Andy Warhol Archives - Adulting: Second- Half

Both

I think that I may have jinxed myself by being so grateful for all of the new things in my life this Thanksgiving. This week alone I found out that our longtime beloved family dentist has brought on a new associate dentist, and plans on retiring soon, and our longtime dog (whisperer) groomer, has moved. (Trip, our spicy Boykin spaniel, who likes only about one-and-a-half people beyond our family members is in for a rude awakening today, and so is the new groomer. Wednesday Bloody Wednesday)

Is it possible that both quotes, shown above, can be true at the same time? Like all opposite statements in this world, there can be truth to both sides. Two opposite “truths” can exist, and even thrive in the same world. Rarely does black and white thinking apply to anything as much as we seem to want it to, for our own feelings of security and control and peace of mind. The truth is, for me, before our longtime dentist and faithful dog groomer, we utilized the services of another dentist and another dog groomer, both whom I thought were incredible and irreplaceable. Both of whose services I seriously mourned when they moved on. Dare I say now, that their replacements turned out to be just as good, and perhaps even better than the ones before them? Is it possible that we will feel the same way about this new set of providers after a period of time? Usually, variety shows that many people have many different strengths, and often you don’t notice weaknesses in someone or something familiar, until you experience the contrast of a strength in someone, or something else.

We love our old, reliable, standbys because we have invested time and energy in them. We have stories with the people and the places and the services that we have experienced year in and year out. We have history. But often we feel unexpected delight and surprise when we try new things and we get new experiences under our belts, which after a while, often become our new favorites, until these “new things” become so familiar that they are transformed into our current reliable standbys. We tend to grow and blossom with the new knowledge and experiences in our lives, but yet the old will always be part of the root system from which we grow. The treasured previous people/places/things give us a format and a platform to better understand the contrasts and the nuances of new things. Plants need strong roots and vital new growth in order to thrive. So do we.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

“Everyone’s a poet – no exceptions.” – Jack Hirschman, prolific American poet

Welcome to Soul Sunday. My regular readers know that Sundays are devoted to poetry. And believe it or not, Sundays are quite a popular day on the blog. The secret’s out of the bag. You really like poetry. You really do. Today is the perfect day for you to write a poem. You are a poet. You are an artist. Just do it. Create. Here is my poem for the day:

“The Invested Rescuers”

When you are in a scary, deep, dark pit,

And beautiful angels help to pull you out,

With their lovely golden corded rope,

Because the angels are so loving and concerned,

about you, they forget that they have pulled you out.

And so they continue to call down to you,

desperately looking for you, at the bottom of the ugly pit,

not realizing that you are now standing calmly behind them,

on the firm, solid ground, relieved to feel the hope

of the sun’s brightest rays, and feeling so warm and thankful for

the angels who cared enough to lovingly pull you out of the dark.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Along Came Throw Pillows

Somethings that I absolutely love in life are throw pillows. I can’t get enough of them. I think it would be wonderful to live in piles of throw pillows with a few warm, fuzzy throws and blankets lying around to add to the soft, colorful, wonderfulness of it all. I’m from Pittsburgh and the last time I was at the Warhol Museum, they exhibited Andy Warhol’s Silver Clouds. Basically, the exhibit is giant silver Mylar balloons floating around the room as you are walking through it. It’s magical! I imagine the same sort of happy effect if you lived in a pile of throw pillows.

There is a scene in the movie, Along Came Polly in which Polly (Jennifer Aniston) decides to liberate Ben Stiller’s character from his routine of removing and storing several expensive, goose-down throw pillows from his bed every night. They end up taking a knife to the pillows and feathers are flying everywhere. Ben’s character does the math and realizes that he spends about two days of every year of his life, removing and storing and then replacing these throw pillows on and off of his bed. Interestingly, if you look up this particular scene on YouTube and then read the comments underneath the scene, there are a lot of others, like me, who get a bit defensive about throw pillows. My husband would side with Polly on this one. The few times that we have seen this movie, I notice that he laughs extra loud and hard at this scene and looks at me, pointedly. He thinks that we have way too many throw pillows.

You can never have enough throw pillows. They can make an old couch look new. They add new life to frequently washed bedding. They decorate furniture for the holidays. Throw pillows are easier than paint to add a whole new color scheme to your room. I get moved by throw pillows. One time we were in Victoria, Canada and I noticed a throw pillow depicting a baby polar bear cub, featured in a shop window. The shop was closed, but I became obsessed with owning that pillow. I was at the shop the first thing the next morning and would have taken a later ferry and missed a flight home, just to have that pillow. It happily perches on a couch in my bedroom to this day. Throw pillows make for wonderful reminders and souvenirs of happy memories in one’s life! Throw pillows purchased on vacation are like happiness squared.

I like going into stores like HomeGoods and Pier One Imports, and seeing shelves of throw pillows arranged like a rainbow. I’m always nervous about pulling one out though, because that usually equates to all of them falling all over the floor. Maybe that’s how I got my idea of living in a pile of throw pillows. Throw pillows are an instant hug, softness for life’s edges, and a burst of color when you need it the most. Don’t you agree???