Bounty of Beautiful Things

This week I am on a media fast. I will not read the New York Times that is so conveniently delievered to my inbox every morning. I will not pick up the local paper or pore over the many news outlets that I have been gorging myself on for quite a while now. Why do I choose this brief period of ignorance? Why do I close my eyes and ears to the worsening state of the world? Well, because when you stop seeing the beauty of things and people and you stop reading books just for the sake of reading them, when you can't enjoy food because people in Haiti eat dirt, when you can't sleep at night, when nothing evokes laughter in you, when you can't even come up with three beautiful things in your day to day life it is time to step back and see what is going wrong. Somewhere in the vast equation of my life (and I have never had a hand for math) something is going terribly awry and throwing everything else off balance. I suppose this is why I dislike math more than any other subject I can think of: when you make even one, tiny, silly misstep in a long equation you will, without fail, get a completely wrong answer.

I have been on the media fast for two days now and already I am seeing things to be thankful for. My mood has lightened, my laughs come easier, and I can taste really delicious food again. I am still not sleeping very well, but I assume that will come with time. Amazing what a little abstinence can do. In honor of this renaissance I am posting as many beautiful things as come to mind at this moment. Enjoy, and Happy Valentine's Day.

1.) eating really briny olives and spitting out the pit
2.) watching an episode of Blue Planet and realizing that your mouth is hanging open
3.)listening to old episodes of This American Life while working on an art project
4.)yesterday I realized that today is Valentine's Day and so used that excuse to cancel a meeting
5.) having one really dedicated member in my student organization (The UNCA
Feminist Collective)
6.)flipping through Gourmet magazine and planning my next cooking adventure
7.)filling out paperwork for the Habitat for Humanity build week I am going on the first week in
March to New Orleans
8.)blog hunting on the web
9.)writing letters and not sending them; then writing better letters and sending them
10.)thoughtful e-mails received on a bad day
11.)finding out that your little sister is finally dating a mature member of the male persuasion
12.)for the first time in weeks, not feeling stressed
13.)reading about folk remedies
14.)thoughts of the goat farm and how March will herald the birth of the babies
15.)not having to buy gas for five weeks and still going strong