A Studio Update: Guest Posts + A Soonish Art Tag Sale
I'm guest posting over at Maven Circle today ~ about self image, and that terrain between being and doing. It felt so good to have the creative constraints of a topic to write to, and to explore something that feels very fresh and true to where I'm at right now. I hope you go take a peak.
Also, I wanted to give you a quick heads up in case you've missed a few other recent guest posts and reviews about Field Guide To Now: An Interview With Thea Coughlin A Warrior Woman Interview on Forest Of Stories A review over at Scoutie Girl Many more glimpses, guest posts and giveaways to come super soon!
Also stay tuned for my second ever Studio Tag Sale. It's happening. Very soonish. Be among the first to know when it goes live--and get other goodness and inspiration by subscribing to my newsletter (on my sidebar for those of you who are reading via RSS.)
xoxo, Christina
Almost enough
Almost enough time to recalibrate. Almost enough time to remember who I am when I feel like I am enough. When the hours stop racing. When wet leaves become amber gems under foot and umbrellas become hideouts for kisses. Almost enough time, across the boarder and far up north, falling asleep on hotel pillows with French vowels in my mouth.
Almost enough to catch my breath, remember what it feels like to be carefree. Almost. Still. I wish it could have been longer. I wish there were days, back to back. A week, maybe. Time slowing to honey.
Instead, it was brief and golden, and then back to the pell-mell of too-full days.
It's that time of year, when I'm wishing for extra hours. When I'm feeling the way that as the days grow darker earlier, and the time veritably speeds up; the hours become more compressed and even more things call for my attention. * * * Do you feel that with the season's shift? The way the rush hits? The way there suddenly is so much to do before the year ends? It feels somehow unnatural doesn't it? This pace. It goes against every fiber and sinew of being, to rush as the world prepares for the stillness of a gathering winter.
On the cusp of a new month, I want to find a different syncopation; a truer tempo between stillness and motion. I'd also like to show up here daily, even just with photos, as evidence: of being enough. And of the moments. One after the next. Golden. Passing.
A reminder:
Whatever path you choose will be another beginning.
Another opportunity to offer something wild and truthful and fragile to the world.
-- From A Field Guide To Now
A few highlights from the weekend
Today, like any other day
Today is like any other day: a hurdy-gurdy collision of who we are and who we want to be. Two boys, not enough sleep, too many things on the to-do list. The same ordinary fears and falterings and hurdles that always find me, find me still.
And yet, I have this inexplicable gratitude: That I am alive. That this body moves. That each morning when I wake up I find one or two emails in my inbox from complete strangers telling me that my book has made a difference in their lives.
For the way T wakes up, and after showering finds my feet and rubs them, one and then the other, while I'm still trailing dreams.
For good espresso and the way the leaves have been a display of splendor: every shade of vermillion, every hue of gold. For running with T at lunchtime. Three miles next to the blue, blue lake.
For seeing my dear friend, even for only a handful of moments, her new hair cut slanting bangs and layers across her gorgeous cheekbones.
That my boys run to me when I get home. That first one, and then the other clamber into my arms, covering my cheeks with kisses. For the way we all gather around the kitchen counter then; T making curry and chicken, and me kneading and frying chapattis with Sprout, while Bean flips through the latest issue of a food magazine, pointing out recipes and reading the titles of things he's curious about or wants to make.
For reading Secret Garden with Bean at bedtime, which is, hands down my favorite book from when I was a kid.
For the way the air smells under the nighttime stars; like snow soon, and decomposing leaves and woodsmoke. And for the way T's skin feels, warm and salty and supple beside me as I crawl into bed for the night.
A day, this one, in it's entirety: a handful of moments.
What holds your attention? What small things overtake you with the feeling of gratitude? (I love to read your lists!)
Grow your wonder
It’s easy to forget, with all the potential of our complex technologies and science how little we actually really know. It’s easy to grow complacent with google at our finger tips, data always at the ready, answers as cheap and fast as rain. It’s easy to forget about wonder, and how it dwells in us as a vital force. Yet to wonder is to explore the anatomy of creativity.
To wonder, is to remember your smallness among the universe of things: galaxies and breath and sudden dying stars, first chances, and last encounters; and to take note of the minutia that matters--an individual flick of the wrist; the subtlety of gesture, the complexity of synapses, the nuances of code, or laughter, or pronunciation. And beneath that to ask: what is your heart saying when you listen?
To wonder is to look up into the night sky, or at the Fibonacci spiral unfolding in the petals of a flower, and be filled with utter awe. Wonder is why children are profusely, almost unstoppably creative. They imagine everything is possible, and bow down before that possibility with their imagination in their palms as an offering.
When was the last time you were overcome with wonder?
A Field Guide To Now: Starting Now
So this is the part where it starts feeling real. Where things are happening. Real events, with people I know and love, and people I've never met. One such event is tonight, and if you're in the area, I hope you'll join me for my book release party!
And if you're not, tomorrow kicks off my blog tour with a review over at Scoutie Girl. More details to come.
To love, to care for, and to dream
Saturday morning the boys woke up early, their voices carrying down the hall before the sun was up. The sky was overcast and pale with the milky light of pre-dawn, and I nosed in next to T, smelling the fragrance of his skin where his clavicle meets his shoulder, and burrowed farther under the covers. But soon they were at our door, two eager faces, one with a jack-o-lantern grin of missing teeth, the other a pacifier still in his mouth, in spite of the fact that he is almost four.
“We’re going to the zoo today!” they announced, as if we might have forgotten.
We’d planned the trip for a week. A two hour drive north across the boarder to the Granby Zoo, and somehow, suddenly, it was Saturday, and they were ready to pounce, impatient, grinning, gregarious. T got up first, and while he showered, they tucked in under the covers with me—and we whispered about what we were looking forward to seeing the most. Me: the hippos. Sprout, was hoping for lions. Bean said, “possibly giraffes.”
It’s not something I ever did as a child—curling up with my parents in bed. The closest thing to it was curling up with my dad on the wide arm of his big brown La-Z-Boy.
But it’s something that feels completely intuitive and animal, to nose in next to each other, all warm and soft and still only half-here and half in the fantastical blurry almost-nowhere place of dreams. And it’s something I love, maybe it’s the thing I love the most about being a mother: this dozy time with them under the covers next to me, when they’re still in their pajamas, their hair all mussed and sweet smelling.
Sprout always tucks his hand into the nook of my neck, and Bean often ends up, propped on an elbow, telling me about something or other with a still-dreamy, faraway look on his face.
The porcupines know what this is like: to doze together, and to dream. The hippos too, know how it matters to be near in rest, as they spend their time underwater breathing only occasionally, first one, and then the other; taking long slow breaths before drawing their heads back under the surface to doze, one upon the other’s haunches, lulled by the lapping blue water of dreams.
As the shower thrums, we hear T start to sing, “Oh we’re going to the zooooo…” and we burst into simultaneous giggles, and then join in, singing all together a slapstick, made-up song. Then there were socks, and jeans, and cinnamon rolls bought from one of our favorite bakeries the night before, and coffee, and then more coffee in to-go mugs, and a box of snacks, and hats and rain gear and then we were off.
And if I can pass along anything about going to the zoo with young kids it would be this: go at the end of the summer season. Go in the autumn on a somewhat rainy day. Go with snacks, and warm clothes and zero expectations, except to be amazed.
We had the zoo to ourselves, almost. We rode the monorail, and saw every single animal in the zoo, and had all the time in the world to feed the nectar drinking parrots, and pet the sting rays, and watch the tigers get fed, and stand in baffled delight as the elephant made a bee-line for us and then picked up a trunk full of dirt and hurled it directly at us, flapping her huge ears, before trundling off.
We had enough time to eat lunch, and let the boys run everywhere they wanted to run, and then ride, side by side in an extra-wide push-cart. And because it was the end of the season, the carnival rides were all closed, save for the bumper cars, which were free, and Sprout’s face was worth a million bucks when he figured out that he could press down the accelerator pedal and actually drive.
And the truth of it all is that I’m not sure about zoos. I’m not sure about the way it feels to stand there, watching on one side of the glass, while the small world that exists on the other is terribly finite. But I also know, that these creatures are the captive evidence of some far greater, wild—and also dwindling--proof: the world is rife with such extravagant, vital, irrational beauty.
That there are hippos, big and unwieldy, with nearly waterproof hides, and self-sealing nostrils. That “jackalopes” exist at all. That porcupines sleep, despite their quills, one piled atop the next, breathing in synch, sharing porcupine dreams. That giraffes must stoop, legs spread like precarious A-frames to eat the tender grass. That the primates are so like us, eyebrows moving up and down in curiosity or disapproval as they watch us watch them from beyond the wire mesh or glass. And that intolerance is something that is exclusively and terribly human—borne of some feverish desire to draw lines, to exclude, to possess.
But before that, beyond that, we are animal first. And if going to the zoo can anything beyond simply standing in wonderment, I hope that it is this. A reminder of our place among the creates of this earth, and that our work, as brave and tender and terrible humans, is to love, to care for, and to dream.
Inspiration for your weekend:
{Because showing up matters. I think it matters more most days than having a good idea. Everyone has good ideas. It's how you show up for them, daily, that makes them into something real and tangible and great. And showing up doesn't mean doing something epic. It means doing something small, daily.
It's the ritual, the repetition, the cultivation of habit that ends up propelling you forward. It's the fact that eventually, if you show up every day for ten minutes and just stare at your computer screen or your blank canvas or your notebook or whatever it is, you'll eventually start to create. And the momentum of that daily act of showing up will become a cumulative creative force.
It's hard though, to do this. There are plenty of days when admittedly, I make every excuse in the book about why I don't have enough time, energy, clarity, focus, whatever...to wake up, to show up, to be intentional with my time--particularly when my days are scheduled to the brim, and leisure time is scarce. But that's the point: to spend those five minutes even when those ten minutes seem insignificant.
10 minutes focusing on a singular goal. 10 minutes writing flash fiction. 10 minutes doing sun salutes. 10 minutes meditating. 10 minutes journaling. 10 minutes making art. 10 minutes behind your camera lens. 10 minutes _____________. How will you show up for minutes today?
Intuitive Lens with Thea Coughlin: an e-course you'll want to take
My incredible friend Thea Coughlin is teaching a new photography e-course-this January for Squam Arts Workshop, and I know so many of you will immediately fall in love it, and want to take it, because simply, Thea is magic with a lens. And if you blog, being able to capture gorgeous photos matters so much. Thea is both an intuitive and talented teacher, and an amazing photographer. She has a way of capturing light that transforms her subjects...and this course is your chance to learn how capture the light and shoot intuitively in manual mode. Check it out:
Intuitive Lens with Thea Coughlin from Squam on Vimeo.
Of course, because I am forever curious about other artist's process, I couldn't help but ask her a few questions about her work, process... and about the delicate and tenuous balance of navigating life as an artist and life as a mama. Here are her thoughts:
What do you love most about taking photos?
Standing witness to the beauty, love and light within my muse, and the place that they are stepping into in their life and then being able to show them what I see through my images. Watching the evolution of acceptance, self love, respect and growth that occurs in people after a spirit session is one of my greatest inspirations.
What's one thing you do regularly to show up and practice your art?
I have to constantly pull myself back to practicing my art. When I am very busy with my business I notice I take less photographs for myself because I am so tired from my work. I have to make a constant effort to simplify so there is room to do photography for myself.
How do you navigate being a creative/photographer and a mama on a daily basis?
It is a juggling act. I start almost every day with 30 minutes of meditation, or what is meant to be meditation. LOL. Sometimes I spend the whole time mentally wrestling with myself to stop thinking of my to do list and just clear my mind. But I show up for this 30 minutes every day. It is my commitment to myself. This time is a guarantee to keep the creativity flowing and a calm grounding to my often jam packed days. My intention is to stop all work at 3:30 when my son gets home from school to be present with him. Recently with a lot of new projects on the horizon I have felt this commitment slip. It feels much better when I have guidelines around my work hours. My creativity thrives during my down time.
* * *
See? Authentic insight. Beauty. Magic. Don't you want to sign up?
Just show up: What I learned while writing my book
One of the questions that I keep getting asked is: "how did you make it happen?" The book. As a mama of little boys. In graduate school. In the midst of a career change.
All of it.
And I've been thinking a lot about that; about what actually went into the process of dreaming something, and then dreaming it real, gradually and with persistence, despite the fact that nearly everything in my life suggested that making a book was a ludicrous idea. I mean really, who sets about the dream of making a book with a infant in tow, and a career up in the air?
That's something I was asked at least a dozen times when I started out, and I lived daily with the fact that the whole thing might fail.
Still I showed up: willing to fail, and willing, also, to ask for help.
More than anything, that is what I hope readers will get from A Field Guide To Now.
I hope they'll read it both as proof, and as a reference manual for achieving extraordinary creativity under ordinary circumstances.
Because really, truly, the biggest things begin with the smallest of creative acts.
...And both making the book, and the book itself are about the practice of showing up.
Showing up daily with intention.
Showing up with notebook in hand.
Showing up with eyes wide open.
Showing up even when you don't feel like it.
Showing up even when all you accomplish somedays is simply the act of showing up.
What will you show up for today?
On seeing and being seen (a little more Squam love)
Here are few more of my favorite images from my time at Squam last week. It's hardly possible to do anything more than simply post them. They capture the way I saw the moments, the golden light, the magic of those days.
All I can really say is that my time at Squam was just enough.
Just enough time to become a parenthesis, a pause from the exuberance and rushingness of little boys and busy life.
Just enough time to find myself, between arrival and departure, just still, at the end of a dock watching as the yellow sun became golden and the lake lit with the color of the heavens.
Just enough time to lie under a storm tossed sky while Jonatha played her guitar to the gathering gulls, and to us--the women around me, gathered there with big hearts and bigger courage; with gorgeous souls, incredible stories; with wild hair and vivacious dance moves; with laughter and wonder and delight.
Just enough time to feel my heart swell big in gratitude.
Oh yes.
The way autumn begins (on finding moments for rest)
There is a storm outside. There is a stirring wind that makes the chimes clink in the lilac, and the rain rat-a-tat against the dark glass where reflections from candles dance. There are little tea candles in jelly jars, flickering yellow and soft against the creamy walls; and purple gladiolas in a turquoise vase that T bought while I was away. He cleaned our bedroom too; rearranging the furniture to make it a sanctuary of softness, white on white, save for the bed frame which he painted turquoise, my favorite color, instead of the black it was since college.
We built the frame together just before we moved to NYC for the summer, his senior year. We were still nearly kids, sneaking into the woodshop late with borrowed keys, cutting boards and planing them, using regular hardware store bolts to hold at the corners. And somehow, it’s made every move with us -- expanding to allow for extra slats when we got a king sized mattress to accomodate Bean when he was still small and spent the night between us, arms splayed like a starfish.
Now he is long limbed and in second grade. He's missing both front teeth, and reads things over my shoulder and bosses his brother around. And Sprout: he started preschool two weeks ago.
Blink. Preschool.
And the bed holds all of us on Saturday morning. The sun angles in from between the wooden slats of the window shades, and we all nuzzle and doze. And even on a weekday mornings the boys will often come running down the hall, while T is in the shower, and tuck, one under each arm into bed with me, their bodies warm and wiggly and still supple with dreams.
It's the end of a long, fruitful, busy week.
I meant to write other things tonight: about reading from my book in Boston, and about other book promo things -- but the truth is: I tire of that some days, and I miss simply telling you about where I am just now, in the middle of things. About the turning of the seasons and my dog's cold nose pressed against my wrist as I write. And about the way she comes to curl beside us, her body knowing what I must relearn again and again: that I too am an animal in need of rest.
I'm looking forward to slowing down this weekend. To stacking wood, to uploading photos from Squam, and to spending some time in my studio making things.
How about you? What are your intentions for the weekend?
Upon returning -- Squam Art Workshops Love
Oh Squam. I am so grateful, so wonder-filled, so satisfied.
It was just the right combination of pure solitude and true companionship. It was both the experience of being seen—really seen—and also of having time, finally, after a whirling, confusing, busy summer, to finally sit alone at the end of a dock, listening to acorns fall into the lake from the trees above, and watching the ripples spread from each epicenter, until I found my own center: re-reading my journal until I caught up with myself, caught my breath, and found my pulse.
And now I’m back.
Really back. Here, now, in this space after an inadvertent break from the Internet that had as much to do with doing some really big growing this summer, as it did about being wildly, failingly busy (which was also the case.)
* * * A quick book update * * *
I sold out of the books I brought to the Art Fair. That felt really good. *Grin.*
And the next few weeks are full: with adventures and readings and a book launch party here in Burlington, and a blog tour (soon to come.) And tomorrow I'm making the long trip down to Boston--to read at the Trident (one of my favorite bookstores ever)—and back. I'm excited. And nervous. But mostly excited. If you're in Boston, I hope you'll come!
The truth and the stories...
"I believe in everything not yet said."
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
from The Book of Hours
Hello dear ones, Oh it's been so long, I hardly know how to begin. The stories I've been living though--oh, they are good ones. Some to tell, some to tuck away into the secret sheaves of story in my mind.
* * *
I can't believe it: that my book will be in book stores in a matter of days, and already it's in Amazon.
* * *
The truth is: I don't really have my stuff together at all about this whole book launch thing. It's a wild adventure of living into the moment, and to be honest, there are many days (most, actually) where it feels like I'm hurtling towards the unknown without guardrails.
The truth is also that I wish I had more time, and I'm just now, finally beginning to reclaim some for this work that I love so very dearly.
And the truth is that in every free moment, instead of writing, I've been painting postcards to send out to all my backers, along with printing the most GORGEOUS postcards--of original illustrations from A Field Guide To Now. And they are really so lovely!
It's terribly fun to see them as actual postcards--that you can hold in your hand and scribble notes on from the moment and then send off to your friends and loved ones. I can't wait to share/show them to you!
I'm going to be giving away a couple of packs of postcards this Friday--so stay tuned for details.
* * *
In the meantime, tell me things.
Tell me: what has yet to be said in your life?
Tell me: what are you looking forward to with the arrival of this new season?
Life As It's Happening:
September is soon, and when the weekends come, we try to soak up all the goodness that's left of summer. Late bedtimes + ice cream. White wine after dinner. Lots of music on the player. Dresses, still, almost every day.
Happy weekend!
The heart of things
At the heart of things there is sweetness, and also the thistles of whatever mess we least expect. At the heart of things there is motion, continual and turbulent, or tremulous and shallow. At the heart of things there are veins and rivers: sap, blood, water, tears. And also the deep pulmonary channels of longing and belonging, and these things spread in a wide, wide filigree of wonder out from my very core.
At the heart of things, each day brings something new. One day I wake up hungry, and I eat a peach, the juice dripping down my wrists. I follow the rivulets with my tongue; lick what remains, and feel satisfaction fill me. Or I tell T to get oysters, and when he brings home a dozen, I find the sharpest, smallest knife we have and pry them open, eating them straight-up, with a little lemon, their wildness still fresh on my tongue, salt water, and tides all there.
Other days I wake up hungry, and there is no morsel of stone fruit, no bread, no sea-filled oysters that will fulfill the kind of craving that begins in my solar plexus, and causes a stirring for which I have no words. At the heart of things there are days where I feel like a wild horse bucking against whatever lasso that's been tossed, claiming some small loop of life as mine, and on days like that I drive to work playing the same mix on repeat, songs with big drums pounding and the windows open, and then I try to make sense of the way life seems always to be simultaneously and beautifully falling apart and falling together.
At the heart of things, I like the quiet. I crave an empty house, the way it is tonight. T is on a trip this week, and now, at the end of August darkness already comes by 8:30 and the crickets are calling and calling, a tremolo of knowing what it is they know: that things end, begin, end. And at the heart of things, I like the sound of cities after dark, where all the wildlife is human, and when the day ends, a different kind of living starts.
At the heart of things there is a spark. The inkling that occurs before the action, the glint before the flame, the breath before the whisper, the rustle of wings before they lift off in flight.
I'm at the heart of things. Doing many things. Trying to remember to show up, to record this intensity. To be right here, and also to breathe.
A Field Guide To Now: It's here!
Guess what?
It's here.
If you pre-ordered my book, it's on it's way to you. (And if you were a Kickstarter backer, it's on its way to you too, with lovenotes, and backer rewards and tremendous gratitude.)
I am giddy. I am terrified. I am excited...
And I'm proud. It's damn good writing, my friends. Truly. It think you'll love this little book of mine, for all it's worlds and words and wonderment contained within it.
It's a reference manual for being right in the thick of things--and proof that making an extraordinary life from those moments as they unfold is possible...
Go! If you haven't, order your a copy. A blog tour is in the works, and so is a New England book tour. Stay tuned... and join me... won't you?
* * * Also, did I mention giddy? (And terrified.)
This is BIG.
One of the biggest things I've done: Put my heart right there on the page, and then send it out into the world.
* * *
If anything, A Field Guide To Now is an adventure guide, and also a survival guide. It's about the hardest, messiest moments, and also the most wild, and beautiful, and grand.
Life is like that, isn't it? One moment follows the next, and if you're in each moment, extraordinary potential unfolds.
Yes. This book is about about the potential of right now. And about becoming whatever you are meant to become. It's about leaning into the moment until being becomes becoming; util ordinary becomes extraordinary; until now yields to the future that you've made.
Are you in?
The wisdom of animal totems
I was with a friend recently who asked me what my animal totem was, and without thinking really, or hesitating at all I said, "A bird, because of the view that they have, because of the way they can lift off and see the topography from above. The bigness of it, and the smallness of it too: the way perspective shifts: the way the tree becomes minute, the waterfall insignificant, the sky infinite."
But if I were to get specific, it’s been the blackbird lately that’s been calling me. It's the blackbird's sooty feathers and silhouette that I picture in my head. And when I took the time to look it up, I really paused. Delighted and in awe of how right the meaning is for my life right now.
Every time I encounter this truth, I'm always wonder-filled again by the fact that there is such wisdom in everything if we stop to listen; if we pay attention to our selves, and souls, and inclinations and leanings.
“Blackbird awakens the mind with awareness as changes of perceptions are unfolding…. At this time there is a magic of the unseen worlds coming forth that is paired with the balance of grounding within the earth as you walk your path. Blackbird will guide this new awakening…. Blackbird will teach much and bring new surprises when you least expect it. Pay attention and listen carefully." >>
The blackbird knows secrets.
* * *
Try it. Quick, before you do anything else, what animal speaks to you right now?
Don’t think about it. Don’t hesitate. Just say the very first thing. Write it down even. Maybe here in the comments. Maybe you're rolling your eyes, but I say: everything is an indication. Everything is an omen if your eyes our open. What can you learn from your own heart?
The process of becoming sometimes feels like this:
Last night I watched the rain storm move across westward sky towards us; hurtling, sweeping, overtaking us without permission and with utter wild grace. I know what this feels like. To be overtaken by wild grace; by the unexpected thunder, by the way the rain washes everything away, making every memory new.
I know how it feels to stand at the screen and feel the ozone tear, feel the sky open, feel the way things will never be the same, and always are.
This is always how it feels, at the heart of things. Tempestuous, urgent, simple, bright. The rain moves through the valley obscuring the mountains. I lean into the vulnerability: learning to ask, to answer, to show up in the heat, to make things new.