Wednesday

Although she has a consequentialness about her, this particular lemon is quite lovely.

This is a sentence I wrote a while back during a calligraphy class at Lauren's house. Instead of practicing the alphabet as I should be doing [seemingly, my dear friend and teacher Lauren doesn't mind such rebelliousness], I often write the lines: Lemons are lovely. I love lemons. Sometimes, though, I write a sentence like this one that comes to mind during such meanderings of the hand.

Most of the time, however, I revert to my standard lemon imagery. Over and over again, in my best calligraphic hand, I write: Lemons are lovely. I love lemons. I do this kind of practicing my calligraphy mainly because I am very good at capital Ls. Creating endless lines of capital lemony words soothes me. But I also write these words because I adore / love lemons. Their taste. Their visual beauty. Their "consequentialness." The comfort and constancy they provide for me.

Lemons in childhood. All of the different kinds of [mediterranean] salads my mother made garnished with fresh lemon juice. A lonely lemon tree in the way back yard of our house on Granville. Lemons in my adult life abound. One if not two lemons for my beautiful salads each night. A light green bowl full of freshly picked lemons on my kitchen counter--though they probably should be refrigerated--just for their beauty. Lemons growing just outside my kitchen window on the tree I planted circa 1978. Keeping track of the flowers and buds that turn into babies, green adolescents, and then yellow grown-ups. My/this lemon tree forever trying/wanting to fill the view from the window. Shanan [without permission] and Francisco [with permission] and I [by merely reaching out the open window] trimming the branches to insure the sky has some room to provide light and warmth for me each day.

My lemons, including the particular one I imagined when I practiced my calligraphy at Lauren's, offer up beauty for me. Their consequentalness and loveliness mark what has come and will come from their constancy, their steady offerings of joy for me.