So, what do I love?

playing guitar
writing
writing songs
writing poetry
creativity-based counseling/mentoring
cooking
walking
sewing

Alright, so the theme, excepting walking, is creating stuff, whether it's music or poems or articles or meals or clothes or whatever else I dream up that I want to create. I have to be engaged in some kind of creative act or I'm not happy. No wonder I sucked at every job I ever had, save this last one, where I get to use my brain for whatever I want about half the time I'm there - and I get paid no less for using it.

So far I have managed to combine some of these loves quite nicely. Song-writing, for example. And writing about guitars. Poetry sometimes turns into lyrics, though not all that often. The mentoring part is cool; I get to help other people create their own stuff. Gotta love that.

Cooking is often compared to music - you lay down a groove, and play with ingredients and seasonings like they're notes or phrases. A stew becomes an edible jam session. A casserole is an ensemble piece. The dough rises like a saxophone solo. The colors in a soup become individual melodic lines. In the summer, we used to make Garden Soup. Fresh veggies, right out of the garden: green beans, peas, corn, onion, broccoli and cauliflower in a veggie or chicken stock, cooked until JUST tender, and then at the very end add a little red cabbage and a chopped up tomato, and the broth turns magenta, and all the colors sing like angels.

Sewing is also sort of a jam session; texture, color, pattern, detailing. There's a structure to a jacket, and very strict rules to follow so that it drapes a body properly, accentuating the curves of the body, drawing or deflecting attention at will, but the detailing is all about expression. I have fabric love. I love interesting textures and woven patterns. I love the way certain fabrics drape sensuously, while other fabrics freakin' testify. It's a marvel to me how it's all done, how the warp and weft of simple threads can result in such dramatically different looks and feels.

Walking, on the other hand, is like a spiritual thing. In my mind, Nature and God cannot be separated or distinguished, so walking out in the woods becomes very prayerful and meditative for me. I once stayed at a hermitage out in the woods for an entire week where there was a "labyrinth" that could be walked as a meditation. I must have walked that thing 100 times. It was bliss.

There are other things that I love, but these are the biggies, the ones I could be happy doing for the rest of my life. Okay, brain needs to settle a bit now.