December Red #2

December 31, 2007

Filed in: The Home Front, The Middle Ages

I know what you’re thinking: this entry has nothing whatsoever to do with The 50th State, she’s just here to brag about the perfect little Christmas present she got from her way-cool husband.

And it’s true, it’s hard for me not to be a bit puffed up with pride, and I understand completely if you feel a little jealous. Look:

This is December Red #2. It’s a tiny little oil on a wood panel, an exquisitely sized 7.5 x 7.5 inches unframed (as it shall remain). Fetching is I think the word you might be looking for.

It’s by Ellen Granter, an artist who shows at the Copley Society of Art (among other places) but who doesn’t seem to have a web site of her own, or anyways one that a little casual Googling can find. (Confidential to Ellen: girlfriend! Fix that! With the traffic this blog gets, you could be rich by this time next week.)

What is so beautiful about December Red #2? It’s off-center, but not in an obvious, attention-grabbing, trying-too-hard kind of way, rather in a way that makes off-center seem like the natural new center.

It’s quiet and ordinary, and it’s unembarrassed and unapologetic about those things. It’s endearing, self-contained, equal parts shy and defensive, but also, in a stubborn way, self-confident, as if it’s saying, Yep, this is my little piece of the world, and I’m staying in it.

So too, dearest future readers, with The 50th State! I’m all about quiet and ordinary and shy and defensive—after all, I’m trying hard to get to North Dakota and Kansas, for cripesake, not dumping my husband and traipsing off to Bali.

If you ID’d that last sentence as a vicious and unwarranted attack on Eat, Pray, Love, you’re correct. I read and enjoyed EPL, along with about 2 billion other people, but The 50th State is not that book.

The The 50th State is for the ones who stay married, or stay at their jobs, or stay in their house with the rotting bulkhead and the leaky shower door. We got dreams too, oh mega-best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert, it’s just that we can’t quit everything for a solid year and upend the lives of everyone around us to fulfill them.

So this is where The 50th State is coming from…a little planning here, a little dreaming there, inching forward and falling back, and forgetting the whole thing every now and again. Not an eagle on the wing by any stretch, but a sparrow, on the ground, with a resolute little puddle of shadow underneath.