I’m sitting here with my morning coffee, a flicker of fire warming the room while the dark windows slowly lighten. A wash of pale blue carpet spills like a tropical sea at my feet as I gaze at all the things I love gathered over a lifetime around the room.

So many shades of blue!

So much carved wood!

All this texture.

All curated and choreographed to please the eye, please me when my gaze rests upon them.

I’m looking at an antique vase filled with African Violets.

I’m looking at the carved wooden scroll on the leather couch.

I’m looking at a dried floral arrangement in a turquoise bowl set on a pile of art books. That photo of a stormy sea.

Why do I take such delight in these things?

The intricate design of a beaded turquoise tapestry, and the blue bowls filled with treasure gathered from the beaches where we sailed.

The brass nails and trim on the coffee table chest with its intricate golden grain.

Violets in blue bowl surrounded by blue rocks on a crocheted doily.

Details! Details! Why do I love them so? Why do they matter? Why do I matter–my tastes, my treasures, my obsessions? Why do you?

We just do! We just do! No purpose. No reason. Just each singular thing juxtoposed against another, in harmony with each other, singing its song, being what it is, just for itself. No more than that.

And me? The curator, the choreographer, the lover, entranced with the beauty of it all, loving each color, each texture, each detail. Loving its song and the way it makes me feel, touching something deep inside, this thrill of being: This simple, astute and sacred sense of self-so-ness. Being me deeply.

I wrote this several days ago and hesitated posting it. It sounded too me, me, me. Why would anyone want to read this? Even I wasn’t sure what it meant, why those words “me, being deeply” came to me with such clarity and passion.

Then I read this in an interview with poet Ada Limón:

“There’s sometimes a misconception that poetry only deals with self and autobiography,” she told Tricycle. “But if you spend your life devoted to noticing and to looking, your sense of self begins to dissolve, because you’re looking outward, and then you recognize that things are looking back at you.”

“When you’re deeply looking at something, you’re loving it. And I think that when you do that, whether it’s with a person or a nonhuman animal or a plant or a tree, it is a way of witnessing and being witnessed.”

Things looking back at you! A way of witnessing and being witnessed!

Yes! That’s exactly what this is all about: me looking at things and loving them, and them looking back and loving me. I realized the emphasis isn’t on “me being deeply,” but “me being deeply.” Being so much more than this “me.” Being one with the things I love that love me back. One with the artists and crafts people who painted and glazed that vase, blew life into that turquoise bowl, chose the beads to sew into that tapestry, carved those scrolls, varnished and polished that wooden chest to a golden glow.

And what of the rocks and shells and violets? Who designed and crafted and loved them into being?

I realize now that what I’m loving in all these things is so much deeper and wider than myself. There’s a whole crowd of lovers here who loved what they wrought and put it out into the world for others to love too–seeking a receptive mind and heart. And I responded. I saw them and loved them, brought them into my home, and found the perfect places to display them. Just so I could sit here and admire them, love them, and feel them looking back and loving me too.

A circle completed.

Limón referred to it as a de-centering of the self. Perhaps. Or perhaps a rounding out. Or discovering a deeper self that draws us all together and loves what it gathers.

Each detail matters because its part of a larger tapestry that would not be complete without each of us. That’s why all this matters.

You. Me. Everything.

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When Things Go Missing

“A Novel about Everything that Matters”

That’s how my agent introduced When Things Go Missing when she sent it to acquisitions editors, as a novel about everything that matters. It’s what I used as a tagline when I published it. I don’t know that this book is about everything that matters to anyone but me, but the fact that she felt that way meant a lot. Find out for yourself is she was right. It’s available at Amazon, Amazon UK, Amazon AUS, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble and other major outlets.