Coloring Inside the Lines

There's a scene in "The Story of Us" where Michelle Pfeiffer's character is talking about her love for a children's book called Harold and the Purple Crayon. If you haven't read it, you should. But here's the skinny:


A little boy named Harold has trouble sleeping, and to entertain himself, takes his magic purple crayon and draws the world exactly as he'd like it to be. Eventually, he draws his way back to his bedroom and falls asleep, content with the world.


This is pretty utopian, I know, but it's not a bad way to consider your way of being in the world. Think about it: if you can manifest the things that you want in your life, the way you want your personal world, your sphere, to be, you can create the contentment you seek. That's what I'm going for, even if it doesn't always work out that way.


Lately, I've been thinking about Harold and his magic purple crayon. In the same way that you can draw your world around you, you can also draw yourself into a box that separates you from everything that should be the most important. The crayon, then, is a blessing as well as a curse. Crayon drawings are hard to erase in reality, but in Harold's world, if you drew the wrong thing, you could fix it. In life, that's not true.


What is true, in Harold's world and the one we all inhabit, is that you can't draw something for someone else. No matter how much you want to, no matter how much better you think you could do it. We're all in charge of our own crayon.

Happiness is a Warm Puppy

I think that sometimes having a dog is a very selfish thing. Unlike cats, dogs thrive on your love and attention. They need it. You have to be available to a dog in a way that you don't with a cat. And so, even when you don't feel like you deserve that kind of adoration yourself, the kind of worship a dog offers, you've got it. Which can be a good thing in dark moments.


Parker has spent the past week or so obeying commands (this is a true feat) and sleeping curled on the bed next to me. He follows me around the apartment, all 20 feet of it, and watches me from the futon in the kitchen while I work all day. It's almost as if he knows I'm sick with a cold, and have trouble sleeping, and feel overwhelmed by life. The selfish part is that he's getting me through it with walks and playtime at the dog park, instead of a bottle of wine and a vat of ice cream.


Although he did kind of look like he was judging me while I ate frosting with a spoon this afternoon.... must have been my imagination.