Words. Fruit. Flowers. Ink.

I heard a fantastic poem on the Garrison Keillor podcast today whilst on my morning run. One was about a couple who should be getting ready for bed, but instead open up another bottle of wine and enjoy each other's company into the wee hours even though they have to work the next day. I love poetry! I love words strung together in such a way that my eyes widen and my heart quickens, or I just sigh.

That got me thinking of all the mediums I and we as humans express ourselves in. Words are not so different from paint, or paint from glass or glass from dancing. Dancing is not so different from growing...fruit, vegetable, flowers. Such beauty in the form of each perfect or wonderfully imperfect form.

As I chose from a rainbow of Zinnias that a vendor had for sale at the farmers market today, she noticed me picking and pondering. "Are you having fun?" she asked good naturedly. I laughed, "Yes, they are beautiful." She said I should come to her house on a Friday night with a flashlight to see how much fun that was. I liked having that imagery in my head that these flowers were picked by flashlight the night before and certainly moonlight, too, because I remember seeing it shining on my kitchen floor. I caught a conversation she was having with another customer about tattoos, another medium we express ourselves in. A unique medium where the creator and bearer of the work are simultaneously expressing. She did not approve of someone who had a toadstool and flower on their leg wearing shorts to show it off and serving the public in some manner. I almost shared my thoughts on how people express themselves with her that had been rolling around my head all morning, but chose to be on my way and share my thoughts with you instead. Ink and flowers growing are not so different I would have told her. Both grow from a tiny speck - a dot of ink, a little seed - and become a full creation to behold.

P.S. I do not have a tattoo, but am enamored by the art. I just can't find something that I'd want to live with forever. I have a strange affection for my scars incurred during athletic adventures though. There is a tiny scar on my left pinky finger that I got from crashing my bike in the bushes on the island of Kauai in Hawaii. I will love it forever: Proof that will back up the fading memories when I am old.