At the fair: where we all show up for something {More than one paragraph 18/30}
The fair always captures my imagination. I could sit for hours watching, making up stories for every person: gap-toothed, lonesome, tattooed, bulging, burly, burlesque, vapid, vagrant, lustful, lascivious, wholesome, homely, heartfelt, heartbroken, dejected, addicted, desperate, depressed, wondering, giggly, giddy, grave, ghostly, strung out, sunken in, over zealous, sensuous, sexy, confident, criminal, carefree, innocent. All kinds show up to the fair. Everyone hungry for something. Welcome to Dreamland.
There are so many girls with incredibly short shorts, pockets sticking out the bottom, wearing cowboy boots and too much eye shadow, following after boys still pimply and lanky armed. The boys have nothing to offer. But you know how it goes. Small town. Bright lights. Everyone wants to be seen. Everyone arrives, hopeful for something that will elude most of them. To be whirled off their feet. To be wonder-filled. To gorge on funnel cake and corn dogs. To win a blue ribbons for milker cows and tractor pulls. To fall in love. To make out. To make a buck. To get a quick fix. To get a rush. To free fall. To fight. To escape the every day.
The carny at the Landslide dances to the pulsing beat of the ride across the midway. He's got some not-so-terrible freestyle moves, his arms jerking about in synchronized symmetry, his eyes closed, his head his own world for now. The kids swoop down the slide towards him on their magic carpet squares screaming. One small girl slips at the bottom as she tries to stand. Hits her butt hard. Bursts into tears.
At another ride, two carnies wrangle over cigarettes, one not more than twenty, the other old enough to be my dad. So many of them are smoking, pack after pack, the only escape during the forever long days before they can turn to whisky or meth or whatever other vice it is that claims them with the night. So many of them have blackened patches on their hands and faces, cheekbones gaunt, missing teeth. Some smile and get into the whole thing, hi-fiving the kids, make a ruckus over their sound systems, "throw your hands in the air!" "Step right up, step right up, I can guarantee you a bouncy ball!" Others move like sleep walkers, numb to the repetition, to the pulsing sound, screaming kids, cotton candy, mud, lights, gluttony. One man at at the swaying entrance to the fun house stands unmoving as kids run past him. He wears shades, stares straight ahead. We circle past three times, he hasn't moved a muscle.
For the boys, it is pure delight. They're at just the right age for all of us to walk about unencumbered, grinning, our fingers sticky with maple syrup cotton candy and ribs. Sprout was just past the 42" mark and Bean, long-legged and tousle-headed well past the 48" mark. They wanted to ride everything, and Bean would have if he could. For him, no amount of spinning or speed put him off. But the sheer volume of music on some rides utterly overwhelmed him. For Sprout, who is all volume all the time, noise wasn't the issue, or speed, but heights.
On the dragon roller coaster, they rode together. Bean was all grins, and Sprout too, until it made it's first rushing descent. Then his face crumbled. We thought he would cry, but Bean put his arm around his brother. "It's okay buddy" we watched him say. My heart felt like it'd just been inflated with helium. (How I love these kids of mine--and how happy I am they have each other.)The entire time they were at each other's sides, running ahead and stand in line, pushing each other, then holding hands, sharing an ice cream cone, chasing each other through the maze of mirrors in the fun house, or standing side by side to watch the tractor pull.
We do the rides, and then we do this: walk about, looking at all the things that make county fairs great. Kids on stilts and arm wrestling contests; a barn with home made quilts and jams; roosters with fancy combs, rabbits with floppy ears, new calves, a mama pig and her piglets, horses with long eyelashes and silky manes. The ponies nuzzle our palms. Sprout watches cows get milked with a commercial milk machine for the first time. Both boys stand forever in front of the incubator, watching eggs about to hatch, asking a million questions. Sprout almost cries when the white tractor he loves doesn't win the tractor pull. Bean drives bumper cars until his hair stands up with static.
And when leave late, two hour past their bedtime, the moon is a sickle in the inky sky, and the Ferris wheel is whirling, it's lights bright. Bright enough to blur the edges. To leave marks on closed lids. To make the whole thing seem real enough to be a dream.
Stuff I've learned while starting out, carrying on, or attempting something great:
{Not Really A Paragraph 17/30}
:: Repeat this mantra: There is enough. Enough resources. Enough people. Enough audience share. Enough.
:: Ask: how can I help?
:: Join forces. Take people to coffee. Listen.
:: Listen some more.
:: You'll make mistakes. Many of them. Admit them, apologize and then move on.
:: Move on for real. Don't let emotional stuff become an energy drain.
:: Know what it is you're actually offering, or doing. Why does it matter?
:: Know who cares about what you're offering. Who does it matter to?
:: Treat people like people, not like numbers or features that increase klout.
:: Spend some time considering what it's like to be inside your audience' head. What motivates them?
:: Reward loyalty and awesomeness in kind, with real things like handwritten notes, surprise discounts, chocolate.
:: Get over this fact right now: there will be competitors, haters, and jealous fools. Consider them a sign that you've arrived.
:: Be humble. Ask for help. Admit that you don't know.
:: Be generous. Share what you do know. Share your process. Share your best tips, tricks, insights and understanding. It will make you richer, not poorer.
The hitch of course is kids {More than one Paragraph 16/30}
I was so intrigued by the comments in yesterday's post about shifting towards a morning habit. About writing then, and soaking up the world as the new day unfurls.
But here's the thing that I can't seem to get around--even though I want very much to go to bed earlier for all the reasons I mentioned in several recent posts... But the hitch is kids. Their existence in my world makes morning finite. There is no pushing on, if I'm in the groove. No additional hours that can be spent, past midnight if necessary if a project demands more time, or a story is taking me places.
When the kids wake up, they arrive: giggling, yelling, whining, squealing. They want things: snuggles, underpants, clean socks, cereal. They need things: undivided attention, clean laundry, reminders, mediation, affection. The hours hurtle on. Even if I awoke at 3am, I'd only have 3 hours until 6 when they typically wake, and 3am doesn't look nearly as interesting from the vantage point of waking up, as it does from the perspective of going to sleep, if you know what I mean. Nearly every parent I've talked to has said something about the "freedom" that night affords: the opportunity to exist with one's thoughts uninterrupted. And that is entirely what I love about the night: that it affords carrying on. Uninterrupted.
Earlier today Austin Kleon tweeted that this poem should be featured prominently on every creative's refrigerator. I think he's right. And I wonder, is my problem simply that I'm aiming for all three?
Is the plight of the modern creative that because we have such boundless abundance, we believe we are boundless? Our modern world offers so many choices, opportunities, options, mediums, encounters, tools, that in turn we tell ourselves we can do anything, be anything, all at once. I for one, fall for this story time and again. But time isn't fooled. And morning, wise and new, knows better too.
So, how to shift night to morning with kids. How then? Is there some middle ground, some secret strategy? Tell me, tell me.
Still paying homage to the night {Just One Paragraph 15/30}
It felt like fall today, even though we're at the height of summer. Crisp air, and the most beautiful bright bowl of blue up above. The weather has been anything but ordinary, and for that, I am glad I guess, though there is a part of me that longs for the familiarity of seasons; for the year broken into parts, for snow then rain, then sun then wind. At lunch, I walked the long way around the block just to catch a glimpse of it up above: blue, between hours working at my desk. It was a long day, all in all, though short on hours (how is this always so?) And now I'm heading off to sleep, while the night swims up to the edges of the house that sits like a raft at the edge of the valley, moored among the grasses wild and sweet. I love the way the air smells, not just here, but all over New England in the summer time after dark, as though the earth is exhaling sweetness. Rest rustling in the tall branches of the oak and fins out along the even, splayed leaves of the sumac whose leaves will soon be red. Owls calling in their secret owl language, silent wings stirring the air into spirals as they swoop. "The thing about getting up earlier, is going to bed earlier," I tell my friend. "Getting up isn't the hard part really, it's going to bed earlier that is."
I still haven't figured this out--how to flip flop the day and night. Start at the beginning rather than at the end. Write forwards instead of back. Explain this to me, morning worshipers, how does this work?
Featured in Artful Blogging*
I'm so happy to have my piece, "Ordinary Remarkable Moments" and my art + photographs featured in the Autumn 2013 Artful Blogging! (And to have my birds...and heart in my hand on the cover!)
Go take a peak + pick up your own copy... there is so much beauty + inspiration in this issue!
xo, Christina
We're ready to make a new little nest for a time...{More than Just One Paragraph, 14/30)
We started packing today, for real, taping together boxes bigger than the boys. We started with the closets and the kid's room: places where things have been stored haphazardly or squirreled away with the irregular logic of eight-year-old Bean, who would keep everything for some later possible use or invention if given the chance. I should really document some of his collections. Keys, in particular. Keys and locks. He has dozens of them, old and new. Combination and padlock. They represent a certain kind of tangible magic to him I think. They are a secret that can only be unlocked if you are the keeper of the key or code. He likes the power of having keys. Of knowing the code. Of unlocking the secret truths that make things as they are. We put them into his metal tool box, the one he inherited from my dad, who was so like Bean with an inventor's mind and chaotic organization of an artist.
Then we worked on making decisions: keep, donate, sell, give away. The keep pile was the smallest, and that feels right and easy. It feels good to shed old things. To cut back. Diminish duplicates. And get rid of singular gloves, old shoes, ugly hats, cars with three wheels, dog-chewed blocks, jeans that won't ever fit. (I highly recommend this process, even if you're not moving. Particularly the latter. Donate them. It feels so nice. Even if you have only half a wardrobe left!)
The home we're moving to has a smaller footprint than this house, I'm excited about that. All around, we'll be living with a smaller footprint on this earth: a less driving, less heating, just less. It makes it easy to let go, to lighten the load, to look towards the future with not so much, and an open heart.
Still, We'll all miss the wide expanse of here.
T and I stayed up late last night, but this morning I woke with the sun and kissed him out of his dream and we went outside together: him with espresso, me with tea, to watch the sun come up. From where we were sitting the whole world unfolded below us, soft blue then lush green with the bright of day. T just sat watching the sky, but I wrote, my hand moving eagerly across my molskine pages with a fast pen. (That fiction story and the book Dan and I are writing, they're connected! That's what dawned on me as the world woke up, there at the table, under a bluing sky.)
Then the boys came, still in pajamas, their toes green with newly cut grass. Bean brought a blanket with him and curled beside me, but Sprout climbed recklessly and delightedly into my lap, and promptly began his soliloquy that never ceases as long as he's awake. He's just so ebullient and glad to be alive. I love it.
T and I grinned at each other across the table, and agreed: we'll miss this something fierce. This wide sky of morning. This view from above.
But we're ready, even though it's bittersweet. We're truly ready for less distance and more connection; for having friends to dinner often and riding our bikes for bagels as the sun comes up. It will 2 miles to my office, 1 mile to T's. That makes me giddy (as does the thought of a pretty new commuter bike.) And school is only a ten-minute drive instead of forty-five. Oh, how we'll all love that.
So yes, we're ready to make a new little nest for a time, and then inevitably, we'll want to lift off again and fly.
Three ways I think about writing when I'm not writing {Just One Paragraph 13/30}
I show up to write a paragraph tonight after watching Silver Linings Playbook. It was good, though it wasn't what I expected, and now it's later than I expected. Still, I've done this small practice for enough days now that it feels like a habit. Enough days that I show up even late, just because. My fingers following words across the keyboard, right out to the edges of my thoughts.
I scribble notes as we're talking; our weekly conversation about the book we're gradually outlining. I draw lines, connecting notes, a geometry of ideas. Pattern recognition. I try to reconcile myself with the fact that I still don't
I mow the lawn in concentric circles, my thoughts circling with me, sifting, growing steady with the repetition. Then it surfaces: the fiction story, the one that I read a snippet of aloud to my writing group, so rough that the characters barely lift off the page...and yet. I can't shake the characters. They have the makings of a story that matters. Next I catch myself thinking, "Why am I thinking about this fiction stuff, when I've got so many other things I should be writing?" I catch myself. Should. I make plans for fiction. Hours of it. Fuck should.
Today {Just One Paragraph 12/20}
Today, nothing quite lined up, though there were many moments: picking wild berries, seeing friends at the South End Truck Stop, and watching Bean watch the glass blowers, his eyes wide, his whole body watching. And there was last night when my writer crew gathered around my dining room table with wine and good chocolate, ears listening for the heart of my story. Still, today was just today. And I am trying to let it be enough.
Today
Today I'm flying low and I'm not saying a word. I'm letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.
The world goes on as it must, the bees in the garden rumbling a little, the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten. And so forth.
But I'm taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I'm traveling a terrific distance.
Stillness. One of the doors into the temple.
- By Mary Oliver
Hello sweet August, here are all my hopes + dreams {Just One Paragraph 11/30}
Everyone, all over the world we woke up today to August. And here in the Northern Hemisphere, that shift marks the ripest month of summer: blackberry time, the county fair, picnics along the river. I asked yesterday what your intentions are for this new month, and am going to break paragraph form tonight to write my own list. These are the things I want to manifest from this sweet month:
:: A last hurrah dinner party
:: Winning the project (yes, the one that counts the most)
:: A new haircut
:: Poems read to me by T a blanket in a field of grasses (and maybe also wine + fried chicken + sauteed green beans and orzo)
:: The view from the top of the ferris wheel
:: A goodbye fire in the backyard
:: Collaborating with the boys to print an Instagram book of the things we love about this place that we've called home
:: A nighttime walk listening to the owls one last time
:: A successful closing
:: A successful move (and movers to do the hard part)
:: New paint on new walls
:: Shopping for school clothes
:: Getting Bean's first cello (he'll start playing in the orchestra this year!)
:: A new commuter bike
:: A new neighborhood to walk in
:: A blackberry pie
Also, because Anna said so, here are my favorite posts from last August:
There Is No Blueprint For Everything
The Heart Of Things
The Truth And The Stories
What are your favorite posts from last August? And really, what are your intentions (and hopes and dreams) for this new month. (Magic happens when you write things down you know.)
Night magic + August intentions {Just One Paragraph 10/30}
Tonight it's about unlikely combinations, sweet red wine, chocolate with salt, the cat pacing on my studio desk as I work late, pausing now to slip in a paragraph as night walks up to the window and whispers: "stay." I fall prey. Is there really another way? Does morning really offer this? The whirr of crickets, jazz, the soft, fluttering flirtation of moths against the screen kissing the lamplight on the other side that falls concentric circles; the cat's purr riding up one side of the night and down the other. Is morning really more than this, with it's new rose and blush and bleary eyes. Coffee, a day new? Does anything really measure against this time when day disrobes, when hours unwind uninterrupted. Who am I to claim radical sleep experiments. Who am I to say: we should all be getting more sleep (even though we should.) I was born at night. It's a hard habit to break.
{Tomorrow is August. What are your intentions for this new month?}
Feeling at the edges of myself today {Just One Paragraph 9/30}
I woke bleary and bumbling and uncertain with a blazing headache. Out of the blue. Light sensitive. Sore throat. All of it out. Yesterday afternoon, riding hard on my bike, and then this morning: sick. Who knows why? My friend texted, wisely, "Its a sign to refocus on you for just a bit." So I called off meetings, crawled back under the covers and spent most of the day in a half-dream state, half in my body, half out. I felt myself at the edges of my skin, a layer of dream overlaying my real world as it passed by in slow motion: the dog coming and going, email notifications, T on the phone (working from home today), the boys coming home (from a sleepover at their grandparents) and crawling into bed, their fingers sticky, their eyes wide and grinning. I felt permeable. I could feel how I am a creature of story, a figment of muscle and dream. I could feel the way I am only here, and then not here, only real and then not real: in my body, and then out of it, in spirit spreading out across the space and beyond it. Have you ever felt that way? At the periphery of yourself, where you understand that you are at once more and less than all the things you say you are, and all the things you imagine.
Here we are today {Just One Paragraph 8/30}
He could have been Bean, ten years taller, driving fast after midnight for whatever reason. The police can't say. The autopsy hasn't yet been done. Driving fast, across the meridian, into a metal culvert lurking at the side of the road, the way so many do these days after the flash flooding and weeks of rain: waiting for road crews to excavate ground and lower their silver-ribbed bellies into place, making way, with wide mouths for unexpected storms. His van catapulted, cartwheeled, caterwauled. Hit a telephone pole. Dead on impact. He was just 17, a new high school graduate, the papers say, and though I didn't know him, I've likely seen him around. He could have been the tow-headed kid riding a four wheeler across the fields belonging to his family's dairy farm at the end of the road. He could have been the boy with freckles standing in line with his girlfriend tonight at the grocery store, buying soda and candy, staring with the bored look of every boy in the checkout line. He could have been any boy. Every boy. This one on his way to Marines for basic training to go wherever such brave, foolhardy boys go, toting guns, their lives and the lives of others in their hands. We drove by on our way to donuts yesterday, saw the kids crowded around the newly replaced telephone pole writing love notes in sharpies, sticking flowers at the base, even as the old one, split in half with the impact, being carried off on a tow-truck past fields of blooming Queen Anne's Lace and Black Eyed Susans and also poison parsnip, that looks, to the untrained eye to be a lovely golden firework of blossoms. We never know, do we? We can never anticipate the danger, the wisdom, the wide terrain of possibility that makes the topography of our lives. T winced driving past and reached out. I grabbed his hand. We looked back in the rearview, the boys laughing, anticipating donuts. Sweetness. Today, there are cars gathered at the farm at the end of the road. Too many to be dinner guests. There is a lump in my throat as we ride by, that swells, even I feel my body lithe and balancing on my light bike, my life impossibly beautiful and real, pulse measured, cadence marked. Here we are today. Here you are.
{Go love the people you love.}
Living life all the way to it's edges {Just One Paragraph 7/30}
Yesterday I didn't write. I meant to. I thought about it. But I never never managed to slip away from the rowdy menagerie that is my family on the weekend, and then I was out late out with with friends to celebrate the first quarterly Renegade Writers Collective reading event (so proud of those gals!) and take in a sneak preview of the Moth main stage event that will be coming to Burlington in the Fall, and then more drinks and general revelry under the warm night sky. So. here I am, making up for lost words so to speak. And here's what I've been thinking today: that this work of showing up is more about the practice than the end result. More about the act of writing, than about the paragraphs accumulated one after the next.
So here I am, still rubbing my eyes at 11 am, catching up for my lost post, and feeling the weight of lost sleep, as the boys begin to wrangle the material of our lives into boxes (if we're to move, we must pack, it seems.) It's quite a slow-start morning after a late night that was entirely counter to my whole "two hours before midnight" experiment, and though today I'm paying the price (and feeling rather old) I'll never stop wanting to live life all the way out to its edges. And just as I'm totally down with this whole sleep thing, and am definitely planning a radical sleep experiment, I'm also avid about inviting the unexpected. Serendipity flirts at the edge of random. Creativity emerges when things break from the norm.
Some days I can't believe how good I have it {Just One Paragraph 6/30}
I worked from home today, with the boys playing at my side, running wild in the yard and then coming in hungry and asking for snacks. I let them eat peanut butter from the jar, made cinnamon sugar toast, poured milk, parsed out handfuls of fat blueberries, and then listened to their giggles as I worked. I finished a client project, which felt good, but also: there went the day. The hours I'd hoped would be spent writing write flat out (a rough first draft of the synopsis of the book I'm writing with Dan Blank; the time I imagined I would spend loafing in the sun, going to the library, or sketching out the fiction piece I have in my head right now.) But so it goes. Each day brings the unexpected bounty of it's particular hours, and with early afternoon this day brought T. We all went running to him, a hundred kisses. Even the dog. Everyone in a knot of snuggles in the entry way, laughing. We do love being a family together. It's one of the best things in the world, the way we fit together, the four of us making this ruckus, gangling, goofy, snuggly, affectionate bunch. "Let's adventure!" Bean said, and so after I took a quick sprint of a run down the road and back, and T grilled burgers with garlic and parsley and oregano, we went to Richmond where the playground always welcomes us and the bakery always offers something good. And then T and I sat with the dog under our legs, sipping dark coffee and eating sweet treats, and talking (and kissing) as we watched the boys play as the sun slanted through the trees at the edge of the world. The morning started out cold and grey. There was work. Then this. Boys. Sun. Sweetness. Some days I can't believe how good I have it.
Considering the meaning of "enough sleep" {Just One Paragraph 5/30}
This morning I'm paying for the fact that last night I was up late. Passed midnight. Into the single digits that technically counted as today. It's my kryptonite, staying up late after the kids are asleep and the house is quietly breathing, to write, or wander the internet reading (un)remarkable things. Those uninterrupted hours sing a siren song in my head. But on a hike with a friend today I mused out loud: what would happen if we all just slept more? There are plenty of studies that prove that we need more sleep than we're getting, and that enough sleep make us more imaginative, innovative, not to mention better lovers, friends, and parents. But as my friend put it, she too stays up late to do uninterrupted and often aimless and unimportant after her little ones are in bed, because it makes her feel more human. Still, she admitted, on the other, waking up after only 5 hours of sleep inevitably results in feeling even less human. A terrible conundrum, really. A tumbling domino effect. This too-little sleep situation. Hormones, sex drive, creativity, intelligence, athletic performance, curiosity and patience all suffer from diminishing returns as we night-owl it, hunched in front of screens, soaking in the quiet, or creating, or letting our minds wonder where they will. But what if we got more sleep? Like, radically more? Eight hours instead of six; nine even? I can't put my finger on why I'm so resistant, except for the fact that after 8 straight years of parenting little ones when sleep was never something I could control, staying up is almost a defense mechanism. And also, there is a childish part of me that wants to run out of the room yelling with my ears plugged at the mere thought of earlier bedtimes--to admit that I should be going to bed earlier would mean, in fact, that I am getting old. It would also mean that my mother was right. It turns out my mother was right about many things, and it's like she's right about this in particular. "One hour before midnight is worth two after" she'd always admonish. Ben Franklin backs her up. "Early to bed, early to rise...." I'm considering doing a week of radical sleep experimentation. But before I do, I need you to weigh in.
How much sleep do you get on average every night? When do you typically go to bed? Do you think you'd benefit from more sleep?
Discuss!
A birds-eye view of this right now {Just One Paragraph 4/30}
This morning I realized that July is almost over, which startled me, because really, didn't summer just start? I've been experiencing this incredulity at an ever-increasing rate: at time's passing, at the long-legged bodies of my sons, at the way my eyes have accumulated crows feet and the furrow between my brows is there for good. When did all of this happen? Time is a trickster. A torrent one minute, then a slow as honey crawl the next. Some weeks pass with laborious slowness, but days are never long enough. Other weeks pass in a blur, but hours stretch out for an eternity. The constant, it seems, is that years go in an instant. Each one short. Shorter. And here I am at the apex of another summer, feeling the way the last days of this particular month make up a strange equation of endings and beginning's for me. Summer is waning, yes, that. But also: my father died this month eleven years ago, on the same day as my half birthday which is two days from today. And if I were calculating my rate of success based on averages, I'd say I was behind, at least on my birthday list. Half the year gone, and only 10 crossed off. (Of those, I'd never thought I'd have ridden a carousel, but that happened, quite by chance two weekends ago at the Shelburne Museum; and I can almost cross off paragliding, because I've found the perfect place for lessons and am now just waiting for the right convergence of wind conditions and babysitting to high-tail it there with T for a day jumping off into blue sky.) But the thing is, success isn't about averages at all. It's not about steady progress rates or past performance. It's about the process, and seeing the way things map out wide and large. About setting goals and gravitating towards them, even as new projects take shape, and new goals emerge. A book. A company. Another book of personal essays in it's inkling phase. A kindergartener. A third-grader. A rekindled sense of utter in-loveness with my guy. And I can't help but wonder, if my father were alive today, what he might say with his birds-eye view, grinning at the life I've made.
I'm curious, when do you take stock of your progress from a bird's eye view? Do you have any times throughout the year that you make it a ritual (like a half birthday) to stop looking at the small stuff, and take in the big picture instead?
The hours run out far sooner than my ambition {Just One Paragraph 3/30}
The day began with rain. Not the violent kind from a few weeks ago, but the soft kind that calls for standing in doorways and inhaling the petrichor. It was the kind of day that called for extra coffee, for laughter at Study Hall between work, for a gluten free macaroon around 2pm, and later after the rain let up and the sky spread with sun, for heaps of texts sent back and forth, things sorted, aligned, mapped out for tomorrow. It was the kind of day that found me arriving hungry at the doorway of home, to be greeted to the smell of Indian chicken with kale and sweet red peppers, fresh mango, cucumbers and rose; and also the sweet embrace of Sprout who always comes running when I return. A hero's welcome. "Mommy!" He exclaims, his entire body dancing with delight. He wraps his arms around my neck. After dinner, the day softened. In the gloaming light we moved to the backyard, sipping beer and rose, watching the boys play under blankets and the dog catch bugs. Then, after stories with the boys (Bean and I are reading the second Mary Poppins book, after a lovely diversion into the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frakenwhiler, which was a truly fantastic read, and for sure one of my favorites this year) I slipped off for a while to listen to music, paint my nails, and mull over projects. Every day, every single day the hours run out far sooner than my ambition. I'm grateful for this, even as I always feel myself fall short. Grateful to wake up hungry and eager for the day, and also to find myself at the other side of the day, still hungering for this sweet life, this work, these words, these hours.
At the end of the day all I ever want to do is write {Just One Paragraph 3/30}
Because I love the sound, the stridulating rise and fall that signals the beginning of summer's end, I spend five minutes looking up the insects that make it. The insects, whose call is as familiar to me as the word 'home', that have gone unnamed for years. For granted. A given. Until today when they start just at twilight. First one. Then few. Then many, all at once a rhythmic ruckus chorus in the trees, and at the horizon the moon kisses the mountains and then rises languidly into an indigo sky. I find that they are katydids. Specifically, the gladiator meadow katydid. And tonight their whirring symphony lifts through the warm air, filters in through my studio window screen, and brings with it the sweet scent of grass and ripening berries. With it, the stars come out. And then gradually the whole world folds close, until it is just here: illuminated under the incandescent light above me. My studio desk scattered with pens and cables and empty water jars and books.The evening hours are dwindling. The balance of available time vs. to-dos elusive for another day. And always when I begin, when I show up just here at the keyboard, it's the same: at the end of the day all I ever want to do is write.
The Things I've Grown Used To Around Here {Just one Paragraph: 2/30}
The moon is round and bright, climbing up through the in the branches of the quivering Norway birch outside my studio window. I've grown used to that tree; to watching it bend in storms, and flutter in the slightest breeze. To the way, when the autumn comes, it turns pure gold before coyly letting the season's leaves fall to the ground, laying bare her silver branches to the gathering cold and shortening days that winter always brings. I've grown used to the way my studio sill, from which I watch that tree, is always cluttered with jars filled paint brushes. With shells. With small canvases to paint (and often the cat finds here way there too.) I've grown used to the wild roses that bloom beside the front door. And also to the dirt road that carries us to and from our house. To the ritual of walking down it with the boys. To finding wild berries: raspberries, grapes, blackberries, Eastern prickly gooseberries and also elderberries that are still blooming in clouds of lacy white. Today, Clover went running out ahead of us, then veered off when she smelled something in the hedgerow, and for the sake of all of us would not return until she'd flushed out every living thing: startled red-wing blackbirds, small brown rabbits, a flock of gold finches that lifted like yellow sparks. I've grown used to the sloping grassy hill at the back of the house where the boys sat today facing each other on beach towels warming in the sun after playing until their lips were blue in the pool (the blue plastic kind that stands improbably 36 inches above ground, and is by far the best investment we've made this summer because Sprout is learning how to swim of his own accord, begging to be in the pool more than he is out of it.) It is the hill where my book began. The hill that, when everything feels like it may just be falling apart, I've gone to lie upon countless times, face upterned to the sky with my heart beating uncertainly in the boat of my ribs, until the steady pull of the earth rightens me. I've felt the earth spinning from that place. I've watched shooting stars fall from the heavens there, and played with both my boys when they were babies. Today I'm grateful for this last month here among familiar things, and also for this small ritual of a paragraph of noticing daily.
Making Saturday Slow on Purpose {Just one Paragraph: 1/30}
It was about a month ago, maybe, when T and I were having a spate of drawn-out, late-night conversations about the direction of our lives, that I decided to try to slow down a little and get more sleep. Slowing down isn't my nature, and sleep is definitely no the first thing I think of when night folds the house in darkness and lamplight spills across my desk. Instead, late night hours are the ones I long for; time spent working without interruption; the windows open and a soft rain falling on stirring leaves until well after midnight. But as we talked and talked, it dawned on me that maybe even though I'm terrified of slowing down, I'd reached the point of overdrawn. And though admitting this felt like admitting weakness, it also felt like a necessity, like some kind of survival mechanism kicking in. And so I agreed that maybe, possibly, a little more sleep and a slight slowing of the pace might be a good thing to experiment with, and so unofficially I began. Fewer late nights. Sleeping just a bit longer. Aiming for just one thing at a time. And above all else, making the weekends, and Saturday in particular, slow on purpose. Gluten free muffins made from scratch in the morning with plenty of coffee and bacon, and then all of us sitting around reading at the table: Richard Scary, and Spider Magazine and the New York Times, and then moving toward the day without rushing or an agenda, and coming back together frequently for snacks and snuggles and couch time in the evening when we could all hear first of the season's crickets making their debut. That's what today brought: the ease of slowness, and also the reminder that summer will be ending soon. Just another month of ripe golden days, and then school and autumn. Reason enough to slow down for a day, and let the time slide by like the skin off a sun ripened peach, the juice making our fingers sweet.
PS: I just love, love, love how many of you are joining me. It's an excuse to pop over to your blogs regularly and to see what the small corners of your world look like day to day!