let me begin by stating my enormous sense of gratitude for the life i now live. looking back through the years of my life, this time stands apart from most, as if suspended in a state of grace. i have much to be thankful for, not least of which is the surety that comes from the five plus decades of experience. nothing bad that has ever occurred within my lifetime has been perpetual. eventually everything passes.

if i were only to look at the places i live my life (home, store, salon..) as empty space, then i have the pleasure of inhabiting some beautiful, organic, light filled spaces. add the people and i am blessed to enjoy the company of wonderful individuals, both coworkers and clients. layer on the work we create and it is mind blowing to be surrounded by such talent. to watch as people grow, settle in, move on. swirling around all of this is my innate sense of style. love it or hate it - it's still style. my style. my approach to light and color, my ability to see form, my tug-of-war with building scent, my simplistic need to design. most days i take all of this for granted. especially the stuff that comes naturally to me. the easy stuff. but somewhere along the way i became a businessman, and i forgot this was meant to be fun. my sense of nothing ever being enough, or quite finished, or whatever it is that fuels my desire to grow and change everything is at the heart of how these projects have all come together. for that i must be grateful too.

i am not a perfectionist, though i strive for things to make sense. no, the imperfect is quite marvelous if given a good look. in fact, i feel like i've created a world where imperfection can be celebrated. how can we make things better if we always see everything as being enough? no one who ever accomplished anything great ever did so by striving for mediocrity. when i see winning qualities in another, when i see their passion to transcend their craft, i am impressed most by their need to strive. we all do it in our own personal way. moms and dads, people who work to build community, teachers and bakers and firemen. the list is endless. everyone gives brilliantly to something. big or small doesn't matter. i fuel my need to strive into my projects. i could have been a better brother, uncle, lover, husband, friend.. but these projects are where my passions take me. i'd like to say i didn't choose it, but that simply isn't the truth. and sometimes, not often, i am visited by my biggest fear. that somehow, i will bugger it up.

quite a few years ago i decorated the shop for the philadelphia flower show. the theme was paris. though at that time i had never been, i researched how french soap makers plyed their craft and what you might find in their workshops. i attempted to build their world and then layer my sense of style on top to recreate our shop as a french savonier. down to the smallest details, the windows were glorious. the shutters, the worktop, flowers, herbs, the ironwork of the tower in one window..my pride flowed out onto 13th street. the people from PHS never came by to judge my window. i was never acknowledged. it was still marvelous just the same. worth the time, effort and expense. it made me happy. it made sarah happy. it gave us pride. a few years prior, christmas 2008, no one knew what was going to happen, but many people were afraid. we brought bare trees in from the forest, scattered leaves and snow on the ground, and shared our love of western "woods" mythology as it pertained to that climate of culture during the financial meltdown. in a year where decorating for christmas seemed garish and mocking, we chose a stark and barren theme that evoked beauty, hope and community. it gave us joy. it still does. when customers mention those windows to us after almost ten holiday seasons, we know what we accomplished was much bigger than us. we reached out through the glass to offer hope to our community. to offer beauty. to inspire. now we seem to be spending so much time scrambling to hit margins and pay bills that we are beginning to wonder if it isn't a good time to be spending more time looking out again, and less time just looking in. just relax a bit and have some creative fun.

sarah and i used to follow a guy named jonathan cainer online. he cast charts and horoscopes. the thing about jonathan that inspired me had less to do with casting than it did with the thoughtful nature of his message. in a chorus of noises, jonathan offered a daily dose of hope. so i had him cast a chart for seven years. then a few days later, sadly, he died. i still have five years of hope left on my pdf.

my personal chart shows me that any day now, neptune will oppose mercury. it is supposed to last for a year. so i guess this essay is timely in that neptune shows us something about our own ’dream of perfection’. it reveals the ideal world we’d like to create, the ideal vision of ourselves we’d like to believe in and the ideal image of our beliefs that we’d prefer to project. it also reveals in each of us a philosophical weak spot, our spiritual ego, a propensity to become lost in a dream of how things ’ought to be’. where we keep our dreams, we must also keep our nightmares (i love that line). neptune can reveal wonderful ideas that we may be able to turn into realities. yet it can also say something most instructive about the web of fearful fantasy we sometimes weave around our vision of the future. this too, can become a self fulfilling prophecy if we are not strong willed and hopeful enough to challenge it.

so i am instructed that it is not going to be a good time for anything where a logical mind or a clear head is required, and if that’s what’s likely to be required of me, then perhaps i should book more weekend holidays. i am going to have much more interesting things on my mind than routines or sensible constructive thought. a once-in-a-lifetime period to be extra creative with my intellect. If ever i planned to write a novel, now’s a good time to find the inspiration to begin. if i’ve ever wanted to paint, write poetry, or simply lie on my back and gaze at the stars while my mind wanders where it will, this is my big opportunity. apparently, creative people live their whole lives in the hope that a moment like this will come along. stiff, conventional and conformist people are terrified that a thought might enter their heads during this time which could destroy the cosy little picture they’ve built of the world. whether or not i enjoy this next period is really down to what sort of person i am underneath it all. If i try to control myself, fighting off the vivid imaginary daydreams as they occur and forcing myself to pay attention to life’s more mundane matters, i'm going to have a fairly trying time of it. if, on the other hand, i decide to make the most of things, down tools, and just let a thousand beautiful, interesting and inspiring thoughts wash over my mind, i will find that by the end of this period, i will have refreshed parts of my soul that i never even knew were there to be reached. the person casting my chart "really must stress that a chance like this only occurs once - or at the most twice - in the life of any one of us. it’s not that you can’t do anything else when its happening, you can. there’s nothing to stop you carrying on with every aspect of your daily life, as long as you make room for this state of mind instead of trying to fight it!" however, i am still instructed to growl and prowl like the leo i was born to be, just so long as i remember to purr once in a while.

either way, sarah and i have decided to take the next year to create our lives in a more sensible way. close the house on monday and enjoy doing nothing. let others share a more active role in all things that make the salon run so well. build in weekends away, time with family/people we love, chase goals, conjure new dreams, conquer new lands and find our better selves again. all of this leads to new creations, new ideas, new products and designs... if nothing else, this reading confirms what we already know. things are on right on schedule.

even with the things i forget to remember, accomplishment still occurs.