Go out and see
notice stories trying to fly.
+++ What is your story today?
Small perfect things
Sounds: the exquisite laughter and glee of the under six set at discovering plastic colored eggs strewn about our friend's back yard; the peepers trilling, bumble bees, bellies fat, new from sleeping in the mud buzzing around beside our picnic blanket; the evening wind rushing up the valley.
Sights: pink hair bows and Easter dresses on our friend's little girls; Bean in his favorite plaid button down, baskets brimming with colored eggs, kids on the swing sets their hair flying back, watermelon smiles, new buds on the trees, the return of the indigo buntings by the pond,
Moments: playing in the sandbox after dinner, playing guitar + laughing with friends up from Boston after dinner; a walk to the pond, barefoot across the squishy grass; looking out the window at Bean and T sitting side by side on a rock eating peanut butter and jelly from jars with spoons (their version of picnic heaven)
Sensations: wearing messy braids, 80 degree sunshine, bare feet on mud; rubbing sunscreen onto little boy cheeks, running hard 3 miles, sunburn (everyone was pink last night).
Food: prosciutto + cantaloupe, grilled lamb + tadziki, coconut cupcakes, iced lattes, Circus Boy, valpolicella, dark chocolate.
April begins
At 5:43 a.m. I wound the window open so that there were two inches of screen exposed between me and the things of the early morning world: the smell of mud and moisture, and also the song of robins, and the other birds I do not know the names of;
and together my boys and I lay in bed, my eyelids still heavy, closed, the little one sitting with his pacifier lopsided in his mouth, the bigger one tucked into the crook of my arm, and T, there, completing my outline, and we listened to the day come softly.
Out the window the clouds were pretending to be mountains, there, across the gulch, beyond the pond, where the world ends, among the maples with their new red buds now flush with pollen, the fog was there below the sky with shoulders hunched, the sun hesitant and milky.
Today, oranges for breakfast, and also a promise on the radio that has everyone watching the thermometer with skeptical glee; balmy sweet undeniable spring on the cuff of all this mud, finally.
So it’s April.
+++ I wanted to tell you how much I loved reading all your random things. So much fun. Thanks for sharing them!
And I wanted to tell you that yesterday was the half way mark for days left for funding for my book project…To celebrate I've posted a new update and a drawing that has to do with the little painting above and something else entirely delicious over at kickstarter... so go take a peak and become a backer if you haven't already.
FYI: I’ve had a couple people email me asking how the Kickstarter funding works—so I thought I should clear things up quickly: If you become a backer you are only pledging an amount. You will not be charged at all—unless the entire funding goal is successful…and then you’d be charged in May. More about the whole crowdfunding process and how I feel about it over at Magpie Girl.
Today: lots of things including sunshine (or so is promised), a much needed run, and writing. Always that.
What's on your plate today?
Then & now and yes
Yes
It could happen any time, tornado, earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen. Or sunshine, love, salvation.
It could you know. That’s why we wake and look out–no guarantees in this life.
But some bonuses, like morning, like right now, like noon, like evening. ~ William Stafford
(Found this poem here today.)
+++
Do you ever go back and read your own archives? I do. It's a little like opening a time capsule seeing Bean small, and me, whatever way I was then.
Today I looked back for the very first self portrait I ever took, at the beginning of Self Portrait Tuesday (before it became Self Portrait Challenge)...
I 'met' so many incredible gorgeous bloggers through those weekly challenges.
The funny thing about blogging is you don't get to SEE the people you read unless they are generous with you, unless they share this too, their faces, their work-worn hands, torn jeans, sunglasses, knees, braids, laughs. And I like seeing these things... and sharing them... which is why I'm doing these Sunday portraits...and I hope you will too.
Another thing from going back through my archives is seeing how memes used to fly around the blogsphere all the time. Now, not so much. I can't put my finger on it, but I do think something has changed in the way that people blog and share (or maybe it's just me?) I've read some interesting posts about this recently. About how there is less community or intimacy or something...and more business now. Maybe? Do you feel this? Sometimes I do. And so in the spirit of sharing more:
4 random things about me right now:
* In the morning when I first wake up I feel myself dangling like a marionette somewhere just beyond my body. It's almost painful to be pounced on, or touched much in this state, and the arrival of small boys in my bedroom (with their inevitable elbows and knees) is always a bittersweet thing (I love the way they smell when they first wake up.)
* I got an email in my inbox on Friday telling me that I'm the Albany, NY winner for this. (I entered only because of the NYC shopping spree.) This is hilariously perfect (and a little embarrassing.) I am a good candidate: I only wear jeans. I am baffled by makeup. I have no idea what to do with layers. Or knee high boots. And I need a haircut. (I thought twice about posting this because it's just so... not me...and yet I'm totally giddy about it.)
* I just got this book and this one in the mail today. I wish I could get books in the mail every day!
* I lose sunglasses always, and yet I can never seem to figure out where they go when they're gone. It's not like they fall off my head...or I leave them on the roof of my car (though I have, and watched them get smashed.) They just disappear. Hence the sunglasses self portrait to celebrate a new cheap pair.
+++ Your turn. 4 things. Also, be brave this week and take a self portrait... you can hide behind your shades. Post your photos here, or in the Self Portrait Sunday Flickr pool.
And when I blink
And when I blink
inside the slender twigs of trees, the memory of leaf, the silent code of blossoms bursting; and there is also this: the way the robin flies to here,
to these still stark woods, her plumage rust, her song the everything
that lifts my heart
and when I hear her call from the kitchen window I cannot help but run
to the back door, where I find the grass still hard with morning frost, and hesitate
and then she warbles sweet and high in the crook of a birch,
and again I learn
how little it is that I know.
+++ Some tunes for the end of March, just for you. <3 Also: I've opened a little shop. Adding a few things to it daily. Prints mostly. Some originals too (soon.) +++ I can't believe it's going to be April so soon. Are you ready? What is one thing you want April to manifest?
Right now:
Through the thin wall: his palm hits the glass of his desktop. And again in frustration. “Why, why? These damn program trades." On Pandora: “You are my sweetest downfall…” ("Samson" ~ Regina Spektor, from Begin To Hope)
Under the stools at the kitchen counter: Sprout picking up crumbs off the floor, babbling to himself.
On the floor: the sun makes broken squares of gold where it falls, and the shadow of the forsythia in the window is lace across the floorboards.
And I am here, trying to hold these things together. Trying, with a thousand hopes, a hundred bigger fears; sand at the backdoor from Bean’s boots; bits of bark around the wood stove; things everywhere, always underfoot.
Monday glimpses
The house was surrounded by fog today and the ambiguous weather of almost spring. We went for a walk; picked pussy-willows with dew-damp fuzz and rubbed them against our cheeks. Soft. Softer. The sky and the hills blended, things became smudged: now, tomorrow, what we hope for, whatever else we are beyond this day. Things became silhouettes of themselves: telephone poles, pigeons perched on wires, rooftops, the details blurred with moisture. The trees wore necklaces of water drops. Bean splashed in every puddle. I splashed in every puddle. Sprout wanted to get his hands in things: in the mud, in the wet grass, in the sky. He kept reaching up, clapping. The sky was white on white.
Down by the pond all four of us watched rocks break through the last thin slips of ice floating at the surface. Ice that looked like cellophane. It’s a favorite thing, always, for anyone near water: to throw rocks. To pick up a hunk of quartz and let it fly. Sprout squealed with delight. DH was reluctant to share his best rocks with Bean who teetered thisclose to the edge, among the stubble of last years cattails, his slender arms snaking out away from his body awkwardly with each triumphant toss.
So this was today: fog, and writing, and small boys under foot (an unusual Monday. Bean’s school was closed for in-service.) It was a day of corn tortillas with beans and melted cheese, and making paper tails (which we all gleefully wore) and fighting off a slew of tail attacking pirates with wooden swords and lots of shrieking. Miraculously, it was also a day of semi productivity. A few paragraphs written, edited, the boys occupied with large squares of newsprint and six dozen crayons (now strewn everywhere imaginable.)
So what if things are up in the air; in the end they always are, and this, this is my life. Boys. Writing. Sneaking kisses in the foyer while pulling on coats. Collecting blue and brown eggs from under the warm feathered bodies of hens. And taking a walk, all of us, to the pond and back, stopping a hundred times to look at the world. To be astounded by the water rushing everywhere, the puddles, the catkins, the mud.
It’s easy to forget today. It’s easy to think in terms of what didn’t get done (that list is always so long.)
What are five small things from your day?
Around here today
I felt like sharing a few photos of everyday things today. Some tunes I've been liking. A new place I've been collecting the things that catch my eye. Also really enjoying some of the new self portraits up in the Self Portrait Sunday Flickr pool~grab your camera and join in (you know you want to.)
And: we took Bean ice skating today--and it was, well, sort of a disaster. Like a wet noodle on ice. Maybe it's not his thing? Any suggestions (we did that push-thingy, it didn't help much.)
Finally: what music have you been listening to this month?
The way laundry gets done around here:
Can you hear Bean accompanying his play in the background with a little off-tune song? I LOVE it when they're both occupied like this. Bean was building train tracks and castles with wooden blocks under the dining room table...and Sprout: the minute he sees a heap of fresh laundry he's on it. POUNCE. He played like that for oh, twenty minutes easily. Perhaps not the most efficient (or clean) way to get the laundry folded...but hey, when it affords time to hang out and sip coffee in the sunshine and get through my inbox, I'm okay with it.
In fact, I've discovered that I might have exceedingly low standards about the way things should be done around here, in terms of housework. DH does to, so there isn't a lot of strife in our house about such things (except, ironically, for the laundry--he never puts his away! Like EVER. Whyyyyy???) And we're both generally okay with letting things build up, and then cleaning them together...The dishes, for example, might wait all day if there are better things to be done. (Like essays to be written for example.) How do the daily things get done at your house?
A post where I ask the internet parenting advice again
1. At what age is it no longer appropriate to bring your son into the ladies room with you? And if you send him to the boys room himself, how in gods name can you be sure he hasn't touched EVERY SURFACE POSSIBLE? 2. How much sugar does your kid eat daily? Or perhaps better put: what kinds of sweet foods does your kid eat daily? (I've been thinking about this because Bean seems to be sugar sensitive...he's sensitive to everything, so that's not really a surprise...but lately I've been starting to think I'm seeing patterns. Curious about your experiences...)
3. Why do so many mothers stop their children from taking risks--because they are afraid themselves? (Or something?)
EXHIBIT A: Today at the park there was a dad watching a boy and a girl. He let them both climb to the very top of the monkey bars, where they both perched, holding on, happy as clams while other kids rode the zip line thingy below them. Then mom came and dad left. And literally the first words out of her mouth were: "Get down from there right now!" Boy: "Why?" Mom: "Because, you'll fall!" Boy: "How do you know?" Mom: "Because so and so fell, that's why."
ACK. Why do we do this? Why are parents (and possibly particularly mothers) today so different than their counterparts a decade or two ago? What is it about nature, and high places and sharp that seem so terrifying that it's not even worth the supervised risk?
E.B. White in Charlotte's Web wrote about the Fern and Avery swinging out the barn door on the rope swing something like, "All the parents are afraid they'll fall...but they shouldn't be, because children always hold on tighter than adults think they will." (This is NOT a direct quote...If you haven't read Charlotte's Web in a while, you should!) And I tried to remember these words today as Bean spent the entire time climbing across the monkey bars and asking me to lift him up so he could cling to the zip line and fwap from one end of it to the other, his little pale boy belly exposed, his face scrunched up with glee and concentration.
(I'm also loving the Boys Almanac.)
And: Sprout's first time on an outdoor swing today. He couldn't stop giggling. I'm kind of addicted. Seriously cute.
Sugaring
Last year ate our savings. Last year ate everything. This year, who knows? This year, the outcome is anyone's guess. We could move. We could stay. It's all up in the air, illusive as the steam, as tender as the first fat buds.
So that's the truth. I want this life more than anything.
Also: You can win this painting.
Self Portrait Sunday:: Challenge # 1
Challenge # 1: Your face, partly hidden maybe; partly out of the frame, out of the picture, in the shadows or turning away.
Add your photos to the Flickr pool or leave the url to your photo here.
I'll be posting a bunch of your photos here throughout the week. Go take a peek.
I can't wait to see what you share this week. Happy Spring!
one of those days
Today I left my keys on the roof of my car dropping Bean off at school and spent the better part of an hour looking for them in the parking lot in the slick mud with Sprout on one hip.... one of those mornings (not enough coffee+ not enough sleep + feeling kind of sick = not that much fun.)
Looking for small pleasures today... Like the yummy salad my friend made me for lunch: roasted eggplant, red onion, zucchini and pepper with goat cheese & mixed greens. Mmmm! Thanks K!)... and like this photo...and this awesome music. What's making you smile today?
all or nothing + love
Today I am...
sipping the first iced latte of the year...
letting my hair dry naturally...(it gets curly)
gathering chapter ideas
letting the dishes sit in the sink...
listening to my rosters out-crow each other...
cutting forsythia for vases to go in sunny windowsills...
working from home today...
...and feeling grateful for you today (in terrible resolution, but still. You get the idea.)
identity::being a mother
To be a mother means that my hands are always full: with the soft-jelly limbs of my baby Sprout, or with the eager sweaty palms of my Bean, bigger now, perpetually on the brink of dashing out into traffic, or climbing over fences, or scrambling down rock strewn ravines. And just as it means that I am carrying things, it means that my hands magic. With my hands, I accept imaginary cups of tea, paint dozens of pictures, rinse a thousand dishes, type a hundred thousand words.
But maybe it’s really about this: being a mother means becoming adept at the imaginary; at telling stories about monsters, or fairies, or of mice that drive dump trucks.... and its this capacity to imagine that makes enormous, extraordinary, things possible for my children, because I dare to dream them. Just as it’s this same capacity that allows me to imagine a time in the future without sleep deprivation…when my short-term memory will return… (it will, right?) and I'll have just a little more time.
SELF PORTRAIT SUNDAYS: Wanna play?
A self portrait to start the week for a while... How to play: post a self portrait on your blog and leave the url in the comments here. I'll pick some of my faves to post over at the brand-spanking-new Self Portrait Sunday site. Tag! You're it.
a work in progress
It's been twenty days since I launched A Field Guide To Now, and in those twenty days I have been more intensely creative than I’ve been in over a year. I've been forced way outside my comfort zone. My word for the year was action, and this project has forced me to take action on behalf of my career as a writer and artist in ways I couldn’t have conceived of when I first took the plunge. I've had to learn how to query and research and push the limits of my ability to create at night after small boys go to sleep. I’m working on this book project, my novel, paintings, and a few other big projects that are under wraps with fingers crossed.
(I am also working part time, at a job that is pushing me to learn In Design and Photoshop, always under deadline. The child-free hours of my day are spent thusly: designing ads and view books and writing press releases. The rest of my day is spent juggling, with a single-minded focus pounding in my head like jungle drums.)
I am compelled, determined, wired, moody, thrilled, exhausted, inspired. When I sleep my mind is active in a way that is almost new to me. It’s frenetic and repetitive: gnawing away at the creative tasks I’ve left off from before bed. This past week I’ve begun dreaming of whales—and they’ve inspired some of the newest art for A Field Guide To Now. Here is a glimpse (in progress.)
Incidentally, when I looked up what it means to dream about whales, this is what I found: Whale reintroduces us to our creative and intuitive energies to show us a talent we've forgotten about or haven't been aware existed. How spot-on is that?
I’ve had more coffee and less sleep; more wine, more sex, more dreams and less rhythm. I’m spending less time on laundry and dishes (and the house is in probable shambles because of it) and more time perched on the stool in my studio painting, with gauche on my fingers. Less time taking leisurely walks with my boys; more time trying to multi-task while they’re under foot.
It's made me think about my identity, about who I am and how I define that. For a while, after Sprout was born, I slipped wholly into the identity of mother, and felt my world narrow to the small, domestic orbit of that life. It was restful, to be there. For a while. Sprout was such an easy baby that I enjoyed his babyhood in a way that I never fully did with Bean—who cried more and was more needy, just as I was newer and more anxious at the whole mommy thing.
But now, Sprout is walking. Bean is 5. The house is littered with legos (Sprout holds lego helmets in his mouth like a chipmunk. I’ve checked his diaper but he’s never actually swallowed one. Go ahead call me neglectful. YOU just try to keep legos off the floor with two boys in the house, four years apart.) There is a constant stampede of activity and peanut butter sandwiches and glasses of milk that get spilled. The vacuum is out all day long. Money is tight. Bean has outgrown all his pajamas. Sprout is starting to say words.
And.
And in the midst of all this messy, simple, regular domesticity, I’ve begun to long fiercely for myself. For myself not as a mother, but as someone entirely separate from my children.
Truthfully, I’ve always had an uneasy relationship with the definition of motherhood, and now, more than ever, I am enjoying my boys and wanting to be distinct from them, in my own right. A writer. An artist. Right now my mind is preoccupied with the craft of writing, with images, and also about self-doubt, and longing…
How do you define yourself? Where does your definition of motherhood (if you are, or want to be a mother) shape you? What are the words you use to tell yourself the story about your life as it is at this current moment?
Before you knew what your life was like
Flipping through a book of poems by e.e. cummings I found flower petals by the dozens from a time in my life when love was a dreamy and girlish thing (embodied by the poem, above--one of my favorites.)
I wanted to be loved the way e.e. loved his women in his poems. I understood little, if anything at all about how love endures and changes; how things get messy and slip; how you become soft in the middle, or are caught like plastic bag rustling and rustling in the bare branches of a tree before spring comes to mask it with blossoms and green.
I haven't seen flowers for months (it's still winter here, for another month at least.) And I think about the girl I was then; how I I had a crush on everything beautiful; how my life orbited around boys and their attention (specific boys, and also the general boy populous); how I had abundant energy and time, but no certainty or focus.
I wonder if I would have believed me--describing who I am today? I still have a crush on everything beautiful. And my life still orbits around boys--three, specifically; the biggest of whom still brings me flowers. Somethings stay the same.
What were you like then? Before you knew what your life would be like?