If Marilyn Monroe Was Alive

February 23. 2014

Claire and I went to Starbucks for our Sunday artist date. I brought my notebook and Flair pen. Claire brought her razor-thin tipped pen to work on her growing sketch of Main Street. 













We like to sit on stools facing the street. It helps us feel like we're somewhere else, a city maybe, where things are happening. 

I often want to be somewhere other than where I am. 

I'm working on this. 

Practice presence and all that. 

And still I long for














But going to Main Street with my kid, the two of us on stools listening to conversations, eating our multi-grain bagels with cream cheese, drinking tea, coffee, hanging out. 

I don't want to be anywhere else.

Behind us three men were chatting.

One man said, 

If Marilyn Monroe was alive she'd be considered overweight.

Second man said,

Not at my house!












First man said,

Not at my house either. 

The third man was just listening. 

Then second man said,

I was talking to a young woman who didn't know who Elizabeth Taylor was. I couldn't believe it! I once held Elizabeth Taylor in my arms. She was getting out of a pool and was afraid to slip. It was a photo shoot. She was probably in her fifties, still gorgeous.

Hearing them made me happy. I wanted to hug them. 

 ***     

Ann and I were on the phone. She was looking at some paintings that she'd dug out of a closet and hung on the walls of her bedroom. She had painted them years ago and was happy to see them out in the open, a second life for her art.

Ann said,

I have a painting that looks like a mouse on a luge.

I thought her observation was timely with the Olympics and all. We kept chatting about all kinds of things until we both sighed. That's how we close up shop until the next talk. It's easy stuff.

Ann said,

Maybe that's just me.
Maybe I'm just always going to be a jumble of things.














Hearing that made me happy. I wanted to hug her.

***

Dad called. I was saying how I'd been trying to get out to see him but the ice and snow was too much. The weather's been so crazy and all that. 

I couldn't muster it, Dad.

Dad said,

No worries. Nothing can separate us. 

Hearing that made me happy and I wanted to hug him. When I got off the phone I kept saying it to myself. And the dog and cat(s) and maybe I told Claire about it. It made me feel happy.

 nothing can separate us nothing can separate us

It's true. 

nothing can separate us. 

namaste.

xo b