Exhaustion

18 hour days. New muscles in my wrists. Thousands of square feet of paint and flooring. More rain. I'm so tired I could almost sleep standing up. Polyurethane fumes, and the report of the pneumatic nailer over and over again. Last night listening to the radio at 2:30 am we realized we've become their target audiance: depressed, financially strapped, and awake doing things we'd rather not be doing.

But somehow we keep putting one foot in front of the other. Friends came and helped us move the big stuff and left us with maple candy and red wine, and soon the floors will be dry and we'll be able to sleep early and deep wrapped in the sound of rural silence: a chorus of frogs and owls welling up. Tomorrow we'll be sleeping somewhere else. Not sure where yet, but somewhere.

Saying grace

Gratitude that the rain has stopped, at least for now. That sun, hot and bright, is pouring down on the fields of dandelions and lilac hedgerows. That my body, sore as it is, allows me to do this: to keep these hours, to tile, to rip out the ugly bathroom vanity upstairs plying it with a sledge hammer and crowbar, delicately so as not to destroy the wall. That my inlaws have been here all week, caring for Bean, making meals, helping to paint. Gratitude at looking up and seeing a bowl full of dark ink and stars spilled out across the heavens.

Gratitude at driving the washboard bumpy road to the house and seeing a fox slink into the high grass almost every evening, a wisp of orange, a fleeting hint of wildness.

Gratitude standing under the apple trees and hearing the hum of a thousand bees, the air pulsing with their honey-gathering vibrations.

Gratitude that today we start flooring, and that when the inlaws leave my dearest friend and her boyfriend are coming to help us move.

So much to be thankful for, even now when every muscle in my body aches. When my head zings from lack of sleep. When, as I type, I can feel tenderness in all the tiny ligaments in my wrists and fingers.

This process is something like labor: there is no alternate way out. We must simply make do. Confronting each day and moment with everything we can give, and trusting we’ll get there. Now, only a handful of days.

Self Portrait Challenge #2: An introduction

The furrows between my brows have gotten deeper this month. No time to breathe, uncoil, rest. Everything is push-pull, pell mell, full throttle. More than can be done, must be. And every off color remark, every comment that could be recieved as criticism, IS.

In this picture, my eyelashes are wet from tears. Haphazard, overtired tears. Hormonal, exhausted tears. Tears because of nothing I can remember today.

We're living off of large cups of gas station coffee, purchased on the way to the house, and determination. I dream of sleep, of a dry basement (many of my paintings were ruined), and SUN (it has now rained for a week and a half, non-stop.)

So this is a different introduction. Another side of me, careworn, frowning, furrowed, exhausted. One more week, and then we move--even though we won't have a kitchen yet.

Frenzy

DH and I have realized that we really, really, need super powers to finish the house. Baring that possibility, it won't be finished when we move in. So we're at the point of creating priority lists: we need a shower, washer, dryer, toilet, sink. We need floors. Currently we have none. GAAHHHHHH! Here are some pretty pictures to distract you while I work.

Oh, and did I mention, it's STILL raining? The basement in our apartment is under 8 inches of water...along with all of our boxes in "storage." When it rains, it pours, right?

Tile and grout, like a trout

So it's been RAINING for days and days here. I'm growing gills. The fields are slick lakes, flooded with rain. The road a narrow ribbon snaking between shimmering expanses of blue. Every available hour is spent at the house. No time to sit back, put my feet up, write. Bean turned 15 months, and I've been composing a post about this in my head, packed with the immense unbounded gratitude I feel at having him in my life, but it hasn't made it to the page. Nothing has, though my computer (after repairs were done in safe mode) seems to be behaving, which is a huge sigh of relief.

The downstairs bathroom has tile! Today, grout. And pictures. I'm bringing the camera today.

The way imagination happens...and, a new painting

15" x 30" mixed media collage.

Here are some up-close shots.

***

Of course, the good ideas always hit at the least convenient times: in the shower maybe, when I’m out on a run, or just drifting off to sleep—any place far from pen and paper. I know why this happens. My mind will start to dislocate then, slipping out of the present and into the luminous space between what is real and what is imagined.

Then, images like bright sun spots start to dance across my internal page. Sometimes I’ll see an entire picture, as though the bulb on a slide projector were suddenly flipped on and the scene dances towards me on the particles of light. Other times I get only a slight inkling. A whisper of theme or color, wending it’s way into the chinks of my busy mind, catching my attention the way the tiny rainbows do, that scatter out about a café, refracting light from the diamond on a lady’s finger as she raises her cup to sip café au lait.

For days after I get an idea, I’ll carry it around in my mind like a pocket full of sea glass, carelessly fingering each smooth shard a hundred times. Then in an evening after the house is quiet and my baby is asleep, I’ll pick out a canvas, and begin, smudging the page with dark blues or pale ochres and white. I cannot remember a time when I didn’t know the colors of the rainbow—nor can I remember not knowing how colors blend: my young fingers holding stubby beeswax crayons already understood that bright yellow mixed with emerald would make the chartreuse hue perfect for drawing new foliage.

Color always comes first, for me, followed by shape and the juxtaposition of realistic sketches and collage. It is rare that I am able to put into words what I will paint before I do. Even when I think I know exactly what I want to draw, I also know it will be different from what I’ve imagined when I’m through. This is the secret I am always learning: painting is about the unexpected, the crazy, haphazard, willy-nilly, process of imagination, and it cannot be defined or controlled.

Each time I come to the canvass with my brushes, my pallet thick with paint, and my heart wide open. Then I follow with bold marks the wild flight of my imagination through some internal landscape of wonder.

***

PS--I've added this one to my gallery.

I just said the following phrase:

"....but you know that 98% of my daily happiness comes from my laptop," and then I gasped, because I really just said that. And because it's true. I use my laptop more than any other tool: for writing, photo editing, web stuff, music. And tonight after I came out of the bedroom from putting Bean to sleep, it had gone and fried itself. Just like that. Nothing works. It will start, but refuses to run any programs. It sounds like a jet preparing for take off. And me? I'm like an old Datsun spinning in deep mud without it.

So anyway, I'm typing on DH's computer. I hate his keyboard (it feels HUGE because I'm used to using my laptop keypad), and it's in his office, being used all day, so until the situation resolves itself, I'll be forced into an internet sabbatical. Probably I'll be feeling the effects of this more than you will--but still. Feel my pain. Whimper with me.

Soundtrack of my heart

Sound • track: a thin strip at the edge of a movie reel or videotape on which sound or the soundtrack is recorded

At the edges of my mind there is a narrative, a song, a whisper, a laugh, a sob, a steady pulse. Even in the wildest times, the times most pressed with worry, when there is little air and even less time for reflection, if I listen, I hear it. In the place between the reality of every day, and the wonderment of dreams, is the thin strip of lyrics, the soundtrack that plays out across my consciousness, defining my world.

In bed just before sleep; in the car driving the half hour stretch between our house and apartment listening to jazz on VPR; in the shower with hot water running in rivulets between my shoulder blades where wings would be, if I could fly; or standing at the stove stirring soup, I hear it. This is when I tune in to the words that slip edgewise into the conversation I keep with myself. The things I hardly say out loud, or never. The things of intuition and inkling, that shape my drive, my fears, my love.

Right now I’m trying consciously to tune in. It is hard to do. The dialogue is illusive and when I try to pin it down, it is as though static is lacing the airwaves. When I listen closely I hear this: below the joy of being offered a job I’m excited to accept, and beyond the worry of finding a daycare program for Bean that will nurture him, is the battle cry of my creative self begging not to be abandoned with these upcoming changes.

It is startling to find myself here, on the brink of so much change, again. It’s been just over a year since change tore through our lives like a river in flood, redistributing everything, shifting our very geography, altering our sense of home.

Last May we were packing our house in CT and trying to imagine what life here would be like. I remember sitting at our kitchen table (I loved where it stood, in a nook off the kitchen with a big bay window facing the backyard) looking towards the living room, the hall, the front door, noticing with sudden clarity and attention how familiar those angles and rooms were were. Noticing the quality of light on the tiled kitchen floor; the Prapluie-Revel umbrella poster between the front windows, the jars of sugar and rice on the counter, and wondering how it would be not to call that space “home.” Our first real estate investment, a noteworthy stamp in the passport of adult hood.

This May everything is different, and yet we’re packing again. On the brink of moving to a place saturated with promise. Like honey comb, drenched with sweetness this house is drenched with our hopes, our longings, our dreams. Everything in it bears the mark of what we have become: a family.

This time, as everything shifts; as the river fills with spring rains and floods its banks, and the shape of the valley is forever altered, I want to be more conscious about holding on to the things I’ve grown to love: my artist self, my writer self; my camera’s lens, my runner’s thighs. Looking back I’ve started to see how easily these things slip to the margins of my life, when other louder more demanding things push to the fore. This time I want to keep an ear to the ground, attune to the beating of my heart. This time I need to remain whole, even as my life divides.

The Swan Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river? Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air - An armful of white blossoms, A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies, Biting the air with its black beak? Did you hear it, fluting and whistling A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall Knifing down the black ledges? And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds - A white cross streaming across the sky, its feet Like black leaves, its wings like the stretching light of the river? And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything? And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for? And have you changed your life?

--Mary Oliver

A post mostly of pictures

Carefully pressed into the small nooks of my mind are thoughts waiting to be shaken out, like sheets after a winter’s storage in cedar scented drawers. I’m aching to tell you about a painting I’ve finished, to let down my hair and write wildly, with gusto. But not today. Today, my mind feels like the fine shards of slate that sheer away from the main piece, exposing layers of mineral color; patterns variegated and delicate. Too much in too little time, still. Every moment at the house, now often with Bean in tow (and like the trooper he is, he plays with wrenches and ratchets in the Pack&Play, narrating to himself softly in babblespeak.) Yesterday, the rollercoaster of sheer delight: the job. A first grade position at a school very near my house; abundant with professional development, resources, support. I can see this next transition---shifting back into the mode of teacher, but with the newly gained clarity, patience, organization, and rest that this year off has afforded me. I can imagine loving the daily challenge, the vibrancy of full-force ahead involvement, the laughter and camaraderie of colleagues. And graduate classes. Finally.

But today dawned drenched with rain and dark, and with the weather came other somber thoughts: finding Bean a just right morning daycare program (DH can pick him up at noon every day) looms now more daunting than any job search ever did. How do I do this? What should I look for? Ask? Say? (Advice please.)

Sunday I’ll get to write, and finish another painting—but tomorrow, it’s all day at the house again. We’re painting, and during our breaks, we saunter about inspecting the wild thicket of green and blossoms everywhere. Here, I’ve kept you in suspense long enough. Some pictures:

Oh--and and I absolutely HEART you all for all the sweetness of last post's comments.

Hooray!

I got the job!! 150+ applicants. 10 interviewees (is that really a word?), 2 final candidates, and I was it. WOOOHOOO! And now I will continue with my happy dance (which really consists of tiling our new bathroom with my beloved husband, while the smell of apple blossoms wafts through the open windows, but still.)

Oh, and did I mention, they're going to pay for grad school?

Happy dance. Happy dance.

Whirlwind days

It’s been DAYS and days, but I’m only now disentangling myself from the whirlwind weekend that was. I had the apparent genius of leaving my camera’s card in the upload port and the battery in the charger on the wall—though I DID manage to take the actual camera, so I have no pictures to document what was a perfect little traveling Bean. But he was perfect. Easy in the car. Easy in the hotel. A perfect peach at the baby shower. And we had a wonderful, extroverted, full-tilt, blue-cake icing on our fingers, cherry soda drinking time, all in all.

It was weird to go back into the geography of our old life. We were struck by the immense amount of signage along the roads. The push to purchase. Also the population density. We’ve somehow grown accustomed to the acres and acres of space between houses where we’re living now, and the twisty-turning little roads going up to our old house felt narrow and claustrophobic, packed with so many houses.

Yes, like high school kids pulling off a slapstick prank, we did drive past our old house—and yes, we did press the automatic garage door opener programmed into our car and drove away. Did I just say we did that? Oh yeah, we’re actually ten year olds. All the rest of the day we kept imagining what the new owners must have been thinking as their garage door suddenly retracted mid-day.

Hours in the car, in the haphazard tumble of visiting and travel, and now that we’re back the week is already barging ahead. Picking slate tile for the upstairs bathroom. An interview on Monday with an outcome still at large. And yesterday, hanging out with a high school friend of mine today who I haven’t seen in ten years, who has been living in Thailand. Priceless to be able to slip back into friendship as though it had been mere days. Understanding tacit and clear. Laughter abundant. Reluctance at leaving.

May is turning out to be the month of conclusion: the house, my job, so much to be decided. I like this clear endpoint. Seeing it, the whole picture comes into focus. Perspective shifts. I’ve grown content and a wee bit giddy. The apple blossoms are rioting at our house for attention, competing with the dandelions suns thick as grass on our lawn. And in the woods, Bean and I found a fox hole with fresh dirt. I can’t wait to start a nature notebook. To press leaves, sketch tracks, paste small photographs of the changing geography of our home.

And look: they drywall mud is done!

Backyard blooms

Bean & I trapse around our tiny backyard in the city, where spring is bursting, full force. Everywhere, insects, sunlight, color. Furry yellow dandilions in dappled shade. Mud in crumbled earthworm trails. Fragrant, sweet tasting violets by the downturned wheel barrow. I watch as he plays. Sticks, mud, rainwater in flower pots. He's occupied for an hour. My notebook pages fill with inked lines and words. My shoulders soak up sun. I adjust aperture and look through the lens at his mud flecked grin, at the pale spider in the bowl of the dandilion bloom, at the swelling chive buds, veined with purple. Click. A smatering of perfect moments.

(A real post, ripe with updates, to follow. Pinky Swear.)

Moody

All day I felt tender, my heart prone to easy bruising. I awoke after too few hours of sleep to little Bean pressing the buttons on the clock radio, causing some sort of very lively Indian music to spew forth LOUDLY. It was kind of funny, in that other-worldly, ‘this isn’t really happening to me’ kind of way.

From there the moments just continued to fracture. Everything today felt out of synch, like I was always playing catch-up with each moment. Sadness kept staining the space around me as though it were the pigment seeping from crushed petals. So much is undecided. (I got an interview on Monday, and I’m terrified; we’re going out of town for the weekend---our first overnight hotel trip with Bean; there are only three weeks are left before we have to move; I think I have a stress fracture in my right shin, but I have to wait until Tuesday to see my very busy doctor.)

Guilt always crowds in at times like these. Bean didn’t really get any sit-down meals today except lunch, and his nap times were totally off. And, though I’m already sick of writing about the disappointment of my mother’s visit, she keeps creeping back in: hers is the voice that narrates guilt for me, and today I heard “I would never do that,” a hundred times as I fed Bean organic alphabet soup from a can, and let him bang wildly on a plastic piano in a toy store when he should have been napping.

But there was also this: the rainbow tonight driving home. And before it, a wash of gold over the distant mountains. The sky was filled with storm clouds as DH and I ate calzones for dinner on the lawn at our new house. Bean napped in the car. From below us, the sonic trilling of peepers drifted up. And when Bean woke, we took a walk, just the two of us, hand in hand. Through tall grasses, and then under the low-hanging cloud of apple blossoms, almost blooming. Five gnarled apple trees, their branches leaning earthward, make up a perfect hideaway.

1st time in the pool

A smattering of days, and he’s suddenly different all over again. My heart sometimes aches with the velocity of his changing, like Penelope’s tapestry, each day it must be unraveled and made anew to accommodate the greater love and wonder that I feel.

We went swimming tonight. His first time in a pool. His body abruptly feather light, his pale skin nearly transparent and beautiful. Eyes big, and lashes wet. But seeing is Daddy at the edge produced a thousand grins. Laughing as I blew bubbles near his cheek, he wanted to hold on to the tiled cusp of the pool. Even there, especially there, with the feeling of weightlessness, he wanted to climb.

In the locker room afterwards, sitting on the low blue bench by the wall in his new monogrammed terry robe from his grandma, he watched a three year old boy closely, transfixed. When the boy left, Bean went to each place he had been—touching the bright yellow metal locker, and then the mirror where the boy had stood, pulling on his swimming trunks. This is why I keep coming to the page: the fragility of memory will not hold this sweetness.

The way his hair still smelled faintly of chorine tonight, even after his bath; or the way he now reaches for his stuffed monkey, cupping his face into its fur to go to sleep. I want to capture everything, and startle to realize how I’ve already lost the urgent memory of when he was newborn, or how he used to push up before he could crawl, like some funny seal pup.

There must be some secret in this: that memory only holds so much. Perhaps we would not move with agility into the future of each moment, if we could fully contain the memory of each passing day. But days like today beg for more. More noticing, more attention. I want to saturate myself with this moment: the way the three of us, walking to our car after dinner, were an orb of family. Bean’s tiny legs wrapped round my waist, his arm touching his Daddy’s chest, and around us both, DH’s muscled arms.

I can't help it

I am now officially a teeny bit in love with Steven Colbert because of this. He's brilliant.

Self Portrait Challenge #1: An introduction

Kath created a brilliant new Self Portrait Challenge Site, and in honor of it's creation she has challenged us to 'introduce ourselves.' Before I knew you...

there were several ill advised months as a red-head, an adolescence in love with the surf; whole days spent in the my bike saddle following the black ribbon of road up to Canada, or later, along the crumbling edge of northern California, with the pacific right below us.

we stayed out late, and sleep late; could make love any time; skip breakfast entirely, do nothing all day Saturday.

and later, there was the everyday collision of wonderment and exhaustion, my love spread out across the need of so many hungry little hearts with not enough attention at home, teaching words, and poems, and numbers and kindness.

and there were afternoons tossing a frisbee, or playing chess, or walking with our lanky English Shepherd who’d roll on command and was afraid of the water.

then you, making a space in my belly and then in my heart

and now I know you and I am different in a hundred ways.

Process

I feel my pores open soaking up particles of light. Above me on the hill, the tiny newly greening leaves are making chlorophyll. Each one, still small and delicate, fluttering, transparent in the slanting afternoon sun. I am pulling nails from boards, my body becoming familiar with the weight of the hammer, the torque of the rusted nails coming out through old holes. For the first time since the house was officially ours, I am here alone, surrounded by calling cardinals, nuthatches, bluebirds, chickadees. The air I full of song and silence. Wind rushes up through the valley, circling the house. Every time I come here, every single time, my heart sings. I know this sounds cliché, and maybe it is—for don’t all cliché’s originate in some utterly profound truth? My love for this land has saturated my lungs, my muscles, my soul.

Each day is a choreography of patience and longing. Every minute we can get, one of us is at the house, and the push to finish is almost unbearable. Inside our heads the jangle of other desires: to mountain bike with the onset of warmer weather, to lie about on the lawn, soaking up the soporific sunlight, to wake up in our own house. Instead, our small apartment always feels like the walls are folding in on us; the counters in the kitchen too narrow and always full with things that don’t belong there: mail, pens, an odd wrench or screwdriver, a bottle full of bubbles. We wake up at night to the sound of the neighbor going or coming late, crashing up the stairs, her small dog yipping in the shrill way that small dogs do; or to the pulse of red and blue lights of a cop car or ambulance.

As I pull nails, my skin grows hot, and my thoughts wander. I’m still sifting through my impressions from my mother’s visit. Trying to locate the source of my emotions: anger zinging up like a hornet bite, loss, frustration, gladness. Our relationship has never been easy. Always there’s been an undercurrent of some unvocalized tension. When I think back over her days here, my heart fingers moments like Braille, trying to find words for the things that might have occurred, or didn’t.

Here’s the thing: for whatever reason, my mother doesn’t know the language of celebration. She cannot simply say: ‘this is so beautiful!’ or ‘I am so happy you are happy.’ Instead joy is always burried under other words, like a vein of iron running through a in stone. Also: I always feel like there is comparison in her words: “I’d never do it this way,” she said a dozen times; and I'm not sure what to do with this at all.

I make progress with the stack of boards. 150 year old six-inch wide planks, faded to gray, originally from a barn in Addision County. We’re not sure what we’ll do with them—but for now we’re keeping them: removing the nails and stacking them in the garage where they’ll be dry. I try to do the same with the granules of confusion, resentment, frustration that I feel now, a handful of days after my mother left. There were bright moments, and her love is evident, but her pessimism has this way of tangling everything inside me. Her answer: I’ll see it differently when I’m her age. And I'm sure will, but it that doesn't change how I feel right now.

With each nail I pull, I consciously allow myself to release whatever unnamed, unsaid tumult has been lurking below the surface, and replace it with sunlight.

Getting there

Spring up here in the north part of the country is a gradual unfolding. Each day, a little more--but not all at once the way I always felt it was in Connecticut. Maybe I was too busy to notice before? The lilac blooms before they've burst. The way the grass is suddenly lush. The outlines of branches no longer stark, but soft and blurred with buds and blooms.

In the backyard at the house, a riot of forsythia. Birds everywhere making nests. And the sheetrock is finally up!

I need your help

I'm ashamed to admit--I actually know next to nothing about web design and I barely understand how my publishing platform works. Are you surprised? Yeah, I'd like to learn--but seriously, where would the time for that to be found? So instead of learning, today I am begging. If someone has the fancy shmancy web skills to help me integrate a gallery to display my artwork into wordpress, I'd grovel willingly at their feet. Doesn't sound enticing enough? I can throw in a year of free hosting from Wired Hub. Better?

Email me if you're interested.

And for everyone else, this is the best I could do. Enjoy.

Fingers crossed

I remember going down a water slide for the first time: I was six or seven, it was the apex of summer and very hot. We were in L.A., at someone’s backyard pool, with the babysitter. I didn’t know how to swim—or at least, I didn’t know how to swim without support (I remember clinging to plastic milk jugs to buoy me up—the cheap version of waterwings, for sure.)

“Go for it,” she told me casually from the edge where she dangled her long legs in the water. Her toes were painted red. I adored her. "When you hit the water, hold your breath and kick you feet, and don’t stop kicking.”

I believed her entirely.

And I wanted to go down the slide so badly. I imagined its blue fiberglass hull was the back of a dolphin. Resolute, I climbed up the rungs of the ladder; up to the top.

I could see over the fence from there, into the neighbor’s yard—I could see their turquoise pool and waterslide, and beyond it, another pool in another yard. This is what certain neighborhoods were like in L.A.: back yard pool after pool, separated by high fences or concrete walls. A patchwork of postage stamp yards—with a stitching of bougainvilleas and roses between them.

But we didn't have a pool. And we didn’t live in a neighborhood like this. My dad always had a fierce attachment to having land (something I seem to have inherited), so we lived on two acres at the top of a mountain in Northridge, with a wild yard full of bamboo and prickly fruit and loquats. Instead of having pools, our neighbors kept horses.

So the whole pool thing was wildly exotic to me. A dream come true. The perfect antedote to the oven-hot of mid day. The perfect balm to scratched knees and boredom. The perfect escape.

Once I’d decided, I went for it, just like that. No second guessing. No long minutes wavering at the top. I climbed up, crossed my fingers, and slid down—the speed sending me hurtling towards the water, replacing breath with giddy glee. Then I hit with a splash and sank. Down I went, and down, and down.

But I held my breath.

And I started kicking.

And suddenly I was moving up and up, towards the blue bright surface where the water and air pressed together in a thin line. Then I burst through, gulping and ecstatic. I was swimming.

I'm still like this. When I decide to go for something, I simply do. I don’t waver. I don’t linger at the top wondering what if?. I just jump in.

Then I hold my breath and start kicking---which is pretty much where I’m at right now with my whole job search. I went to a school today that I’d love to teach at—close to home, and rich with opportunities for professional development. But it’s in the most competitive district in the state—and they've received close to 200 applications for just that one position. So I’m mostly just holding my breath. And kicking.

And keeping my fingers crossed.