Complexity

I always meant to read Anna Karenina. My handsome navy blue leather bound edition is evidence of that fact.  Yet I know why I've not yet jumped at the opportunity. The book itself is more than two inches wide.  It's heavy. The pages are dark with dense writing and long paragraphs.  And the page count: a whopping 736. Last Sunday, we attended a brand new theater adaptation of the novel which peaked my curiosity and moved the daunting book to the top of my list.

To me, a play becomes brilliant when it evolves into something more, when it reveals feelings and ideas in a new way, and best of all, when it delivers me to a place beyond my seat in the theater, if only for a few moments.

In this case, I could never get past the fact that I was watching actors on a stage marking their places, conveying their gestures and delivering their lines.  It was enjoyable, well-acted and well-staged, yet the portrayal seemed too basic and uncomplicated to truthfully reveal the depth of feeling this searing story about our human imperfections must possess.

I can't help but think that inside this celebrated novel, there must be a stunning richness of passion and thought and conflict and ideas that are inherent in making the often difficult choice to follow your heart.  And that it's the complexity of all these things playing against each other that creates brilliance and delivers true artistic power.

In a week where I've sometimes felt like a one-sided caricature, my mind focused on my professional life, on the changing of profiles and email addresses, on setting up my new space, and on the unsettled nature of this in-between time, I received an email from a dear friend with a great line in it. "I think of you as a lover of gardens!" 

For more than 20 years, Deb and I have had a fun friendship formed by proximity and revolving around our gardens and our cats. We were the only two in our traditional suburban neighborhood who opted for a purposefully unruly look that involved paths and stones and plants tumbling over one another rather than green lawns and shrub-filled borders. Our gardens were places of constant change as we moved, divided and added, in an attempt to create beauty and form. And we never did get rid of all the weeds.

Last year, in an inspiring search for a fulfilling endeavor, she left our now familiar corner to live and work in a 90-year old farmhouse on 10 acres at the coast.  Stunningly overgrown and in disrepair, she took on the unimaginably difficult task of wrestling the charm of the place out of wildness. Already, you can see the results of a wonderful passion and energy.  And you can feel how the marvelous complexity of thoughts and ideas that led to taking this leap is adding beauty to the world.

It's a nice reminder that we all carry wonderful complexities that can be seen in the diversity of things we choose to do and create. And that many things worth doing are probably not all that simple, and without the imperfections, maybe not nearly as interesting either.

And now to find the time for some more reading....