Welcome To My World

June 8, 2009



Welcome all who visit "my world".

I write this blog from a tiny room off my bedroom. I call this room: "my world," because it is my own space. It is a room of my own with all my favorite books, and things: paintings that my son has made, shells collected off the beaches of Long Island, a framed photo of me holding my first grandchild, an antique rocking chair, my journals, candles, hand cream, hidden candy.

Leading you into "my world" is a beautiful 3x5 Arabian hand made rug that my son brought back from his tour of duty a few years ago. When I step on it I feel as if I've passed through a portal into a magical place. There is an energy in this room. I'm always happy here and time does not exist.

I sip my coffee as I gaze out a window that faces a canal. In summer I can see only glimpses of water between spaces in a lush maple tree that provides total privacy from all the homes across the canal. I could sit here naked if I want to and no one would know! When I have the window opened, I feel as if I am sitting in a tree house.

To say I love being in this room is an understatement. At the end of the day, I yearn to walk through the door and sit at my desk. Sometimes I make an entry in my journal, sometimes I just sit here and look out the window until they find me and ask, "What time is dinner?"

Before bed, I'll sit in the rocking chair and read a short story from The Best American Short Stories edited by Salman Rushdie, or a few pages in Conversations with God, book 1 by Neale Donald Walsch.

It was my son, Peter, who had the idea that I start this blog. You can visit his site at http://www.pvanderberg.blogspot.com/ It was this same son who, several years ago, told me to make this little room into a writing room. "Get rid of all evidence of work," he told me, "and just use this room to write." Well, I still work in this room, but the work files are now hidden, so wherever my eyes land, I see only books of inspiration: books on screenwriting, copies of The Writer's Market, books by my favorite authors: Amy Tan, Anna Quindlen, inspirational books like Goddesses In Every Woman by Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston, The Collected Works of Guy de Maupassant, Italian Folktales by Italo Galvino and many more.

My other son, James, filled my walls with inspirational paintings. You can visit him at http://www.dekooningspleen.blogspot.com/ or at his website http://www.jamesvanderberg.com/ to see the type of paintings hanging on my walls.

And my youngest son, Paul, an illustration major at Pratt Institute has contributed a black and white illustration of me with my beautiful granddaughter, Sara. It, appropriately, rests against The Art of Happiness by His Holiness The Dalai Lama and a collection of poetry books.

Their contributions to "my world" are all around me, but, still, they know that they cannot enter without permission. If the door is closed they are not allowed to disturb me unless the house is on fire or my mother is on the phone.

It was my son, Peter, who came up with the idea of "Peppers & Arias" for this blogspot. Back in September, 1984, I had an essay published in the NY Times called, "Peppers and Arias, Old Times and New." The blog name is perfect for the type of writing that you will see on this blog. There will be opinion pieces, recipes, everyman slice of life, humor, poetry and personal rant.
"Who cares what I have to say?" I asked him.
"I do," he said.
Now, who amongst us has a child who cares about what we have to say? I figured I better take advantage of that and blog away.