Juno, My Muse?

So why have I started to blog?

          Well . . .  One of my most laconic friends emailed me, and predictably his email was short.  "Do you blog?  If so, can you send me a link?  If not, will you start blogging?"  That was all he wrote. 
          I, of course, saw this as a sign from God to blog ;)  Let me explain.  This friend hardly speaks.  Really.  We belong to the same book club, where he rarely offers any of his opinions though he is full of them.  He's a word miser.  A stingy non-verbalizer.  Oh, and there's that time when he was struck dumb by the Holy Spirit and couldn't speak for months.  Therefore, you can understand why when he sent that email, I thought hard and long over his suggestion.  I had to decide whether his handful of words were the crumbs of a bored mind or the manifestation of a "spirited" soul.  Granted, that though more often than not, this friend's ramblings would fall in the former category, I had to decide that his words to me were the kind of pearls spoken by a spirit-filled-Balaam's donkey ;)

          A few days later, when I saw him at a wedding, I asked him what inspired him to send that email.  He said, he was bored and wanted to read something, anything, even trash.  So, there you have it, my suspicions confirmed.  

I Love Trees!

          When I recorded this video, I had been working on this illustration for hours and had extemporaneously decided to record my progress.  I had not planned to do anything of the kind, and hence my utterance was spoken on the spur of the moment and is therefore unscripted and embarrassingly honest. 

           I ended up sharing the clip with a few friends who offered varying responses.  One friend chuckled so hard that she snorted right out loud.  My plain words embarrassed her, I think.  Or perhaps my need to make sense of my life made her feel embarrassed for me.  I don't know.  But then, there was another friend who sent me a text message, which I have kept till this day.  She wrote: “tears started trickling down my face.  I am now a big mess at work, but was worth it.  You touched something in my soul . . . and it was beautiful.”

           I suppose, I am hoping, that for every chuckle there will its counterpart—a sigh—from someone who feels less alone because of my simple-mindedness.

           So here’s to you, "Ms. AQ", your text has made me feel less alone too.