In it

I meant to post yesterday. I am a NaBloPoMo failure, but that is ok. I'm going to keep posting anyway. I'm in it. That's what matters. In this moment, in my studio, writing. The light is so bright today I had to pin up paintings the boys made over the windows; my own stained glass, the light opaque and sacred falling on my desk.

At the doorway, Sprout hovers. It's just us today, getting things done. He's so good: I make him a snack in a wooden bowl and tell him to play and he does, mostly, coming to my doorway to check in every so often. The hall is wide--a perfect playroom, and toys are strewn inevitably, a cacophony of things with wheels rattling down the length of it. I put on my headphones so I can think. This mix helps this morning. I go back to the page I am editing. There isn't any other way except to be in it, is there?

What are you in the thick of today?

Almost 6

I just had to share Bean's kindergarten photo. Swoon. He is such a rascal. Almost 6 and full of determination and eccentricity and delight. He is all about bossy, and "mine is better." He is all about talking all the time, inserting himself into ever conversation, chattering over everyone and everything else going on. He is all about drama. Tears. Howls. High Drama.

Like this morning when he fell off a stool at the counter and then hit his plasma car. It was comical. He was FINE. Totally fine. And yet you'd think he had lost a limb. The wailing. You can tell he is delighting in every minute of it. There is almost a little grin at the edge of his face even as he's wailing. This little guy has always been one to burst into tears: over the thought of Lyle Lyle stuck in the zoo, over a lost twist tie; over anything. It's something I love about him: how tender he is. He sees the world in such a sensitive, thoughtful, particular way.

In my head he's still 4. How is it possible he's almost 6?

++++

Also: My sweet sister had her baby this morning at 12:10am! An 8lb, 6oz little boy! So excited and happy for them I can hardly stand it.

Early sundown

It's always so bittersweet, setting the clocks back and waking to light slanting across the frosty grass; the sky pale with a lemon colored dawn. Then, when the day seems just to be really getting good, the shadows are already long and night arrives before I'm ready: starry skies, the temperature falling, pitch black by dinner.

I like the way time is malleable on this day though. The way we all collectively agree to say that on this day we have another hour. (It makes me wonder: what else could we collectively agree on? )

It's this time of year that I always end up wanting to do some redecorating; change my blog theme; organize my bookmarks; put candles on the windowsills; pull out my warm boots and pretty scarves.

I'm craving new sources of creativity. What is inspiring you lately? ...your favorite piece of clothing for late autumn? ...new music have you found recently? ...blogs are you crushing on? ...books you are reading?

big messes + small deceptions

Today was all about getting things ready for winter: tossing our fat ghoulish pumpkins into the compost and raking up piles of wet leaves, mostly to be jumped in by Sprout and Bean. It was cold and our cheeks were pink after an hour spent outdoors, mowing the lawn a final time for the season and gathering up the stray bits of bark left from the wood that we stacked. Inside, after pulling off muddy boots and wet gloves we made hot chocolate: unsweetened cocoa and sugar melted with a bit of boiling water, then stirred into frothed milk with a touch of cream. Little boy moustaches, happy grins, and only one spill. “Uh oh, uh oh” Sprout exclaimed as his drink pooled into his lap.

By the end of every day my boys are covered head to tow with the evidence of their days: mud and chocolate, paint on their shirts, pasta sauce on their elbows. Are all little boys messy, or are mine particularly so? Reckless in glee and sensory delight. They’ve both grown this month; a late autumn growth spurt. One of my favorite things about our house is the corner wall between the kitchen and the den where we mark their growth with stubby pencils or whatever pen we can find.

“Let’s see if I grew!” Bean will exclaim gleefully after eating a particularly enormous serving of pasta or a heaping plate of blueberry pancakes.

Once we were a little overzealous and recorded his growth: a remarkable half inch in a month. The following month we discovered our error: he’d shrunk. Or so it seemed. The line made from his head to the square edge of the book was below the mark we’d already made.

“Did I really shrink?” Bean asked wide eyed.

“You did,” I lied without blinking. “That’s what happens when you don’t eat your veggies.”

Oh yes I did.

Circles and lines

A trip to Boston and back in two days. Too many hours in the car; rain pelting, pummeling; grey, on grey, on grey. Mist hanging low among the pines and oaks, their leaves brown now, the last deciduous trees to loose their leaves. The boys in the back seat eating fig newtons and building things with legos. Four hours, then traffic, then dinner with dear friends and bedtime for little guys in unfamiliar sleeping arrangements, and wine and in the morning, the penguins, as promised.

Now, post workout, headphones on, I sink into the quiet circle of my thoughts. It's a slow descent. Like a plan landing. I circle around myself, procrastinating, getting the runway in order. Some nights the runway is obscured with mist; with rain; with memories; with gulls circling; other's it's a quick hard landing, and then I'm in it, fingers flying, QWERTY, and blink, an hour is gone.

mountains at the back of my mind

Frost in the morning. The mountains pink again with dawn and snow. A filigree tiny crystals on every blade of grass, each barren twig, the puddles frozen over. We talk about jack frost and watch the skies for crows. Count them, two by two, and see the blackbirds here and there, scattered across the fields of stubby stalks of corn.

*

A trip to Boston tomorrow, solo, with both boys, and I am writing lists for not forgetting: string cheese and juice boxes and etch-a-sketches and extra pairs of pants.

*

An email from an editor (the editor?) wondering about the status of the book; and I have lump in my throat because the past month has been very quiet on that front. I have ideas, and I’m working, but slowly. It’s so good, so good, but is it what the editor wants?

It is more prose poem than essay, more wonder, than advice, more solace than suggestion. It is a reason, to show up, to pause, to rest with the empty space on the page; to linger with the fragments of image, with the telltale narrative of a day lived one moment after the next, spreading like concentric circles, widening the view from here, from this moment right now.

Is this important?

More important than market? What of blockbuster hits, what of print dying and all that jazz? Do I listen to that ruckus, or just make what springs up urgently?

What do you think?

writing like this

I wanted share this piece I just finished--based off a still life of bones--for school. I love how it turned out and am totally digging the freedom of digital + messy media. +++

11 weeks into the semester, and I am starting to feel the way rivulets of thought follow the same paths across my mind, effluvial, tangential, but towards the same place. Grooves forming. Patterns

The culmination of bigger projects are looming on the calendar now; dates circled, deadlines in red, and for all the art and code and philosophy and discussions about emergence, I miss writing.

Writing like this: words collected and stashed like a grubby handful of chocolates; words that tell you how the mountains were gleaming white and pink with snow and setting sun; words that capture the birds on the wires that my eye notices now always, tracing the contours of poles and lines that frame nearly every view.

Words that gather like snow clouds on the horizon; words that hold the dry air and the crackle of yellow-brown leaves; words that gut the feeling of quiver and heart flutter when two police cars pass me, lights flashing, sirens blaring, as I pull to the curb, hesitate, then go again. Words that do this: magic, poem, prose, wonder.

I’m doing this program, this time, these commitments because of writing. Because of the way I need it, like breathing. Because I am an artist first, always, and now, and have finally found the courage to claim this title for myself. And because when I graduate I’ll have three precious letters to attach to my name and the opportunity to open doors to new jobs that support and sustain me creatively and financially. But right this very second I crave what words can do for the single frail fluttering leaf, rust colored against the blue that is my heart tonight; in flight before a certain settling.

And so even though I’m a day late, I’m showing up for NaBloPoMo. Whatever I have, that’s what I’m giving. Messy fragmented words. Whatever I’ve got.

Will you come along? Your comments make me happy every single time.

festivities

For the first ever we're actually doing it up right for Halloween with some serious pumpkin carving the day of with friends and neighbors. I'm a little terrified about what my kitchen might look like post pumpkin massacre, but totally into the idea of having a bunch of rascals running around while parents attempt masterpieces with the aid of sharp implements and choice beverages. How can that not be fun? I'll totally be taking pictures.

We've starting cookie baking early this year too, and are attempting a haunted gingerbread house (you can download a PDF of the no-frills pattern I made here.) Because as Bean put it, it's just too long to wait until Christmas, and because baking cookies is one of my coping strategies of late. Grin.

+++ Some links I've been wanting to share:

I want to live here. Oh yes.

Misty Mawn's photos are giving me a serious case of wanderlust.

Brian's mix on 8tracks.

Doing this is so on my bucket list.

This set of autumn photos.

What are you up to for the weekend?

A compass of ordinary things

By Wednesday night I can hear my heart thud, thudding in my chest as I wait for a glass to fill with water, or scrub the dinner pots and pans after the boys have gone to bed. It is a hollow drum in the hull of my chest; my rib bones lifting and falling shallowly, more fragile now, after days with too little sleep and so much to think.

I seek out the basket of laundry, rumpled from a day left waiting; shirt sleeves inside out, socks always mismatched, and find solace in shaking out the wrinkles with a quick flick of the wrist, my fingers smoothing the cotton of little pajama shirts; the denim of pair of after pair of jeans. I let myself become lost in the folds, in the process of folding; the bed where I am sitting filling with tidy categorical stacks: napkins, linens, little boy clothes, mine, his. It’s Wednesday, the end of my classes for the week, the day when I feel the cumulative lack of sleep spill out unevenly in my mind, my thoughts like so many mismatched socks.

I’ve discovered this is the only way for me to be: wholly here, heart thudding, and then here again, wholly.

Here is anywhere. Here is this moment with a random fat fly buzzing heavily about my studio; my keys clacking. Here is in the car driving home in the golden light of late autumn (the leaves are mostly fallen now; the ones that remain are rust and ocher.) Here is scooping Sprout up, his hands covered with green marker marks, and pressing my face into his sweet sticky curls. Here is telling my sweet wide-eyed bean a story about two chickens and a hedgehog on a raft. Here is now, and mine is a compass of ordinary things.

What holds you in your life? What makes it possible for you to do, and do, and be, more, again, day after day?

leverage

It started out beautifully. Bean + Sprout + sandbox = happy boys + happy mama. Despite the softly falling rain they were content as clams, pushing yellow metal dump trucks over dunes of damp sand. So I went to work stacking wood not twenty yards away. And the next thing I knew...

Sprout was covered head to toe in mud. I don't mean that metaphorically. I mean that very, very literally. He was so covered in fact, that it became immediately evident that he was not the one who had covered himself. His cheeks were painted with mud. His pants, his boots, his knees, elbows, hands, arms, neck. And he was screaming furiously. Indignantly.

Bean looked way too pleased.

See? He thought it was hilarious.

Until, out of nowhere I said, "I'm documenting this to send to Santa, you know."

And then, without looking at him again, I set the camera down and proceeded to strip Sprout down to his diaper. When I was finished I looked up to discover Bean was rooted to the spot. A look of utter abject horror on his face.

Then he dashed inside, removed his muddy clothes, and frantically started hugging Sprout.

I ran Sprout a bath. Bean came up and sat at the edge of the tub, urgently offering toys to Sprout who was delighted by the sudden change of events.

I asked Bean if he wanted to get in too. He said, "I'd be delighted." (Really, he talks like that.)

And then he got in and hugged Sprout and let him have all the toys. And after quite a while he said, "You know mama, you really don't need to send those pictures to Santa."

He was perfectly behaved all afternoon, too. Thank you, Santa.

scraps and bits

It's late. It is that time of night where the house hums in the quiet, and outside the moon, full and round and up till morning, is obscured by the clouds that came in the evening. It is that time of night where my mind becomes perforated and shallow; where what I'm working on dissolves like sugar in the bottom of a cup of tea.

It's been such a non-stop week, I haven't felt like there were ever minutes really where I could come up for air until today when Lizardek came for a visit, all the way from Boston, all the way from Sweden. Liz. What can I say? She and her mom filled up my home with smiles today. We went to an ice cream factory. The blue sky sang bluer. The yellow leaves lingering on the hills hued to gold. Such a fun day; also because Bean and I got to hang together, and I've been loving these times we've been having: just the two of us. He's a different kid when he's by himself. All kids are, I suppose. But I particularly like spending time with him when we're going someplace and chattering together. On the way home from our adventures today after two ice cream cones, he passed out in the car, chocolate still on his cheeks. Looking back at him I could feel my heart thudding hard in my throat. His eyelids transparent almost; his sandy hair falling slantwise across his dreaming face.

It's amazing, again and again, to find myself in the identity of being somebody's mother. It's a form that constantly shifts and sheds; like the fragile skin of a snake. I grow as they do.

+++

Some scraps of exciting news:

Milk & Ink: A Mosaic Of Motherhood is out! It's jam-packed with amazing writers--many of the pieces moved me to tears with the sheer beauty of the language, and poignancy of story. I've contributed three pieces to this collection and feel so lucky to be a part of it! All profits are going to Mama Hope--which makes this an even more most buy, must read book. Go get your copy!

I've started a new weekly column over at Today's Mama chronicling some of the nitty-gritty bits of being in grad school full time as a parent. Fun stuff.

Some musings about the future of digital media and culture here. (This is where my head is when it's not here.)

It's about this

This post is for my sister, who is due with her first baby in three weeks...

Oh yes. This is the way things happen.

You get pregnant, have a baby, survive a year or so of sleep deprivation, memory loss, heavenly smiles, and diapers, and then one afternoon while you're making a sandwich your baby is sitting on the counter, nonchalant, happy as a clam.

This is what having a baby will teach you:

That you are not in control.

That you were never really in control.

That there is grace in loosing the battle, just as there is grace in quietly, patiently persisting with boundaries, bedtimes, and broccoli.

You will never be able to hear a story about a child suffering again without tears wetting the corners of your eyes, entirely unbidden, always unexpected, smudging your mascara as you consider what if.

It's okay to start over or give up a million times. No one knows any better than you do--and when it comes to your own kid, you do, actually, know best, no matter what anyone else tells you.

It's all about giggling.

Getting dirty is inevitable and essential. Make your peace with the effing laundry heap. It will never go away. Although--one thing that most certainly will go away, inexplicably, and often, are single baby socks. One by one they disappear until you'll have an entire drawer full of singletons.Think I'm kidding? Just wait.

It's about stopping and getting down on the floor. Especially with boys. It's all about the floor and what can be accomplished there: block towers and tickling matches, and moments of physical affection, rough and tumble that they crave. Moms who wrestle are awesome. It's not just a guy thing. Please don't believe it's just guy thing.

It's about the fact that floor will always have crumbs, paper clips, pencils, crayons, snippets, legos, blocks, matchbox cars, marbles, rocks, crumpled leaves, gravel, sand, bits of grass, sticks. Don't let it get to you.

Don't let the crying get to you either. Whatever feels like the worst day in the world, the worst hour, the worst minute, will surely pass. And then they'll be 20 months old and sitting on the counter, as if that's okay, as if it's not precarious and against the rules. And they'll be grinning and giggling and drooling, and saying "No! No! No!" when you remove them, or suggest an alternative.

It's all about alternatives. About distractions. "Oh look!" That's a magic phrase. Oh yes it is. {more...}

Chaos + golden light

It's really like this. Golden, golden light. I get out of class and drive home in wonder, my camera on my lap. I pull over randomly to take pictures (one of my many projects for class is to sustain a daily practice--mine has been to take a picture of the same thing every day in different contexts. Here is a peak.) I am stunned over and over and over again by the beauty of this world.

On the radio about a month ago I heard a scientist declare, "there are no miracles," and I spun the tuner away in frustration. How can you look at this wonderment of beauty, or even at the precise minute functioning of your hands or dreams and say there are no miracles? I couldn't live without wonder. Could you?

Today Bean was sick and Sprout was teething--his final teeth (fingers crossed) are poking through, and even so much to do, I spent most of the day outdoors in the mild golden light stacking wood and watching the boys play side by side: with sticks in the mud; in their tree house; in the sand box; in the gathering froth of fallen leaves. Bean desperately wants Sprout to talk, but Sprout is taking his sweet time. He says many words, but enunciates them poorly; always grinning, gesturing, moving. Sprout isn't interested in the names for things the way Bean was at his age; instead he's interested in making people laugh. He is so tuned in emotionally, it always surprises me to see the way his face mirrors mine. When he's done something naughty and I scold him, he bursts into tears of remorse, arms flung wide, running to me to fix it.

But oh, he's got a temper too, that little one. When he want's something and doesn't get it, he'll grab the nearest object and throw it to the floor howling, "No! No!" indignantly. And he does the perfect jelly-limbed all kick and squiggle tantrum. Nothing lasts though, and he's like a summer day. Even when the clouds show up, it's only for a little while. Bean on the other hand will dig in and stay moody for a long, long time. He does things his way regardless of who he annoys, or disappoints. His. Own. Drummer. Oh yes.

By Thursday the week has always pummeled me a bit. My mind spits sparks. The ideas lift off and land like startled birds and I'm always hoping I'll have enough down time and quiet to catalogue them, though I rarely do. My notebooks are bursting. My desktop is a daily array of exploding files. Thursday always shoves me back into the daily, immediate, messy parts of my life. The laundry that's piled up; the wood that needs stacking; boys, loud, snotty nosed and grimy handed with jelly grins and the softest hair in the world.

Today we made gingerbread cookies and apple sauce from the trees on our land--and it was an exercise in letting chaos happen, let me tell you. Flour, everywhere. The nutmeg grinder disassembled. Apple peels on the floor. Sprout on the counter (he climbs everything all the time now, to all of our chagrin.) Sometimes chaos is perfect.

Chaos and golden light.

solitary moments

The valley is umber and golden and red below me, and the poplar that quivered all summer in turns silver and green has shaken it’s leaves to the ground. Crows call, squirrels churl, and the wind pulls at the house. It’s a familiar sound: the sound of the colder months here on this hill that I call home. It will be our fifth winter here and I know now the things I imagined I would when we first moved: where to find the brightest leaves for pressing; the softest moss among quarts in the woods; mushrooms under brambles; leathery skinned, fragrant and sweet apples.

Today I am inside and alone. In other rooms the floors gleam in the sunlight. In mine, the windows are backlit with the gold-orange of the trees, and the loudest clatter is my own fingers on the keyboard, my own breath. I soak up these solitary times when I can become reacquainted with the threads of narrative in my book, make progress, print drafts, scribble notes. It’s so very rare though, for me to be solitary, or even alone for more than an hour.

I imagine sometimes, dreamily, a little writing hut with months to spare. Time elastic and mine. But then I wonder if my mind would go soft; if I’d lack the discipline to persevere in the circle of my own circumscribed thoughts for so long. Self inflicted deadlines languish the longest, this I know. Similarly quiet rings the loudest in the absence of my small boys who fill the house with ruckus laughter; with the crashing of vehicles into one another; with wailing, with stomping feet, with squeals, with words.

When are you alone? What is the quiet like for you? What do you do that time, with only you? What are you like then?

A list for Saturday

Today: wood stacking and striking skies. The hills are dappled with sun and shade. My boys want to be outdoors all day, their noses running, always heading for the mud, always climbing to the top of unstacked piles of logs.

I'm still getting over being sick--and contemplating the affects of it on my digital and academic life over here. (I'd loove to hear your thoughts on this subject.)

Today there will be chocolate chip cookies and chicken soup and rosy cheeks. There will also be reading. Lots of it. And figuring out how to do a podcast for A Field Guide To Now (!) and maybe a run. Yes. That's Saturday's list. What is yours?

Also: we're entering the phase of toddler temper tantrums around here. Oooh boy. Here we go. More on that and some pictures tomorrow.

Go Boldly

I'm sick and going to take a nap but I just wanted to check in and say hello and share this little bit of art (one of my mottos of late.)

Once I get caught up on sleep and get over this cold I have so much I want to share. Right now my brain feels echo-y. Does that make sense? My thoughts keep bouncing around in there. Kind of like this. (So cool, right?) I can't believe it's already October. What does fall look like where you are? What are you enjoying?

the things that show time's passing:

I spend the day between here and myself.

Outside the trees are turning to vermillion three weeks early and in the evenings the mountains are on flame; the sky purple dark and sudden light the way only a New England sky can be. I spend the day in a state of almost perpetual creative activity and it’s crazy and intense and thrilling. If I could chart the synapse activity in my mind these past five weeks it has skyrocketed. Each idea leading to sequential sparks, my mind like the starry sky when you look up after twirling: blur of streaking gold and dark.

It is inconceivable, almost, how fast the days go. How fast autumn light is gaining. The equinox slipped by like something leaving silently through the closing door of summer. I look now and wonder at how fast time has gone, while all around me there are marks to show it’s passing:

T and I celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary this past weekend (and our eleventh together) returning to the place where we were married for a marvelous meal. We were married outdoors on a little peninsula reaching out into the lake, and over the weekend we walked back there in awe by the way our lives are now. “Did you ever think?” I asked. He shook his head.

I was pregnant then, with Sprout.

How things have changed.

Do you know that when I started this blog I didn’t know a single “real life” person who had ever even heard of a blog? Little did I know how it would change my life. And it has—wild as that may sound. It has submerged me in the world of digital media where I feel compelled and creative and at home; and it has given me community and audience and escape and reassurance. This week I’ll likely hit the 1000th post mark. (This is the 992st post)…and there are 11,854 comments logged on this site. Pretty awesome.

Since that time blogs and digital media and the internet have changed so much; facebook and twitter and commercial blogging have reshaped the face of personal blogs in many ways—but I’m still so happy to come here. So grateful for your comments, for your shared pieces of existence, for your tips on good music, good food, good books, good ideas, and good ways to solve problems with two little rapscallion boys.

Time is galloping. The garden is scraggly with weeds, plush with overripe tomatoes; overrun with squash. The geese are back, cutting the skies in Vs, and the starlings and blackbirds have arrived in throngs on the wires of the telephone poles I photograph daily now as a part of a daily artistic practice. Tonight I am tackling HTML and CSS (another thing on my 33 before 33 list) and listening to new favorite mixes on 8tracks, and feeling like while time is slipping, it is the best time I’ve ever had. All of it, all my life: the best time. Do you ever feel that way?

What are five things you are grateful for right now?

snapshots like sunspots

From the past week:

1.

Frustration the color of crushed grapes; my fingers in my palms. We’re at a stand off: my five year old and I. He wants to do one thing, I’ve given him a choice of two others. It was like this when he was a baby. People said, “just let him cry it out,” but when we did, a single time, he cried for an hour, then fell asleep but woke up angry, remembering everything. Now his eyes are puffy with tears and allergies and I’ve had far too little time to myself, and far too many deadlines to make time now for this push and pull. I scream. SCREAM at him. I am ashamed, heartbroken. I want to snip through everything I’ve done with a small pair of embroidery scissors, thread after indelicate thread until I get back to the place where our hearts are close and our cheeks touch.

I hate you, Mommy. I hate you he screams.

Nothing prepared me for this. For the way I would feel like I had ruined everything. Like being broken up with, but irreparably worse. (Thank god we have a few more years before he is a teenager to figure things out...)

Finally I backed down. He played outdoors. We skirted each other ashamed by the mess we’d made of things. At bedtime he asked for Daddy to read to him, and slipped by my studio door without coming to goodnight.

2. T carries him into the bedroom before I am awake. The feeling of his bird like shoulder blades; the hull of his delicate ribs; the haphazard placement of his marionette arms against my neck, wakes me. I love you Mommy. I love you so much.

I love you too. I love you. I love you. I whisper back. His elbow makes an upside down V along the line of my chin. I press my nose into his neck where it smells forever just like him: like cookies and grass and autumn air, and slip a little towards a softer sleep.

3. We're downtown at a street festival and he stands watching the fire throwers, just like his dad, hands in pockets, one knee bent, transfixed. I leave the two of them watching and walk with Sprout and my mother to the Capitol green, where my littlest runs like he has something to prove. (He does: joy is everywhere.) His face beams. He climbs every set of stairs he can finds. He stops to smell every single flower; stroking the plush purple petals of the petunias as though they are the source of joy. (They are.)

4. My little one. He is the still point at the center of my heart, and a twirling dervish that colors my heart with of comfort. He is curls and sticky fingers and sweat on his brow and newly found independence and tantrums. He is laughter with juice running down his chin. He carries crushed gingersnap cookies in his fist and grins.

5. I can see them walking towards us across the green grass, both wearing yellow, like sunshine flooding towards me. They walk in synch and they are grinning: they’ve gotten lemonade and a new hat and gloves for him for winter, and they are almost one and the same, those two foreign bits of my heart.

6. The light is golden and the hills are purple and flame. The leaves have begun to turn to orange; tattered yellow; ocher. The grass is dewy now and strewn with the tree’s spent energy of a season.

Light refracts like fire in what remains.

This + that tonight

Hi. Tomorrow I have some photos to share + some stories about the epic tantrums and dark parenting moments that occurred this weekend (brought to my knees, I dare say, by my five year old Bean who holds my heart rather indelicately among the coins and pebbles and twine and marbles in his pocket) Tonight, I thought I'd share a glimpse into what I've been thinking and doing, squirreled away for hours in my studio studying:

I've been asked several times in the past couple of weeks what Emergent Media is exactly, and, as is often the case with my mixed-media multiple genre life, I find myself wanting to shrug and say: it's everything.

Because it kind of is.

It's words, for starters, and everything conveyed and made possible through the evolution of conveying words with letters, first on papyrus, then on the page, now here, on the screen. Simply: within the story of words evolving from speech to writing, is the story of human beings becoming, of human consciousness evolving, and of media emerging.

Thus, to study Emergent Media is to study both the medium, and the message, the chicken and the egg. It means to study words, and to study the ideas that words convey. It means to study media, and the messages they convey. It means to examine investigate the past for patterns, and to peak towards the future for clues. ...[more]

Question

What web host service do you recommend/love? Please share. Need feedback on this asap. Happy Thursday! xo!