Much Love Monday

On Saturday, I had lunch with a friend in a restaurant raised far above the city. We could see the river in the distance, and the string of cars that glinted like diamonds across the bridge in the midday sun. My friend spoke of crystal staircases on luxury liners and how when she walked down a beach one early morning this summer, she came upon a young boy drawing hearts with two initials joined by an ampersand.
The lunch was drawn out, almost like an exercise in zen, with pauses before each course, to feast the eyes as well as the stomach. A conversation about writing genres was the leitmotif. Why is it that some are drawn to write poetry, others not? My friend said she's drawn to the epistolary form, she cannot imagine writing to people she does not know... Which can give us pause to thought: is that not what we are doing here, quite often, on the internet?... Lunch was punctuated by a slice of cheese cake, and snippets we caught of another conversation being held in English somewhere else.
When my friend addressed "the low cost of human life in some countries," she did so at the end of our lunch, when we'd already returned to the noisy streets below. This bracket of reality, that needed to be addressed after what happened last week, was set as an unpleasant aside to what is vital to life: cultivating inspiration and the strength of soul. For if we keep looking at the ugliness, might our faces not turn to stone in unhappy expressions, just like those in children's stories? Still, my friend addressed the sadness, if only to brush it away, having put it in its place...
It is true that if we rose above things all the time, we would lose touch with reality, but sometimes living well is a question of knowing how and when to be engaged, and how to spare ourselves from unnecessary noise.
So, for today's Much Love Monday, I love lunches that are shared with friends some place high above it all when such respite is most needed. Sometimes, it is important to dream, and to dream with all one's strength.

While there were so many photos to choose from for this week's post, I chose this fantastical interior from Marie Claire Maison (see the unexpected hearts round the mantel?), for the images seemed to represent the happiness of the soul, which is something internal, interior. If we can cultivate that space, we will better navigate our adventures in the outside world, better keep ourselves from capsizing, for the walls are not built to keep things out, but to keep the beautiful interior intact.

Elements: glitter circles, heart tape, 

arrow and medallion shape: pugly pixel.