Christmas Come Early

I love reading books. Fortunately for us, blogs can often be as good as book or magazine reading. My friend Colleen  is a pretty good writer, and she happens to make jewelry too. One of her recent posts is called "All My Best Intentions." I love the title and I love the message. Sometimes our best intentions end up differing greatly from the outcome.

I never intended to fall so in love with jewelry, especially the handmade variety. And now that I no longer work with that jewelry, I feel a bit of a void. But I can fill that hole with jewelry blog reading ... and shopping. I think we never intend to fall in love with the things and people we end up loving. It is a mysterious force. When I met Colleen in Oregon, I didn't know we would become friends and about the connection jewelry and writing would establish between us. But I am happy to have found Colleen, her blog, and this post, featuring the necklace above. When I read her post, not only did it get me thinking, but it got me wanting that necklace.

I made my purchase and the package arrived last week along with this gift from Colleen: an old book titled, 'So You're Going to England.' It's really funny, as I never intended to collect old books or come so closely associated with my home away from home, but here I am, receiving these things as gifts and basking in them. The old book smells so delicious and it reminds me of Eliot's line "So you're going abroad and when do you return? Well, that's a useless question, you hardly know when you are coming back, you will find so much to learn." I never intended to quote Eliot for the rest of my life (maybe over-quoting) or memorizing verse, but I think now that is the direction in which I am most certainly headed. And now my best intentions are to return to the land of Eliot someday and hopefully write a book of my own ... and we will see what happens with that.

Colleen wrapped this gift in the perfect vintage paper, including an homage to Harvery Nicoll's. I'm sure her best intentions were to gift me with the most meaningful of presents in a beautiful way. And that she has. But I wanted to write this post so that Colleen would know that that gift was already given to me on the Oregon Coast and the first time I saw her jewelry. It was packaged in a different way, as the best presents are, without wrapping, and by completely falling into place at the right time. The blog posts she and others send out into the world are gifts on their own. It is an extension of the gift of her art. And I am just trying to make the best of being surrounded by such goodness, such truth, such talent, such beauty.

Thank you Colleen, for the gift of your friendship, and your words. They have had nothing but the best effect on me.