Haircut

I got a haircut today. I've always had 'good' hair. It's thick, curly and brown. Interestingly enough it's new, curlier personality only showed itself in the last several years. Before that my hair was bone straight. I've heard since then that people's hair often reinvents itself. Who knew? Anyways, right now my hair looks like Adam Sandler's ex-girlfriend from Wedding Singer. A little bit rocker. Alanna, my hairstylist (and one of my best friends) blew it out straight. So at this moment I resemble a middle-aged rocker from the eighties. Not sure if that's what I was going for, but until my next shampoo and my curls reclaim their right to my hair I'll try to own the rocker thing.

This is a picture of my refrigerator. We all have one. Some are clean, white and unadorned. Mine is covered with the evidence of a life well lived. I often admire the orderliness of other people's lives. I visit my mother-in-law (who, by the way, is an amazing woman) and leave feeling the sharp sting of inadequacy as I hold the tidiness of her life up to the well worn chaos of mine. I long for the days when there is no dog hair on my clean black blouse or there are no dishes left next to the computer by my lovely young daughter, but inevitably I'm left believing that when my life is as orderly as hers I will long for the chaos once again. Lately I daydream about going to Europe. That part of me that longs to be an artist is also inexplicably drawn to the old churches and beautiful architecture of Europe. I am finally grown up enough to perhaps afford a trip to Europe, but cannot find my way clear to booking the travel. Maybe I'm afraid of being disappointed. Maybe I'm just afraid. Period. Who knows? But for whatever reason, I cannot seem to take out my big, grown-up credit card and settle on a destination. My husband and I recently made out bucket lists. It was borne of a rough patch in our marriage where we both seemed to realize that we needed to feel more alive, more challenged by our days. My bucket list included two sculptures that I must see in person. The first is La Pieta which has found its home at St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. Now I am not a Christian, but when I first saw this sculpture I was struck by it in a very personal way. Here is Mary, a mother, holding her dead son. Her strength is almost overshadowed by the frailty of his body. If it were my child, my dead child, I would feel just as she looks. Lost and confounded. The second sculpture is the Winged Victory of Samothrace at the Louvre. Like millions of others before me, I'm drawn to the statue of the Greek goddess out of a visceral impulse. I have always felt like an outsider when talking about God. I don't believe, in any traditional sense of the word, in God. I am convinced that life is more than the sum of its parts; that we are more than the sum of our parts, but to believe that there is a grand orchestrator, I cannot. There are times that I know a peace that is so much more than I could ever explain in words...but I cannot attribute this peace to an omnipotent being that exists separate from me or anyone else. Art is further evidence that a higher purpose exists. Sometimes when I look at beautiful artwork, I'm moved in a way that prayer has never moved me. Art expresses something that words cannot.