncommonly dense. Selective raindrops fell from the sky at a storm's early onset, though I didn't feel a single one touch me.

The C.D. in my disc changer cycled over on the drive home and I hit the FM button, half-expecting it to land me something good. 
Then as if on a cosmic cue or by silly coincidence, Clint Black started singing to me:

All the heaven's rivers come to life, I see it all unwind
I hear it talking through the trees and on the window pane
When I hear it I just can't believe
I never liked the rain

I'm not easily won by a country song. It's usually a problem with the lyrics or maybe that honky-tonk synthesizer with its twangy drone that makes my ears tickle. It is a musical genre that is reserved for two occasions in my life: karaoke and rodeos. Outside of those annual events, I wear denim jeans as unassumingly as the average citizen and strongly discourage others from allowing it to inspire their wardrobe.

In any case, I am white and hereby compelled to pay homage to country music because of my prarie-bonneted, trail blazing, ancestor settlers and the sad songs their lungs must have harbored over the Oregon Trail. How anthems of hardship on the plains has its modern translation in sequined chaps and belt buckles the size of Montana, I will never know.

Respect for my ancestors and skin color aside, there are a few songs I just like and they are counted among the albums of Clint Black. He was one of the first male voices I ever fell in love with on the radio, and a girl can't just forsake her first love on the account of a few bad lyricists.

Live at a summer concert a few years ago, he single-handedly redeemed all things good about country music with a few notes from beneath his black Stetson. I enamored still.

My relationship to country music about as fickle as this pre-summer weather: tiresome and generally untrustworthy. I am hard pressed to find relevance in music waxing nostalgic about catfish on a trot line and endless summer romance. I am about as urban a former country girl as could be found in all this rainy metropolis and yet its funny how a few raindrops and the right song can bring a past time crashing into the present.


A sky cracked with electricity is so great a wonder that I delayed sliding the glass door closed. With full sensory of the storm for a few minutes, the intermittent light show and my billowing curtains made me glad for that country song.

On nights like this I am reminded of the beauty of a place like Portland, despite the thriving city of "elsewhere" I long to be most of the time. In the storm and the rain come memories of what it was like to walk through the rain in seasons of youthful expectation for classes and the excitement of a crush in each one. Other places, I have certainly been, but in the returning, I haven't minded the rain as much.

It was good of Clint Black to remind me. He might even see me at the end of July, hunting for a good spot in the fairground crowd to hear that song he sings about rain..

Objective: typewriter.

Courtesy ETSY.com

Brevity is torture for every writer. Ubiquitous internet access makes it so that I cannot say what I want without the haunting suspicion that better information exists elsewhere. My blog entries are not miracles, of that I am sure. But to distill a single line of confident text always is.

With a typewriter, I am convinced that all the letter soldiers would go marching down a straight line to meaning. The driving keys from left to right would send up a delicious chatter, scaling the alphabet of my thoughts. I would stay up all night to use this typewriter, yes I would. I would happily abandon the backspace bar for an eternity of feeding papers one by one through a mill of ink.  
I was recently asked what one material possession I would take if my house was burning down. I really couldn't think of anything I would need that badly. But if I had a typewriter, not even a fiery inferno could make me part with it.

Like Ralphie on The Christmas Story believed that an "Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle" would transform him into a vigilante hero, my red typewriter would be the chronicle of endless revelation maybe and a love letter or two.

I'm getting ahead of myself. It's time for some research.

Heightened expectation.

Something has to spark the muse. Awaiting the untimely dispensation of creativity, I am driven into the night,empty handed of even one inspired thought to pen. By default, I then look to the work of others. Evermore consumed in the desperation and dejection that is the barren wasteland of unemployment, hopeful words are a continual feast to my heart. Here is a reading I can handle for the day; a heart that forsees future glory clipping the heels of the present..

Hush, hush, hush…

    I heard a sound, come from the ground

   All of the trees are a buzz
 Talking in tongues, talking with lungs, talking of freedom

    All of the earth is soon to give birth

  Look at the mountains alive

         Birds and the bees, insects and leaves

    All of us longing, longing for home

                
J.Foreman