Postcards of Summer

Summertime~  

Come join me!  Jot down your favorite memories so far this summer.  Did you see where the sun was at sunset on June 21?  Go back to your favorite viewing spot and note it before you forget.  It's always fun to go back on December 21 and see where it sets then as well.  You'll see where the arc of the sun is in your part of the universe.  You can even trace it with your finger.  Do it on a piece of paper and you have the beginnings of a work of abstract art complete with  the concept behind it!  

Take photos when you can and slip them in an album...an electronic one counts.  Were you hot? Tired? Energized?  Did you eat something extra scrumptious?  Write it down!

I love long warm days which begin with a cool, misty fog.    When I took the photo you see above with the guard station in it, I had just finished a perfect day of painting.  I literally cried in gratitude for living such a charmed life. 

I love throwing myself into the cool waves after lazing around in the soft, warm sand. I ended this
perfect day painting the fading light with my dear friend Diane Gold.  We're both freckly types and enjoyed the surf and lounging around the beach in our wetsuits between painting sessions.  They are the BEST sunscreen and they are (slightly) more flattering than bikinis on, ahem, women of a certain age.  Diane, I love laughing  and painting with you!

Dinner at Nature's Grill.  I couldn't bring myself

to post a photo of my dinner so here's a not-food shot.

These summer days rush by far too fast.  But I've discovered something. Consider this.  Pause, wherever you are, at the end of a breath.  Look around and notice what surrounds you.  Be grateful.  Consider writing it down... Even just in your imagination.  Oddly enough, even if you never revisit what you've written, you'll anchor the memory and live it three times.  You'll slow time down.  The rushing will stop. Experience the thing once as it happens, twice as you notice it happening and three times as you write it down.  If you begin to do this in a cyclical way you'll notice your life becomes more like your breath.  The natural rhythm soothes and calms as it stretches out the hours.

Today I continued getting most of my worldly belongings together.  I have tidy stacks of treasures to unpack in my new place while this apartment looks like a clothes dryer, a cardboard recycling bin and a file cabinet got into a fight.  Nobody won.  No photos please....It's ugly.

Malibu Station #4 will be at the Hillcrest Center for the Arts

all summer and it's for sale.  You can own your own California 

beachfront property for pennies on the dollar.

My end of the day reward for accomplishing my goals was my dance class.   Tonight we grooved to old beach music, tunes like Heard it Through the Grapevine. We got slick with sweat and my muscles, which would often be sore after so much hauling "stuff" from one apartment to the other, were deliciously fluid.  

Now I'll go to sleep with the sounds of crickets and distant traffic, soft, cool sheets and a breeze from the window. Good night!