Flirting with chance:: it's your turn

Hello lovelies, I had no idea so many of you would play along on my little game of chance. It was an amazing day, and a challenge to try to fulfill at least suggestion from almost everyone who commented and to document it in some way. But it was also so much fun.. It was an adventure filled with many moments of resistance and joy and delight. Here is my the interactive piece I did for the class project.

I want you know know that the best thing I rediscovered through this project was just how amazing YOU are.

You are generous, sensuous, playful, romantic, and thoughtful.(Yes, you.)

You nudged me stop and take care of myself and pause; drink warm tea, luxuriate in a foot bath (the first I've ever given myself), throw myself in the snow; dance, twirl. Mostly the whole thing pushed me outside of my comfort zone and made me contemplate when I started taking things so seriously.

I was struck by how infrequently I really allow myself luxuriate in the moment. My life has gotten so busy that I'm uber focused on tasks and projects most of the time. If I stop to linger, it is to browse through my favorite photography blogs, to read something, or to stare out the window. Text and images have become the only way I fill up this hunger for beauty that lives in my soul.

My fingertips and taste buds, tendons and feet were grateful to be remembered; to be used, engaged, made to move, revel, relax, reach beyond.

How often do you flirt with chance? When do you allow yourself to step outside of your ordinary? Do you allow yourself the chance of random conversations with strangers? Moments lingering over tea? What senses do you nourish throughout your day? Which do you neglect?

To thank you, I am sending you on your very own chance encounter mission this week. It felt so taken care of by you in this unexpected way. I am so grateful for the opportunities you offered me to dig into ordinary moments of my day, and to find in them so much beauty. I hope you feel the same.

HOW TO PLAY:

In the comments share a link to your blog with photos (and words) documenting your discoveries. One person chosen at random will receive an original tiny art piece in the mail, and I'll feature some of my favorite of your photos/posts later this week here.

YOUR MISSION: This os permission to allow yourself to play; to follow whimsy and to explore who you are in this moment.

1. Make yourself your favorite breakfast. Use extra butter. Cream. Real maple syrup. Bacon. Whatever it is that you love . 2. Buy yourself tulips. 3. Take 10 minutes and pin, tape, or post some images that you love to a wall in your workspace. 4. Go outside, set a timer for 4'33 seconds and just breathe and listen. 6. Buy a pint of raspberries. Stick them on your fingers like you did when you were a kid. Eat them one by one. Don't share. 7. Do something for a stranger: buy the person in line behind you coffee, pay a toll, fill a parking meter, give them a flower.... 8. Clear a space, get down on the floor and stretch for five minutes. 9. Dance to this song. 10. Take a self portrait, of your face, in good light. Revel in your beauty.

Document in some way. Ready. Set. Go!

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

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.

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.

Blur and beauty

Hi. I have resolved to come here and snatch snippets and pin them down even if I feel like they don't matter or don't make sense. Will you still come to visit? I hope so.

So Wednesdays are the longest days for me around here now. Two studio classes with so much awesome my brain basically explodes by the time I'm through at 5pm. Then the long drive home where I can feel my body practically humming still with the energy of thought. Like a whirring halo of ideas that glisten over the surface of my skin. It really feels like that.

I'm grateful for the drive; for the almost forty minutes (with evening traffic) to pull myself out of my mind. To reconnect with my muscles, breath. It's a good transition time so that when I get home I can melt to floor level where Sprout comes to find me, folding into my chest. He strokes my bare arms with his little sticky hands. "Hi mama. Hi."

This is the hardest part and also the riddle: not being around him all day, even though when I am around him all day I long for exactly what I have now--heady intellectual conversation and artistic challenge.

Why must this be so?

Tonight T was out late, so it was just me and my two boys after their grandparents left. We said grace, ate polenta with cheese and sauce, giggled a lot. And then already it was about teeth brushing and diaper changing and bedtime and now more than ever I want to sneak in and kiss their faces. Am I missing everything by not being here every day to police the endless tussles over toys; to clean up the endless messes; to catch their endless smiles? No. That can't be. Their lives are rich with grandparents and Bean is in Kindergarten (!) and oh, how I love this crazy intense busy mind expanding stuff of being in school. Little by little I'll be posting a few more tidbits over here if you are ever interested in following along. I'm also on twitter pretty regularly, sharing all the inspiration I'm finding daily. Like this (so fun!)

It's starting to feel like fall here. The garden has reached that prolific wild state of neglect and bounty. There are potatoes with a thousand sleeping eyes waiting to be dug; crickets still in the evening; the first yellow and red leaves. Something I'm going to try very hard to do on the days when I don't have class is to get outdoors for small snippets of time. There is nothing more restorative than walking under the open sky, or lying in a field of tall grass, or feeling the wind hard on my face at the top of a parking garage with a glorious view.

I am 32.5 today; he was 68 eight years ago

I remember the way the turkey vultures circled in the blue, blue sky, and the way the light moved across his room, casting the shadows from the paned windows, the cherry tree, the fence, across the pale wall. I was a different version of myself then. Twenty-four, living with T. in a two-floor rental by a hot pink liquor store in a crappy neighborhood in Connecticut. I was in my second year as a teacher in a charter school where cops would chase guys across the parking lot, guns drawn (drugs) and the Long Island Sound was two blocks from the school. T. and I had just gotten a dog; we’d walk him in the evenings to a graveyard down the street from our house. Everything already felt like it was at stake. I had no idea.

I'd started my first master's program that summer; a master's in Education. I remember exactly where I was sitting when I got the call: on a boulder in a field in New Hampshire. Above me, the full moon hanging low and round, and the air was sweet and heavy with the scent of blackberries and newly turned earth.

I flew home the next day. Home to the place that I still associated with that word. My childhood home: the 6 acres of hilly Northern California land where I'd broken my arm, become a teenager, and yelled fuck you at my father, then ran out the door and down the hard-packed path to the barn, to the hill beyond where I always went in sadness. I was 16 when that happened, and he was strict in an archaic sense of that word: he expected me home by 10pm until I graduated; thought women looked best in dresses; counted on my mother and sisters and me to cook and generally keep the place presentable. I don’t remember the fight, save for the fact that he followed me and said: what if I’d left and those had been the very last words you said? (He was leaving for a trip that afternoon.)

I am painting the wrong kind of picture. He was formidable and peculiar to be sure. He was stubborn, foolish, and sometimes clueless (particularly about teenage girls and their boyfriends.) But he was also wise, funny, astounding, tender, and proud of me.

He admitted this before he died: I have no idea why I was so strict with you three.

Maybe in part because his father was a Lutheran minister; because he was one of nine. His own childhood was marked by obedience and hard work; berry picking to make the family budget, a paper route with a too-big bike before the age of 9. As a result he parented peripherally, often illogically. He didn't have much of a model. I'm not sure if this is a reasonable excuse. Who would I be now, if I had had more freedoms then, less boundaries, more team sports, less time spent doing work to earn free time?

I resented him at 16, certainly, but only with the kind of fleeting resentment that most teenager have for their parents. It didn't last. And even through those rocky years, mostly, I adored him. Adored the way he could fix anything; and also the way we could talk.

He opened up the world to me, with his ideas. He shone the flashlight, and let me take the lead. He asked me questions, then listened, and let me feel my way to my own truth. Up late, we’d sink in deep into conversations about Aristotle, Goethe, Steiner, Da Vinci, Saint John. He encouraged me to take risks too, to climb tall trees; to lie at the edge of cliffs and look far down; to sit on the peak of the roof and watch the sky.

I quit the program: knowing the rest of my summer would be utterly unfathomable, uncharted, disorienting. I wasn’t wrong. I lost my north star, my childhood home, my sense of who I had valued myself most to be: my father’s daughter. I’d spent my teenage years bucking up against his antiquated parameters and steep expectations, sure, yet as a result I’d become someone who felt confident with words and tools because of all the hours, years, spent by his side in dialogue, in partnership, his shadow, his helper. He’d taught me to use a weed cutter and a chain saw; to operate the table saw; use a hatchet, an ax, a maul; to drive in nails with a hammer, straight and true.

I was with him when he died today, eight years ago, on my half birthday. I secretly loved that he died the 26th; a day that we could share. It felt then as it was our final link; a secret handshake; a promise that I meant everything to him the same way he meant everything to me.

Damn.

How I wish it didn't happened that way at all. How I wish that he were alive still; that he could spend time with his first grandson, my Bean, who is so like him. That we could still spend nights up late, talking, or afternoons discussing the universe over Lipton tea and toast with cheese.

I look at Bean and see my father as a child. He has the same startling intellect; the same way with observation, with words, with plans. He understands numbers and machinery as effortlessly as if he came into this world knowing. And just like my dad, he’s exquisitely sensitive. Just the same: he’s smitten with hay fever; he wonders about god; he builds elaborate machines with Legos; he handles a carving knife with more grace and skill than most ten year olds, even though he’s only 5.

I wonder what grandchildren would have done for my father. Softened his edges, maybe? Let him slow down, linger, and enjoy without the intensity he brought to every interaction. Everything was a full-on discussion, an inquiry, a puzzle to be solved. Again, so like my son.

So like me too.

The things we take from our parents; the things we borrow, steal, keep unaware. The habits we hold on to, the ways we think, wonder, see the world. So much of who we are is shaped from what we received, or didn’t, from the people who raised us, who gave us love or failed in this enormous way.

I think of this now as I watch both my boys. My second, so like T. Sunshine, pure sunshine. Laughter always, smiles always. He’s action and play and physical finesse. He’s an athlete already, coordinated, sure footed, in love with games: with playing ball and peekaboo and hide and seek.

I didn’t mean to arrive here, at this wonderment at my sons. I meant to say: it’s my half birthday today. 32.5 and I'm at the brink of possibly going again to school, for the third time (remember, Sprout arrived on the scene unexpecedly the second time I enrolled?)

The past six months have been the best, and the hardest, and the most rewarding. I can only gape, wide-mouthed, at what the next six months will bring; nevermind the next eight years.

Who will I be when who I am now is my former self by nearly a decade? Tell me: who will you be?

August, just around the corner

Summer is galloping by. Full tilt. Allready the shadows are longer as we head outdoors after dinner, the four of us. The boys head to the sandbox. T and I grab our new rackets and giggle as we attempt volley after volley in the fading summer light. Around our heads halos of insects swarm; the air is mellow and smells of the honeysuckle and roses by the front door.
In the garden things are suddenly ready for harvest: arugula every single day, spinach, basil, chives, lettuce. I walk down barefoot, often followed by one or the other boy to harvest a colander full before lunch. The best salads begin with a simple vinaigrette, chopped fresh herbs, every green imaginable, and then whatever we have around to throw in: grilled trout, quinoa, carrot curlicues, tomatoes. I will remember this summer as the summer of fantastic salads.
And of changes.

Wild crazy wonderful changes.

Your comments on my last post really filled me up. I want you to know that. Each one brought new perspective, encouragement, thoughtfulness.

I especially loved this from V Grrrl, because it reaffirmed exactly what I believe:

I think a healthy family is one where everyone’s needs are balanced against each others, where family members recognize that everyone works together for the family as a whole, and that sacrifice and compromise are part of that process.

T and I and our boys all made a promise to each other about this upcoming year. It's going to be an all hands on deck kind of year, and all four of us are in. We're all going to try our hardest to do it the first time, follow through, pick up the slack, pick up the messes as we make them, remember to take walks, exercise, eat chocolate, laugh.

It's going to be such an adventure. I can't wait.

T and I have basically become adults together. We met when he was just turning 21, and in the decade that I've known him he's either been a student or working in the stock market and I cannot even begin to describe the relief and disorientation I feel at imagining him doing work that matters in the world; work that he loves; work for a salary. It will be a learning curve for us both to discover ourselves anew in these new roles. I imagine it will be all about patience and patience and patience. Also humor. And chocolate.

For the next month I'm working my way through the manuscript for A Field Guide To Now. It's exciting to finally be in it. Things are coming together. Art, words, ideas. I'm excited by the direction and beginning to trust the process now that I've had a few days strung together of consistent project time. (That last photo is a sneak peak at a piece of art that will go into a postcard.)

I'm curious: What are your plans for August? What food are you crushing on right now? What tunes are you loving?

Also: If you could hear just one thing that you need to hear right now, what would it be?

xoxo!

Retrospective

Hi friends. How was your day?

I spent the day sifting through the artifacts of who I used to be. I moved my things into my new studio today (pictures tomorrow in the morning sunlight!) and spent hours sorting and perusing and riffling, and discovering again who I used to be.

Since I was twelve I’ve a notebook or journal of some kind more or less consistently, and today I leafed through several, re-reading words I no longer remember writing. It was a blast.

I’m not much of a diarist (though my earlier notebooks were certainly concerned almost entirely with boys and my relationships to them.) My notebooks usually contain the recordings of a haphazard, passionate life: words I've read and want to learn, conversations overheard, to-do lists, notes for poems, and sometimes the longer unravelings that write to discover what I am feeling in a given situation or moment. And oh, my twenties were abundantly full of feeling. Relationships coming and going; loves arduous, delightful, foolhardy, intense. And always the repeated question of whether I was pregnant or not (so glad that is no longer a question mark on the table!)

I was so holographic in my twenties; so changeable to whomever I was around. I was enormously influenced by certain men I dated—and while I’m grateful I didn’t marry any of them, I’m happy that I still know them all, peripherally, in the tender and distant way you can only know a former love, now become friend. They are all great men. Enormously talented in their own ways; worthy of the influence they had on me to be sure. Still, I was nearly transparent dating some of them: taking on their passions and pastimes the way water takes on the contours of the riverbed it travels through.

A couple of weeks ago I was chatting with a dear girlfriend of mine about turning thirty; about the angst you feel at the end of your twenties when you are told that the world is your oyster and you want to do everything you can to make sure it stays that way. You become preoccupied, maybe, with the way things appear (you check off certain boxes, perhaps: house, spouse, puppy, baby.) Perhaps you throw yourself into multiple activities. You maintain a bustling social life; commit to far to many things fearing that without all the hustle you’ll become a working stiff, a boring old married couple. Maybe you fear becoming that couple with the new baby who no one ever sees any more. Maybe you fear becoming the couple who have regular sides of the bed; who don’t talk over breakfast; who forget to hold hands in the grocery store. Already you are fixated on remembering what you used to be like when your were younger, in your early twenties, when all-nighters were effortless, and you could drink hard and not feel it the next morning (or when you had sex on the couch just because you wanted to, instead of because it was the only cushioned place in the house not occupied by a sleeping child.

I was so glad, looking back, to no longer feel that angst. To feel instead the grace that comes with sticking with things; with letting the edges soften a bit. As I said to my friend: it’s not about doing more, it’s about being more. Quietly, subtly, within the very small orbit of your ordinary, extraordinary life.

That said, when I turned thirty I had no idea how I'd feel now, at thirty two (and a half!--remember saying that when you were a kid?). I hated turning thirty. I can remember my optimism and anxiety cocktail perfectly. I was obsessed with the idea that I had missed the boat already (for becoming a writer and artist; for ever having an amazing body; for doing any kind of adventurous travel; for having a night life.)

I was sure that I was saddled for the long haul, and that in fact, it would be a haul. Thirty sucked. I was pregnant (and vomiting) and while things were fabulous financially, I hated my job more than I can even begin to describe. It unsettled me, and sucked the creative energy from me in a way that left me frazzled and certain that I would never amount to a single thing in the world. Then I turned thirty-one and had Sprout and quit my job and all of our financial security came tumbling down around me like an igloo made of sugar cubes in a rainstorm. Yet miraculously I began, last year, to see how being more means being in the moment. It means discovering the day, wholly, with joy and wonder, and living into it as wholly as possible.

I discovered grace in the midst of sadness; wonder in the thistle-sweet heart of despair. I grew disciplined with fitness, and found in push-ups and running the control I could not claim for the rest of my life.

Last year was unfathomably hard. If my twenty-five year-old-self could have seen last year she would have been terrified by th repetition (the laundry, the dishes, the endless responsibility of making food and enforcing bed times), the perpetual noise and lack of privacy, and the endless, endless worry. But she would have been missing the point.

I have a kind of tempered, hard-earned confidence now that I never had in my twenties. The kind of confidence that comes, trial by fire, through doing the difficult, painful parts of life. From giving birth; from loving two small boys until my heart could split like an overripe melon, revealing the sugary sweetness inside; from fighting and wincing and feeling small and reactive in my relationship and growing from it, to become richer and deeper, like soil made from the decomposed refuse of last season’s garden clippings. We lost a lot last year. A lot of security, a lot of known outcomes, a lot of comfort. Still, I gained a groundedness I'm grateful for. I traded muscles and determination for all the thinness and whimsy I had at twenty-five.

And I’ve begun to discover how contentment can come slowly with the unfolding of a day: with eating berry crumble and a frothy coffee for breakfast (surrounded by the hubbub of small boys); with folding sheets fresh from the dryer; with the sound of the oscillating afternoon fans and lemonade; and later, berry picking after dinner. Black raspberries are my favorite, for sure. PS:

Here are some summer tunes I've been humming along to.

A weekend away and the photos I did not take

The lilacs are fat; my boys cheeks are sticky with apricots; the lawn is overgrown. Today T. wraps his arms around me at the table. We sit side by side, plotting our next moves while our boys escape out the front door and head to the sand box together. We can see them from the window. They sit side by side in the sand; hair blowing back in the dandelion-down strewn wind. They giggle together, and seeing them this way makes everything worth it. They’ll always have this. I went to NCY for the weekend with a lovely friend whose sister has an apartment on the Upper West Side. I haven’t been to the city since Bean was tiny; and my camera battery died before I could foray out to take many pictures. So instead I offer this:

The pictures I did not take.

The green Central Park lawn strewn with picnic blankets, and above it two bright yellow balloons lifting up; floating beyond the buildings at the tree line and into the blue and cloud flecked sky.

The two girls with red hair ribbons tied around pigtails, running among the picnickers with a pink and blue kite on a short string; feet bare, knees skinned, the littler one stopping to just stare for a while at the bobbing improbable flight of the kite in air lifted by the sheer momentum of her sister’s strong brown legs.

The desiccated crumpled body of the baby blue jay on the sidewalk beneath a tree, legs drawn up, blue-gray feathers crushed into the cement; and the look of revulsion that the lady had, in her enormous black Prada sunglasses, dark skinny jeans and ballet flats, her skin pearly, her hair frosted, her stroller a Bugaboo Frog. She skirted the bird and shuddered, then walked quickly on.

My friend’s face; beaming with emotion that mirrored the sun yellow of his fleece, the two of us seeing each other for the first time in ten years (except in photographs). His profile against the backdrop of the dancing fountain at Lincoln square: curly eyelashes, dreads pulled back, a smile playing on his dark lips,

The view from 230 Fifth at night; an indigo sky and lights scattered like a diamonds in a jewelry box. The Empire State building right there, smack-dab, lit in green and yellow; potted palms, crowds, champagne. Hair blowing in the wind.

+++

I wore a wicked dress, you guys, and I looked amazing. Super heels, a tiny chocolaty shoulder bag, smouldery eyes. I had a few twenty-five year old boys in a state of euphoria and then shock when I spoke to them, then offered up my wedding band as proof. To further the short circuit in their minds I murmured this: “I’m a mom, too.” Best expression ever. Utter disbelief painted over sheer attraction. I couldn’t stop grinning and thanked them after they docilely hailed us a cab.

I needed this. I needed to encounter a part of myself I haven’t seen much of since becoming a mother. Wine, French food, a hot dress, crowds parting just so I could pass. Who doesn’t need a day like this to remind them of what they are?

As though everything that I am is contained in a composite shell of moments hauled about to contain the soft-bodied hermit crab soul that is mine. Right now it feels like I’ve clambered into some new place. Inside a Fibonacci spiral, the sound of the city comes rushing back. It’s endless traffic and hubbub and movement thrums in my eardrums still. Be still my restless heart. Still I am happy to be home.

The way things go + some current crushes

Hi! I have so many things I want to share with you today. First, some crushes:

These luminous folder icons have completely revamped my desktop and seriously upped both my cool factor and organization.

These fabulous planers are also rocking my organizational world. I am so not an organized girl when it comes to creative projects. I see BIG PICTURE and details sometimes get sidelined. This in particular has really helped me to narrow my focus and get things done.

And I've been wanting to share this glorious camera bag that arrived in the mail a few weeks ago (I was the Shutter Sister's giveaway winner) and oh man... I can't even begin to tell you how lovely and awesome it is. It's big enough to fit my camera and everything else I schlep around, and pretty enough to make me look put together even when I'm not. (THANK YOU Maile!!)

These photos (swoon) and this blog.

Some news:

I was interviewed here and here this past week by two of the most amazing, inspiring women in the blogosphere.

Last night I put some new prints up in my little shop!

And at this moment: the weather is all over the map still. Rain, sun, wind, rain.

Everything is exuberantly green in the same way that kids color the grass in their pictures: GREEN EVERYWHERE. And while I love what green stands for (summertime picnics, gardening, bike rides, bonfires) I wish the apple blossoms could stay longer. In a single afternoon they exploded into full bloom with bees everywhere, each tree its own secret universe of pollen and petals, and then today, just a few days later, there are already as many petals on the grass as on the trees. So fleeting. So fleeting. Everything is this.

We hung out with the very first friend we made here last night. He was sitting on the porch across from our new apartment as we backed over the curb repeatedly with an enormous moving truck. I remember feeling utterly out of place among the scads of college kids with 7 month old Bean in tow and actual real furniture instead of futons, but M. walked over and said hello, and Bean thought he was the coolest person ever and we've been friends since. Now Bean is five and M. is moving to Austria for an unbelievably awesome job, and wow. Time. There it went.

There is no more of a tangible way to notice time's passing than to watch a child grow. This, and then this. SO FAST. I'm carrying on about this today because I get it this time. I get that these moments right now are the ones I'm going to look back on and say, oh, that was when it started. That's when we had no idea. (Sprout is still small-ish, but the next time I stop to think about it he'll likely be riding a bike. )

I've gotten the most wonderful emails from some of you about being at similar points of transition--and I so love them. I think it is incredibly helpful to tell each other these stories about how things begin. About the moments before beginning when all we're doing is imagining and waiting and things feel scary and at large (because they kind of are.)I want to hear more about these moments in your lives. What is beginning right now? What are you on the brink of?

Then & now and yes

Yes

It could happen any time, tornado, earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen. Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could you know. That’s why we wake and look out–no guarantees in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning, like right now, like noon, like evening. ~ William Stafford

(Found this poem here today.)

+++

Do you ever go back and read your own archives? I do. It's a little like opening a time capsule seeing Bean small, and me, whatever way I was then.

Today I looked back for the very first self portrait I ever took, at the beginning of Self Portrait Tuesday (before it became Self Portrait Challenge)...

I 'met' so many incredible gorgeous bloggers through those weekly challenges.

The funny thing about blogging is you don't get to SEE the people you read unless they are generous with you, unless they share this too, their faces, their work-worn hands, torn jeans, sunglasses, knees, braids, laughs. And I like seeing these things... and sharing them... which is why I'm doing these Sunday portraits...and I hope you will too.

Another thing from going back through my archives is seeing how memes used to fly around the blogsphere all the time. Now, not so much. I can't put my finger on it, but I do think something has changed in the way that people blog and share (or maybe it's just me?) I've read some interesting posts about this recently. About how there is less community or intimacy or something...and more business now. Maybe? Do you feel this? Sometimes I do. And so in the spirit of sharing more:

4 random things about me right now:

* In the morning when I first wake up I feel myself dangling like a marionette somewhere just beyond my body. It's almost painful to be pounced on, or touched much in this state, and the arrival of small boys in my bedroom (with their inevitable elbows and knees) is always a bittersweet thing (I love the way they smell when they first wake up.)

* I got an email in my inbox on Friday telling me that I'm the Albany, NY winner for this. (I entered only because of the NYC shopping spree.) This is hilariously perfect (and a little embarrassing.) I am a good candidate: I only wear jeans. I am baffled by makeup. I have no idea what to do with layers. Or knee high boots. And I need a haircut. (I thought twice about posting this because it's just so... not me...and yet I'm totally giddy about it.)

* I just got this book and this one in the mail today. I wish I could get books in the mail every day!

* I lose sunglasses always, and yet I can never seem to figure out where they go when they're gone. It's not like they fall off my head...or I leave them on the roof of my car (though I have, and watched them get smashed.) They just disappear. Hence the sunglasses self portrait to celebrate a new cheap pair.

+++ Your turn. 4 things. Also, be brave this week and take a self portrait... you can hide behind your shades. Post your photos here, or in the Self Portrait Sunday Flickr pool.

Sugaring

Sugaring with the neighbors yesterday. I love their old-school, hand made set up. I love the sweet clouds of steam, and how everything feels hopeful and grand standing around the evaporator watching the sap bubble and thicken. Hours pass, easily, occupied this way. Bean was all helper this year. Carrying wood. Pouring sap from the metal tap buckets into the big plastic five gallon bucket to be filtered and poured. He even got to strike the match to light the fire up. This is his boyhood. This is what he will remember. This is why we are here, even though things are so tenuous financially right now that at any moment we might slip, and have to leave. So. This is why I'm throwing my heart into trying to make A Field Guide To Now. This is why there is a lump in my throat at night, when I can see how it might not reach that stupid enormous funding goal (that also feels so small.)

Last year ate our savings. Last year ate everything. This year, who knows? This year, the outcome is anyone's guess. We could move. We could stay. It's all up in the air, illusive as the steam, as tender as the first fat buds.

So that's the truth. I want this life more than anything.

Also: You can win this painting.

the journey

"Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home."

--Matsuo Basho (Check out the entire set on Flickr.)

Another image poem

anatomy of my heart today: PS--Your comments on my post earlier meant the world to me today. Really. xoxox! C.

Looking.

A fun weekend

New baby chicks & new bantam chickens from a neighbor (we named the rooster Guisseppe!)

A new bike for Bean.

New plants in the garden.

Sore muscles.

A night with just DH.

And only four three weeks left of school.

Weekend snapshots

(Bean took this one.)

The world has turned green. Less than a month left of school. The morning sun is waking me up, and I've been heading out to run more. Still not feeling totally in harmony with myself yet: still too much on my plate. But more days and more moments where the the orbit of things aligns with my own twirling self.

(Btw: The Cure was a wild, loud adventure that included getting lost when leaving Montreal--4o miles east, before we realized we were supposed to be going south. Oy. And the next day was a blur of tiredness.)

I am hoping to update here every day this week. I have a thing with perfection. I don't like writing here unless I have long moments to spend, delving into the deeper fabric of my thoughts. But I miss the daily practice. The flawed jotting of notes, of small moments, of daily life. When I first wrote here, I wrote all the time... but somehow I seem to have upped the standard on myself, and now I'm dragging my feet, feeling like if I can't post a brilliant post, I should'nt post anything at all. What is with that?

A post in pictures

Artichokes for dinner: a Bean favorite. Mine too. We eat all the way to the heart, dipping each leaf in lemon butter; then wonder at the purple and pale green thistle center.

It's suddenly warm here. Days perfect for drinking fizzy water and limes. Days for getting first sunburns, working in the garden. A week of vacation: to catch up on writing and sleep and time with my boys.

Bean and I spend every second outdoors in the afternoons, ambling through our meadows, taking stock of everything that is new and green and budding. He found these old baskets from last autumn's crysanthemums on the brush pile we're preparing to burn. Natraully, they offered endless entertainment.

Made the first batch of sun tea this week. The temperature has hit 80, and it's almost soporific. Just two weeks ago I was wearing down and socks, now I'm barefoot, my toes badly in need of a pedicure.

Writing, upstairs, alone in the house, I heard a thud. Unmistakable, reminding me of a childhood in the Rocky Mountains in a big-windowed cabin and my dad, holding stunned birds in his quiet palms. They always flew away, and compelled, I went downstairs and out the screen door looking. It was there, below the frong windows, wings spread wide, eyes closed. But I scooped it up gently, and held it. (My dad always said holding the birds helped them with the shock.) And eventually, he started to blink, and move about, then perched for a while on my thumb before flying off. A small blessing.

Wildflowers suddenly everywhere, and insects. I'm so damn grateful to be through with winter.

We hung Bean's first tree swing yesterday. So much nostalgia from childhood: my feet scraping the blue bowl of sky.

I found two today, the first of the year. I think of them as my writing talismans. Last year they brough so much: my writing group, Pam, a piece to be published this summer in the Sun. I've pressed them in my new Molskine.

He's just so beautiful. Yesterday in the garden he was stomping about. "I'm going to get the moon," he said, and then wandered off, gesturing that he'd gotten it and was holding it and bringing it back. "I brought you the moon, Mommy," he said, beaming.

Glimpses from Sunday ::

We sip pink homemade smoothies with striped bendy straws. Bean grins up at me. We clink our glasses together. “Cheers,” he says.

Against the window, white snow falling sideways. A jar of golden honey on the counter. I’ve been curled into the corner nook on the couch all day with my laptop. Achy: pms and the flu, what a whopper. I’ve burst into tears at least a half dozen times. DH looks at me like I’m from the moon, then offers to make tea.

The cyclamens on the windowsill are a riot of pink, and in a circle around my small boy: fluorescent green Post-it notes, crayons and stickers. There are logs on the fire and the room is filled with a steady heat and the smell of smoke, faint, the signature of winter, still here, though today sunlight until 7 and at dawn, mourning doves on the ground below the feeder.

It is time to force branches of forsythia, and to visit our neighbors to inhale the sweet heady scent of maple sap and steam by the evaporator. Time to buy Bean a new rain slicker, boots. Mud from here until April.

What are three blogs you’re enjoying this month? I’m craving new inspiration, beauty, curiosity, and delightfully precarious sentences.