Nearly beginning {More than Just One Paragraph 24/30}

There is mist when we wake up. We lie in bed, close, breathing, watching the soft world through the wooden slats of the blinds. Three days left.
I think about the ways we cannot know. The ways before and after are utterly discrete, the barrier between them absolute. It was the same, waiting for the arrival of my sons. Or waking up the day after college. Or the moment after I said "Yes." It is always this way.
We move with measured intention or whirling chaos towards the unknown, and then we are there at the brink. We can't know, and yet we leap. Wings made of faith, of certainty, of calculable odds, of foolishness, of hope, of daring.
I walk out into the meadow with bare feet, just to feel the dew. To pay homage to the way the grass has always been there, lush, tangled, season after season to harbor field mice and Queen Anne's lace and milkweed and monarchs. I go, because for so long this field has claimed me, and claims me still. Not just this field really, but all fields. The wild, my home.
We'll see where new begins; what shape beginning makes.

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Beginning

The moon drops one or two feathers into the field. The dark wheat listens. Be still. Now. There they are, the moon's young, trying Their wings. Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone Wholly, into the air. I stand alone by an elder tree, I do not dare breathe Or move. I listen. The wheat leans back toward its own darkness, And I lean toward mine.
BY JAMES WRIGHT

Manifesting (+ a giveaway!)

Today there is coffee from three hours ago, milky sunlight, and feathers strewn telltale on the snow. The neighbor’s dog: a black, curly, stupid thing came again, her tongue lolling, killing hens. I chased her in socked feet across the snow, shrieking. Then pulled on boots, and called my friend who came with his quiet farmer hands, and his shotgun (just in case) together we found the hurt birds, and the scared ones.

In one of the pines along the drive, a Rhode island red; I scooted in among the sharp twigs, collected her akimbo wings and splayed yellow feet, then pressed the plumpness of her soft body up against my chest. She buried her face in my hair, and I could hear her breath coming fast and steady. It always surprises me to hear birds breathing. Like the sound of wings; fluttery, raspy, faint.

Today Bean is building a cardboard box fort with the empty boxes from Christmas and Sprout is napping after smashing his chin on his brother’s bunk bed, and coming up with a mouthful of blood. Today there is a broken glass jar pushed accidentally off a windowsill. There is laundry in haphazard stacks; strawberries cut lengthwise in a bowl on the counter; marbles scattered across the slightly sloping floor.

Today there is the chapter outline of my book waiting for me like a jigsaw puzzle shaken in a box without a lid. My desk is strewn, my fingers already stained with white paint and gel medium from setting up a few paintings for later work.

Today is almost the end of the year. The last day. And this is my messy, ordinary, glorious life. I am so grateful.

It’s been an amazing year, and you’ve helped to make it so. Truly.

Today I want to know: what your words and dreams are for the year that will begin tomorrow. One word, or a list. What do you want to manifest?

I believe in this. I believe in it deeply. I have found again and again and again that the things I ask for manifest when I ask clearly, when I put my greatest, deepest wishes into the palms of the universe to hold.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.

Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of initiative there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and endless plans.

That the moment one definitely commits oneself then providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have otherwise occurred.

A whole stream of events issue from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would come his way.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Begin it now. ~Goethe

So. What do you wish to begin this year? What is the wildest, truest thing that you want to have happen?

Leave your answer here, or link back here with a post on your own blog, and two of you will be the (random) recipients of these pieces of orignal art!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

(*Leave a comment by midnight, January 1st, 2011 to be eligible for the giveaway.)

UPDATED: I selected the winners using the random number generator at random.org. CONGRATULATIONS Ashley and KitKat! Please email me with your address & I'll ship these off when I get back next week! xo, Christina