Something That I Wrote (Saturday Walk in the Snow)

Saturday Walk in The Snow

“This is hard,” I say, pathetically. The hill is steeper than I thought. Plus, I'm thirsty. And I'm wondering, on a scale of 1 to 10, how socially awkward it would be for me to stop and eat some of the freshly fallen snow.

“We can turn back,” he says. He's always more compassionate than I; I would have just said, “Suck it up.” 

I point forward breathlessly. “No,” I say. “I want to make it to the stream.”

Steps later (trudges, really), we arrive. In warmer weather, this particular stream looks to me as though it has been plucked out of a museum. It's Nature's finest display of what perfect photo backdrops Earth is capable of creating. Today, it's even prettier than it has ever been. Water trickles beneath a ceiling of frozen summer days, which has a crystalizing effect that amplifies the beauty. It's summer, spring, fall, and winter all in one.

We stand and admire it: the entire scene. The stream, the trees, the snow, the quiet. The sound of the running water. Speaking of which, I am still thirsty, and stopping here has made me even more aware of the white, fluffy, potentially refreshing stuff that surrounds us.

What if I were to eat it, seriously, I ask myself. Would he think it was childish, maybe? Weird, at the very least? Even if he thought it, I really don't think he'd say anything. And, I mean, he has seen me at my worst: we are getting married, after all.

But what would he really be thinking? His parents have just departed from visiting us, and while they were here we did grown up things like drink wine and nibble on cheese and talk about fiscal cliffs. So what would it be, now, to eat snow? Even if he wasn't going to say something, what would he be thinking?

This back and forth about how such an action might be perceived tick tocks in my mind for a moment or two, but, soon it's out of my control I feel one of my hands slip a musty mitten off of the other.

 The exposed hand plunges into the powdery goodness of a roadside snowpile near the pristine stream.

 It melts in my mouth. It's solid and liquid all at once. Refreshing.  Better than any glass of water anywhere ever.

 It's wonderful.

A moment passes and I wonder if I should say something like, “Sorry, you are marrying a child. It was indeed immature and possibly gross of me to eat snow off of the side of a road, but I just couldn't help myself, I was thirsty, and...”

Oh, maybe I should just say nothing.

I look to the sophistocated snow-covered woods: The frosted trees are poetry in frozen motion. As I admire their regal stillness, I wonder who will say what next, or what he's thinking. Of me, or about anything.

But, then,

Out of the corner of my eye, I watch as in one swift move, his hand plunges in and then reaches up toward his mouth. And just like that, he too takes a bite/sip of this silent, icy, beautiful afternoon.

“Man,” he says with a happy sigh. “I really love eating snow.”

I smile, and take another bite, and then so does he. 

And it's refreshing; all of it.

Better than any glass of water, anywhere, ever.

Love What You Do

One year ago today, my fiance and I moved from Brooklyn to Vermont.  When we made the decision to move, we experienced several puzzled expressions on the faces of friends and family members.  "But... why?  Aren't you supposed to live in New York City?  You're a writer and a filmmaker.  What's in Vermont?" 

The move from Brooklyn to Vermont was about a lot of things for me, but one of the biggest ones was hitting a "reset" button on my passion as an artist and on my spirit as a person.  A lot of the things that make me inspired weren't present in Brooklyn. For an artist, that's dangerous territory.  We survive on inspiration - it is the marrow of our livelihood.  And the subsequent absence of the royal jelly called dreaming was taking its toll on me in a big way.

Hindsight makes me seem worse than [I hope] I actually was, but by last spring, I was getting really anxious about the fact that without inspiration, my artist self was slipping away.  An artsy, weird, nerdy little girl I once knew was being replaced by a grumpy, frustrated, jaded weirdo.  The result was a ball of confusion that was unfortunately housed in my body and was interacting with other people as me.  And clarity as to what was causing it was getting less and less obtainable with every day I spent away from sweeping parks, the sound of crickets, and the smell of firewood in winter air.  I'd been consistently away from the things that fuel my inspiration for so long that I had forgotten their potential effect on me.  Instead, I was starting to think mean and grumpy was just "how I was".

This was a make or break moment, really.  A few more months and that once inspired little girl might have been permanently trapped inside a furrowed brow, destined to ride subways for the rest of time.  But then one day on a train that was crawling up the Hudson, the former version of myself, the artist, sat down next to me.  She whispered something to me that I can't believe I heard.

What if to revive that artsy nerdy girl, I needed to go in pursuit of the things that made me tick? What if I could be inspired again?  What if I just needed to let myself be?

She whispered her idea directly into my consciousness. Then that piece of me - the artist - disappeared into a melting sunset.

But she wasn't gone, yet.  I just had go to find her.

Over the past year, I have been teaching myself to discover and embrace the things that make me "me".  The things that make my artist heart flutter and stir a pen to sprawl romantic flights of fancy onto a page.  For me, that ongoing discovery has been driven by being away from where I was. While I was there, I couldn't see it.  Riding the subway, I couldn't know that if I were to instead take some of my favorite songs for a long drive in the countryside, I'd remember that winding roads and beautiful music are an inspiring combination to me.  I couldn't know, in apartment air filled with the conversations of passersby and neighbors, that it's only in pure quiet that I can hear my characters speak.  My hungry stomach couldn't remember that although delivered pad thai is indeed quite good, a homemade tomato cream sauce that takes hours to create is oh so good.  I had to come here and do those things in order for them to work their way back into my soul.

But this blog really isn't (I say after so many words,) about Brooklyn or Vermont.  That's just what contributed to all of it for me.  Nevertheless, it feels appropriate that on this first day of my second year here, I am officially re-launching the Love What You Do blog.  In its new iteration, this blog is fully dedicated to the idea that the more we embrace the things we each love, the more fulfilled our spirits will be.  That fulfillment is what lets us dance, laugh, and sing.  It's what lets us enjoy one another.  When inspiration meets inspiration, magic happens. Happiness happens.  We happen.

Love What You Do is a creative space dedicated to inspiration. It is a collection of things that inspired me and projects, foods, recipes, and ideas that might inspire you.

In life and in writing, I am (now, again,) all about the details.  I think it's the little stuff in life that makes our world colorful and exciting.  From appreciating the poetry in tiny moments to making something as simple as breakfast at home feel special, I strive to embrace the details in my life.  I hope to inspire readers of this blog to do so too.

❤Lauren