Sweet Nothings

The sun has come out today, the skies have closed their torrential downpour and somewhere, a scent on the wind carries Spring throughout Cannon Beach with wild abandon.

It's another Manic Monday here, minus any sort of actual mania, because it's impossible to feel manic when you live in a small, rich, hippie-tourist beachtown, especially when the sun is shining.

I've got some sweet nothings for you lovers to nibble on, today.

Sweet nothings such as the joy carbonated water brings, and how wearing 5 rings at a time makes you feel like Esmerelda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, (Which, if you haven't seen it in a while, let me assure you is a VERY good thing.  She's a babe.) and also how conversations over lunch with 81 year-old missionaries who call you "sweetheart" every five minutes and speak beautiful words of blessing and wisdom into your life can just make you want to sit down and cry because you wish you had grandparents who loved you the way this stranger loves you.

We can talk, also, lovers about how I'm rereading Eat Pray Love and I'm falling in love all over again with balance, devotion and pleasure and cultures, spirituality, travelling, relationships and compassion.  I'll never forget how that book really jump-started me on this pathway to finding divinity in every day life, and a new reason to celebrate thankfulness every single day.

Rereading Eat Pray Love makes me thirst again for my life now, and it inspires me to never, ever, ever give up on the desire God has placed in my heart for travelling and writing and eating good food in beautiful new countries with astoundingly graceful people.

People are incredible, and their stories are worth telling, worth sharing, and I cannot wait to get my hands on some of that juice to write about.

Lovers, let's not forget the sweet nothing that is the incandescent aroma of freshly-mown grass.

Let's give thanks for the sweet nothing that is the new novelty pin on my laptop bag that reads "Never Apologize For Your Art."

Sweet Nothings are beautiful, and I think that they alone are a perfectly good reason to live your life.

Let us add to this by acknowledging and loving the sweet nothing that is a chocolate peanut butter milkshake in the afternoon, and a few youtube videos of John Williams compositions shared with fellow ecstatic music-lover friends.

Yes, lovers, today is beautiful and life is a gift, so go out there and live it while you still can.

When Becca was here last week, we took a wee roadtrip down Highway 101 along the coastline and stopped at several small beachtowns and places we'd both never been before.  In one of these little miniature adventures, we stumbled across a framing shop called "Art Happens" and met a beautiful, white-haired, overall-clad woman who has been matting and framing pictures for many, many years.  She had these beautiful quotation cards made from leftover materials that she was selling for a dollar apiece, and so we each bought 7 or 8 of them.

I'll leave you with the quotes that struck me so much, I had to take them home with me forever.

Wishing you all the sweet nothings and the all-inclusive everything else's in the world,

Xx,
Hannah

"Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow." -Helen Keller

"Do you want me to tell you something really subversive?  Love is everything it's cracked up to be.  That's why people are so cynical about it.  It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.  And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more..." - Erica Jong

"Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding..." - Diane Arbus

(This one is possibly my most favorite:)
"Living involves tearing up one rough draft after another."  -Author Unknown

"The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen." -Frank Lloyd Wright

"There is power when individuals discover that no one is coming to rescue them-- that if they don't do something different, nothing in their life is going to get better. When the thought connects, it's electrifying.  A lot of people turn their ways, simply because they decided to stop waiting for help." -Nathaniel Branden

"Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notions of time; effaces all memory of beginning, all fear of an end." -Madame De Stael