THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT by Mark Haddon

A wonderfully constructed story that it forces you to become attached to the strange habits and foibles of the lead character, Christopher, who is autistic. Without being pedantic or obtuse, the narrator's voice is exacting and transparent, bringing you into a world where the color of cars passing on the street decide the mood for the day: red cars, good mood. Black cars = bad mood; and where the mysterious death of a dog leads to an unraveling of family complexities. It is a book about love and loss, and it made me contemplate again how people make sacrifices for the ones they love, and how misunderstandings almost invariably arise when words are not enough. Hadden’s experience working with autistic youths gives his character’s voice validation, and he writes with a lithe humor and sensitivity, even when exploring issues of depression, anger and self doubt. A quick, easy read, THE CURIOUS INCIDENT pulls you from one chapter to the next with wry observations about human nature, wit, and well constructed sentences.

Weekend sweetness

Syrup making in an outdoor evaporator, old iron spiles, sap dripping into galvanized buckets with lids to keep the squirrels out. Standing around with people we barely know (our neighbors to the west) it feels so easy to be ourselves. To laugh, to throw the slimy tennis ball for their spaniel, and lick syrup from a paper cup, still hot, unselfconsciously. We share conversation the way two friends might a sandwich, snatching juicy bits here and there while Bean crawls about on the wood pile and gets licked by the dog.

“Doggy,” he says, over and over again. “Doggy.” And we can’t help but laugh with wonder and scoop him up. He’s starting to talk!

All weekend a friend has been visiting, and our house is full of the quiet harmony that occurs when someone you love is around. An extra set of hands. Dishes done. She laughs at all my husband’s jokes and and Bean adores her. Between us we've probably had six bars of chocolate. And in the moments in between everything else, we’ve been sorting out our souls over cups of tea or red wine , talking until we’ve gathered many bright words like handfuls sea glass.

Hair cuts today (I got bangs—see above), and playing in the late evening sunlight at the waterfront, chasing Bean about the lawn and drinking up the light.

Before and during

Out in the field of trampled grass we sit under a gray bucket of sky, looking towards the roofline of our house, angled and steep against the gentle slope of the hill. Redwing blackbirds call from their perches on budding branches. Maple sugaring tomorrow with the neighbors, and the electrical wiring is done, the walls finally framed. Drywall this week, then paint. These things feel like progress but there is always more to do.

This early part of spring is always a time of disbelief for me. So long since foliage was familiar, I can’t remember the soft outlines of trees, fuller with leaves, nor can my memory slip comfortably around the color of bright green grass or blossoms. Yet it is only a matter of weeks, a half a calendar’s page of days before the landscape’s contour changes. When the peepers come and the new sap stops dripping into the buckets in the sugar maple stands, it will happen. It is the same way with the house now. We walk the rooms, so accustomed to the film of drywall dust, the nails underfoot, the exposed studs. Picking paint samples is an act of faith. But soon we'll have floors, the kitchen cabinets in place, tile underfoot in the bathroom.

Before and during feel so much longer than the after, when in reality, of course, the opposite is true.

Growing

The sun made me happy today. Bean & I went to the park and I think he felt it too: that glorious springtime light splashing our cheeks and making shadows look like blue cut-outs in a collage. We squinted and laughed and climbed the jungle gym and then went for a latte and a vanilla milk.

He’s becoming his own little self. Thoughtful, interested, pointing out everything. It seems like this past week all of a sudden he’s started to notice the most minute details in things. He points to airplanes in the sky---and last night we came home late and I cradled him in my arms so he could see the big night sky and he pointed up at the stars and started babbling excitedly, turning his head as we walked up the steps to the porch, so that he could get one last glimpse before we came inside.

Chiaroscuro of the heart

I sit at the dining room table with a good mechanical pencil and some soft lead. The house hums with the regular quiet of evening. Into the corners of my mind the hubbub of the day still seeps, like spilled ink soaking into a paper towel. I give myself a task: focus wholly on these two little boots. Let my eyes move along their contours. Stay focused. Follow with my hand.

I sketch the outline of each boot. My mind slips into a place between thinking and not—a place without language where I hover like a humming bird, millimeters from a flower anticipating sweet nectar. I start painting the shadows.

I’ve been trying to do this more: directing my focus towards everyday objects. To notice how things are. To try to accurately observe. Everything doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be.

I've begun to notice this week how often I put value on moments, on whole days: “this is horrible,” I hear myself saying, or “I hate this.” Often I am overcome with these emotions—the value I give the moment obscures it.

The shadows are hard to capture. The quality of shiny rubber catches the light. The boots are still new, only used indoors by Bean’s small feet. He’s walked about in them like a bowlegged cowboy, high stepping, with a big grin on his face. Soon they’ll be muddy, their sheen tarnished with a glaze of puddle mud.

The shadows are important. They give depth and angle. Without them the contours I’ve drawn will look distorted and not like the boots at all. It is the shadows that bring dimension, and I’m starting to understand that about my life too. It is hard for me to allow the shadows to simply be, without resenting them, or allotting them a value. Hard to come face to face with my sorrow, anger, or aggression, without letting these emotions spill over my entire perception self. Hard to let them exist alongside my breath, without holding my breath.

I’m not good at allowing these emotions to rest in the open palms of my soul, without clenching my fists.

Some nights when I paint, I let things distort, grow wild, brilliant, abstract, but tonight I want to capture things as they are. Tonight I want the chiaroscuro to be as it is, there on the table before me. Light where the bulbs above my head illuminate the toe tips. Dark where the soles touch the table top. Light where my breath comes freely. Dark where my mind comes up against the sharp edges of undefined worry.

I recall reading about this years ago when I was trying to learn how to be mindful, rather than just being mindful. I never got it then: this process of acceptance. I never understood how hard it is to sit side by side with frustration, with self pity, with a knot of anger, and allow these things to be without allowing them to flood the page with darkness. To accept them, but not to give them reign. To see them as they are, without the distortion.

I go back over the boots, working with watercolors, adding layer upon layer of red pigment to create the shadows. I begin to notice that there is shape to the shadows. They have borders. I focus my mind on the page. The meaty part of my palm rubs up against the fresh paint, smudging it. A trail of dark pigment flecks the outer edge of my hand.

I realize that often in these past few days, when work has been highly stressful for DH, I’ve allowed myself to absorb his aggression and frustration. I’ve internalized it and allowed it to spread: an unidentified fear spilling across the page of my heart, and my whirling hormones (after two years, nearly, my cycle is finally returning) have added to the blur.

When I look closely, this is what I see: the boots. Two tokens of puddle-stomping joy to be had by the small boy who I love. My anger: not really mine, but absorbed from the environment of stress I’ve been in this week. My worry: money, always money. My fear: that I am not good enough.

When I observe closely this is what I feel: breath. Tension. Focus. Acceptance. Release. Here are the boots, and my soul as I see them tonight.

Self Portrait Tuesday: Time # 3---Playtime

By the calendar, spring is here now. Yesterday the equinox, and today, a few moments of daylight more. But at this latitude it is still cold, and we are feeling cagy. Bean and I went out into our tiny urban yard today: a mess of lumpy lawn, a broken mower under the deck, the tall gray picket fence leaning in. He raced about on the uneven ground, falling often, laughing, bringing me dried leaves (this is what he does now—bring me small things he finds: lint, a scrap of paper, leaves. And these thing suddenly are precious.)

It was good for me, after days like the past handful, to go with Bean outdoors and watch hid body fill with bubbly wonder like soda in a cup. Good to remember how easy it is pocket these small instances of joy.

We twirled until we were both dizzy and then we sat and watched the world spin. I could see his eyes still tracking the orbiting yard around him, and the grin on his face wide like the grin on mine.

It’s been an interesting week of sinking deeply into words, and now I’m longing for easier things: for messy collages, for magazines, anything where the image does all the work, and words are only for decoration. I’ve realized how important daily writing is for me---not just morning pages (though they help); doing the kind of writing that requires me to return to previous work again and again, crafting sentences on a daily basis makes it possible for me to refine meaning: like making maple syrup, so much sap evaporates before there’s real sweetness to be had.

This push I’ve had to write fits with the season. This piece of Earth has turned it’s axis again toward the sun, and everything feels it: receding ice, new shoots, and randy stray cats who come yowling around our door looking for handouts. The shift in season also reflects another internal shift—my body is going though some sort of hormonal reordering, and my moods are wildly flailing all over the board.

So it was good to go outside in the cold bright air, soak up sun and twirl.

I write, I have written

I tried to think of something clever to write to describe the weekend, but I couldn’t, because all I’ve been doing is writing and I feel squeezed dry tonight. (The yeast infection, the serious shin splints and the ridiculously cold weather haven’t helped.) Every spare second for the past three days, writing. I have about 10,000 words of stuff that in the good moments I think is actually decent. Then there are the moments that I feel like flushing it all down the toilet. These moments occur in abundance. But it’s some kind of progress. The deadline is tomorrow, so it’s up to the stars then.

The highlight of the weekend: see below.

Some nights I wait with an empty cup

Some nights I wait with an empty cup for the water to boil in the blue metal pot.

Some nights there is too much to define: the places where I begin and end, where my heart leaves off loving and begins needing unsayable things that make me flutter like winnowed chaff in the wind.

I want more than water and tea leaves, more than steam. Some nights the world stops in my soul and I must wait like a heart attack victim for the pulse of words and meaning to return.

I pour the liquid into my cup and burn my fingers on the steam; then bring them to my lips, hold them there, caressing their blistered heat.

Some nights, I wait for words to rush up like the steam, to catch me unaware.

13 months and running

Dear Bean,

Today was one of those days I’d prefer, mostly, to forget. You started screaming practically the minute you woke up this morning—after sitting bolt upright and immediately pointing to, and fiercely wanting, every off-limit item on my night stand (a glass of water, a pen, nail clippers). You wailed your way through getting dressed, howled shrilly when I put you down, and proceeded all day to become a wet mess of tears any time something did not go your way.

It didn’t help that today of all days our landlord decided to have the insulation in the apartment re-done---without telling us. For hours (all morning and most of the afternoon) we listened to the sound of insulation being blown into the walls, pumped through feet of wide corrugated tubing by a very loud air compressor. Hours of drilling, of metal ladders being put up and then taken down. You ran from window to window, pointing and yelling, interested in all the commotion until it was well past your regular nap time---but the noise kept you from sleep.

When they left in the afternoon, the two of us were quite grumpy at each other but grateful for a soft bed, and so we curled up together like a set of measuring spoons and slept until 5p.m.

Not every day is like this. Though you HAVE begun throwing what appear to be tantrums: your legs turn to jello. You wail. You fall to the floor. It is really very dramatic. And you’d think that perhaps I’m torturing you, or maybe, at the very least, that I’m cruel and unkind and am preventing you from a happy childhood because I won’t let you try and figure out how the outlet covers come off, or how to turn the knobs on my easel (it WILL FALL! I Promise.)

Most days however, you are a delight. You love spaghetti, the baby sitter, swings, and taking the tops off of chapstick and pens. You bring us books to read—and use our fingers to point to stuff that you like on the page. You point at everything. And you hug and nuzzle us when you’ve missed us (even if we’ve only been gone five minutes.)

Your sudden explosion in receptive language has left me floored. You understand so much now. You can follow simple directions and know the names for many things you love: book, shoes, swing, breakfast, milk, nap.

Yet I can see how the gap between receptive language and expressive language has you frustrated—and I’m sorry when I can’t figure out or anticipate from your wild “uh-uhing” and pointing what it is EXACTLY that you want. It is also wildly frustrating to you every time you come up against a boundary. Trust me kiddo, it’s wildly frustrating for me to0---especially after you do it again, and again, to see JUST EXACTLY WHERE THAT LINE IS THAT YOU CAN’T CROSS.

You are already so different this month, than last month. Last month you were a brand new one year old. Now you’re a pro at this whole toddler bit. You run—everywhere. You run away from Bella, your little girlfriend, with HER sippy cup in your hand. You play chasing games with us, and with the cats. You want to run with the big kids at the park. You want to be just like them, and I’m not sure if my heart can grow fast enough to take this. Yet I know I’ll adjust—and you’ll help me. Now when we go for walks you reach up to take my hand, as if to say, “this is the way mama!”

How I love you!

Dislocation

I just finished this painting, and am fascinated by how it turned out. The process of painting is so organic for me: far more wildly right brained than writing is. I start with a canvass, and just push paint around. I let the background sit for a couple of days, there on my easel in the middle of the room. I allow it to saturate my subconscious. I think about it in the still moments when I’m nursing Bean, or rocking him to sleep, or when I’m lying in bed just at the cusp of sleep myself. If I’m attentive, images will often alight on the cinemascape of my mind. I’ll see stalky bird legs, or a particular wash of color. Or I might pick up on a mood.

Days go by this way. Until I find the right image to follow, and then I do.

In this painting the colors of the background were so moody, I struggled with how to extend an image beyond their sheer rawness. I wanted this piece to be another in the series I’m making for upcoming café shows, so I wanted to stick with the theme I’d chosen of juxtaposing organic and inorganic; detail and chaos.

Flipping through the bird book DH gave me for Valentine's Day (along with a pair of incredible binoculars! Yes we’re like that. I gave him a telescope. And no, we didn’t discuss our presents in advance. That’s just how we think.) I found myself lingering over the image of the great blue heron: so majestic, wild, fierce, lonely.

After I’d made the bird, the dark city landscape evolved to go behind it. I was writing about dislocation and creating home at the time, and these ideas became the narrative of this painting.

In Connecticut, where I used to live and work, I’d drive along 95 and I’d feel heartsick at the trash, the urbanization, the acres of cement overrunning coastal wetlands and marshes belonging to egrets and herons, red tailed hawks, grebes, and mallards. Now I’m living northwards by several hundred miles and things seem more in synch. There are wide swaths of open space designated for the birds. Along the sandbar heading towards the islands in Lake Champlain, and huge osprey aeries sit atop telephone poles every mile or so.

But I can’t help feeling like somehow it’s up to me to be a part of making this last. It’s easy to feel entitled. Easy to say, “this is my land.” Harder to make actions reflect the fluttering wonder of my heart.

I am interested: what choices do you make consciously to protect the natural habitat where you live?

Self Portrait Tuesday: Time #2

Me as an 8 year old: Lanky as a bean pole with scratched knees, and sun blonde hair. Riding a red wagon down a washed out gully, full tilt. Climbing loquat and eucalyptus trees up to their highest branches, never falling. Rolling down the long stretch of grassy hill again and again and again. Keeping swallowtail caterpillars in a box. Becoming an expert mark with the bow and arrows I carved myself. Telling myself stories—outloud. Drinking root beer floats in ceramic mugs. Running naked with a herd of cattle in Covelo, CA when it was so hot, mirages would spring up everywhere at a distance…. And rescuing this squirrel from our cat. He became my pet for the year. His name was Chipper—because he liked eating corn chips, of course. He’d ride around on my shoulders, under my hair, or in a pouch I made.

Me as a teenager: Lanky and uncoordinated. Getting curves and waging a war against them. Scratched knees, a Lifeguard tan, sun and peroxide bleached hair. Riding around in a mint green Toyota Tercel with my best friend from high school eating cherries. Climbing cliffs at Goat Rock, never falling. Kissing boys again and again and again. Reading Dostoyevsky, Soloviev, Dante and Tolstoy for pleasure. Drinking beer, hating my parents and lying a lot. Writing stories---in my journal. Swimming naked at Salmon Creek beach with friends. ….And keeping chickens (7-8th grade), a rabbit, another rabbit, a dog, and Manx named Tomten.

Me in college: Lanky and mostly coordinated. Trying to learn how not to hate my curves. Scratched knees, East Coast pallor, my first pedicure and professionally highlighted hair. Riding my road bike 500 miles from upstate NY to Canada. Riding my mountain bike all over the woods. Climbing rock walls, sometimes falling. Kissing boys again and again and again, until I found the right one. Reading Diddion, Ellison, Kozol, and Morrison. Drinking wine from long stemmed glasses, learning to be honest with my parents and love myself. Writing poems and stories so furiously and copiously, I was sure I’d die of thirsting for words if I stopped. Running naked into the autumn waves at Harkness beach with my boyfriend (DH!)… And taking care of a python, a gecko, and an oyster toadfish (a work-study gig at a science center), milking 40 head of cows at a dairy (summer of my freshman year), and watching swans in the cove near my college.

Me now: Lanky and as coordinated as I’ll ever be. Finally loving my body for what it does: give birth, run long miles, hold me up right, give me pleasure; rather than for how it looks. Shin splints, East Coast pallor, and no-highlights pony tail. Riding the bike at the gym for cross training. Making plans to spend the summer rock climbing with my best friend from college. Kissing my husband and my beautiful Bean again and again and again. Reading Goldberg, Lamott, Kingsolver, Oliver, Illende and Bly. Drinking lattes for survival in the morning, loving my mother, missing my father, and trusting myself. Daring to write like my voice matters, and feeling certain that I’d die of thirsting for words if I stopped. Sleeping naked….And dreaming of keeping bees, and chickens; rescuing the neighborhood stray cat, missing my dog (with DH’s parents in NJ until we move) and tolorating the constant butt-first affection of my male cat, Mojo (why, why must cats be like that??)

Some things change with time. Other things never seem to.

Pictures from my kitchen tonight

Dinner with friends. Two one-year-olds running around the livingroom waving kitchen utensils. Adult conversation & good wine. Pizza deliverd, and ripe avocados. Fresh raspberries for desert with vanilla ice cream and brownies DH made while I was out on a early evening run. (It was warm enough outside to run in shorts!) Cappucinos. Laughter. Then a tuckered out babe, and a quiet house. Tea with turbinado sugar & snuggling on the couch with DH. Looking back through photo albums of five years ago when we were just dating and eager. (Our first apartment on the Upper East Side; a backpacking trip in Pueto Rico; a bike trip up the California coast.) Now to stumble greatfully to bed.

It's starting to feel like home

I spend the day pulling nails, removing plank after plank from the barn board on the walls in the living room and foyer. I wear leather work gloves, old pink corduroys, and a dust mask. Particles float in the air like plankton. Each piece of wood is old and feels light and brittle. Some splinter when I pry the nails out, but I am trying to keep as many pieces intact as I can. This is good wood: probably a hundred years old. I know this much: it comes from Addison County, and on one plank I found “KS + BC, ‘29” scratched into the wood.

Every time I arrive at our after being in our crowded little apartment I feel like my heart is going to burst with longing and giddy glee. Invariably, I leap from the car and must go straight out into the fields where I walk along the old stone walls, taking inventory of all the small things I hardly know and already love: mossy covered logs, mule deer tracks, coyote scat, seed pods rattling empty in the wind.

Last week the fields were covered with snow—nearly a foot in the low places—and zig zagged with tracks. Now the road dirt road leading to our house is thick with mud, and except in the shady wooded valley where sunlight barely creeps and the stream runs, the snow has melted. Brown grasses lie limp and pummeled against the sloping earth, but below the dead stalks, I can new green.

The robins arrived this week. I always know that spring is for keeps when they come. It might still snow, but the relentless turning of the earth means longer days and warmer air. Today as I’m prying the boards loose from crumbling gypsum, I feel spring fever, plain and simple.

I open the windows, and notice flies (I think must have been dormant) are now buzzing with irritating stupidity in the space between the window glass and the screen. Fresh air rushes in, and I’m warm enough in my faded red t-shirt. All I want is to get outdoors, when I’ve gotten every plank off the wall, pulling bent nails from each piece, and stacking it neatly, I give in.

The sun is falling towards the west, and in the east a gibbous moon is rising just above the trees.

I sit on the lawn and watch it rise.

I can’t remember the last time I watched the moon slowly climb the sky, moving between the branches of the beeches as though it were climbing the rungs of a ladder. The sky is a perfect deep blue, and the tree tops are stained golden in the setting sun.

I listen. The neighbor’s sheep are coming in from the fields and I can hear them bah-ing plaintively. Then I hear an early owl call from the woods, it’s whoo-whooing echoing around our land like a marble rolling in a glass bowl.

I hear mourning doves, flickers, chickadees and red winged blackbirds. I try to focus, drawing my eyes to where my ears pick up each bird’s individual call; and I see them on the tops of trees, serenading the setting sun. I can’t bring myself to move. In the field below me, I watch small red squirrels run up and down tree trunks.

The moon is above the tallest tree now, and the sun just below the twiggy edge of the woods. Sitting here like this, with my face drenched in evening sunlight nand my arms wrapped around my knees, reminds me why we’re here.

Why we struggle on so many days to put together cohesive and civil sentences with each other, exhaustion stretching us so far and we forget to do anything else. Why we’re living in a too-small apartment, in a neighborhood full of college kids whose whooping wakes us up at 2am, where we’ve grown used to seeing the spinning red lights of the ambulance, called again and again to the house across the street as a woman screams and a man yells and then things get too quiet too fast.

Sitting on now on the lawn looking at the mountains and the tiny houses dotting the valley below like toy figurines, feels just like finding one of those store directories in the mall with the little red arrow that says “YOU ARE HERE.”

We’re making a home. Making it with our hands and our longing; with our fights, our silences, our love making, our laughter, our work.

It didn’t even take a month after Bean was born to realize that we wanted to move away from the congested tangle of Southern Connecticut with its perpetually snarled Highway 95, and it’s disproportionate emphasis on money and belongings. Holding him when he was still small enough to fit along the length of DH’s forearm, his little eyes shut tight in slumber, we knew it was not even a choice. We had to move: to risk everything and start new.

I can’t help but wonder if we would have moved at that time—or ever—if we hadn’t had Bean. A part of me pictures the fragments of our lives would have been like: sharp little pieces of worry poking up through our busy days. Commuting everywhere, so much time in the car. And another part of me imagines the excuses we would have: the unknowns, the cost, the labor, the risk all would have weighed too greatly when put in the scale along side our comfortable, if not stifled life.

How grateful I am for the wild unplanned joy of Bean, and for the fierce bugle call of our dreams that sounded as a result.

My feet sink into the muddy ground, and I rest my chin casually on a knee as I watch the bright scarlet wing patch of a blackbird dip and dive across the tree line. Here I am, I think.

Wednesday Mosaic

We eat sweet ataulfo mango scored into cubes and eaten right from the peel with our fingers, the sticky juice getting everywhere. Bean runs round and round the coffee table coming back each time for more, his cheeks flecked with the yellow fruit. We’re both grinning. The sun hits the back of my neck and makes the leather of the couch warm to the touch. The cats are sitting on the windowsill soaking up the sun’s heat, and when we go out onto the porch for a moment I hear birds—not just the house finches and chickadees that have kept us company all winter, but early song birds that I cannot yet name by call alone.

The lowers DH brought home a few days ago for me, still blooming: hot magenta, lemon and golden petals filling the room with delicate fragrance. Breakfast is my favorite meal and this week we’ve been gathering around the island in the kitchen, the three of us eating mouthfuls of warm buttered toast, fresh plums, yogurt, coffee. Even though Bean was up so much last night I heard myself say to DH, “I can’t wait for the night to be over,” at around 2:30 a.m., this start to the day somehow redeems it. The tiredness temporarily wiped away by the fact that I’m here with my guys in the kitchen, DH and I swapping small talk and smiles while Bean kicks his highchair and practices using a fork.

By late morning I sink gratefully into clean sheets (I love the way they feel, newly laundered), and nap hard with Bean nudged into the nook of my arm. When he wakes me two hours later, I can’t figure out where I am. The house, the bedroom, everything is utterly unfamiliar for a minute as my brain untangles itself from the terrain of my dream.

It is one of those days of family meals, and I love this. I make tofu with sesame seeds and almonds, sautéed sugar snap peas, rice pilaf, and while I’m cooking DH and Bean take a walk down the block. I catch them with my camera on their return, and Bean sees me from half a block away and grins as wide as a melon wedge when he runs into my arms.

Later we go to the park, snow still on the ground, and I watch in wonderment as my baby is suddenly a kid. Independent. Exploring. Picking up woodchips and throwing them with glee, then taking my hand and climbing the stairs to the slide where we go down together over and over again. On the way back I look for more evidence of spring: and find sap making buds knobby and big on twigs, and former icy patches into puddles reflecting sky.

When we get home I finally make it: the perfect chai masala. Steamed milk, good sugar, and this tea.

Self Portrait Tuesday: Time #1

I ran 11 miles today. It felt like an eternity and I wanted to give up many more than eleven times, but I didn't. I chose to run indoors after my last long run left me chilled to the bone, but regretted my decision. It was sunny outside even though it was cold, and the scenery would have kept me engaged. Running indoors is synonymous with boredom, and though I brought these stories to listen to on my iPod, and could be seen from time to time grinning from ear to ear as a result, I couldn’t shake the monotony of running in place.

One foot after the other, staring at myself in the mirror for 1 hour and 45 minutes makes time do crazy things. This much I know: time is not a constant medium. In the last half hour of running, when both knees were burning and I was dying for Gatorade (which I forgot to bring) and I had to pee, it felt like each minute was stretched out the way a tape sounds when the tape film gets pulled. The song blares at warp speed, all blurry and ridiculous.

Other times —-like when on the couch and write in my notebook with the bright morning sun flooding in through the windows---an hour or two feels like a small pocketfull of minutes. I could sit there forever, writing. No amount of time feels long enough. Bean always wakes too soon.

So I've found that staying present in the moment: running only for these steps that are happening now; holding my mind in check, right NOW---is the only way humanly possible to make it through 11 miles. This is also how I make it through the rough days when everything's off kilter; and how I plan to make it through 26.6 miles.

Taken moment by moment, the quality of time evens out. Now is NOW. Thid moment I can bear—and then suddenly this moment has become the next.

***

Here is a brillaint piece of writing about time.

Here are other self portrait takers.

Snow & sky: pictures from our land

Waxing moon

Fence post at the tree line

Tracks in the woods.

Our uplowed snowy driveway.

Field weeds.

Winding road.

Mt. Mansfield at sunset.

Snowy day

We woke up to snow---powdery inch upon inch making everything sparkling and white. When the sidewalks were plowed, the snow came up to my knees on either side, and all day fat dreamy flakes drifted down.

Sometime in the past month Bean has connected the word "snow" with snow, and today when I said "do you see it snowing?" he ran to the window to look out, still in his jammies.

After a breakfast of waffles and eggs we put on our jackets and went out on the porch. This was the first time he's ever REALLY played in snow---the first time touching it, bare handed; the first time he made the connection that the stuff on the porch was the same stuff coming down from the sky---and he'd point to snowflakes falling and say "uh, uh, uh!"

He ran out the door and knelt in it eagerly, but then sat back and stared at it for a good long minute, as if frozen in amazment. After his initial shock that it's REALLY COLD, he started to play, picking up handfuls, and watching as each little flake dissolved in the heat of his palm.

Becoming

To grow is to go beyond what you are today.

Stand up as yourself.

Do not imitate.

Do not pretend to have achieve your goal, and do not try to cut corners.

Just grow.

--Svami Prajnanpad

***

I am surrounded by notebooks, and I am taking notes. Like an archeologist, I am looking for clues about the piece (a book?) I am trying to write. I want to find the veins that traverse it, that bring meaning to it’s peripheries. I am re-reading all the scribbled pages and documents I’ve written since the winter of 2004 when I was hugely pregnant, exhausted, and severely dislocated from my sense of self. It is startling and sometimes funny to go back and read all the thoughts I’ve dutifully recorded.

Over and over againI write the same things, tugging at the girdle of phrasing, couching my words this way and then that---trying to get closer to truth. And then over and over I forget.

I find I’ve written things down that make me laugh out loud. Like this:

“I look around the apartment today and think: god, I’ve all but killed the houseplants.”

Other things make me go quiet inside, the way a bird must feel after it has landed. Like this:

“The map of your identity changes when you love someone. “

**

“On the train home, we slice through the dark—an isolated rectangle of light and breath and shifting weight.” **

“The days of recovery from labor and bonding with Bean have blurred together into a continuous present. I find I am unable to think very far forward or backward and instead end up lingering in the moment doing nothing except watching and listening to my son breathe.”

** “His little fingers curl around my thumb, and I am learning humility now. The moments of each days fabric have become a string of little wonderments. Little things matter now. Like coffee, and the incredible smell of his hair.”

** “Everyone lives through periods of intense change, yet few give pause to these moments of turbulence. Few are present and reflective right in the moment of becoming.”

**

I’ve started to feel present in the story I am trying to write for the first time, and have begun to realize that it is more than a story about birth (my son’s) or death (my father’s) or love (my parents, my own). It is a story about becoming.

I want to know your stories of becoming.

Just the way to start a day

Bean woke early this morning, so we decided to make the best of it by taking a walk to a new bakery that just opened a month ago. The air was biting cold, but the sun was out so brightly it impossible not to smile. In the older section of town, where stores are a bit run down, and the people are a more flavorful mix of Somalians, Ethiopians, Bosnians and Vermonters, the little new bakery occupies a bright yellow building with blue and red trim.

We parked our stroller outside and trundled in---immediately transported to some Old World place of heady bread aromas, freshly brewing coffee and warm croissants. A tiny place really, with just enough room for wall counters and stools, and a display rack, the rest of the shop is the bakery itself, where the baker whom we recognized from summer farmer’s market trips, was rolling dough.

As if aware of our delight, Bean sat happily on the high counter in the sun, still bundled in his snowsuit, his hair standing straight up with static, and ate mouthfuls of buttery croissant. NPR was on low in the background and when fresh coffee cake came out of the oven—all crumbly and sweet, we ordered two pieces. If I could have my way, this is how I would start every single day

It's March

It’s March, and like clockwork all the maples and hickories, oaks and beeches along the sidewalks have swollen nubbins of buds. The air is just that much warmer. The sunlight lasts just that little bit longer. And it makes all the difference.

It’s been one of those weeks that has zipped by in a blur: moments scattering like a flock of grackles. Now as I sit down to write with a steaming cup of tea, it takes me a moment to gather up the memories, to locate myself in the present of this flutter of action.

A few things that have happened this week:

DH and I got to work on the house together for a few days in a row(we’ve stuck gold with the baby sitter. Bean adores her!) and this made a huge difference for us. Not only are we finally making what feels like significant progress, but we also feel like we're on the same page for the first time in weeks.

Another good thing on the homefront: 0ur kitchen cabinets were delivered on Monday, each Shaker style piece in its own cardboard box, nestling together like some extraterrestrial cityscape.

It felt like Christmas, opening them. Drawers with pneumatic buffers, a pantry with folding out storage shelves, a sink base wide enough for this kind sink; SPACE, finally for all our serving dishes, utensils, measuring cups. Progress feels like it is finally being made, and we’re moving now more rapidly towards laying flooring and building the remaining walls.

Yesterday, DH took over the evening routine with Bean and I took the night off. Time at the gym, and then to Barnes & Noble where I spent the rest of the night organizing notes for the manuscript I’m working on. It felt so good not to be rushing. To have the time to run a full seven miles (in just over an hour), and to linger reading the latest Elle magazine on the stretching mat. And then to finally sink into my writing long enough to gather up all the loose threads and get a hold of the big-picture tapestry again.

Today, I got this project underway. I'm really excited about this (and I hope you are too!)

And tonight walking to my intaglio print making class all the bells from church towers around the city were chiming—dinner hour. It was so beautiful---the sun just set, and the sky awash with rosy pinks. Then to spend three solid hours with a bunch of other artist women getting printing ink and whiting under our nails: heaven.