32 Perfections

Spent a good part of the past week getting Sparky off to the airport for his son's graduation from UCLA. See sidebar for a photo of Sparky. The preparations included planting trees, bathing a big dog, and bailing buckets of water out of the nearly overflowing washing machine. And of course the usual mad searches for clean t-shirts, matching socks, an unbesmirched tie. Then the actual race to the airport, with me clutching the steering wheel, white-knuckled, driving faster than I ever have except on other trips to get Sparky to airports relatively on time. It was only when we were pulling onto the ramp for the airport that Sparky discovered he was wearing two different (even though incredibly similar) boots.
When I got back to the house after this adventure, I collapsed and ate Boston Chicken and watched X-Files, in no mood to drive the hour plus back to mum's.
Then, the next day, yesterday in fact, my 'friend' came to visit, it was that time of the month, you can apply whichever euphemism you prefer for menstruation. And it was one of the approximately 3 times a year that I am truly stricken by the process. All I wanted to do was lie down and moan. I did manage to get back to mum's and get a little work done, but I also have this tendency to become incredibly brain dead, unable to think of the words for common things like 'cup' and 'window.' I actually say things when I'm in this state like: "Could you open the...thing. You know, the thing to the outside. That you can see through. You know." Needless to say, I didn't post.
But it got me to thinking about the next exercise. Yesterday I had also read about a young Nepalese girl's visit to Washington. Sajani Shakya is a 10 year old living goddess. She is a goddess because she has 32 perfections. It is believed the goddess Kali inhabits her and will do so until she reaches puberty, when the goddess will leave her, and she'll be retired and get a pension. This is a real, true thing. Even the pension.
But will she still have 32 perfections after she reaches puberty? Will menstruating somehow wash away those perfections? Now, even though I can't remember the word for 'window' and sound like David Sedaris speaking French when I try to refer to one, I think I still have at least 32 perfections. Maybe 56. Maybe more. You do, too, even if you're a man and don't menstruate at all.
So, this exercise is called 32 Perfections. And it's simple -- just look around you, look inside you, and perform and Act of Attention to your 32 perfections. What is perfect about your life, your person, your mind, your dog (although that's really the dog's perfections, not yours)? Write them, draw them. If you don't have time for 32 this round, do what you can then take an extra five minutes every day for the next however many days, and do a couple until you're up to 32.

My perfections have to start with:
1)My ability to write, which gives me so much joy. To write and spill my guts, or write about the most delicate images, the violet wash of color in footprints in the snow.
2)My ability to see, just to see yellow. Just to see the wrinkles in my mum's face, all soft and powdery. The bursting, silky peony...

I have been saying I will share my Bake a Cake exercise, or some of it, anyway. Here it is...
Did not bake a cake. Mum doesn't like me to use the stove, because of electric bill. Or maybe that's an excuse, and she expects me to burn the house down.
So...went on an adventure instead. There are mills in Indian Orchard (I want to base an exercise just on that name, someday). The mills used to produce cloth. Mum says that she bought a lot of my clothes there when I was young. Jerseys. There don't seem to be jerseys anymore, at least no one calls them that. In any case, there was a factory outlet store at the mill. Also, I remember my dad saying that the Chicopee River, that runs through the Orchard, used to be a different color every day from the dye. Disgusting, but I wonder if it wasn't kind of pretty, too. The mills now house a rug outlet, and artist's studios and a gallery.
The Orchard is plastered with banners, purple with white lettering, that tout the artist mills, and oddly, a Titanic museum housed behind Henry Ochrymowicz's jewelry and watch repair store. I'd never been to either, so opted for the gallery which seemed more promising, somehow.
After a kind of creepy drive through an industrial complex, now mostly abandoned, with broken windows and pot-holed roads, I found it and it was wonderful. Once I parked in the lot that was weedy and surrounded by crumbling loading docks and stairs that led no where, I found the entrance and went in. It was lovely. I immediately stopped imagining being done in in the parking lot by knife-wielding men with stockings over their faces.
The space was huge, and light-filled, the old factory elements muted by white walls and sage colored upholstered benches. And of course, art in many media. There was a warren of studios as well as the gallery, down narrow hallways, with all kinds of more art hanging on the walls. There was:
1)a stained glass dog, maybe a Boston Terrier, vivid and humorous.
2) a representational woman in a draping pink gown, looking very Edwardian- upper- class- tea- party. "After Thomas Eakins," the caption said, and I could see why.
3) bluey-pink landscape, with snowy crest of hill.
4) brown cows in a field...