after midnight | in the morning
There is a quiet now that I’m unused to. The way the house almost hums: the ambient noise of all the things we use all day, plugged into their sockets, sleeping with green blinking eyes open. The baby sleeps; the boy too, spread-eagle on his bunk. I can hear them breathing. Outside there are crickets in the dark, calling with their stick-legs sawing legs for summer to last a little longer, and also to have the of encounters with a mate.
It’s 1am. My mind is a hive of whirring thoughts. Heidegger and his mysteries coupled with all the things I do not know about how to make a video capture of my screen, or how to alter images the way I see them in my mind, and there are also things about aperture and chance and promise. And this: what will I do when the day comes fast and hard and I’ve had only five hours of sleep, backing up against a handful of other nights with barely six. How not to take the world personally then?
+++ I wake up with "you are the best thing... that ever happened to me.." running through my head in loops and I can hear the boys downstairs clattering, laughing, fighting over the fire truck. My husband has let me sleep in some, and when I slide into the skin of my waking self I feel still, like the hive of bees swarming through my limbs, each finger quivering slightly, and the thoughts I went to sleep with are still there, like a trace of sugar on my lips. I remember, I gather, the thoughts coming faster, too fast until there are words before sentences.
Heidegger. Oh my. Have any of you read Heidegger? The piece I was working through last night was called "The Question of Technology" and oh, how his circular, mysterious sentences thrill me. I am a girl for whom philosophy speaks truth. I'm versed in this. The way words, when traced to their origins reveal certain truths. I love it, even as the questions themselves make me uneasy.
I keep meaning to show up here in a more reasonable way: with a complete story, with a real update--of all the things and thoughts and ideas that have filled my days, but I can't seem to yet. So the fragments will have to do. The snippets, whenever they come, making a patchwork memory of these moments.
Noise and light
I bump into things. I walk in a slant. The sky is overcast and moisture holds onto the air like something desperate and weak. I wake up and my days are smattered with sparks of conversation: I live with three boys, two of whom can talk, the third, almost, each day his words becoming clearer. And even without words, it doesn’t matter: they make themselves clear. They yell and grunt and sneeze and exhale air quickly and with irritation through their teeth. They grab things, push past each other, point, reach. Outside are flickers and crows, calling the way such birds call: abruptly and then silence, each instance of sound a purpose, a communication with the wet leaves and the semi dark and within it, the other feathered hearts of similar birds, their dark wings folded, claws holding damp branches.
If I listen, I can hear the apples falling, and my fingers moving like a hailstorm across the key pad, a clatter like water on a metal roof, and downstairs: “No, no, get down. What is it with you boys? That’s enough of you, go play with your toys!” And then there are pots that clatter and his words don’t last.
On the road there is traffic and I can hear it, a rumble, gravel crunching, the sound of someone driving away, and in my heart, blood pounding with everything: heat, love, regret, delight, irritation. In the apple tree a solitary urgent finch cheeps, cheeps, cheeps. Above the cloud cover in the quiet sky, there are jets crossing, trailing contrail and higher, satellites, without sound, no atmosphere to hold the rumble in, no small thing to contain the noise of their velocity traveling through the dark among the lighted memory of stars.
I linger where it’s quiet, reluctant to go downstairs to where the littlest is making a racket with wooden sword, the bigger one has some small toy he’s tinkering with, discovering what makes it’s lights flash in the dark. Then he counts his quarters, four by four until he gets to seven piles and he comes to tell me, I have seven dollars, a shadow at the doorway. A shadow, everything, bearing sound, until the light begins and spreads.
I need your help!
First of all, a little bit of giddiness: I must just have pause here to say how THRILLED I am to be in an MFA program.... To have weekly artistic assignments in multiple mediums I have never explored. To be engaged in daily discussions about how ideas and words and images shape who we are. YES. Indeed. It's been such a long time coming and it feels incredibly incredible to be here finally. So awesome. Now that that is out of the way, because you are all reflective and brilliant and generous and truly amazing, I have a favor to ask. I need your help. 5 minutes of your time and a little bit of your brain to be exact....
One of my first assignments is to explore some ideas around design--and to create some type of presentation based on that exploration. I've decided that because my art and writing has come to life here on this blog through my interaction with you--that I'd like to ask you a few questions and then turn your answers int a super cool mind map representing how you collectively think about the answers to these questions.
I need your info by Friday at the latest...All that is need is a one or two sentence response to each of the following questions. (You can leave a question blank too, if you want..)
What do you get by being a contributor? My undying gratitude--and a a glimpse at the final product (if you'd like.)
UPDATED: Thank you to everyone who contributed. I can't wait to figure out how to represent your awesome responses. xoxo!
an impossibly possible project
I feel like I am in the looking glass, slipping towards an alternate view of everything that I know, everything I can imagine, be, do.
I’m wearing a blue dress and it’s just me and the quiet and then, eventually, NPR as I wait at the stoplights and I want everything to feel the way it does tonight: full with opportunity, yet not saturated with the stress that will inevitably come as deadlines press and the hours cannot hold enough. Right now, anything feels possible. This is always the way things are before you begin them. You can be anything, right up until the moment when you try.
Then it’s all about sweat and grit and talent. I’m not leaving any room for doubt.
I have the feeling that I will be coming here often with words; with the little scraps of thoughts I invariably carry around in my head; with the wonder of all of it, and the terror too. I’m the only one in the program with two small kids. The only one living at the end of a long dirt road thirty minutes away. The only one nearly bursting with words for a book. It will all be possible, right?
If there was ever a time this blog had anything to do with balancing motherhood and a creative life, it will be now, for these next two years. I'm thinking it should be my new byline: My Topography: An Impossibly Possible Project.
{grin.}
I want to remember this: just before parking for class tonight I watched a middle aged couple, both blind, navigating the sidewalk together, their bodies a dialogue of halts and movements, their dark glasses reflecting the setting sun. They held each others arms, each tapping out a path for future steps with a long white stick. They encountered the park bench, a tree, and navigated around these obstacles with a kind of faltering grace. Without sight, they were wholly devoted to the task of being present in the moment of walking.
The only place I can be is right here, encountering the unexpected with joy.
I also wanted to tell you that I'll be posting links and inspiration and essays about emergent media and design here. (But I'll also be taking full advantage of all your awesomeness here. Stay tuned. I have a project already in the works that I need your input on.)
August 25:: Working Together
WORKING TOGETHER
We shape our self to fit this world
and by the world are shaped again.
The visible and the invisible
working together in common cause,
to produce the miraculous.
I am thinking of the way the intangible air
passed at speed round a shaped wing
easily holds our weight.
So may we, in this life trust
to those elements we have yet to see
or imagine, and look for the true
shape of our own self by forming it well
to the great intangibles about us.
~ David Whyte ~
August 24:: Treehouse
Today I said yes.
Yes, and a pile of wood destined for the dump became a flying boat fort. He built it nearly half himself. Singing, hammering, adding knobs and buttons and tubing and the appropriate tree fort signs. And then he came in for lunch and over rice with tamari and avocado slices he drew this absolutely awesome self portrait.
"Why is it white just around your head?" I wanted to know.
"Because I'm sticking my head through the hole in my treehouse, and there is space between my head and the hole. Don't you get it, Mommy?"
And then I did get it. I love the way he thinks.
August 23::uncertain ordinary (and a list)
Hello there.
I hardly know where to begin tonight. I’ve been playing tag with the delete key. Typing words, then flitting over with my pinky finger to delete them all, and again. It’s a peculiar choreography of indecision and exhaustion: the day was full of talking. Some days are like that, full with friends and family in such a way that the quiet becomes slender mortar in the chinks between the noise, and I want to creep away and scribble little quiet notes onto bits of imaginary paper and slide them into the slight hesitations between hubbub and bustle, between making bread and taking phone calls, meeting a final deadline for work (that job is through now, on to the wild blue yonder of freelance + being a full time student) and sharing lunch with a friend and her wee ones, all the while circling about wiping counters and trying to pinpoint exactly where I am in space.
I am not sure where I am. That is the truth. With this sprained ankle, I haven’t been running and I’ve lost that sense of forward motion that I have when my feet move down the dirt road, the sweet scent of grass drying thick in the air and the crickets singing, every night louder. But it’s not just because I cannot run. Things have been out of the ordinary for so long I no longer really have any memory of what ordinary is.
Uncertainty, on the other hand, I know something of that. This year has pummeled me so often with last minute curveballs and second chances and unexpected offerings that I’ve started to develop a new set of reflexes. I’ve learned to duck and bend, to bow in prayer, to hold my breath and then release it, and then to wake up and carry on with the day without knowing where it will end despite the fact that every ounce of me craves control and certainty and sure outcomes. I’m beginning to understand that we never really have any these things, though sometimes with more resources (time, money, etc.) we successfully concoct elaborate facades that allow us think we do.
But for now it is about this. About facing the uncertainty and saying yes, and saying yes again. It’s about counting up the little things each day and finding the utmost joy in them: the white cat crossing the bridge with a black mouse in her mouth; the red cows chest deep in clover; the corn, taller than my head now tassels waving against the blue, blue sky; the fat four-leaf clover I found when I looked down today at the edge of the field; the apples turning golden and pink and red.
It’s about just going, slowing, being right here with this life. Being.
I’m terrible at it, but I’m learning. I’m learning that it’s okay to never be finished. I am learning that the real blessing is about not being finished.
It’s about having more to do.
Does this make sense at all?
As I gear up for school this week, which feels just as foreign as it would feel to be saying that I am heading for heading to Antarctica or the moon, I have no expectations, only happiness tucked into my pockets, and wonder, and a little trepidation too….and I would like very much to hear what new music you are listening to (so I can make some new mixes for driving) and also what is inspiring you right now.
Mine:
This blog. And this one.
This poem.
This artist.
Some music
A piece of clothing (or a few)
Your turn. : )
August 22: decided
So I am going.
It's for certain. Even though things will be tight, tight, tight financially. And also time, it will be a figment, and invention of imagination, a delirium, a dream. Who cares? I'm going. A full time student, this year, this week. I'm giddy. Happy. Content. Terrified.
I didn't even imagine this last year, now.
It's been such a year.
A year of big huge changes. Of beginnings. Of this: every day I face uncertainty on the page and keep going. I put my words here, and here, and here again, around the moments that I am trying to say. It isn’t arrow straight or clear, but it’s got a pulse, and it keeps unfolding, like something new and wet, or something very old and furled and fragile, and I keep waiting, and showing up, fingers crossed, with more determination in my rib cage than I’ve ever had for anything. This book is happening. There is no other way.
And now school too. Complete reinvention. The beginning of so many things.
Have any of you done this: full time school + full time parenting + full time writing?
Full, full, full.
{big smiles}
A love letter::1.5 Years
I have been wanting to write you a love letter for a long time now. 18 months more or less. Since the day I met you to be exact.
The first thing I did was count your toes and fingers. Then I kissed you, still new, still wet, still scrunched and red and purple. Oh how I loved you in that instant. Irrevocably. Utterly. The very first thing you ever felt in this world was me; my skin, my beating heart beneath it. We looked at each other for forever. You were content in that moment, and in this world still you are content; filled with laughter and delight.
Now you arrive in my room in the morning with your hair invariably tousled and softer than corn silk, your face radiant with smiles. I lift you into bed, and while your big brother is dressing himself in some outfit involving numerous Hawaiian prints or plaids, you lie with your head resting on my chest, and hum a little song. We begin nearly every morning like this, and you smell like heaven.
Next you climb up the mountain of pillows to look out the window at the world below us; at the dawn becoming day; the purple mountains; at the sky spreading with early morning light. Often when your brother comes to snuggle in, you join him, pressing your cheek against his cheek, grinning, cooing. How lucky he is to have you, spilling with affection, as the one who adores him above all else in the world.
I’ve been wanting to tell you a hundred things, wanting to snatch a moment to write them down, and here are some: you play with balls with sheer delight: tossing and catching as though sport is a thing you came into this world knowing. You lift up your shirt and point to your tummy to be tickled. When someone hands you a doll or stuffed animal you hug it instinctively, and carry it around tenderly, rocking it in your arms.
You play peek-a-boo, hide and seek, and a hundred other games of your invention with your brother or by yourself, contentment surrounding you like a halo of bees around the sweetest honey. You stack blocks, and jump from precariously high places with more ease than I ever imagine is possible for someone your size. You are coordinated and physically adept. You climb both up and down our steep staircase; you sit at the stools by the kitchen counter without assistance; you drink your milk or water only from a glass (refusing sippy cups entirely.)
You eat independently and willingly: tomatoes, chicken, corn on the cob, tuna, PBJs, Indian curry, peaches, anything. You love cookies, fig bars, milk, berries. When you are eating something and you discover something you’d like to be eating more—you simply remove whatever is currently in your mouth and hand it off to me. Thanks little dude.
You cannot help but smile. You smile at everything, always. You have begun to say words: mama, daddy, mooah (more), ba (ball), wa wa (water), no, oh nooo!, uh oh, uh-uh (what we say to you when you are doing something you should not be), papa (your grandfather), nona (grandmother), though words have come slower to you than they did to your brother, just as drawing isn’t something you are naturally drawn to: you want to eat the crayons or paint your hands with markers instead.
You have the best giggle in the world. You sleep, easily, effortlessly.. This was something I never wanted to write about because I feared jinxing it; feared that it would change; but no, it’s just who you are. We put you in your crib for a nap or at bedtime and you simply go to sleep, humming to yourself softly. You sleep for two or three hours back to back. You are easy going in every way: even teething only results in a fuss here or there, and you only cry if you are hurt or if your brother takes a toy away from you. Really. You hardly ever cry. Mostly you laugh. You smile. You climb onto your red radio flyer wagon and stand—not holding on—and surf back and forth and grin with glee.
I guess the truth is I expected you to be like your brother, who was all intensity from the minute he was born. (This morning when he came in to snuggle with us after dressing he was already talking, telling me about how to tie different kinds of knots. He’d pause every so often to visualize, then gesture with his slender hands and he described the images in his head. And this is what he was always like. Intense, articulate thought. He squirmed, wiggled, fought sleep. He cried often, and still to this day gets upset more easily than you. My sweet firstborn: so thin skinned and aware of the world.) I guess I couldn’t fathom that you could be so entirely different, so entirely your own little self from the get-go. But you are, oh you are.
And you blessing. I love you so. I love you, I love you, I love you.
August 15::The only way
This is what I will keep saying, even when things seem impossible, or impossibly hard, or just straight terrifying, or daunting, or uncertain. Over and over, yes.
Two phrases in my head today (the second one makes me giggle):
"There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way." ~ Wayne Dyer
And also: "If you're going through hell, keep going." ~ Winston Churchill
August 14:: Country Fair
Still on the August Break and posting every day over at flickr.
Yesterday we went to a country fair. Fun. Sun + sun, livestock, lemonade, maple cotton candy, ribs, tractor + truck pulls, pig races and rides. Sprout's first carousel ride = total glee. An awesome day, except: my gimpy ankle and the long drive home.
Today I feel nostalgic for summer, even though it's here still. I hate that it's ending. I'm not ready for the yellow leaves that are already on the ground; the cricket songs; the shooting stars. I want the live long light and languor of July a little longer. Although the peaches now are making me smile, and the promise of apples soon. Today the sky is pale, pale. The color of sun on cement; the color of white with shadow. The color of a day slipping by with wind in the trees. I want to nap. There are things I must do: two chapters, an InDesign project, always a to-do list. Two weeks more of summer and then who knows. Everything upended, likely. Everything different. I don't remember how to be in class. Don't know, yet, still, if I will be. So it goes.
How are the last weeks of your summer being spent?
One more lesson on the things I cannot control
Here is the truth: I was a certified swim instructor for years. I have taught every kind of person to swim: a 2 year old; an elderly woman; a teenage boy who only spoke Chinese; an autistic 4 year old who would sink blithely, fearlessly to the bottom of the pool if I so much as blinked. I was a lifeguard for years. In California. At a water park and at hectic health club pools where kids would do the deadman’s float just to addle my brains.
Simply: I love the water, and I’m good in it. I can tread water for minutes; swim a mile at a reasonable pace; do the butterfly; snap a flip turn; float forever.
But teach my kid to swim: this, somehow I cannot do. More...
Interlude
Running last night, after a day that felt so very long, I tripped and sprained my ankle. Damn. It was shockingly swollen immediately, but our awesome neighbor who is a doctor said it wasn't a particularly terrible sprain (thank god) and that it will take about 3 weeks to heal.
Hi universe. How are you? Oh, what? You haven't noticed that I have a lot on my plate this month huh? Well I DO. So can you please ease up a wee bit? Thank you very much.
August 10::Tuesday
I am permeable and split wide open like a summer melon overripe with the sweetness and sun and with all the things that are still unresolved.
I am like a diver, on a cliff with a blindfold leaping on promise, daring to dare.
I am girl caught in the morning light, caught by the beauty until I can hardly exhale, wet hair dripping, light slipping golden and honeyed across the floor.
I have just exactly these superpowers: I am a questioner, a seeker, a storyteller, a finder four leaf clovers everywhere; I am brave; I love the ones I love to a fault; and I find my salvation day after day among the pebbles on the path, the spider’s weaving webs, the sun rising and then setting in a sky filled with rain and contrails and wonder.
What are your superpowers?
August 9::Monday
August 7::Saturday
All about friends. The best of friends. (Miss you Jess.) Long walks to fields dappled with light; clouds above, laughter, the kind of honesty that comes from knowing someone for more than a decade; good wine and pasta with fresh corn, and chard, basil and tomatoes from the garden; the promise of Sunday bacon and a few more hours to watch my kids play with some of my favorite people in the whole world. (Also love that seeing my family through someone elses lens...)
August 6::Friday
A couple of snapshots from the festival of fools today. Tired, enthralled boys. (The first shot was a happy accident.)
What are the things you juggle? What are the balls that can drop, or the ones that are made of glass? (This man also juggled machetes twelve feet up in the air on a pole.)
August 5::Thursday
This boy makes me smile all day long. I snapped these right after his nap... when he was all sleepy and mellow still. Love his little bum in the air.
+++
Today was all about long walks and conversations with my best friend... Conversations interrupted by little boys asking for snacks and finding caterpillars and banging on drums. Conversations about purpose, about passion, about direction, about contentment.
About the difference between these three terms:
Self absorbed.
Selfish.
Self confident.
What do you think of when you read these words. What does each mean to you? How do your definitions change when you apply them to your best friend, your lover, your mother, your child?
August 4::Wednesday
Humidity; swimming in the pond; watching airplanes land at the airport observation deck; cherries and chocolate; what it feels like to be surrounded by your favorite people in the whole world.
August 3:: Tuesday
the kitchen counter cluttered with fruit. }
+++
Summer is slipping. Thunderstorms rut the roads and send lightening forking through the afternoon sky of late. Across the world, people sit bare headed without shelter in fields flooded with rain. My heart aches for them. Since becoming a mother the news is almost too much to bear. I don't know why this is, except I know now, how my sons' little round bellies mean everything to me. How the fragrance at the back of their necks is heaven. How their laughter fills me up. How I want everything for them. Every single thing. (This makes my heart ache too.)
We took a hike with friends along the river and came to a spot where a tornado must have recently touched down among tall pines: each trunk broken in half like a handful of toothpicks; the river was swollen and fat with rain. Ahead of us the boys leaped; carrying nets; feet bare. I didn't bring my camera: my hands were full with Sprout who is is a daredevil, a water baby: plunging towards the rushing water headlong, arms and legs covered in mud, in sand, in pine needles, in glee.
+++
T. starts his job tomorrow!
+++
How is your week shaping up?