The art of falling down:

I crossed the first item off my 34 before 34 list this weekend: snowboard blue squares, and it felt amazing. They were my last two runs on Sunday. The light was golden and the shadows long and blue across the trail, and it was just me and my board and the snow and random strangers hurtling down at improbable speeds around me. And I did it: carving my way back and forth in a brilliant, precarious, unlikely upright angle, slanting and turning, all the way down, and this is what struck me about the whole process: that becoming something or learning something is always this crazy, amazing, awkward process.

Falling is awkward (and painful) and it isn't something you can skip. You can't fast forward learning. You can't overcome fear by skipping fear itself. You can't avoid falling by not falling. You've got to be in it: messy, face planting, laughing, crying, doing it all over again.

The best thing about riding the lifts is getting a glimpse at a bigger picture. When you're on the ground, your perspective is narrow. You + snow. You think you're the only one, maybe, to every wipe out this horrifically. To skid into the drift at the edge of the trail; to splat off the lift like you don't know how to stand. You collect yourself quickly, looking around, laughing self consciously. But from the air it's all different.

From there you can see: everyone is falling. Even the show-offs. Even the brilliant ones for whom snowboarding is like flying. They know that falling = learning. Falling = risking. Falling = facing fear.

This is true for everything, not just this new obsession of mine. It's true for writing; for making art; for asking for what you want; for extending your reach; finding your voice.

When was the last time you gave yourself the opportunity to fall?

Circling

I stand by the heat of the wood stove, circling the present moment in my head like a dog preparing for sleep. It’s snowing again, although dawn was bright and clear: the truest pinks and the most pale persimmon clouds. Now everything is back to white on white, and the bird feeder needs filling. Today I am torn by what I want to be doing and what I ought to do. All morning T and I attempt conversation, fail, and attempt again. At the root of it: we miss each other desperately. We both want to fold into each other’s arms and have an afternoon just us in a café somewhere, but instead there are boys, and homework, and book work, a party tonight, and so the day ends up mostly being about adjacent circles rather than concentric ones, and in our longing we miss our mark, push each other away, and feel the distance more acutely.

If only I could stitch all the moments together today, I’d have a quilt of him to wrap around my shoulders now as I write. Him, in Sorrels in the driveway pushing the snow blower into knee-deep snow; him on the couch, buried under the lot of us this morning, all trying to tickle him and make him laugh; him cleaning the downstairs bathroom toilet, shirtless and muscular after a workout.

Now he’s taken the boys and gone on errands in spite of the snow falling harder, and I wish I could have gone with him, but reason and responsibility and the off kilter awkwardness of our morning convince me to stay instead.

I’ve been interested in exploring this thread interaction lately, since I wrote this post. I'm fascinated with the way people navigate the in-betweens and daily happenings. Neither hilltop nor valley, but the places where things even out and we’re just in it, doing our lives, side by side. There isn’t always grace in these moments, or courage. Often tiredness paints the whole picture a bleaker hue than it would otherwise be (and today this is most certainly the case.) Living with someone and loving them never ceases to be startling to me; unexpected, delightful, or painful to the point of wincing.

So this is my life. I always grin when I say this in my head, encountering myself in present tense, inside this moment (now: at my desk with cords strewn everywhere in the silence of a house now empty of the boys that fill my world. So this is my life: and I am so grateful I get to share it here, and show up, and find the threads of your stories too in the comments.

I am so interested in all your responses to my last post about blogging (thank you!)

I’d love to know: what are a few of your current (new) favorite blogs? Where do you creep, peruse, become inspired?

Today, I am loving this beautiful piece by Pixie. This is awesome. These images caught my eye.

And this.

Everything is invented

{Maria Kalman}
I love this. Oh yes. How true it is. The opportunities we make for ourselves; the parameters we define, achieve, exceed.

How many times do you find yourself circling in the small circumference of your day: your world defined by the limitations of work, by small children with sticky hands; by whatever it is that you see as the perimeter for what is possible?

“There are so many things that you’re told you can’t do. So many things that can stop you. You can either be like the elephant that is hobbled it’s whole life—so it doesn’t know that it is free once the hobble is removed, or you can do things your own way. You cannot live a life of fear.”

The woman telling me this is the flight attendant on the last of my three flights. She is beautiful, in her late forties, with milky chocolate skin and sparkling eyes. She wears a flower diamond ring on her finger, and her eyes light up when I ask her if she’s ever been sky diving.

“No,” she says, “but it’s something I’m thinking of doing. I’m afraid of heights.”

Then she tells me, “I went parasailing in Mexico and it was incredible. The air was fresh, and the world was so quiet up there above the water. It was like I was an angel.”

I can’t help grinning. I love that every single assumption I’ve had about this woman has just been shattered into a million pieces.

“Hang gliding has always been on my bucket list,” I tell her.

And she looks at me then, head tilted to the side, and in that moment we both get it. We’re two of a kind. The kind of women with bucket lists; with wanderlust; with adventure bursting from the drawers of our hearts.

“What is the number one thing on your bucket list?” she asks.

“To publish the book I’m working on,” I tell her and her eyes light up.

“I’ve always wanted to write,” she says.

So I say, “Tell me. Tell me about your life.”

And so she tells me how until two months ago she worked as a successful registered nurse. How she climbed the rungs of success in her field; spent her career traveling: starting a hospital in Nicaragua, bringing medical supplies to villages in Africa; exploring the streets of Rome.

“Resilience is about being able to change,” she tells me, when I ask her how she got from that to this; to being a flight attendant.

“Change is what makes people thrive. It’s when they get stuck in the same patterns for too long, when they’re afraid to change that they become unhealthy.” And because she wanted more wanted more balance in her life, she quite nursing and became a flight attendant.

I want to ask more, but the plane is already in its descent. We exchange email addresses, and she smiles as she presses hers into my hand.

When the plane hits the runway with a thud, I'm still smiling.

Yes for resilience. Yes for adventure. Yes for living your life without fear.

+++

What do you believe is possible? What would you do if limitations didn't exist?

Flight + Fruition

It was fascinating to start the new year in the sky. To watch the curve of the earth appear below, as the plane lifted off, at once heavy and weightless as it cut the clouds and traveled upward improbably into the wide expanse of atmosphere above the earth.

It’s a wonder to feel the way anything is possible this very instant, always and again.

Right now.

Today.

In this new year.

I left before dawn, after the requisite security line removal of belt and shoes, jackets, laptop and toiletries laid bare for the world to see, and then no coffee because the kiosk was closed, I was off. The sky was ink, the runway lit by lamplight, the cabin dark.

I held my breath: waiting for the feeling of air catching under the wings. I used to love airports. They meant adventure and freedom: Italy, Germany, New York, Puerto Rico. I loved the bustle, and energy I felt at airports, the way everyone was coming and going, the expectation and possibility that was almost palpable in the air. But now the world of airports is defined by orange alerts and leaving. Leaving my two sweet boys and T, who woke with me and carried my bags to the door and kissed me softly on the lips before I left for a week to visit my sister and her new sweet little baby boy.

In the air the earth grows small and spectacular at once. The land stretches out in an intricate pattern of rivers and mountain ranges overlayed with the persistent geometry of human life: grids of roads and fields and buildings that look, before dawn like twinkling circuit boards; light bordered by dark, by deserts, by lakes, by the black of pine forests and mountain ranges, white-capped volcanoes rising up above the clouds.

Three flights later I was in Oregon, circling then landing next to a field of grazing sheep. Live oaks, and mossy sycamores; hills steep and rolling under wide West Coast skies. I walk out into the bright afternoon sun disoriented by the time change, and hug my sister who looks beautiful and tired and happy all at once.

It stuns me to realize how I’ve already forgotten how newborn time is alternate to the reality of the rest of the world. How time is defined by the moments of feeding, and the moments of sleep in between. How life exists entirely within the circumference of doing nothing but holding the baby, and doing small things: running the dishwasher, or righting coats on the rack; the world soft and quiet and wrapped in the cocoon of a now that the rest of us forget, caught up in the plummet and pull of a faster pace.

I’ve already forgotten the way this is everything. Small sighs, milk down your shirt, toasted cheese, and the gift that is five consecutive hours of sleep. It’s a time out of time: the moments of falling in love and being split open. It is the beginning of everything.

I sit with my nephew in the crook of my knee and write; body memory returning, time traveling backwards to that newborn time with Sprout, new and warm and dreaming.

I try to explain how this is now and then it’s over, forever.

+++

Last year my word was action.

And it was fulfilled again and again with steps taken and decisions made towards a life more fulfilling, sustainable, and full.

It was an incredible year: T quit his job and found new work that he loves; I went back to school and launched A Field Guide To Now (still holding my breath on this....More (good) news and rewards—finally—to be sent out in February!) and my boys learned to play together: moving through the house in a tornado of action, transforming couch cushions into forts and blocks into castles.

This year my word is fruition.

Fruition (n.) 1) attainment of anything desired; realization; accomplishment: 2) enjoyment, as of something attained or realized. 3) the state of bearing fruit.

Yes.

+++

I loved reading your comments in your last post; loved to feel the force of your intention being put out into the world. I'm so looking forward to what this year brings. To the adventures, the discoveries, the things that will come to fruition.

in the morning

There is golden light this morning and a dozen blue jays, plumage ruffled, in the lilac out the window. The walls are striped with shadows from the window panes, the trees outside, the angles of furniture illumined by the morning sun. I watch the way heat dances; sunlight revealing the shadows of the invisible. Waves of warmth rising, shimmering, lifting from the wood stove, where logs become embers, and across the clear valley ribbons of smoke lift from solitary houses. Above the sky is the color of robin’s eggs: pale, pale blue.

Snow dresses the world in magic when the sun shines. Frost makes fractal whorls on the glass panes of the windows in the garage, and snowflakes, each one spectacular and individual, glint and sparkle across the wide expanse of field where tracks crisscross, revealing other secrets: the paths of squirrels and foxes going at dusk to the stream.

Today the mercury is shy despite the sun, and breath catches sharp in our lungs and rises up in steamy clouds. Today the boys are home. The house is filled with their clatter, laughter, disagreements, and small storms. They leave behind a trail: marbles, blocks, honey, bread crusts, airplanes. They wear at my patience. They fill me with delight. They are, always and again a lesson in living right now. In shifting gears abruptly. In being here. Right here.

Some days it’s not where I want to be. Some days, like today, I feel myself longing for the unremarkable quiet of an empty house. Instead there are sticky fingers and boys still in pajamas. There is spilled cat food, and snow melting in puddles at the door, and boys who want the things that sustain them: attention and stories and be seen.

And so I do. I turn to Sprout who is climbing into the chair beside me, and press my face into his warm head. I get up from the table and carry my empty cup to the sink; gather things to make bread dough. Rinse my hands. Wipe the counters clear.

Together we will knead the bread and then place it in bowls in the sun. It will rise there all morning in the warmth, and then we’ll shape it into loaves, spreading it with cinnamon and sugar. I’ll let them lick their fingers and I’ll turn the oven light on. They’ll press their faces against the oven door and look. They’ll wait for the timer to ring and then eat slices of bread, fluffy and warm with melting butter for snack.

I’ll let this be the present: warm bread and sticky fingers and sun.

push | pull

There is the bittersweet that comes from having things go exactly as they should and then be over; just as that feeling springs from things going exactly opposite to what was planned and all the loose ends that come from such moments of disappointment and disarray. This was our holiday: joy-filled and tense at turns; full of expectations and sparkly lights and glee, and also frustration. Family drama (his, not mine this time.) Stubborn boys. Heaps of snow, chocolate, caramel corn, and candle light. Singing carols. Good wine. Snowboarding for the first time.

And Bean insisting he knows how to do it already—then hurtling down the mountain at a speed that defines the term break neck, only to throw himself to the ground at frightening angles to stop. Twapity, thwack. And then he’d sit there dazed, distracted, and completely clueless as an entire ski school made a zig zag around him, as though he were the outermost pole in a slalom course.

My firstborn is not a child who wants to be taught.

At least not by his mama. And I should have known better—swimming lessons have been a disaster two years running. Ice skating had similarly poor outcome. Still, T and I are lovers of the outdoors; of sports; and of doing them together…and Bean asked, no, begged for a snowboard for Christmas.

The scene was set. A perfect white powder day, the day after Christmas, just the three of us on the mountain. Good tunes in the car on the way up. The promise of hot chocolate. New gear.

But he would only do it his way. For two painstaking runs. And then he wanted to stop.

Because it was hard.

Oh expectations.

I am aware that there is a very salient lesson in all of this. Something about letting go of attachment; about not having expectations; about letting things just be, moment by moment.

But there is another fierce, plucky, determined part of me that doesn’t settle for that all of the time. Carpe diem was not a term derived by someone sitting on their laurels.

And I believe there is something mighty to be said for perseverance. For doing something even though it is hard; maybe because it is hard. Willpower is invaluable as an adult. As is self reliance.

The outcome?

He’s going to take some lessons. End of story. (Even though I'm internally waffling: is he ready? Is he big enough for half day lessons? Does he have the stamina? What if I ruin sports for him forever?)

I’m starting to understand that this parenting thing doesn’t ever get easier. Sure, he can dress himself, and poop without assistance and he can be left unattended to clean up his room and he won’t pull every tissue out of the box while doing so. But the emotional complexity is increasing daily. Control. Compassion. Give. Take. And figers crossed: maybe a couple gifted teachers along the way to smooth the rough edges of our attempts.

How do you decide when to push your kid and when to let them call the shots?

here in this life

It’s snowing hard from a pale sky, the kind of snow that makes me grin and want to cry at once: it’s so beautiful, white on white on white.

And I’m back in my life again, after a hiatus of days, weeks, the intensity of a semester behind me and in a few days, Christmas. Family, and plans to make croissants from scratch, and bleary eyes on Saturday morning at 5:30AM when the boys will inevitably wake, eager and wide-eyed with wonder.

The past two nights we’ve watched old movies: Miracle on 34th Street and It’s A Wonderful Life. I’ve never seen either one, and oh, how I love them both. Nostalgia is a funny thing, isn’t it? It’s something inherently human, isn’t it? To want and long for what’s gone by. It’s maybe one of the things that defines our humanity. Our awareness of the past tense, just like our awareness of the future plant’s us squarely in the very fleeting, very mortal moment of the present.

In this moment I’m wearing torn, paint spattered jeans instead of a carefully fitted dress. I’m here in this present of my life, and out the window blue jays and cardinals gather in the lilac hoping for seed. Streaks of blue and read against the landscape of brown and white and gray. By the end of winter their colored plumage is something I cling to in a monochrome world; everything drawn out: the time it takes to leave or arrive an almost endless choreography of outerwear.

Today it’s the solstice. The wondrous darkest day, half a year away from when the light lasted until nearly ten and the fields hummed with crickets and danced with fireflies at dusk.

Tonight we’ll light candles at dinner and sing. We’ll hang the prisms that the Advent Fairy brought in the windows to make the light dance on future sunny days, and maybe we’ll go sledding, all of us on the toboggan hurtling down the driveway in a flash of laughter.

The best way to get a tree

On a sleigh with work horses pulling steadily their breath rising in hot clouds. Snow crunching underfoot, following each other out across fields among balsams. Finding the just-right tree and watching with Sprout as T and Bean sawed the tree down together with a hand saw. Back and forth, back and forth, and then dragging it to the road where the horses could pull the sleigh. Then hot chocolate; cookies; and carols in the car on the way home.

Unwind

Oh hello!

What have you been up to?

The past few days have been my very own Alice in Wonderland gone awry: coding and building a website from the ground up--using all new (to me) tools has made my brain ache and my body long for movement. It's still in it's demo phase, but I'm excited to share it. Go take a peak around.

Outside it keeps snowing: gorgeous dreamy flakes and our Christmas will be white, white, white. In the tree out the dining room window a red cardinal waits, wondering when I'll put the bird feeders out. Things have been on hold around here as the semester came to a symphonic end. Everything colliding with many unexpected technical failures: the learning curve is steep when you're a novice.

Of course, I love every minute: I'm like that. But honestly, this last week was really hard. I really started to miss all the things that define the day to day of my life: wrestling on the floor with my boys; exercise; painting my toenails; making out; going out with friends; decorating for the holidays. Everything was temporarily abandoned as I hunched at the table and produced create a website; two essays; and three art projects.

Now: I'm a free girl for a few days--but I have some serious (and super exciting!) book business that must be attended to, and how! Cannot wait to share--but can't yet. Just grin with me & keep your fingers crossed. And thank you, thank you for your patience with getting rewards and all the rest. I haven't forgotten. Oh no, not at all. It's just: I never do things half way. It's going to be awesome. Oh yes.

Today we are heading out to cut a tree and tonight our neighbors have a Christmas nativity that they've been putting on with the neighborhood kids in their barn for twenty years. It's magical: warmth and caroling and kids with halos and angel wings and donkeys and lamas and lambs all acting out the story of the birth of Jesus. I love it. It's one of my favorite things about the holiday actually: this simple, old fashioned celebration that speaks to the heart and the truth of this holiday. Peace and goodwill and community. And also cookies and sledding after.

Speaking of... we're having some friends for some cookie decorating fun tomorrow and I'm wondering: what is your absolute favorite holiday cookie recipe?

nothing but scraps

Impossibly, I am still awake. Smacking my head into code. Ready, ready, ready for the semester to end. Ready for some time disconnecting from intellectual work and reconnecting with play and this here space. In the meantime: bed, because nothing else makes sense and then tomorrow more work than is possible in less time than is conceivable. Rinse and repeat until Wednesday. Then, no matter what: yoga + dinner with girlfriends and the semester will be more or less complete. Whew.

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

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?

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?

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.)

almost a list about today

There were things, hours, chocolate graham crackers, kisses, tears. There was a walk down the road stalking birds on telephone wires for an art project (I've been inspired by this theme. Do you like the new header?) There were storm clouds and hours spent reading, Ong and Havelock and Surowiecki, and pages filled in my notebook ideas bursting like sparks.

There was an afternoon self portrait session when the light was temporarily good. Three self portraits are due in another week, in deferent mediums, and I've settled on a theme I think, of how we occupy ourselves in this illusive way: we are beings being. I feel this particularly as a mother--the way so many different piece of me are occupying the same space with myself. Does that make any sense at all? I am interested in the way we converge with ourselves, and are at odds. The way the words mother | writer | artist | designer don't necessarily overlap in any kind of orderly way.

There was giggling on the bed, snapping more photos, twirling, and heading for the door. There were white rocks found and stored in pockets. Wild grapes eaten that stained our lips. Birds caught in flight, in pixels. Birds in silhouette, black over blue.

There was an evening sky filled with pink, and fallapart tired boys and more tears and bedtime snuggles, and then T and I found each other on the couch, soaking up the light, soaking up each other, our fingers running lightly along each other's limbs.

Now there is night, windows are mirrors, lamplight makes circles and words fill the page.

Tell me about your day... I love reading little glimpses into your worlds.

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.

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

I love this set. I've been loving taking pictures every day (though I've failed to post every day.) I like trying to tell a story with shape, with color, with line echoing line, with gesture reflecting gesture, with color. +++

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}

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...