My name is Beth! I hope you will join me on my adventures as I share my thoughts and writings on coziness minimalism, and life. So grab a cup of tea, mug of coffee, or glass of wine and let’s talk cozy!
Good Morning. I’ve been hooked on an album for the past few days, filling the quiet with constant sound because it makes my brain feel good. It’s distracting in the best way and has had me dance writing in giant headphones for a few days now. If you’re feeling like you could use a little more head bobbing, leg bouncing, and shoulder dancing or just a healthy distraction in your week, join me in a listen.
I know it’s been a lot of posts lately. The reason for this is procrastination and overwhelm on my longer writing project. It’s getting there, but it can get there later for right now. I write here because if I don’t, I won’t write there. My type-A personality would have me organize my creative distractions in a spreadsheet and address them in a reasonable order, but that’s not how reality works and recently, I feel a little like a lamb searching for grass on a construction site. Huh– where did I get turned around? How long have I been gone from the pasture? This music is leading me back though. Isn’t “Dream of Mickey Mantle” great?
I went for a run along the beach trail the other day, going a little too fast because adrenaline allowed and it felt good to focus on the pleasant pain of blood pumping in my legs and behind my ears instead of other things. The wind was loud and sharp and the air was salty and fresh. I was exhausted after two miles, but the stretch after was soothing and necessary. Stairs will be tough for a day or so, but that’s part of the fun, no?
I watched Mike run his first half marathon in October my senior year of college. I was amazed that people run that much for fun and actually look happy doing it. After the race, he jokingly asked me if I wanted to do one sometime. I was like, “You’re joking, right?”
He was joking, and yet, the itch to do something BIG crawled onto my skin, seeped into my pores, and sank into my veins. Could I run 13.1 miles? Yeah; I could.
My times weren’t amazing, but I ran the North Jersey Half Marathon twice and felt good for ten miles both times and then felt like my legs would fall off for the last three, which is weird because you need legs to finish the race, and I was determined to finish. I remember a sign that one of the spectators held. She sat in a wheelchair and held up a poster board that said, “Pain is temporary. Pride is forever.” It is what got me through my first race. It is the mantra I used for my second. I think about that sign all of the time because to this day, it urges me to accomplish things that are tough.
A friend of mine recommended an incredible book by Glennon Doyle called Untamed. It is a memoir by a woman who did hard things because she realized she could do hard things and that she needed to. I know I can do hard things too. I need to do them. I know because I’ve done them before. No obstacle is too big, no distraction too consuming. If life were easy all the time, the good parts wouldn’t be so good.
What song are you on now?
To reduce less healthy distractions this week, I started listening to music while I write. Normally, I’m horrible at this type of multitasking, but for some reason, this album is fueling me and my fingers are flying. I did make the mistake of watching the music video for one of Bleachers’ newer songs, Tiny Moves, and it is incredible. Don’t watch it unless you have a nice chunk of time, because it is beautiful and you will want to watch it more than once. The video features Margaret Qualley who choreographed, starred, and co-directed the video and Bleachers front man, Jack Antonoff, her husband. I feel a weird connection to Qualley since usually, when people ask me, “You know who you remind me of?”, I could now just answer yes, since the answer is more often than not Andie MacDowell, Qualley’s mother. I shared the link for the video with my friends to whom dance was a huge part of life at some point – it never was for me; I haven’t the talent, but I always wished I could. I’ll happily settle for the talents that I can call mine though.
I got my first “real” haircut since December 2018 yesterday and honestly, it’s just fine. I never was one for salon small talk, so when the pandemic was like, try cutting your own hair, I was all for it. My self-hair cuts were fine too, not to mention free, so maybe the salon and I will do battle in another six months to see who gets to hold the scissors.
The independence of certain skills can be very freeing. Cutting my own hair and doing my own sewing alterations were difficult skills to learn, but they allow me to minimize interactions that I find tedious and that makes the pin pricks and temporarily looking like Samara from The Ring a little more worth it. Making a story outline was similarly difficult to figure out, but I know I picked up the other skills well enough so I have high hopes for what I’ve put together.
I just realized that my head has been bopping the entire time writing this. The music’s getting in my blood, the words are singing in my head. I’ll go for a run in a little bit and the wind in my ears will join the symphony and it will be a brain pounding and body pumping with healthy distraction. I will write words. I will read words. I will stretch mentally and physically, escaping into Gone Now, because it just feels good.
Have a weird day; have a fun day; have the best day you can. Get up, get dressed, brush your teeth. Do something little, because lots of little somethings lead to something big.
I’m a nervous highway driver, on occasion. Weirdly, singing seems to help with that. So, sometimes, I sing when I drive. I sing when I drive when I’m nervous, that is.
When I was new to driving as a teenager, my dad would passenger seat “drive”. He had an imaginary brake pedal on the ceiling of the car and when he’d hold his breath in silence and reach for it with his hand, my confidence would waver. I remember thinking that a very real passenger-side clutch pedal would have been much more practical because no matter how many times my dad told me at first, “G’head; ease up on the clutch. You’ll feel it,” he seemed only to be all sorts of crazy at the time and me – all sorts of confused. Of course, he was right, and if you know how to drive a manual transmission, you know what I’m talking about. For the rest of you, there is no other way I have found to explain it; so you’ll just have to trust me on this one, okay?
Before moving back to New Jersey, I was out of practice with driving, having lived in New York City for seven years where cars are things that you sometimes forget exist as modes of transportation rather than simply as perpetual enemies to face at crosswalks and invisible crosswalks, alike. I decided to ease my way back into highway driving with a nice little “test drive” by following behind the U-Haul that Mike drove during our move. White knuckled and singing, with a nice big U-Haul to tail (and the U-Haul’s being restricted from going on the Parkway), we made it, somehow. Mike was proud of me, I was proud of me, and I think it’s accurate to say we were both sort of in disbelief. Turns out I could do it all along, like the whole time probably, you guys. Who’d have even thought?
Driving and music just sort of go together for me. My sister did most of the driving when we were in high school. She knew the radio stations to preset and had taste in music that I’d not yet honed for myself. I trusted her musical prowess and learned to like the emo pop and rock bands that were so popular in my school days. In middle school or high school (I can’t remember – help me out if you know, dad!), my dad showed me how to use his and my mom’s record player and my musical knowledge expanded to include Van Morrison, the Beatles, The Who, Cream, and Emmitt Rhodes, among others, heard as originally intended. The soft thud and crackle of a needle dropped in a vinyl groove has been a very comforting sound ever since. I’ve not touched a record or a record player for years now, but I can recall that sound as easily as I can hear my neighbor’s music playing next door right now. Unexplainable, yet simultaneously explainable – you know, magic.
Nowadays, I have an included music subscription through Amazon Prime, built on a Prime Music Unlimited subscription that I paid for (and got very limited use out of if I’m being honest), for over a year. It’s basically the same as the paid version, except that I can no longer pick the exact song I want to listen to at the exact moment I think to listen to it. The song’ll come on eventually, I have learned, and I’ll hear new stuff that I’d otherwise not have known about while waiting for it to do so. I use this music subscription, almost solely for car-based purposes and it has been my co-pilot (cough – karaoke machine) for many a long drive.
My taste has since evolved into something with an identity of its own that I’m proud of and that I don’t care whether or not other people share in. My go to for driving is almost always something by Vampire Weekend (or something similar now, by the unpredictable nature of the Amazon Music roulette wheel). Before I got rid of my paid music subscription, I mourned the final days of still having the ability to play the entire Father of the Bride album in its intended order, getting lost in songs like Bambina, Sunflower, and Flower Moon. I’d like to say I sing along to Vampire Weekend, but what I actually do is try to sing along to Vampire Weekend, as, at least for me, many of the songs would take a gazillion driving listens to get the words right (as you must remember; I cannot look at the lyrics because – driving). No, I sing whatever words fit the pleasant Koenigean warbles and “my audience” is not displeased.
I think of the Beatles writing Yesterday and Paul McCartney using the original placeholder lyrics of, “Scrambled Eggs. Oh my baby how I love your legs,” and I think it’s totally reasonable to change the words to something like Diane Young, Don’t Lie, or Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa for my own listening (and driving) pleasure. Someday I’ll look up the words, though I’m happy enough with my own versions for the time being.
Perhaps my nervous reaction to driving was born from that invisible ceiling brake. Maybe it was the watching for the opposing traffic’s yellow lights while I was stopped at a red at intersections (you know – to leave sufficient time to feel the clutch). Maybe it was how fifth gear liked to keep me on my toes by sticking every once in a while when downshifting to fourth. At some point in time, specific origin unknown, it came to be, and here I live to tell the tale, much improved thanks to uninhibited car singing and an affinity for Vampire Word Salad.
I’ll end it here before this last track skips, but feel free to set the needle down at the beginning again if you so choose.
I’ve been reading a lot of Tolkien this year, among other authors, and can say he offers an escape worthy of the time and brainpower it takes to digest his world-building, maps, pronunciation guides, timelines, and versatile storytelling formats. I’d never read Tolkien’s works before, but I’d seen the Peter Jackson – helmed The Lord of the Rings films and decided to attempt the feat of pouring my eyeballs over the entire epic journey of the ring bearer and his companions in written format from start to finish, and then some.
I spent many cold, winter mornings and evenings curled up on our blue couch, or in a chair by the window, my toes cozy with the warmth provided by the baseboard heater. I’d toss a throw blanket over my lap, my steaming mug of tea or coffee or glass of red wine – close at hand, getting safely lost in the pages of a very dangerous and complicated fictional world. Let’s just say if your brain’s at risk of turning into mashed potatoes, just read through a Tolkien Appendix or “The Battle of Unnumbered Tears” chapter in The Children of Hurin and you’ll be sorted for at least a little while.
I started with The Hobbit, a prequel to “the trilogy”, after seeking the advice of a friend. As the story began, I met a Tookish hobbit named Bilbo Baggins who both craved adventure and was resistant to it. I recognized such a personality immediately, sharing in these traits myself. I joined Bilbo, Gandalf, and a company of rhyme-named, treasure-minded dwarves on a romp through parts of Middle-earth from West to East, from The Shire to Erebor, a.k.a. The Lonely Mountain.
I tasted adventure and couldn’t get enough. The names became easier to differentiate and the characters came to life in my mind. I read of trolls, a victory of wits, a rank cave of treasures, and the last homely house in Rivendell. I tensed as wargs and goblins pursued Thorin and his company. I soared to eyries on eagles’ backs and trekked through the endless darkness of Mirkwood, cowering beneath Shelob’s (chatty) spider-spawn and grew intrigued yet suspicious of vanishing, feasting wood elves. I cautioned my thirst at magical streams and hid behind Bilbo as he sweet talked a cunning dragon called Smaug. It all made real life feel a little easier, not having to face those trials first-hand. It made reading “the trilogy” a little easier too.
My Preciouses
It was helpful to come to The Fellowship of the Ring with a lay of the land, to some degree (a familiarity with the films was a helpful crutch as well). Middle-earth is a vast realm and only seems to increase in size the more Tolkien stories I read. The first book of the trilogy fleshed out the maps introduced in The Hobbit. The journey started as The Hobbit had, in the familiarity and comfort of The Shire in the most eastern lands of the old West, with my old, new friend, Bilbo. What ensued was a journey of nothing less than epic proportions, a fantastic escape like a fever dream that lasted over a month and was disappointing to wake from.
I learned that Bilbo’s ring was more than just an invisibility cloak that he employed as a party trick or escape tactic. I learned that The Shire was not exempt from the dangers of the East, as it seemed in The Hobbit, those dangers held at bay by protective, mysterious rangers, men of the sunken West. I met a mischievous, ravenous tree, and was relieved, yet wary, at the rescue of Frodo’s companions by Tom Bombadil, the yellow-booted “master of the land”, who simply is and his wife, Goldberry, the river-daughter, surrounded by bowls of flowers in their cozy respite of a home. As Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin evaded a few of “The Nine” hooded riders on horseback, relief washed over me again, followed by intrigue at the introduction of the mysterious ranger, Strider, in the Prancing Pony tavern who would come to be their guide, protector, and a major power-player in Tolkien’s complicated tale.
The journey continued on, presenting harrowing scrapes with danger, a slightly altered cast of characters from the film adaption, and what seemed like a lot of songs. Tolkien is a poet who expertly plays with words and inserts poetry into prose in a way that adds meat to the story while also explaining some of the history that is helpful to understand the state of things in the “First Age” and “Second Age” of Middle-earth a little better and to bolster the current affairs in the “Third Age” in which the story takes place. His poems sing and while the music probably sounded different in my mind than in his ear, there were indeed the makings of a melody.
Tolkien creates new languages on the basis of existing language foundations and principles, some even possible to learn if you have the interest, patience, and time. I think, personally, I’ll just stick to my Duolingo French for the time being.
Tolkien establishes relationships in the first book of the trilogy as well as an overwhelming sense of obligation, empathy, trust, and apprehension among the shepherds of the ring. Every surety is tested until it is unsure. Curiosity overwhelms and havoc ensues in the form of orc attacks and Balrog-induced cliff-hangers. There is heartbreaking loss, but temporary safety is often a close-following companion.
And then there’s Lorien.
A land of the elves, concealed amid the treetops, a place almost too glorious for human understanding, that none but Tolkien could invent and convey with his magic words.
I went out to buy the next two books before I finished reading The Fellowship.
Funny thing, when you purchase a Lord of the Rings book, it seems to serve as a guaranteed conversation-starter with the bookstore cashier. When buying The Fellowship of the Ring at Labyrinth Books in Princeton, I smiled when the cashier felt compelled to share that Andy Serkis recently narrated a new audio book adaption of The Fellowship of the Ring, just assuming I knew who Andy Serkis was while providing no additional info and ignoring the fact that I was literally handing him my credit card for a paperback copy at that very moment. Luckily, I did know who Andy Serkis was and was able to offer some sort of interested response, because it is my firmly held belief that Andy Serkis was perhaps born with the main purpose of bringing Gollum/Smeagol to life in the LOTR film franchise.
When I bought The Two Towers and The Return of the King at Barnes and Noble, I was met with an, “Awwww; Lord of the Rings! My dad used to read those books to me when I was a kid.” And that’s connection right there, people. I can attest that the secret network of Tolkien fandom is alive and well.
If I read these books as a child, without seeing the movies, I wonder how much of Tolkien’s talent I would have actually appreciated as I floundered to grasp names and races and languages and maps and quarter-turned, counter-clockwise, rotated geography for over a thousand pages. I’d have sunk like the lands in the West, for sure. No, adulthood was necessary, for this reader at least.
I finished The Fellowship and immediately went on to The Two Towers, impatient for the adventure to continue.
If you’re looking for orcs, don’t you worry. They are served up in heaping portions in The Two Towers. I read on, worried as the Fellowship separated due to the divided fates of the young hobbits. I mourned a fallen ally on the banks of the Anduin. My skin itched at the sight of two glowing orbs in the darkness and ice trickled down my spine as Gollum/Smeagol led Frodo and Sam through the Dead Marshes, the description of the faces in the bog and the thought of their cold, flacid skin, vivid as touch in my mind.
I’d walk through my local woods and recognize The Shire in the hill of the Battery, Moria in the Battery bunkers, and the Anduin in the river below. Lorien gleamed in the early morning sunlight, golden on the leaves, while Mirkwood lurked in the fading dusk, ominous with each rustling that broke the static, blue silence. Fangorn was present in the strength of the trees and Isengard invaded where trunks had been felled for restoration. There is no Mordor here, however, and the map is reversed, the lands in the West – now in the East, sunken in the sea.
I dreamed of battle encampment, my imagination hyper-activated in sleep, and the sure menace of orcs and probable doom lying in wait. I didn’t feel ready for certain defeat and stressed over having never wielded a real sword. I didn’t have the courage of the ring bearer and his company. Cold sweat woke me. Disorientation overwhelmed as I fumbled for glasses on my nightstand in the dark, slowly coming to sharpened reality. I reserved my battle-cry for next time, ultimately fading back into a safer dream, shielded by a warm quilt, soft sheets, and safe shelter, a world away from the battles of the Third Age.
Shelob was absolutely horrifying and made me realize that Samwise is perhaps the truest hero in Tolkien’s epic tale for the challenges that his creator constructed for him. (Pro tip! Don’t Google Shelob if you are afraid of spiders.)
Another cliff-hanger ushered me straight into The Return of the King and I found my favorite of Tolkien’s books, so far at least. I really think it would be a tough one to beat, however. The storytelling in this book is more well done than a steak at Chili’s. The way Tolkien unfolded simultaneous events, devoting appropriate attention to each battle, escape, and rescue, all while keeping the story going and maintaining the quality of the character relationships fed a glow of admiration within me. I know I won’t ever equal storytelling like that, but I felt lucky to read storytelling like that and that’s enough for me, I think. We’ll see.
A culminative battle brewed as the fate of the bearer hung uncertain in the hearts of his scattered company. The forces of men, elves, dwarves, wizards and a couple of brave hobbits combined to fight a growing, visible darkness. Dread prickled my scalp as a small company braved the kingdom of the dead on blind trust of their leader, he – destined to rule in an age to come. My heart pattered in the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith, melted in the fiery waste of Mount Doom, and soared in flight with the eagles, once again. I almost wished it had ended there and to never have known The Shire touched by darkness, but then Merry and Pippin would not have felt themselves worthy of the title of hero in the end, each earning it gloriously, like their other hobbit companions.
Tolkien tugged a few remaining threads on the seams of the story and just like that, it was finished.
I craved the first page and the unknowing mind again. Instead, I sifted through timelines and appendices and that satisfied, for the time being.
Tolkien is a tutor for what language is capable of, what the creative mind is capable of, and the influence a great creative mind can have on other artists, readers, and adventure seekers. Tolkien’s epic storytelling ability is an unreachable destination, a myth, lore – surely, right? And yet, it was achieved by a man of very human proportions (with a heavy dose of talent).
“What has [Tolkien] got in [his] pocketses?” as Gollum might ask.
cozy does it 