a life full of love and other things

here's an old poem to get things goin' again. 

don't forget the good behind you. 

***

a life full of love and other things.

I think about the first car trip we took (you and me)

in the wide open spaces of Indiana land.

The happy fall sun would drip all over our bodies

as we sing and walk and talk and marvel that we found each other.

Then, it was just you and me

in a different time and a different world.

I still think about those car trips

where we would drive for hours.

I would lean over and kiss your mouth on the side

and you were charming (as always, my dear)

and I was at home, with you.

You loved me back to life

and today, a thousand years later

I am still only at home when I am with you.

It was an other time in the world then.

Things were simpler,

purer and funnier.

And as we got older and more of the world

we saw,

we realized things needed to get funnier.

We had to learn to laugh everyday.

if we didn't laugh, we cried.

Cause things seemed to get sort of serious for a few years,

people died, divorced, got hurt, and things got really broken...

And even today, so many years later, we are still sitting in the car

you and me

small lovers in the big world

and I still lean over to kiss your wrinkly face and perfect mouth (on the side)

and we talk and laugh about the state of the world

the money we spent

the money we saved

and where we should eat dinner tonight.

I will always say you loved me back to life. 

© 2011 Lauren Stamper

the coach

I wrote this poem below, "The Coach," in response to a friend of mine who, out of the blue, lost their dear friend in the middle of one starry night. This death, although personally removed from me left me shocked and reminded of how fragile we are....

In four nights time, Tuesday night, I wake up to use the bathroom because I drink too much water Monday night with dinner. That night we have tender pieces of filet steak that I decide to pick up on the way home from work. I call my husband (he has been the love of my life for years) from the car and tell him that I feel like meat (He always loves that idea). I love how he cooks meat- no one cooks meat like him. It's always just how I like it- a little red-ish inside. I only buy organic meat. When we were young and poor, still building our lives in the early years, we decided to rarely eat meat so we could afford the good stuff when we did eat it. So that's how we kept it. Organic, grass fed meat - delicious. Over dinner that Monday night we will sit and talk about our day, the kids, the song he started to write, and the book I started to read, A Severe Mercy. The book is a memoir written by a friend of C.S. Lewis', Sheldon Vanauken. It is the love story between him and his wife, Davy, and includes eighteen letters from Lewis to his friend. Tomorrow my best friend gives it to me and I start it on Sunday, two days from now, and by Monday night I am already heavily immersed. It's a slow read, but I'm thinking I'll probably have it done in two or three weeks. That will be just in time to start the book club my best friend and I have been talking about. Over dinner we decide to have a glass of red wine (We love red wine). Maybe that's why I end up waking up in the night to pee? Well, it's actually going to be the water I gulp right before dinner with my pro-biotic pills I have started to take. Pro-biotics are very good for you. They put billions of good bacteria back into your body. We will go to bed around 10:30ish, have some pillow talk, kisses, and "I love you." A few hours later (3:37 a.m.) I wake up to go to the bathroom. Sometimes I wake up my lover next to me and sometimes I don't. That night I will wake him slightly. I walk into the bathroom and then I get a sharp pain in my chest. Then, apparently, I fall over in the bathroom, and I'm gone. Just like that. He runs into the bathroom after I don't respond to him calling my name, but I can't even describe the look on his face. It's horrifying. In that instant he just lost everything. I actually don't see his face from here. It's probably better that way.

This afternoon I am standing here drinking a cup of Twinnings English Breakfast tea at our kitchen island. I have my black tea with a little milk and no sugar. There is no expiry date on the carton and I think that's strange. I am figuring out if we should do Thai or Italian for dinner tonight, and next Friday night people are standing over me weeping. Their tears are very fresh - they fall more from shock more than deep grief. The feelings will come in a month or so from now.

You never know when she will take you home. Live well. Love well. Eat well.

© 2011 Lauren Stamper

my week with Marilyn

Last night I watched a movie called "My Week With Marilyn." It was a beautiful film. Michelle Williams was a fantastic Miss Monroe and her portrayal of the icon showed how lost and broken down she really was. The film takes place during the filming of a movie Monroe made with Sir Laurence Olivier, and reveals the tormented nature of this magical woman and her soul. It was a pretty and sad film, and it makes me stop and wonder what pain and fear lies behind the smiling eyes all around us.

Although Miss Monroe lead a unique and extraordinary existence (one we can't compare our normal - somewhat normal - lives with) there is still truth to be taken. One never knows what demons people are facing. Everyone has a story, and sometimes those closest to us are hiding pain and torment we can't even begin to imagine.

In some ways the world expertly pretends that things are all a-okay. Being pretend has become a fine form for some of us. But the truth is the world broken down and people are breaking down with it. The next time you don't understand someone, stop, take a moment and open your eyes to what may be happening behind theirs.

***

love and marriage goes together like a horse and carraige

Tomorrow, March 9th, it will be four years since I married Bob. We got married on Jones Bay Wharf on a Sunny (not so much today) Sydney Sunday evening. It was lovely.
Geez, I love this guy.
Bob, you are the sweetest, most kind-hearted soul I know. You have a big heart and a genius mind and I want to be like you when I grow up.

Here is a poem I wrote him a couple years ago. Our friend (Nate) printed it for us in his ridiculously beautiful penmanship, and it hangs on our bedroom wall. Nate's wife (Jaynie) says that the most important thing about love is staying in love. And I quite agree. I think love matters and means the most when it's boring and mundane but remains.

Enjoy.

***

something for love

and every day I am happy to be with you, my dear
sitting opposite each other sipping coffee
waking up to you
saying goodnight to you
dreaming as I lay next to you
driving in the car with you
solving our problems
one ride at a time

and you, my dear,
will never go away
and I will never go away
and we will be the same two lovers
song-birds even
singing our songs of hope

it will never end
and we will go on singing
until we finally arrive where we are heading…
home.


© 2011 Lauren Stamper

cosmos in chaos

My silence is no reflection of some still calm ordered existence right now. I'm quite the mess, and honestly, my head and heart haven't been this full of emotion-I-could-burst for quite some time. All around me is the juxtaposition of cosmos and chaos. Order and Insanity. Beginnings and Endings. Love and loss. I know I say this often, but it's more true to me everyday: life is everything all at once. And I am full.

It seems the people I love most (those special special ones who make up my insides) seem to be either fighting grown up battles no grown up should have to fight, or living the best years of their lives...(giving birth to perfect little babies planning weddings and other sweet excetera's ...) And some are doing it all at once. It's a constant roller coaster - the highs and lows of the human heart and existence. Sometimes, just sometimes, life will throw a bone and hand you one 'thing' at time, but right now it's all of it and it's all happening now. And my heart is full for the ones I love.

The longer I live the more I believe that nothing is more important than the people you love. Nothing has more access to the heart and soul than another human heart, and, over the course of your life, if you are brave enough to let even just one person in, you'll have to grow a big heart and wide arms... because life is messy and grey. You must be able to take deep breaths, call on divine strength and realize that there is nothing more rewarding and fulfilling than keeping a tight grip on someone's hand and pulling them through the fire.

It's amazing what kicks in when the chips are down and you have to survive. Even if we're all just hanging on by a thread.

to the sea (part one)

A few days ago my husband released a single on iTunes. It's a song called "To The Sea." And, just like it's author, it's beautiful.

He wrote it about us. About a boy and a girl who meet, fall in love, follow each other to different parts of the world and find themselves mostly nesting beside the sea. The two of us have actually followed each other to lots of different places. The glamourous and the not so glamourous. We met in a small country town, moved and married amongst the beaches of Sydney, hopped on a plane a few months after we said "I do" to LA, jumped on a tour bus, slept from hotel to hotel, moved to the stunning ocean hills of Malibu California (with our besties), ended up in an apartment in Santa Monica, lugged our stuff back to the city of Indianapolis, and now here we are: back to Sydney living in a borrowed house driving a borrowed car. Oh dear. Try to explain and define love? I don't think so.

I think maybe love is a bit like the sea... the constant ebb and flow, the calm, the chaos, the divine, the earth. It's everything and one thing all at once.
I don't know much about love, but I know this... no one wants to be alone. Love is about not feeling alone.

One of my all time favourite songs is by one of our fave bands called Dawes. It's called, 'A Little Bit of Everything,' and one line sums it all up magnificently. "I think that love is so much easier than you realize. If you can give yourself to someone then you should."

And while I'm on my song kick, also download "I'll follow You" by Jon McLaughlin. Talk about a love song. I probably didn't even need to write this blog. I could have just put a link to that song - it says it all.

Good night x

the world

I was thinking of this beautiful Blacklist Studio print (www.blackliststudio.com, by the way) this week and started pondering the big wide world we live in. The world is so full. It's one big beautiful mess of people, places, lunches, dinners, boyfriends, girlfriends, heartache, happiness, hope and a lot of hopelessness.

It's everything all at once.

Life is a bit like that sometimes - the world seems to be on your side one day, and the next day you pick up the phone and all of a sudden you're in a situation you wish you would wake up from ... the next moment your best friend makes you laugh through your broken-hearted tears.

It's everything all at once.

And sometimes amidst it all, pieces of yourself get lost along the way - the world can drain the life out of you and you have to remember who you are. Don't lose what's real about you. Hold onto the stuff that brings you joy, be able to take walks alone, find a best friend who is a better person than you, and if you can find someone to give yourself to then you should (I took that last line from one of my favourite songs- more about that later).

That's the kind of stuff that life can try to take from you if you let her. So while the world is a big and deep place (but getting smaller and more shallow) hold on to the real you.

Don't let the wrong things and people about the world define you.