Simply Sunday - Perspective, herons and crows, flamingos, and a tiny book on happiness

A roundup from a birthday week, with hilltop vistas offering just the right balance

Happy Sunday! It means so much to me that you open this email and spend a few minutes reading these words each week. Thank you.

Writing over the course of the week, I often start out with questions that are then answered in the progression of days. Sometimes I change my mind. Sometimes I make a discovery that completely changes what I think. Sharing the dotted map, the bird walking, and the little off-roads—or letting you see the forest ahead—is part of my process. It’s the difference between this “thing” you are about to read and the TL;DR of it: I saw some birds. I had a good birthday. I’ll make a list.

One is probably too long.

One is much too short. It leaves out so very much of the texture, the living.

It might even contain the wrong highlights.

If you are here, reading, I think you probably want something in between. Maybe following the bold words can help you skip around.

If we start at the end, I will say, it was a very good birthday. It could have gone either way. For most of the day, It didn’t look like it had a chance. A walk changed everything. And when I thought about it the morning after, and thought to myself that it had been a really good day, it was clear that what mattered was the time. Time spent sitting on a mountain mattered. After that, what left me smiling at the end of the day was the time we spent, first on a walk (and there were herons), then playing guitar, having dinner, telling old stories, laughing over some pulled tarot cards, and playing a game of cribbage. It was the time, the laughter, the sense of togetherness. These things seem rare in our house. It was a wonderful birthday blend.

A gift.

This post starts earlier in the week and then picks up at the end of the week, sitting on the top of a mountain and taking in what maybe I needed most: perspective.

There is a lot here, and I’ve debated about what to cut, what to hold, how to rearrange. That there is a birthday through-line makes it harder to break things into separate pages. But I am rearranging. I am weaving and patchworking and layering and tucking things in.

Here are the highlights (that appear below or on separate linked pages):

• Six Threads

• Sitting at the Top of Twin Peaks (and a decadent coffee)

• Looking for Overlaps (an “I am” list)

• Year Lists

• Reasons to Be Happy (a tiny book)

• Illustrate Your Week prompts for Week 26

(In the end, I removed the story I started with. I thought it was the anchor for this week, but there is just too much. It feels a bit like removing a wooden block from a game of Jenga. It feels disorienting, but I’ve tucked the little wooden piece in my pocket for another week.)

Thank you for sharing a bit of your day with me.

Amy

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Six Threads

• On a walk this week, I walked farther down one road than usual and found myself next to a colorful mural. Delighted, I snapped a photo, just taking in the cheerful color, the overall brightness. Checking the photo, I realized I was right in front of a heron in flight, a heron flying into a rainbow of light.

A small portion of an expansive mural. San Francisco, 2023. (Amy Cowen)

• I looked up twice this week to find a California scrub jay in the bottlebrush I can see out the window over my monitor when working. The bottlebrush is a frequent spot for the backyard hummingbird, but the jay looked too heavy for it, the branches with the red scrubby blossoms bending under the weight. I was surprised both times.

• I caught sight of nuthatches this week, tiny, scurrying and bouncing up branches, almost invisible in some light against the browns.

• There was a crow. I wrote about that on Instagram and shared the two parts of the story, a long poem about looking for the first bird of the day on my birthday — and wishing for a do-over — and then an afterthought, a moment of serendipity. The crow had a place in this week.

• On a walk at a favorite lake, I stopped to listen to something I heard and saw that there were great blue herons in nests in the tops of two trees in the middle of the lake. Multiple herons were in each nest, standing and stretching and moving around. Herons, always a favorite, spotted on the same day as the crow. A different part of the story.

• There were flamingos, too. A calendar prompt for Illustrate Your Week led me to flamingos, and with the final weekly self-portrait for the year in mind, I decided to surround the portrait with flamingos, a field of plastic flamingos. I started drawing in flamingos, thinking of a few times I’ve driven by houses where there were flamingos in the yard, and once, all over a hillside embankment. These unexpected bursts of pink whimsy have always made me smile. While drawing, I started wondering about the symbolism and Googled to see what a lawn of pink flamingos means. It was a funny moment, and now I know more about flamingo and pineapple symbols.

Sitting at the top of Twin Peaks

[Written while parked at the top of Twin Peaks.]

Back when I recorded “rainbow hair” (and drew the cartoon), I was someone who wanted to see the sun rise on my birthday. That was my tradition. If I couldn’t manage that, I tried for a sunset. Catching one or the other was important. I wanted to be someone who did that. I wanted to always mark the day with the light and with intentionality, with slowing down to find and appreciate the light.

Today, I didn’t have sunrise or sunset in mind. I planned on going to the ocean to sit and just couldn’t make myself do it. It seemed unnecessary. (This is something I need to work on.)

After stewing a bit, I decided I would grab my birthday (free) coffee (thank you, Starbucks) and sit at Twin Peaks.

It was a good decision.

As soon as I left the house, I felt my mood lighten. It’s overcast, nicely blue gray with a heavy cloud layer, which is perfect. These are tones I find soothing, comforting, and comfortable.

I sat in the parking lot, debating my coffee choice. I worried about the oil change light that had come on as I left the house and about the meeting I have to drive to next week. I worried about the FedEx truck that had boxed me in.

I sat and overthought my free coffee.

In the end, I ordered something familiar but with a twist or two: upside down, 1/2 caff, oat milk, and extra caramel drizzle. (Okay, that was four twists beyond my normal customizations, which at least include a switch from regular vanilla syrup to sugar-free and a downgrade to skim milk.) Living on the edge today. Seizing the reins. Well, sort of. I second-guessed myself before actually placing the order and looked it up to make sure I thought “upside down” was worth trying. Maybe I should have gone ahead and added “line the cup.”

Once at the top of Twin Peaks, I rolled the windows down a bit to let the cool breeze in. When did I sit here last on my own? It’s been a long time since I drove here to sit, park, sip coffee, think, and write.

I watched people. I snapped photos for my contour series. I could sit here all day snapping photos of people. I don’t know why I am so fascinated by people from behind. They become shapes, and yet even in that, they are all different, all unique.

“EEEEEs. Eeees, Mommy.” I smiled as I watched a mother with two toddlers position them on the ground-level ledge and step back for photos. “Eeeeessssss.” One was just barely able to sit up that way. The slightly older brother was very clear on the “Eeeeeees” of it all.

I watched two young women pass, hand in hand. I watched tourists hold out phones to passersby asking for a photo. I watched families, all ages, all sizes, people in twos and threes and clusters from tour buses.

I sat and looked out over the city, the long stretch of Market Street ahead of me, buildings growing up tall all around it at the far end, but the sprawl of city between here and there. Familiar lines.

The coffee was excellent. The best I’ve ever had maybe. The best I can remember.

I watched a young girl passing by with her family, maybe 11 or 12. She had on fluffy, fuzzy pink, mint green, and white earmuffs. She took them off, adjusted her hair, and then carefully repositioned the muffs before posing for a series of photos.

I watched a woman in a Harley-Davidson hoodie with her family. Tattoos and ball caps and backpacks. Prints and plaids, zigzags, flannels, selfie sticks, down coats, short shorts, neon colors, muted neutrals, big hair, little hair, tie-dyed tourist sweatshirts, sunglasses, and head wraps. Anything goes up here. Anything goes.

I remember sitting here through the years, definitely on some birthday days, and writing. My youngest would fall asleep in the car, and so I would drive up here to write, grabbing the minutes where I could.

We all come to spots like this and look out over the edge. What do we see? What is it we think when we stand up here and the world gets small below us. The photos, of course, capture the “I am here” moment. We are constantly positioning ourselves in time and space. “I am here.”

I am here.

I tried to approach this week with more grace this year. But the week got wrapped up in other things. I spiraled. I bounced between okay and not. But, I also carried with me years of learning how to do this, learning what works for me on this day. We each have a different response to our birthdays. I don’t think I can even totally change or head off my response. It’s part of me.

So I bought crumpets. I ordered lemon curd. I bought a fancy orange marmalade on a whim. I bought a box of tea. I made time to write. I honored time in my journal. I washed my thinning hair and took self portraits. I drew my final self-portrait for this year of weekly self-portraits.  I made a list of simple things I “could” do on my birthday, things that matter.

Simple things are enough.

An assortment of simple things. (Amy Cowen)

I could sit on this hill, in this parking lot, and watch people all day. I would want to draw them, too. I would move, soon, from my keyboard to my pen. This is who I am.

I am here.

A lookout scope at the top of Twin Peaks, 2023. (Amy Cowen)

Before I left, I tucked my things away and got out and walked along the edge, snapping my own photos, snapping photos, of course, of the viewfinders, the scopes you can use to zoom in on the city below. I find them charming, despite the graffiti. (I wouldn’t want to touch them, but they are charming in concept. They are markers of looking, of seeing, and of perspective. This vista is about perspective. This vista offers the ability to look out and see the sprawl of the city, the way houses sometimes appear to be stacked, the ocean and the bay, the two bridges. This vista is about perspective, about what we see in front of us and, at the same time, about who we are, what matters, where we’ve been.

I am here.

Later in the day, I stood atop another hill, one I had to climb. (Amy Cowen)

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Looking for Overlaps and Year Lists

—>An “I am” list posted at Instagram, the scavenger hunt of Illustrate Your Week, and year lists. (It’s time to make a new one.)

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Reasons to Be Happy

In a random few minutes trying to see what else I could clear from the bookshelves, I pulled out a tiny book called Reasons to Be Happy (by Sandy Gingras). It’s pink and yellow with a cheerful sun (which I first thought was a lemon) on the cover. It’s a tiny book, a book gifted. It reminds me of the kind of greeting cards that people once sent. It was a moment of serendipity to pull this book out when I did.

A very small book sitting on top of an unfinished illustrated journal page. (Amy Cowen.)

I took one look at the first few handwritten pages, and I cried.

I set it aside, knowing it was symbolic to have happened upon it, and flipped through it on another day. It’s charming. This is the kind of book we all need to see every now and then. The text is poetic and simple and accompanied by charming illustrations.

From the introduction:

“All I have are moments (and moments are the hardest of things). Slippery. Intangible. Fleeting. If I tell you though that moments ARE a kind of map, a kind of wealth, a kind of cure, will you believe me? I can tell you that they’ve helped me through the hardest times…”

I especially like the lists, quirky lists of early morning moments, kid sandwiches, smiley smells, summer nights, and funny little foods.

The author has several other books, all of which are available digitally through my library. So you might take a look and see if you can pull something by her. You might enjoy the quick read, the simple text, the core reminders. I also looked at Lessons of a Turtle. It opens with this headnote:

“Lessons of a Turtle is a wise and warm little book about slowing down and finding your own path in life. It’s a celebration of simplicity, a reminder that the little things in life really are the big things.”

And the author’s opening note:

“I’ve become a kind of turtle-woman: one part taking care of everyone and everything, one part practicing contentment and stillness; one part struggling toward change and the future, the other part trying to focus on the present moment and accept myself as I am.”

If you have a soft spot for turtles, this one is very sweet, and there are some good and poignant reminders. But Reasons to Be Happy is the first one I would recommend.

Looking at these books reminded me of how much I enjoyed How to Be a Wildflower, which I talked about in Episode 372.

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Illustrate Your Week — Week 26

—>The new prompts for Week 26 have been posted.

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