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// Things I want to remember /  by Christina Rosalie

So busy this week, back to school, back to being in a hundred places at once. Still, it's summer and I'm trying to be in it. At the dinner table watching our boys run out across the grass holding hands to look for sticks for roasting marshmallows, T says: "Oh love, I want this to last forever."

I nod, knowing exactly what he means. Them, as they are with shaggy summer hair, scraped knees, berry stains on their fingers. And us. Our lives full to the brim right now, but in good way.

Things I want to remember:

// Dinner tonight: flatbread baked on a stone on the grill along with summer peaches + a hint of vanilla, chicken with olive oil + thyme, and a salad of summer's brightest: new plump blueberries, arugula from the garden, baby lettuces in a mustard maple balsamic vinaigrette.

// The way morning gallops in, with my boy's on it's back. They're wearing capes and wielding swords. It's before 7am. They are whirring with elbows and energy and laughter.

// The laundry whirring in a quiet house while the babysitter takes the boys on a bug-catching walk. They bring back crickets in a plastic egg box with holes poked in the top. It stays on my counter over night: some wells filled with water, others with grass. In the morning the insects are all alive still, and I make a plea for their release.

// Impending angst about my book deadline. So much to make a book. So many words. Picking the right ones seems feels daunting some days.

// Returning from an afternoon run just as thunder breaks the sky open. Then sitting in a circle of pages, blue post it notes scattered about like the petals of some sacred offering to the writing gods while the thunder rolls about like a bowling ball above me in the sky. Rain falls through the open windows onto the sills bringing the scent of earth and green.

Tuesday {in pictures} /  by Christina Rosalie

Hello friends.

I'm finding this so restful: to notice the small things of daily life and to share them here with you.

We've been keeping a jar of markers and fresh paper at hand for quiet times, and today had many moments where the boys just sat and colored. I love the way Sprout is learning to draw: circles first.

I made some fresh peach preserves yesterday with some not-so-great peaches. Just a little sugar + water + a hint of vanilla and they cooked down into something lovely to have on biscuits this morning.

Today was all dappled with sun and shade. I love the way the field grasses blow in the wind.

While I was writing Bean and T made a sign for our nightly visitors. Bean has since observed that perhaps he needs to add a checklist to clarify exactly what makes a skunk a bad one. We have several this year. We always do. T has twice encountered them in the coop, though they've yet to spray anyone. Still. Bad skunks take note.

Manuscript progress today for sure. It is wild to be working on something this big. It terrifies and thrills me in turns. I've decided to focus on just finishing the manuscript. Once it's in, all my backers will be rewarded (with a little extra surprise in addition to what they signed up for) for their patience. Until then, I imagine I'll be pretty quiet on that front: creating beautiful chapters.

What are you up to this week?

Documenting the week in pictures /  by Christina Rosalie

Starting tomorrow I have a week off from classes. I have high hopes for these seven days: uninterrupted writing time to get somewhere significant with the book manuscript; writing in the mornings; then making illustrations in the afternoons, the fan on low, interspersed with strawberry picking and swimming lessons and celebrating the Fourth.

I'll be taking a break from writing here, but I'll be posting some photos every day instead. I'm looking forward to the challenge of bringing my camera with me more and documenting our daily life. Care to join me?

Always this /  by Christina Rosalie

On the gravel drive, a sleek-skinned slug moving slowly, antennae swiveling about. A bumble bee, flying along side me as I run its wings moving a thousand times faster than my feet. Horses in the pasture, does at the edge of the woods, a new fawn, thrushes, blackbirds on the wire and buttercups by the armful strewn across the fields. This is my prayer, my alter here, to move among this tall clover, to run one foot after the next, and to take note of this always and again blooming glorious day

Sleep deprivation + inspiration + some springtime glimpes /  by Christina Rosalie

Everything has turned green suddenly, and on a brief walk around the house last night this is what I saw.

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I’m still humming with wonder at the work that I do now: that I have this chance to write, create, share, make. That this is my job, finally, truly. And that this book is emerging slowly from drafts and chapter outlines pinned across the wall in front of me.

Today though I’ve accumulated some serious sleep deprivation, and combined with conflicting deadlines for class, I pretty much just want to do this.

Instead, I think I’ll be trying this for a week or two. Are you reader’s of Patry’s blog? I just found her, and am soaking up her words with immense gratitude.

I’m also still thinking about this podcast by Jamie about supporting the artists and bloggers and creatives who inspire you.

She’s new to me, and I’m grateful for the discovery—especially since I’m working on making my own podcast this week to send out to backers. Alessandra, the goddess who created Gypsy Girl’s Guide did an interview with Jamie at the end of the podcast and shared the link on Twitter. The interview is truly inspiring for anyone with a wanderlust heart such as mine. (Also I adored hearing her accent! It’s something I miss when reading words: how much emotion and passion and story is contained in the tone and cadence of the spoken word.)

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Who are few creatives who are inspiring you right now? What do you love about their work?

+++ Also, if you're a twitter type, follow along. The inspiration I find there is plentiful every single day.

These are things that happen /  by Christina Rosalie

These are things that happen when I circle back into this present that is mine: sunburn on unaccustomed cheeks; blisters on my palms after an afternoon in leather gloves raking lawn debris; the unexpected delirium of forsythia and daffodils; bumblebees; wet marks on my knees from kneeling to look among the clover.

I cannot help myself: I slip into a neighbor’s yard and pluck a handful of daffodils, carrying them in a closed warm fist up the drive, pulling the boys behind me in the red wagon with the other. I grin secretively the whole way. I smile rinsing dishes; but am near to tears when the red-winged blackbird swoops low across my path. These ordinary things stun me. The way my life folds back around me, and this is where I am: in the thick of spring, at the end of a dirt road, with a restless cat, two boys, and a writing deadline waiting for the evening.

All day the sky was blue; all day it was just me and them; two changeable constants. Mood swings, bare bellied tickles, cookies and milk, sand at the backdoor. Five loads of laundry; sun dappled sheets; jumping on the bed; exercise.

It will be this way all week: just me and them the sky. T is out of town on a business trip so it will be us, making the best of allergies and hilarity; less urgency, but no less full throttle: “look mommy, look! Did you see, did you see?” So this is what I’ve been missing.

on my path /  by Christina Rosalie

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations--
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

~ Mary Oliver

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Thank you, thank you for your words! I'm soaking them up as I plunge into an intense week with tight deadlines for school, facing things I don't know how to do and time constraints I don't know how to meet. I'm so excited to share this book. To make it good, and true, and beautiful. I love that it has illustrations, and can't wait to share some peaks at my process with you, just as soon as I come up to breathe again.

Today I sit at my kitchen table by a vase of iris and roses (thank you my sweet sister!) and watch fat wet snow fall hard. I keep coming up against the boundaries of what I'm capable of in code (Action Script 3.0), and keep fumbling until I get beyond them. This process takes hours, with hardly anything to show, and I'd be frustrated except that none of it really matters, save for how I'm learning, always and again from what I cannot yet do. From every misstep, I learn the location of solid ground; from every failed attempt, wrong turn, or narrow miss, I find my path more clearly.

Utter failings and exquisite truths /  by Christina Rosalie

It hit me today while I was running that I don’t tell stories here nearly as much as I used to and I miss it, and I can see that you must miss it because the comments dwindle when I post sporadically and tersely with just a few scraps of observation from my day. And the truth is, your comments mean the world to me: not their quantity so much as their depth. I love what you have to say. I love how you see your worlds, and how you see mine. And the truth is, my readers here have saved my life many times over, and I mean that with no hyperbole at all.
When I started this blog six years ago it was my only creative outlet: I’d just move to a new town with my husband and six month old Bean, and I had no friends living within five hundred miles of me, not to mention no friends anywhere with children. This blog was my lifeline. I laugh now when I tell people, but I truly got at least 90% of all my parenting advice for raising Bean from the people who shared their lives through their blogs, and who shared my life by commenting here.
And gradually, I found my voice here, through telling stories about my kids, my muddy dirt roads, my heart full of wanderlust, my hunger for doing more and seeing more and being more; because you were listening.
I dreamed the idea for my book here; I shared the news of Sprout’s arrival here; I spilled the messiness and heartache of tenuous times here and man, I am so, so grateful for the inspiration, insight, and pure awesome that you bring to my life.
All this to say: I want to share more here, not less. I want to keep having this space be a place that I go to find my center: to find my words and hear your words. And it’s sort of slipped off the map a little in the past months because holy hell, grad school is no small thing.

I’m in the midst of cool project for school this week; an interactive documentary, to be exact. (Though if you ask me what an interactive documentary is, I’ll have to say wait and see—because I haven’t found a single example of what it is I’m trying to do. It requires action script code, and video editing, and interviewing, and graphic design and interaction design and animation. See?)
At it’s core is a series of video interviews with local artists who are all utterly brilliant, and intimidating, and awesome. They’re the kind of people I want as mentors. The kind of artists who have made it big time in their fields. The kind of artists who make me proud and terrified to call myself an artist.
I can’t wait to share it, but it I’ve still got a couple of weeks of work; and a lot of learning to do.
Right now it’s pushing me beyond every single boundary I have.
I’m interviewing people I never met; I’m designing a browser interface that accounts for emergent interactions; I’m learning to make lines do what I want them to do in Illustrator. This all but petrifies me.
But mostly the interviewing people I haven’t met part.
I’m good once I get to know someone, but those first awkward moments are a heat flash away from pure agony. Add to that the fact that I’m shooting video (a thing I am learning to do on the fly, as I go) and oh lord. Deep breaths.
Today I interviewed Maura Campbell who is fierce and fiery and passionate about her craft. My batteries died in my HD Flip just before the end; and then further embarrassment ensued because I couldn’t figure out how to open the damn thing. (Thank god for smart phones. I had the how-to googled in under a minute.)
Really. This happened.
And even though I was mortified, I was thrilled, because here’s the thing: I knew, even in the moment, that the battery malfunction I was having was just another way of falling down.
And learning to fall is necessary in learning to fly, or leap, or risk anything. Because it’s the people fall and recover that become rockstars and superheroes. It’s the ones who fall and get up time and again that discover how to make their dreams fly.
And if there’s one thing that has really gelled for me this winter it’s been this:
Falling is ok. Failing is part of the process. Doing both with frightening frequency means I’m pushing beyond my comfort zones, and that I’m learning. Big time.
Also that bravery doesn’t come from waiting for the perfect opportunity or knowing everything in advance, or getting it right the first time. Bravery comes from googling how the hell to open your video camera and replace batteries in the middle of an interview, and then recovering composure.

And at the end of the interview when we were standing in her paper strewn office, and she was telling me about how writing is requires being utterly selfish with one’s time, I asked her the question I always want to ask every creative person that I come into contact with: How do you balance this with the rest of your life? How do you do this and children?
And in not so few words her answer was this: you do the only thing that you can. When her kids were small, she wrote, fervently, in the center of the living room as her kids, four of them, twirled around her. When they were bigger, she retreated to her bedroom, leaving them with the warning: interrupt only with blood, or fire.
And that’s what makes her brilliant.
It has nothing to do with balance, with being a ‘perfect’ mother, or with having the right time and the right place to begin. It has to do simply with persisting. . With daring to dive every day towards what you love to do most. Always.
And it was such an awesome interview because I got to be reminded of that.

Things that delight me /  by Christina Rosalie

This series of shadows snapped from a walk with the boys yesterday.

Spring riding today: blue squares all the way. Easy turns. Wide grins.

Buying a new moleskine. The reporter kind with plain white pages. I the way the pages feel flimsy and effortless; the way ink shows through & the way words tumble after each other to be put down there in my messy handwriting.

A secret I can't wait to share really, really soon.

The way the light lasts longer and longer every day.

Mapping out my schedule for summer and blocking off whole days for writing, no excuses. (Or perhaps I have the best excuse.)

What are six things you're delighted by today?

Now we go down the muddy road /  by Christina Rosalie

You can feel it on days like this: the way everything wants to run. Blood, sap, snowmelt, everything quickening and spilling over.

We go out because there is nothing else we can do. Staying indoors and getting work done is like trying to hold water in my palms; the boys slip out before I can stop them. Sprout barely has his boot’s on and Bean has run away ahead carrying a summer umbrella. I chase after carrying mittens, hats.

The big one is almost flying: wind catching the umbrella as he makes the turn. And from a distance his slight body has lifted off the ground.

I remember.

I once jumped off a toolshed as a girl. There was a wind storm. I held an umbrella high above me. It was the only thing I wanted: to fly. And it seemed so inevitable, so certain that I’d just lift off. I didn't hesitate at all.

I don’t remember falling. Though it’s certain I did because I’m here aren’t I? Or have I just forgotten some secret magic of childhood where flying is less impossible; where dreams blink in and out of reality just like shooting stars?

Now we go down the muddy road and everything is running quick, quicker: our feet, the snowmelt, the sap in every thick trunked tree and slender willow. Under the banks of snow at the edge of the road muddy water rushes: rivulets gathering and spilling, seeking downhill; seeking the eventual streambed, the pond, the river, the lake, the ocean.

The boys are soaked in seconds but giddy with the late afternoon sunlight and the softness of the air. They find sticks to poke in snowy holes; carve miniature rivers; make dams of snow.

Beneath our feet, slush the color of maple sugar. And though it is still long before the purple of crocuses;when I look up I can see the slight red fatness of buds on the maples. A swelling promise. Sweetness soon. And this weekend: daylight savings already.

Almost spring /  by Christina Rosalie

Do you feel it? The days are growing longer. There is more mud and less snow; but still snow. Spring, almost. The boys are drawn to the puddles; to wherever the ice is thin. We kick chunks of snow along the road and stand with our heads thrown back watching the starlings and grackles lift and land.

A few days ago I brought my camera with me for the first time in a little while. I love how having a camera makes you look harder and see more. Have you done this recently? If not, you should!

At the window:: a morning poem /  by Christina Rosalie

I am at the window eating oranges sent from a friend of my mother-in-law’s from Florida: the only place now in our country without some fringe of snow,

and they are sweet fire.

I suck the juice off my fingers, sticky and grateful as fat white snowflakes fall again toward the earth beyond the glass.

I am still not tired of watching.

Still not tired of the way the world is now, like a line drawing in graphite, all gesture, all movement, all white on gray on white;

and so I watch until I feel things settle within like snow, softly

I watch, till the blue jays arrive in the lilac bush for the oily seeds I put out at the feeder and my soul drinks up their color: blue on gray on blue,

and the sweet round fire of the orange,

and I am sated.

Manifesting (+ a giveaway!) /  by Christina Rosalie

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

The best way to get a tree /  by Christina Rosalie

On a sleigh with work horses pulling steadily their breath rising in hot clouds. Snow crunching underfoot, following each other out across fields among balsams. Finding the just-right tree and watching with Sprout as T and Bean sawed the tree down together with a hand saw. Back and forth, back and forth, and then dragging it to the road where the horses could pull the sleigh. Then hot chocolate; cookies; and carols in the car on the way home.

A list for Saturday /  by Christina Rosalie

Today: wood stacking and striking skies. The hills are dappled with sun and shade. My boys want to be outdoors all day, their noses running, always heading for the mud, always climbing to the top of unstacked piles of logs.

I'm still getting over being sick--and contemplating the affects of it on my digital and academic life over here. (I'd loove to hear your thoughts on this subject.)

Today there will be chocolate chip cookies and chicken soup and rosy cheeks. There will also be reading. Lots of it. And figuring out how to do a podcast for A Field Guide To Now (!) and maybe a run. Yes. That's Saturday's list. What is yours?

Also: we're entering the phase of toddler temper tantrums around here. Oooh boy. Here we go. More on that and some pictures tomorrow.

small discoveries /  by Christina Rosalie

At some point there will be enough hours and I’ll know it, but for now Photoshop is like sliding down a rabbit hole into an alternate reality where everything reacts and responds in arbitrary, brilliant, and unexpected ways.

I spent the whole day occupied in this way, siting at my long white desk, sheaves of paper sketches spread around me like snow, making images, digital and graphite both.

Outside the weather has turned decidedly autumn like, and today the sky was the kind of gray that makes me moody, and it’s that time of the month where everything seems blunt or sharp depending on the circumstance, and chocolate really is the only solution.

It takes more effort to dig out of my own head space on days like these: to inhabit family life without the residual layers of mood and intellectual momentum. Still, there were lovely moments: French toast with maple syrup from our neighbors, cuddling with the boys on the floor, taking a walk down the road with Sprout in the wagon, Bean holding my hand, T's arm wrapped around my waist. Every single day I fall in love with my boys more. All three of them.

Today I wanted to share a new mix of music I’ve been absolutely crushing on: A soundtrack for making things.

Also into this project: Love 146. And this awesome, awesome site: Arbutus Yarns I love, love, love discovering your sources of inspiration. What are you crushing on lately?