Not ready to run in place
All week it's been gray and cold, and I feel myself falling out of the summer's rhythm of daily runs. This summer changed my thinking about my body. I realized that my body loves to run. Loves to sink into a steady loping pace, feeling my heart thrum in my chest, pushing blood to the vast network of capillaries that make me whole.
Today, because I have other things to do, the run ends quickly. I take the last blocks of sidewalk with quick even strides, already thinking about the things I need to do before I leave for my writing workshop. When I stop to cool down a street away from home I'm sad. I watch my shoes crunch over broken grass and kick the leaves along the sidewalk that have gathered there like guests outside the church after a wedding. I bought my shoes in June with good intentions, imagining like every other summer, I'd run a few times and loose motivation.
But I didn't. Instead I kept running, and my shoes now at the end of their season are worn in places. The soles packed and scuffed, have probably seen close to 100 miles of cement and gravel and dirt this summer. I'll be sad to give them up; to buy a new pair, destined to be treadmill shoes, as I run in place in front of a mirror through the winter.
Self Portrait Tuesday: October Documentary
My time: Coffee & croissants--fuel for the day.
Our time: He always wants to be near by.
My time: Gathering up drafts and editing photos
in the snatched moments when he naps.
His time: Taking baby steps.
Our time: Playing together on the lawn; waiting for dada
in the outdoor gear store; and a trip to the library.
Our time and then Their time: giving me my time.
Mama says om
Parenting is hard. The world moves around us in a spastic rhythm, a swirling chaos of day to day activity: work, school, meals, rest, noise, play, comfort, nurture. Finding the breath to everyday life is an art and often we find ourselves hyperventilating. At Mama Says Om, we look at parenting as a spiritual and often humorous endeavor. We write from the heart about those things that give us breath. Ignore the chaos in your own life and visit with us; it'll all still be there when you get back.
Come on, Mama. Just say Om.
What it's like
DH and Bean played and napped for 4 hours this afternoon while I got some real writing time in. I went to Borders, ordered an iced latte and a walnut cranberry cookie and plugged in my laptop next to an old man with a leather hat and a newspaper at the counter that faces out into the store. With Stan Getz on my ipod, and the background bustle of people coming and going around me, I was finally able to focus on my writing long enough to actually figure out what the hell I'm trying to write. I forget, until I have long stretches of time like this, what it feels like to really WRITE. To move past the snatched observations and the background twitter of my brain overloaded. At home, invariably, I distract myself. I get sidetracked into the minutia of crap I convince myself I need to do. But at Borders, where my worst vice is people watching, I more or less stick to what I'm there for: navigating the terrain of the story on my brain.
It's a crazy process. I feel like the blind lady I see around town often. She taps her way down familiar streets with hardly any hesitation. But when she comes to a crosswalk, or a change in pavement; a new flowerbox perhaps, or a heap of fallen leaves, she hesitates. Tapping the obstacle's outline with her stick until she knows its shape. Until she knows how to proceed.
All in a day's mischief...
Looking for the shape of words in autumn
I am fighting a deadline again for writing. A chapter in the book I can't imagine but feel compelled to write. I sit by my desk, sheaves from different drafts scattered round me like snow. I pace in my mind, restless with the slow process of imagining and believing that writing is for me. I want the ease of the paintbrush, the pencil. There, a leaf in front of me. Nothing is hidden. Every line revealed. Every shadow.
Saturday mosaic
A night of waking, but a later morning. Banana-pecan pancakes and coffee; enough time to finish my book. Bean asleep for a nap. Herb omelets and fresh orange juice. The cat wants in, out of the rain.
Skies the color of cement. Bright maple leaves like fallen stars under foot. Puddles in the low parts of the sidewalk, Bean in the Bjorn on DH, the three of us walking downtown.
At the farmer's market late, most of the stalls already packed up. Less people than the usual summer crowds. Gourds, squashes, pumpkins, bright root vegetables, their tips gathered up in piles. Organic local burgers from the farmer in the last stall who talked about his cows with an earnestness that was both sensible and loving.
Buildings stood up tall and stark against the wet autumn sky. The mercury hovered around fifty. Bean wore a hat, mittens, baby Uggs: shearling lined. I wore my boots, and felt my heels blister--the first christening of footwear for the season is always like this. In late spring, bands of blisters where my flip flops rub. Now my heels, soft, unused to boots, rubbed raw.
Later at a small harvest fest at the local market. A bright blue tractor. A bee keeper with a thin glass viewing hive. The bees circling round the queen, generating warmth in concentric circles. We picked out wine for diner with friends; apples to go in the wooden bowl on our coffee table at home. Bittersweet chocolate for a cake.
Small drops of rain fell, freckling the sidewalk. Clinging to grass. Making leaves stick wet and bright to our soles. Up high on a wire a lonely pair of shoesâ. I've always wondered about how shoes end up dangling there. I imagine boys, joshing each other, getting rid of an old pair of track shoes at the end of the season; or hoodlums pushing someone around, tossing up his shoes.
Hanging from their laces they felt like the small piece of my heart, wearing my father's blue flannel shirt this morning, as I wrote. It's been three years since he died, and more. And now my baby is taking steps around the coffee table, inching his way like he's up somewhere high, along the edge of a cliff.
Broken For You, by Stephanie Kallos
With a haphazard cast of characters, Broken For You tells the story of an elderly woman who has been diagnosed with brain cancer, and her growing friendship with a young woman who was abandoned as a child. It also tells a complex story of forgiveness and creativity: the young woman makes mosaics that document images of grief and love—and of the Holocaust—out of the broken bits of the thousands of rare antiques the older woman inherited—originally stolen by Nazis from the Jews in Europe.
The first half of the book was slow and indirect. It took me weeks to read. But as the plot unfurled amidst a gleeful smashing of plates, I became glued. I couldn’t put it down. Switching back and forth from simply narrating the story to a voice that speaks directly with the reader Kallos’ writing is bright, delicate and hopeful. She is brave enough to take up a dialogue with death and loss, and changes it with the beauty of the images she imagines and conveys. A wonderful, joyous read.
“Loved ones whose presence once filled us move into the distance; our eyes follow them as long as possible as they recede from view… Maybe we chase them…Maybe we stay put, left behind, and look for them in our dreams. But we never stop looking, not even after those we love become part of the unreachable horizon. We can never stop carrying the heavy weight of love on this pilgrimage; we can only transfigure what we carry. We can only shatter it and send it whirling into the world so that it can take shape in some new way.â€
My little helper
Yup, he's wearing a biking helmet in the last shot. He didn't even seem to notice it was on his head. We're excited because his head now is large enough for the teeniest, tiniest helmet on the market...which means lovely long rides in the bike trailer on quiet back country roads with mama & daddy for the remaining days of autumn! DH and I have only been able to ride together sporadically for the past 7 months, and it's probably the thing I miss most about our pre-Bean life.
Plout = Purple Lipped Trout
It appears that in my last post I called the delightful plumy apricot concoction my son loves so much a plout. Blackbird kindly clarified that a plout is in fact a Purple Lipped Trout. (You will have to ask her how she knew this amazing information!) It seems that our small family has developed its own vernacular. Both DH and I are glib and silly when it comes to words. We make words fit, where no words do. Things have names in our house that we give them carelessly, in scattered moments when the right name wont come, and for some reason, they stick.
Such was the case with the plouts. We started by calling them ploots. Then, realizing there was a "uo" in the spelling, we began calling them plouts, recklessly without noticing the "uo" spelling. We sang many a rendition of "plout, plout, let it all out, these are the plouts we are talking about, come-on!" You get the idea. (Bean of course, thinks we are hysterical and rewards us with the most exquisite peals of laughter we'll do just about anything to get more.)
Interestingly when I was looking for links about pluots so that the general blogosphere could be informed, I googled "plout" and was perturbed to come up with a whopping 59,700 searches including that word---but most of them unfortunately, a) had nothing to do with the fruit in question, b) were written in a foreign language, or c) were fan sites for the Greek biographer Plutarch.
Incidentally, when PLUOT is correctly googled, it procures only 39,000 searches, most of them actually having to do with said fruit.
The funny thing is, not one search for PLOUT led me to the amazing PURPLE LIPPED TROUT, so I was forced to go obscure reefs with my watercolors and brushes to procure a specimen.
Plout eater
As far as I can gather, plouts are a funky plum+apricot hybrid, and for some reason they are available in my local market--grown locally and organic. Bean loves them, and spends a delightful twenty minutes at a time sucking at the sweet, firm golden flesh.
CORRECTION: Plu-ot. See above post.
I should just throw myself a pity party and get it over with...
..Because my day has NOT gotten better. Just when things were looking up I had to go to the doctor to follow up on the mysterious disappearance of my IUD string. Turns out the whole damn thing has been gradually (over the past week) migrating south. So it needed to be removed. And then replaced. I'm sure I don't need to convince anyone how horrible it is to go to the obgyn. Nothing about cold metal down there, or the word SPECULUM is pleasant. But the one thing that can make that experience worse is definitely having an IUD removed and then replaced. Only one word remains. C R A M P. So now I'm eating Ben & Jerry's Mint Chocolate Cookie Ice Cream and watching my son eat a Plout (I'll be posting pictures of this later. So cute.) And contemplating digging a hole and climbing in with my pint of ice cream and my spoon.
Something to make it all better
Oh this is so good. It made everything slightly more right. Not to mention, Bean sat in front of the stereo just listening and grinning for more than a minute. Ahhh.
The kind zippy exhaustion that caffine creates
has swept over me this morning. I woke up so many times last night I lost count, to the thrashing limbs of my baby boy. I recall saying FUCK around 2 a.m. when his pacifire, which he so dearly loves, could not be found. And this morning, burrying my head in the thick down of my pillows, reluctant beyond all measure to be awake. The day is already like the blurred air around a whirling dirvish. Of center. There is no excuse, no real reason for this jittery unhappiness. But things keep piling up.
Self Portrait Tuesday: almost a documentary
I've spent a great deal of time behind the lense of my new camera this past week, documenting my favorite subjects. We survived the return trip from NJ without major incident, but yesterday was a wash. Exhaustion crept over us and we napped most of the afternoon, the three of us to the bed, limbs flung out, the lines between us blurring. Next week, a real documentary.
Summer's last moments
In New Jersey this weekend the air was still warm. The mercury crept up to the low eighties; summer's last heat spreading out across the lawn. We played with the dog. Watching him zing out in crazy enthusiastic circles chasing his rubber toy. A flash of apricot and cream, I remember when we picked him out. New in our relationship--together just a year. We'd just moved into our first apartment, and Zeus was the naughty pup who uprooted the flower boxes. Now he tousles Bean with loving licks and spends his afternoons under the coffee table, his body limp with relaxation, his eyes rolled back.
The weather was warm enough this weekend to lounge in a tank top on the grass. To wear sunglasses, feet bare. To run along the canal for miles where the snapping turtles sit in spring, on narrow logs in clusters.
With Bean under the watchful eye of his grandparents, DH and I got to do things we never get to do---mountain bike for long hours on rugged trails, hopping roots, and wide logs, riding narrow planked pathways over wetland mud where in the spring, skunk cabbages bloom. Riding around in his parent's sports car, taking curves fast and giggling, listening to 80s tunes. Walking around town hand in hand, late, under lamplight eating pumpkin ice cream.
The weekend went like an exhalation. Almost unnoticed. I've always wanted to catch exactly when the seasons change. For weeks now, I've been writing about the feeling of fall in the air. And being here, a few latitude lines south of home, I'm certain these warm days will be the last this season. Almost bitter sweet, I realize my baby will be running about solidly on his own two feet next year, this time.
Isn't this how it often is? Moments full of sweetness pass before we truly glimpse them? So often we dwell on the times of sorrow, when frustration or grief poke their strange faces into our nighttime thoughts. We've grown accustomed, somehow, to the frantic diet of agitation that our national media spews forth.
Today, with the rapid-action feature on our new camera, and our dog, we tried to snare a few of these bright breathless moments, mid air, before they vanished with the evening sun.
Click on the picture for a slideshow.
OCTOBER'S LIST
Happy October! This is the month where fall actually feels real to most of us in the northeast. When leaves heap up high, and kids sink into piles, chest deep and giggling. It's the month of all things pumpkin. Of cider doughnuts, hot coffees, and the first of many mornings cold enough to see our breath. Since I'm obsessive about lists, and totally inspired by Irene's fabulous sidebar lists, are some things I'm into this month:
* Starting a bookgroup. What we're reading: classic contemporary lit we all kinda think we read but have forgotten, or maybe never read and just thought we did, or know we haven't read but should. First up: Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller.
* Reading our new camera manual cover to cover so that I know how to do all sorts of nifty things like astrophotography, macro pics, and self timed shots, so I can do red currant’s awesome October SPT life documentary challenge.
* Learning to knit---I'm terrified I'll still be terrible at it like I was in fifth grade (the last time I gave it a whirl), when everyone had to make mittens in handwork class and mine had monstrous thumbs. This time, I'm going to start with something simple & straightforward: a knit-purl blanket out of super soft wool for Bean. I'm eyeing the gorgeous knitting needle rolls that Nikki Shell makes.
* Trying some yummy new recipes. I'm looking at Traveler's Lunchbox and Chocolate and Zucchini, and Delicious Days for foodie inspiration.
* Making art with my son; doing pen and ink drawings for Everyday Matters; exploring digital collages like Dreamy via the Garden; looking for design inspiration in the world around me like Poppy, and branching out into new terrain in my art journal with some more mixed media collages like Joleen. I'm also finding arty inspiration at: paperheart, boygirl party and ryan garber
Survived: 7 hours in the car and a new camera
We're visiting the inlaws in New Jersey, and made our way by starlight this morning down along open highways to get here around noon. Seven hours, give or take, and Bean survived. So much to post about--perhaps tomorrow when we have leisure time and Bean's grandparents are doting on him. Noteworthy: we purchased a new Cannon EOS 20D. It takes amazing pictures and yesterday, walking around town trying out the exquisitly rapid shutter speed and the lovely zoom lense, I was giddy beyond belief. Click on the photo below for a slideshow sampling of the pictures we took.
Yummy
See his tongue?? He tries to stand now, all of the time. Munching on the edges of the coffee table, chairs, our knees. His little wobbly legs push him up frantically, his feet tipy-toed. He sways about like a drunk with a hula hoop.
Time to move everything another level up. The surface of the coffee table, no longer safe from little grabbing hands.