Today I was listening to some awesome Americana Bluegrass music, with all sorts of instrumental work. Lots of great guitar, mandolins, harmonicas, fiddles and violins – I know they are the same instrument; they just become something totally different by the way they are played. There were howling vocal backgrounds, and whiskey-voiced singers, all salty and sultry. I don’t know exactly what I mean by whiskey-voiced, but there’s a gravelly quality to some singers’ voices that sounds like they’ve spent time in smoky bars and have stories to share from their travels.

This is the kind of music that has an unmistakable beat, and I couldn’t help but dancing a little as I listened. I was working, but it made the day go by so fast. Towards the end of the day, as I was immersed in this style of music that I love and for some reason hardly ever listen to, I was reminded of my Uncle Dan.

My Uncle Dan is not someone we spent a lot of time with when we were growing up, simply because we were usually in opposite parts of the world. But I remembered today going to a birthday party for him at his lake house in Colorado. I hadn’t thought of that party for years. But all of a sudden, I could remember everything like I’d just been there again. I could remember where my uncle stood.

The yard sloped up to a dam that went around the lake. You could walk up to a path and an area where you could look out over the lake to the twinkling lights of houses all around it. Down in the yard, there was a huge, old tree, with a wide, beautiful canopy. There were benches under the tree, and lots of people were gathered and meandering about the yard and the house.

Uncle Dan is an artist. I mean an exquisite artist that can work in a multitude of mediums. His house was full of art that he had created and also that his friends had created. The party was full of artists.

After the sun set, there was a bonfire and lights from torches and candles filled the evening. There was a magical feeling in the air.

At one point, people brought out instruments. There were several guitars. My uncle went inside and brought out his flute. He is also a very accomplished musician. These guys started to jam. I couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve, and I remember being completely transported by the music – like it was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard.

It wasn’t only the way it sounded; there is something amazing about watching a group of musicians jam. They didn’t have sheet music. They weren’t playing a song, really. They were playing off of each other. They were paying close attention to one another. Each of them had his eyes trained on another’s hands to see which way they would go next. Were they going to go faster, or slower, or get into a really good rhythm and just stay there for a while?

There was someone singing in the background. It wasn’t actual words, just humming and harmonizing, adding to the overall sound. A couple people were softly tapping their hands on the wooden benches to add a bit of percussion.

Everyone involved in the making of music was thoroughly engaged with the other musicians. They watched each other’s hands, but they also looked intently into each other’s eyes – they had to open up to each other in a phenomenal way – to be able to read one another’s directions, moods, the feel and the way things were going to go. Their communication with one another was palpable to those of us listening. The way they interacted with each other was part of the music; it was what made it so breathtaking.

I love all kinds of music. I love a symphony where every performer has their notes to play, and they are all playing at just the right time to give voice and expression to the composer’s thoughts. But to see a jam session is a kind of musical adventure. It is an otherworldly experience. It is beauty wrapped around you. You are seeing a rare glimpse into the very heart of music – of notes flowing from one musicians soul to another – each person adding a part of themselves to the larger sound, each bringing their best, each reading and interpreting the others in the group to discover what they are as a whole. This is how the sum of their parts creates something bigger and bolder, wilder and more reckless, or softer and somehow haunting.

It must have been the greatest gift of his birthday to be able to hang out in his yard among friends and fellow artists, giving to one another in this way, participating in the making of something beautiful and one of a kind.

As a kid I was mesmerized. Today I realized that night might have been my introduction to the world of this style of music, raw music, music straight from the hip. I don’t remember leaving the party. Each of us girls must have drifted off and been carried out to the car. We must have been asleep and dreaming of a wild and poetic music, written straight onto our hearts.

Photo Credit: from Morguefile.com

By: darrenhester

http://mrg.bz/Lrq3Gn

“All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.” James Thurber, US author, cartoonist, humorist, & satirist, best known for his contributions to The New Yorker. (1894-1961)

Can you imagine how the world would open up for us if we knew the answers to these questions? To know, without a shadow of a doubt, what it is you are running to – with wild abandon, knowing you will be caught in the arms of whatever it is you pursue? Perhaps the art that is in you straining at the little seed of love where it dwells – waiting for the smallest nod of acceptance and joy from you – to burst into bloom.

There are so many things it could be; the thing we are running to. We get caught up in simply going through the motions of paying bills and running on the treadmill of oughts and shoulds and musts. And we are responsible people; so we take care of what needs to be done. This is good. This is right. This is proper.

How often do we stop to think about what we are running from, and to, and why? How often do we allow ourselves to ponder how big our life really is – how many people we affect along the way, how many people are watching us for clues of how to sort out their own lives, how much depends on us being okay in our own skin? And if even for a minute the thought of people depending on you for their well-being makes you cringe, take a deep breath. It’s time to get to work on you and your best interests for a minute.

Because people, sometimes young people, sometimes our own young ones are looking to us, it is imperative and a great privilege to spend some time deciphering some of life’s bigger questions. Let’s not look at self-discovery as one more chore, but as a way to breathe more life into our life, more love into every relationship we enjoy,

This morning, as I look out the window at work. I see the rolling hills of Southern Oregon, the patchwork of various fields, fence lines lined with trees, and farm houses dotting the scenery. There is one bright patch of freshly plowed earth. It is a little square of deep, rich brown amidst the softening green, almost tan of the late autumn, winter ground. Something about it makes me want to rush to it and scoop up the soil in my hands and breathe deeply the smell of fertile ground. Something is going to grow there and that is one of the loveliest things I can imagine.

Something is growing here. My spirit soars at that thought. I watch my children come up with new ideas every day, and I know that they are growing at a pace that will catch me by surprise someday and take my breath away. They will be off to explore the world on their own, and make decisions, and be grown-ups.

At this moment, in this place, I can say that I am running from anything stagnant. I am running toward growth because my imagination is a field that must be plowed on a regular basis. I need activity there. I need the richness of a seed pushed deep into the soil, where it sits and wraps itself in mystery for a time, and then with enough warmth from the sun and nourishment from the rain, it explodes into a dizzying display of outstretched arms and tendrils climbing, flowers bursting forth with filament, petals and pistils.

I am a garden ablaze with vibrant color and endless texture. I can get lost in the depth and brilliance of all the life that is there. It only took a moment of contemplation this morning, for me to be utterly grateful for the mind I dwell in, the gifts I have to give the world, to my own family and children specifically.

Beauty is within. Beauty is inside our hearts and souls and imaginations. Take a moment today to think about what you are running from, and to, and why. I wouldn’t take it so seriously as to get lost in a morose downward spiral. Perhaps think more of the running to – what inspires you, what makes you sigh happily when you think of it.It could be as simple as a warm cup of coffee with a friend. Some mornings that is what I am running to – and I think to stay in the moment – that is what we embrace. Some mornings I am running to the satisfaction of completing something big. I love the idea of starting my day with “what am I running from, and to, and why?” and engaging my heart to wonder and a brief moment of self-discovery.

Today I am in love with nature, the smell of fertile soil, and the pleasure of a fertile imagination. As odd as that may sound, that is my story for today, for this moment. I am running to the richness of Something is Growing Here. Oh, wrap that thought in mystery for a time and see what blossoms come Spring!

(This article became a Front Page Reader’s Choice Favorite on SearchWarp.com)

Photo Credit: from morguefile.com

By: melodi2

http://morguefile.com/archive/display/152392

As I look out the extra-large picture window at work, I see a view that changed my whole perception of Thanksgiving this year. We look down on the rooftops of Ashland, Oregon and catch a tiny glimpse of Main Street right below us. Peeking up between the buildings are the blazing orange and red trees that line this picturesque town full of Shakespearean actors, memorabilia and artists of every variety. Across the street are more rooftops, with deck chairs and little gardens, beyond the quaint downtown are rolling green hills dotted with barns and cows.

We have just had our first light dusting of snow for the season, right in time for the holidays. As I continue looking out the window, drinking in the view, I notice that the bottom third of the mountains I see are still a vibrant green from all the fall rain of recent weeks. The middle third is more of a grayish color, and the top third is covered in snow. How beautiful to still have the gorgeous green of summer, the brilliant colors of fall on the trees and the quiet white of winter all at the same time.

And it hit me that I am looking at Nature’s version of an extended family. Down at the base we have all the bright and bold activity, all the exuberant colors of our youngest members. They dance all around and sing, “Look at me, look at me!” It is impossible to ignore their bounce and their verve, their enthusiasm and propensity for mischief.

Out just a little bit are the mothers tending their young amid the lush green of the pastureland. There is a fullness to them, a richness you can sense of all that they have to provide for their young ones. There is life in every step, and vigor that is palpable.

Beyond that there is the gray of the slightly older parents, the ones with teenagers. They have earned every gray hair with late nights waiting up for their buoyant ones. They have crossed over from mommies and daddies to parents with rules to enforce. If they are lucky, they have learned from experience, not to take themselves too seriously. They have started to mellow and laugh with their kids, instead of worry so much. Their kids come around these days because they want to, not so much because they are dependent. It is a nice transition. Hanging out with your own young people, still having a bit of hip and cool to dispense.

Then there is the top of the peak, and I see my folks and my husband’s folks with their white hair and their wisdom, their stories of the old days, and their laughter at us young people with all our big ideas. They have succeeded in so many ways. They have history and depth, they are the sages and the poets, with time on their hands to think about the big questions. Us young ones are still just running around after our children, going in every direction, and looking forward to the days of big questions and time to think.

I think about how nicely this whole scene fits together, and how it almost makes me cry for all its beauty. I feel a stinging in my eyes, not for the multi-colored hills, so much as for the beauty in my family, the rungs of wisdom on our family tree, and the tiny buds still bursting open with new life. It is truly a gift to belong to a family, and to be looking forward to my husband’s entire extended family joining us this Thanksgiving.

(Reprinted from a December 2006 original publication date)

What a gift this holiday season has been to me so far! The part of Thanksgiving I treasure the most was the evening I sat around the dining room table with my 14-year old son, a 14-year old nephew, an 18-year old niece and her boyfriend - playing Balderdash and laughing so hard that we all ended up with headaches. Watching my son cracking up at something I’d written, shaking his head, wiping tears out of his eyes and smiling from ear to ear was worth every dirty sock I’ve ever picked up off his floor, every time I’ve had to remind him to brush his teeth, every moment of frustration during his early teens.

Everything was washed away in that moment of laughter - the kind of laughter that actually makes you tired, leaving everyone breathing heavily and just trying to catch their breath. Not everyone can become this unglued over a board game, I realize. I guess this year, I’m especially thankful that I was raised in a family where playing games was a bonding experience - where shared laughter gave us memories to hold us together during tougher times.

One of my fondest Christmas memories was also one of our families bleakest. We were just little kids, and my mom gathered us around to tell us that we needed to pray for our Daddy. He was very sick, and he was never sick. She told us, through tears, that this year, there wouldn’t be any presents because all we really wanted was for him to get better. I don’t remember anything else except four little girls huddling with my mother on our big green couch, and crying and praying for a miracle.

Right at that moment, a friend of my fathers, knocked loudly on the door. He was wearing a Santa hat and carrying a box full of presents. Trailing behind him was a merry group of soldiers from the Army base where my father worked as a minister. News had traveled that we were in trouble, and the guys knew we needed some cheer.

With all the hoopla, even my dad, wrapped in a blanket to keep warm, came down and sat in front of a roaring fire in our den to watch his children be entertained by good Samaritans. The presents were unwrapped, and we girls opened packages to find a doll each and four board games. I remember one sister received the classic game, Operation, and there was a big crowd of guys all hunched over that little guy trying to tweeze organs out of tiny openings without ringing the bell.

In another corner of the room, a crowd was playing Tic-Tac-Toe Toss with sand bags into a 3-story, 3-room per floor miniature building. The Twister map was laid out and people were falling all over each other to land their left hand on a yellow spot, and their right foot on a green. And in the loudest part of the room, a rousing game of Pit was being hollered - as the stock market trading floor was reenacted by pushy people trying to out-yell one another and score the perfect “Corner on the Market!”

What is odd to me is that I don’t even remember what sickness my father was suffering under - or if we were ever told. He got better. I just remember an evening of laughter and happiness, where there had been sadness and fear only moments before. I cry every single time I watch the holiday classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” because we were on the receiving end, as little children, of that sort of outpouring of love. It didn’t take much. There were no expensive toys - there were just priceless moments of friendship and fun given by young men who knew that a family was having a rough time. They gave their time and their attention to little children who needed to laugh.

A few years ago, I got to repay the gesture. My Girl’s Night Out group heard about a family who had lost their home in a fire. We got the sizes of each of the children in the family, and split up their needs among us. We filled a car full of clothing, warm blankets, toys, soft-snuggly-teddy-bears, shoes, you name it and brought our contributions to the maternal grandmother who had taken her family in to live with her. Within a week, we received probably the most beautiful Christmas card I have ever seen - designed, colored, and written by three little girls we’d never met, who joyfully and exuberantly thanked us for all the laughter and tears of happiness we had given them.

When I think of all the things, and lists of things, and lists of all the lists we are trying to manage at this time of year, I wonder how any of us are able to keep any holiday spirit. These things threaten to steal our joy of giving, because we start to get trapped in a spirit of obligatory giving. In my youngest sister’s kitchen hangs a sign, which reads, “The most important things in life aren’t things,” and I pause to let that sink in until I can remember what it means.

This year, I hope we all are able to be still for a moment and remember a priceless joy - a thing about the holidays that stirs our hearts, that isn’t really a thing at all, but a feeling, a tradition shared, a favorite story, a favorite game, a bit of wassail or cider with a friend, or the smile on a child’s face because we took a moment to hug or wipe away a tear. This year, in the act of caring for someone who desperately needs some care, I hope we all get to feel the unspeakable joy that comes with reaching our hand out and realizing we’ve just given someone a lifeline. This year, I hope we are able to take the time to play a game with a teenager, until the strong silent facade is broken, and laughter is bursting out of their every seam.

(This story was originally published in December 2006, in the Clovis Unified School District newspaper, the CUSD Today. I am reprinting it before Thanksgiving because I love it so much!)

Photo Credit: from Morguefile.com

By: gracey

http://morguefile.com/archive/display/143385

And just like that, the other shoe drops. Sometimes right in the midst of a personal joy, we are encountered by a friend’s sorrow, and what do we do? Yesterday I called a friend to tell her my big exciting news. I was actually bouncing around a little with enthusiasm for my big deal. She answered in a whisper, which right away told me this may not be a good time. She was in the I.C.U. with her sister-in-law who had been in a terrible car accident and may not make it through the night.

Of course, my exciting news evaporated as I tried to reach through the phone cord to wrap my arms around her.

Because I always write about Beauty from perspectives that we wouldn’t normally associate with Beauty, I thought today I would write about beauty in the face of tragedy. What is the most beautiful expression of concern you have ever experienced? Who stands out to you as a pillar of strength when your whole world was falling into pieces?

For me, it is my former roommate Gail, who sat with me one afternoon in silence as I cried to tragic sounding classical music played over and over again because that music spoke my heart in ways I couldn’t muster words to speak. The music seemed to be giving me permission to feel the weight of my sorrow, and it wept along with me.

I was dealing with a loss of enormous proportions; the kind of loss that doesn’t just heal up real quick and become easily forgotten. No. This was the kind of fragile situation that would be with me for the rest of my life, to varying degrees. Over time, the hurt maybe lessens, but it’s always right there under the surface. All it takes is a look in that direction, and all sorts of feelings come up again. I was in the midst of that kind of hurt.

There was nothing anyone could say to make it better. No one could say, “Oh I know just how you feel,” because it’s not true. No one can know exactly how another person feels when that person is devastated.

Gail sat with me. She never said a thing. She didn’t pat my head and say, “There, there,” she didn’t try to help me snap out of it or think of something happy. She didn’t do anything at all to try to console me, and in not doing a thing, she gave me the greatest comfort anyone could have given me. She participated in my sorrow. I knew she heard me. I knew she felt along with me. And she gave me all the time I needed to cry until I couldn’t cry anymore, and I was ready to go do something else. I will never forget what a gift she gave me.

My father is a minister and he has been with people in hospitals going through excruciating pain and loss. I remember the story he told me about when he was a young minister and he got a call that a family had just lost their young child. He rushed to the hospital to be with them, and before he entered their room, he prayed for words of comfort. Once he was there, he wrestled with what he felt was an appalling failure as their pastor, because no words whatsoever came to his mind. He struggled to come up with anything, just one comforting word. And the harder he tried to think of something, the more his mind was blank.

He sat with them for an hour and a half in silence. The entire time, he was waging battle in his heart to find what he felt they needed to hear from him. Finally, as he stood to leave, feeling like he had let them down tremendously, he reached for the mother’s hand. She held onto him and through tears thanked him profusely. “For what?” he said incredulously. “For not saying anything,” she responded. She told him that well-intentioned people had come to say that we are to be joyful in all circumstances (a scriptural reference) and that God always has a plan. She said that deep in her heart, she knew that, but at this moment she just didn’t want to hear it. It was the furthest thing from comfort.

My father said that this was the greatest lesson he could have received about being a good pastor and being with someone in a time of sorrow. Over and over again he has been with people in catastrophic situations where their worlds have suddenly been turned upside down. He has witnessed the well intentioned, but cruel messages of hope people try to deliver. He has stood or sat beside people for hours on end as they wept, and been told repeatedly that he did more for them than anyone else, because he didn’t try to say anything to make it better.

I think of my Dad, and I think of my roommate Gail and the enormous gift she gave me of being my strong friend, who silently sat with me, enveloping me in great swaths of solace without saying a word.

I think of my friend in Los Angeles, whom I just learned yesterday has cancer and is waiting for a liver transplant. I think of my girlfriend who sat beside her sister-in-law in the I.C.U. last night hoping against hope that she would make it through the night.

And I just want to say, “I’m with you. I’m here.

“And that’s all.”

(This story is a Reader’s Choice Favorite on Searchwarp.com)

Photo Credit: from morguefile.com

By: blondieb38
http://morguefile.com/archive/display/131482

It takes a man who is married to and in love with a redhead to find beauty in a dark storm cloud. When I asked my husband last night for a quick word off the top of his head that I could use today to write about beauty from an interesting perspective, he thought for a second and then started describing the menacing clouds we drove through on our recent trip back from California. He explained that although, I was white knuckling my hand grip on the door through the whole storm, when we looked up into the dark clouds, we saw a purple glow coming from deep inside the storm head, and it was gorgeous.

It rained harder than normal, people slowed way down on the freeway, and everyone was super aware and cautious as we were being pelted by what seemed a furious onslaught of Mother Nature. It lasted only a few moments, and afterward there was a crispness in the air that made every detail of the hills and mountains we were driving toward pop. All the colors of the following sunset were heightened because of the clear sky that all that rain had created.

Driving to work this morning, I tried to see how a raging Mother Nature could translate to something in an actual woman, and how that could be seen as beautiful. What occurred to me was the beauty of a woman on a soapbox speaking her truth with utter conviction – a woman full of righteous indignation over a wrong that must be made right.

This is different from someone throwing a hissy-fit over not getting her way. This is not a woman just head-waggin’ mad over some slight she imagines she has sustained. This is not even someone speaking passionately but from a rehearsed speech towing the party line. This is a woman who is speaking from her deepest core of truth, who doesn’t have a prepared anything, but because what she says resonates so completely with everything she truly believes, she is in a zone of powerful oratory, and people realize in that moment that they are beholding something amazing.

I am thinking specifically of a woman like Sojourner Truth, who is famous for her, “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech in which she called the establishment out for keeping women and black women specifically down. Her speech was delivered in 1851extemporaneously, off the top of her head, to the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio and I would bet that the women in the audience had a hard time sitting still when she was finished. Reading it today, nearly a hundred and sixty years later, I can barely remain in my chair. I want to get up and cheer my approval. I want to dance and stomp my feet and cry big, real tears because she is so right and so right on and so amazingly clear and brilliant and true.

A woman in the midst of speaking a truth like that seems to almost rise up from where she stands, doesn’t she? Something happens to the lighting in the room when someone is bearing her soul and communicating from a place of passionate truth. The lens in your eye goes into soft focus, and she becomes elevated and radiant with perhaps a halo of glorious light around her head.

If you have never witnessed a woman speaking this way, you are missing out. She is up there on her soapbox, in an onslaught of magnificent words coming through her from where she is not sure, but they are intertwining with sparks of gold glitter in the air around her and weaving themselves into majestic poetry that can be seen and felt by everyone in the room. There is a power that first sucks all the air out of the room, as everyone collectively holds their breath to not miss one single word of what is being said, and then suddenly breathes that power back with such force that it seems all the doors and windows will burst open from the raucous applause, the whole room coming to their feet as one to sound their battle cry of approval.

Oh, that is a beautiful woman. No matter how stocky or burly or plain and simple Sojourner Truth may have been, in her moment of speaking a great truth that needed to be spoken, she became mesmerizing. She was a dark cloud with a purple glow about her. She became menacing and amazing and a beauty to behold.

(This story is being syndicated and placed on the front page of BlogHer.com)

(This story is a Reader’s Choice Favorite on Searchwarp.com)

Photo Credit: from morguefile.com

By: naama

http://morguefile.com/archive/display/60291

Perhaps it is the familiar way she treats all her customers at The Steps of Rome in North Beach, the Italian District in San Francisco.

She places a hand on your shoulder when she greets you, she touches your scarf to compliment your style, she hugs a friend who has come by to say hello, and takes him by both hands to spin around with delight. She is the most mesmerizing woman I have ever seen.

As I sit transfixed by her antics, there is loud Italian Bebop music thumping in the background, making me feel just a little bit wild, tapping my toe and rocking my shoulders to the beat. Then there is the Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake sitting before me winking and flirting with me until I give in to its tempting, over-the-top delicious, deep-sigh-inducing flavor. It occurs to me that I may be under the influence of Italian Mojo – otherwise I would not be accusing my dessert of flirting with me.

There is decidedly something unusual and wonderful about Italian women. As I watch the waitress at this coffee shop, I notice that she is not necessarily the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. In fact, she’s on the plain side. You would never know it though – because she is vivacious and darling and has the entire place watching her every move. She sashays this way and that around the café tables, avoiding head-on collisions, but casually bumping her hip into people just a tiny bit and laughing out loud with her head tipped back.

Is it her confidence that is so disarming? She is alluring in a way most women only dream of being. I know as I watched her, I felt like taking notes. This is what I learned in an Afternoon of Charm School from an Italian Waitress:

1)     Love what you do!

2)     Look people in the eye when you talk to them,

3)     Listen with everything you’ve got, be completely absorbed by what they say,

4)     Use touch innocently, but be sure to touch people somehow,

5)     Smile like you are in love, and

6)     Pronounce people you meet as gorgeous in some way: their smile, their boots, their earrings, or their southern drawl. Find something about them to dwell on and then make them feel like a million bucks for being so cunning and clever as to have that one thing.

While she dances around the restaurant delivering steaming plates of aromatic pasta dishes, or more of that sinfully delicious cheesecake, she quite literally blesses everyone she encounters. People cannot help smiling in her presence and allowing the weight of the world to simply melt away. She creates an air of flamboyant joy that is palpable and intoxicating.

I decide right on the spot that she is my beauty secret hero. Her beauty has nothing to do with her outward appearance, and everything to do with her charm, her grace, her laughter and her ease at spreading joy. She is the embodiment of radiance. She makes you feel lovely, and in return you remember her as stunning! What a clever beauty tactic!

Photo credit: From Morguefile.com

By: seabreeze
http://morguefile.com/archive/display/79601

Nov. 3, 2010…Modigliani’s $68.9 Million Woman Auctioned At Sotheby’s – creates a record-breaking sale to start off the Fall Art Auction season.

When this hit the news just last week, the first person that flashed across my mind was a homeless man in San Rafael. He could have been a Shakespearean Actor; he had such bearing and poise. He was extremely focused on ritual. He moved in set patterns around Marin County, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. He would stand on a street corner across from the building where I worked in downtown San Rafael, and hold court.

He would go shirtless in the summers and display a well-honed and crafted ebony physique. He wore a rag on his head. He spoke like an itinerant preacher, belligerent orator, and professor-at-large, eloquent and unintelligible at the same time. He clearly had cycles of delirium, or medication, where on every third day, he would be lucid and be able to form clear sentences. The other days he would rant and rave, arms flailing, impassioned speech, just without any real point per se. Sometimes he would gather a crowd of onlookers, trying to decipher his speech. At other times, he looked like a dangerous crazy person, and passersby would creep to the other side of the street to avoid him.

On the occasional days when he was in his right mind, he would join me on the stone benches in the shade at the Bank of America building where I would have my lunch and read. At first, he frightened me a little. But I came to know him as harmless to me, and interesting. Fragments of conversations were all I was ever able to have with him. I never could get his name, I would ask, and he would get distracted by something and go off on a tangent. He wasn’t even on his best days completely cogent.

However, he complimented me, and what girl in her early twenties doesn’t want to hear something lovely spoken of her? In my early twenties, all my best physical features were more prominent than perhaps they are in my forties. I had long legs, a long neck and my red hair was much more vibrant in those days. He would call out to me, mid-rant from across the street even, and refer to me as “Legs.” That, alone, could be seen as objectifying, but remember, I was twenty and was rather proud of my long legs. But he also called me a Modigliani Girl. He would draw attention to me, as if the people wandering by quickly trying to get past him were his actual audience, glued to his every word, and he would tell them about me, that I was exactly the type of woman Modigliani loved to paint.

I had to look the painter up, and back then, I don’t think the internet was quite what it is today. I had to go to a Library to look up what kind of woman this made me. From what I could gather, Modigliani was one of those brooding, alcoholic artists, who squandered his talents and tortured his creativity with self-medication and drug induced deliriums. He died a pauper and his wife jumped out the window killing herself and her unborn child at the news of his death. It didn’t sound like a compliment by any means to be associated with this dark artist. But, I also saw that he painted elongated forms, long necks, long torsos, and ballerina-like long legs. Whether his models looked like this or not, he seemed to always see long, elegant shapes.

This fascinated me. I wondered about this homeless man and his knowledge of the art-world. I wondered if he himself was some sort of tortured artist, or simply a lover of art. Perhaps, art has always been how I relate to others, whatever their station in life, whether we have anything else in common or not, I find ways to discuss art, or the artist’s way, the need to create, the desire to communicate with others in some way, the ability to see beauty in tragic figures, the sixth sense that everything is connected, that all matter is here to be formed somehow into something beautiful.

Several years passed, and I was working in Sausalito. I walked outside my office, and there in front of the Safeway, was a tall, stately street-man with a rag on his head, relaxed, and resting against the wall as if he was in one of his calmer days. He looked up and quietly said, “It’s the Modigliani girl!” I smiled and shook his warm hand, and tears came into my eyes, that he would remember me.

Today, I wonder where he is, and if in any way, he is still a lover of arts, a soap-box speaker on a corner, enlightening people to the ways of the world, and pointing out what he thinks is beautiful to everyone who passes his way. I wonder if he knows that the artist who died alone and miserable and poor, just had a painting auctioned off for millions of dollars. Perhaps he only ever pretended to be crazy. Perhaps he bought it for himself.

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