And So Life Continues.

Just minutes ago I was standing in the kitchen talking on my cell to a friend back in CA when I looked out the window into the backyard. I was in awe. Out in the snow, casually strolling and looking for food were six deer. Six! Picture everything covered in sugary white snow and six gentle animals silently walking through the yard like apparitions. It was so pretty. So, so pretty.

Big Red and I marveled at the snow that fell this afternoon. We were sitting in the living room and catching glances of it through the picture window next to the too-large TV. Because it had rained yesterday, all the snow that had since fallen has decorated every branch, every railing, every roof. It is a wonderland. I wished aloud that what I wanted at that moment was for us to be in our own home enjoying the snow. He said he was thinking the same thing.

Out in CA life continues. The Slam revolution that I started is picking up momentum for the 2008-09 school year. My friend told me that today they had a lunchtime slam and it was again, a success. A student who has never performed gave it a shot and won. I am so proud. Proud because I know I brought this to them and they have embraced it. I hit a switch and the light continues to burn. I was told that the poets spoke of rape and of immigrant parents, who were beaten and burdened but persevered. Magic to my ears. How I wish I could have been there to hear it.

Tomorrow is my parents thirty-third wedding anniversary.

I just finished reading Elizabeth Gilbert's in depth exploration of Eustace Conway in The Last American Man. Conway is a man who, by the time most teens are frothing at the mouth to gain a drivers license, is able to nail a squirrel to a tree by throwing a knife at it. He lives his life with nothing more than the nature that surrounds him as his sustenance. While I have no desire whatsoever to live in a tee pee, or hunt deer, or even to make fire from twigs, I can appreciate being relieved of the modern burden so many of us carry to amass things. Stuff. I want a lot of stuff. Shit, take a look at my letter to Santa. I've been totally seduced with wanting, wanting, wanting. Certainly most of us have been; it's how we grew up.

Perhaps a piece of the secret answer to the Happiness puzzle is trying to want a little less? Being satisfied with what we have already? If we want less, then we may not be inclined to be so obsessed with trying to figure out ways to acquire those wants. Too much stuff, and the stuff begins to own us.

Maybe. But I still want the Frye Harness Boots. That's not so bad, is it?