the very smallest of things
The very smallest of things have made my morning: The internet came back on so I don't have to leave the house early to do work. There was juuust enough milk for my latte. The snow plow guy just came and plowed my driveway so I can get to class this afternoon. It's snowing: fat, fluffy, gorgeous flakes. The fire is warm and snug and my cat is curled at my feet.
This week is go, go, go time. The end of the semester. Super big projects all due. And then a few weeks off--including a week out West visiting my sister and her sweet new babe. Cannot wait for the break. For cookie baking and decorating; for playing with my boys; for cleaning my house. For all the mundane joyful stuff that I've put on hold to push through these final deadlines.
where I've been:
The craziest storm ever. Extremely localized. 75mph winds. Trees snapped everywhere. Needless to say, no power. We're at the inlaws, waiting it out. Likely no power until Sunday. Just in time for three major deadlines. Oh yes.
Tell me something to cheer me up! What tradition are you most looking forward to for the holidays?
Thankful*
I took these pictures yesterday, out my front door. Like heaven, the way the storm came through spreading the arc of a double rainbow and then left the world golden and blue and vermillion with the setting sun. I'm so thankful for this place that I call home--and also this place here, where I can connect with all of you ( hit m 1,000 post here just last week!) Also today I got lovely, really super awesome news about my book--that is still not in stone enough to share details on, but enough to grin about big time and to be thankful for.
I've spent the last three days working intensely on digital projects: Flash, After Effects, video. By this afternoon I felt a little like a wild animal, and when the golden afternoon light filled up the sky again I pulled on running close and fled the house for a long run while the shadows grew long and blue across the road.
Tomorrow I'm taking a digital break to be with family... I'm craving that: a reason not to check in and be in front of the screen for a day.
Happy Thanksgiving! xo, C
Code switching
And it’s then the milk spills. TWICE in one sitting. It’s then that they fight over every single thing. Then that the bigger one crashes into the littler one, and the little one comes to me wailing, his mouth full of blood.
It’s then that tears are inevitable—from me, if not from them. [More...]
A list from today:
* Alone all day to work on projects with only the cat for company * A phone call with my older sister whose little boy is 2 weeks old today. Love hearing his wee little fusses in the background. * A pomegranate * Starting to 'get' ActionScript 3.0 just a little * Filling this sweet elf house of Bean's with color
What are some highlights from your day?
This moment
At the counter after school. Ramin noodles + scallions in warm broth. Israel Kamakawiwo'ole + his banjo on the stereo. And for a moment we were just there at the counter, the three of us slurping the extra long noodles and giggling and drinking the broth straight from the bowl and I could feel how we were at the eye of every storm that had come or would come: the afternoon ahead of us with its various unravelings and tantrums. But right then, I let myself breathe and unfurl a little into the delicious present...and then I went to get my camera because the stripes and the noodles and the little boy grins were making me want to explode with happiness. Yes.
Emergent Process
Today the first snow. Not really the fat flakes of later winter, but the quiet delicate fluttering of small flecks of snow nonetheless. The sky is gray except for where the clouds are pulled thin, and then the sun shines through with milky light. Out my window birds arrive: chickadees, blackbirds, crows. The alight among the bare twigs, and preen, the slight fleeting snow falling on their feathers.
This is as close as I’ve come this week, to being out doors: watching from my window as the world turns to winter outside. And I can hardly believe it: winter, just like that. The days darker, and darker still. Inside, I’m at my desk; an itemized to-do list hanging on the wall in front of me: 34 projects of varying degrees of critical importance to be accomplished by December. Two weeks.
And it’s intense. That’s for certain. Especially with two small boys underfoot. This past week I was doing the solo parent thing which forced every single minute to double in value. Not longer. Just worth more. In every minute I’m mother and student. Writer and novice programmer. Digital artist and researcher. All of it, every minute.
But when people ask me how I’m liking school, often with an “I’m so glad it’s you and not me” tone of voice, I can’t help myself: I love it. {more...}
hump day + systems thinking
By Wednesday night I always feel a little pummeled, like I've been swimming for three days straight, and this week has been particularly intense because T has been away on a trip to California for work and so it's all mama, all the time when the boys are here. Also, Wednesday = six hour straight of class and by the end my mind revolts. Tonight it was all about DVR and recorded Glee episodes (What is it about that show by the way? I want to hate it, but end up kind of digging it every time. Why?) This week I've had a minor breakthrough about myself as a learner. I'm a highly, highly visual learner (right!? Who could have guessed??) But what I didn't realize is that I've overly relied upon my visual capabilities to compensate for organizational shortcomings--and while I can visually tell you where everything is in my studio or on my desktop--once a file gets moved on my computer, I'm at a loss. And truthfully, files are in a state of creative chaos. To make matters worse I harbor unnamed skepticism for burning anything onto a CD and then deleting it from anywhere. But I am determined to reform.
How do you organize your desktop, your photos, your Word files, etc? I'd love, love, love to get some peaks into the way all you creatives organize your work on your computer. Please share!
A snapshot from today:
The light of late autum is gold, gold, gold. It fills our south-west facing dining room all afternoon; honey on the table, honey on the floor, and we’re drawn to it like bees, sitting barefoot, my son drawing while I write. Above the bare branches of the trees, insects swarm; the last warm days a small ellipsis of insect procreation. Out the back door the chickens come, inquisitive, pecky, turning over every crumpled leaf in search of bugs not burrowed down. The shadows fall long, longer, across the valley spreading indigo lace below the trees. Each chicken has a shadow twice her size, imaginary hens on stilts, walking slantwise across the leaf strewn grass.
Sprout is napping and Bean and I are each occupied in our own way. Me: editing. Him: drawing blueprints for gnome houses and prototypes for robotic flying cars.
Suddenly he leaps back from his work table, “AAAAH! Something scary with pinchers just ran behind my desk!” he screams with dramatic flare.
His eyes are genuinely huge, but then he sees me smiling. I cannot hold the laughter back. “Really?” I ask. “Is it going to eat you?”
Now his eyes grow wider. He looks off for a minute into space.
“It cannot eat me.” He concludes hesitantly. “I am bigger than it. I could just…I could just squish it. Right?”
Oh how I love this silly boy of mine.
In it
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?
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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
*
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.
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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.
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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.)