each small thing: the future is magic

i love you on earth,

2012-01-25T19:53:00.000-08:00

"mama, i love you" said finn suddenly--& urgently! tonight--"i love you on earth" he said

heart melt all over!

and now i am thinking the thing is, to just be fine, that is all we need.

just be fine.

i do dishes and worries start to pile up, worries & self-criticisms. when actually all i need to do is plan class tomorrow.

all will be well and i can be fine.

and you can be fine, we can be fine.

three quotes from fanny howe because this book, The Winter Sun, has been so good to me lately (piercing):

these are two doctrines yeats believed in, as quoted by fanny howe:

"1)That the borders of the mind are ever shifting, and that many minds can flow into one another, as it were, and create or reveal a single mind, a single energy.
2)That the borders of our memories are as shifting, and that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself."

here's howe:

"Are we in for a surprise?
The future is like magic. It wears no robes or veils but arrives naked, tossing its surprises to the right and to the left. How does it arrive? It neither comes from ahead nor do we enter it running. This is beacause it and we can only approach what is always coming toward it and us."

"Even while I have gone back over the words, i have never been sure of the need for it, the use of writing at all, the value of any completed poem, or the idea that writing might lead somewhere. I haven't really known what I was doing, only that I would keep on doing it."

"The winter has returned. The warmth that signaled spring has been replaced by an angry frost. The arms of the pines lift and drop in concession to a low wind. . .Someone only yesterday told me that the harm we have done to the world is now irreversible. At the same time we can finally look through a telescipe strong enough to see the beginning of the universe. It is not a beginning if it can be seen still happening from where we stand on earth. The cardinal whistles at the top of a spectral elm, or is someone writing on a slate of air?"

joys

2012-01-15T19:26:00.000-08:00

joys story
Hello! We had our holidays and made some things--that was fun. Note: singing is a form of wisdom. Note: just want to throw this pen down and start living again. I mean throw this computer down. Note: "To resist the reality of time is to resist leaving childhood behind" (Fanny Howe). Note: "One day the sun admitted, I am just a shadow. I wish I could show you the infinite incandescence that cast my brilliant image. I wish I could show you (when you are lonely or in darkness) the astonishing light of your own being." (Hafiz via Fanny Howe). Also, I feel so much better when I feel loving going on in me, like wheels. When I can love openly. A big part of me is full of love, leftover holiday love but it's real, amazingly. I didn't know it could happen actually. Note: singing is not a form of wisdom it is what it is. I still wish I sang more, opened my throat. Miss it. Don't be embarrassed for me!

three boys nursing their babies (noam, jasper, finn):;;;;;;

creative finn::::::;

animal drawings pillow made for uncle james:::::::::::::;

two sleepytime owls made for a niece and a nephew:::::::

karla kuskin poem (one of my fave kid's poets) and painting made for another niece:

star city made by finn for his friend's birthday::::::;

papa and finnegan:::::::::::::::::

glitter cards:::;;;;;

the owl holds a leaf:::::::;;

cousins!:::::::;

time of love and decorating and baking. moonself. jupiterself. sunrise.

2011-12-13T20:59:00.000-08:00

story of where things live
Finn says "I want to talk about things!" when we sit down in the morningtime. We are friends? he asks, often. Mama, we are friends? You're my mom? We are lonely? We make maps and pictures of snow. Rainy weird december days. Job interview! And now the waiting. . .Well what we do is, map and draw. Morningtimes have been at least somewhat consistent. I feel it is radical space, mom plus kid. Radical space of our creation. In fact all space seems like radical space . . .I am trying to create radical space in my life but it isn't easy and you already knew that. Sometimes as I write I listen to the whines of Finn. He grumble scratches--wants me to play. We play dinosaur island. Sometimes I realize how my attention is right here, exactly in the now, if I let it be. But I have to realize it. Loveliness of winter is right here: green wreath, which I decorate with red bells, pinecones, prairie grasses gone to seed, dried flowers. Writing poems from the perspectives of planets lately: Jupiter and Earth, to be exact. Here are some dirty windows and snowflakes looking in through the window; here are some windows/snowflakes/sunrisings looking out. Jupiter as a tall tree's heart; the other side of the snowflakes, our home at night; regular life too regular life; and a full moon rising near a grey gleaming windchime. As we draw and write, I ask Finn questions about where things live: Where does the sun live? In the grass. Where does water live? In the ocean. Where does pink live? In dragon's blood.

the yellow leaves

2011-11-28T22:37:00.000-08:00

& many ideas in my mind, from Lewis Hyde's The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World: "The passage into mystery always refreshes. If, when we work, we can look once a day upon the face of mystery, then our labor satisfies. We are lightened when our gifts rise from pools we cannot fathom. Then we know they are not solitary egotism and they are inexhaustible. Anything contained within a boundary must contain as well its own exhaustion. The most perfectly balanced gyroscope slowly winds down. But when the gift passes out of sight and then returns we are enlivened. Material goods pull us down into their bones unless their fat is singed occasionally. It is when the world flames a bit in our peripheral vision that it brings us jubilation and not depression. We stand before a bonfire or even a burning house and feel the odd release it brings, as if the trees could give the sun return for what enters them through the leaf"

Thinking so much about gifts; what it means to be giving; the purposes for making things and for being--

as if the trees could give the sun return for what enters them through the leaf

Now I am moving this thing I am giving; now it is in motion. The giving moves because we move, and because we are alive, an ecology, a collective being. I am moving within your abundance and you are moving within mine. I guess I mean that the things within my fingertips--so often feel caged in there, I feel achey to let them out--and yet the giving inside can be moved instead of stagnant, can be thrown up into the air, juggled and swirled and released. I think.

the magic dreaming seeds of hickory hill park, sunny cold november--

2011-11-28T22:29:00.000-08:00

morning writing time and a sort of photo shoot/ radical acceptance

2011-11-28T22:18:00.000-08:00

& thinking about these ideas, from jon kabat-zinn: "radical acceptance" is something one can achieve if one "takes in and responds to things as they actually are"---also "letting go of the stories we tell ourselves about how things should be"

"our desire to get it all done generates feeling chronically rushed or overwhelmed. . ."

here's where i posed finn, hoping for a holiday card:

but hey morning writing time: sometimes things are so right!

Of the first F / dragons and hammers

2011-11-06T20:44:00.000-08:00

F Story ending with sunrise.
Finn certainly did learn to write an F this weekend--monumental! He learned to on the box of Halloween ghosties and pumpkin lights and other decorations that we were, sadly, putting away. Then he did Fs all over the place! He was f-in the place up. We went for a walk around the block, and he carried a piece of chalk and drew an F every 10 feet.

After the F moment, other things also happened. Scootering. The purchasing of blue lights, the hanging up of them, the witnessing of their circle shadows. The picking out of some new toys after a whole lot of cooperating. Also, the stickering of cooperation charts. The watching of the Muppet Show. The painting of a good dream and a bad dream (both dreams containing a dragon and a hammer; in the bad dream, the dragon is getting you, in the good dream it is saving you). The setting of the sun.

This morning we were up early (saving daylight), and as we plunked on the porchswing to watch the sunrise, in a cool reversal, Finn said, I miss the night, wanna go get the night back. Instead, we wrote. This is the new thing we do, I declare, as of today. I am trying to capitalize on the fact that I tried to explain to Finn that I'm a writer this weekend, and ever since then he says that he is too. So us writers, we get up at 6, and from 6 to 7 is sacred writing/drawing/thinking time. Every 10 minutes we are allowed to show each other our drawings/writings, but otherwise we are quiet and focused on our work. It was spontaneous this morning--but it worked out in a really nice way. And so now I declare it, right here, and hope it will continue to work. Come on, luck plus will-- !

dragon dinosaur with butterfly wings

2011-10-30T21:23:00.000-07:00

story of this week (stress).
this week i am not sure. it was a festive weekend, with parties and parades and puppets. yet this week i am not sure. my friend asked me tonight, how has my relationship with finn changed? i could hardly explain that--she last knew finn a year ago, when he was 2. yesterday he liked the funny face i made and so he said very seriously, looking at me with a gravity, "mama, i love you." he's never said it just like that, stopping everything else to say it, that's why i was so glad. that's what i told her to explain the change in our relationship. finnegan is a person now--and he can be considerate, or pushy, or easily frustrated, or easily happy and dancey too. he danced under spiderwebs today as lauren beat-boxed a song in the "party haunted garden". i am impatient far too much, always hurrying him, moving him along, getting him buckled in, saying i'll be late for work, or late for meeting someone, or late for storytime,or his preschool, or puppet shows, i am always late, it is always happening that way. hurry up! buckle in! mama, you're kidding? that's what he always asks. because sometimes i do a crazy gruff voice because i don't know what else to do, that's how bad i freak out when stresssed. mama you're kidding?

a story of parts/ hard glittering & being taught

2011-10-21T22:09:00.000-07:00

story with an inability to know anything precisely.
this is a story from general to specific about right now. i have been teaching. did you know i am a teacher? even though i don't know how to be one, and often i feel i don't know how to help students. many of my students have led extremely painful lives. i know many people have. but right now i feel the burden of my students' lives; i feel the heavyness of them. three of my students could not respond to the simply journal prompt of "describe a childhood memory" without crying halfway through. in the sense that they say something like "i can't finish this journal i'm crying now". childhoods full of abuse, shame, murders and violence, abandonment, no love. wars. disease. poverty. all that, you know. what do we do? here we are, hanging off each other's hands. what do we do?

i can't talk about this anymore not because i'm crying but because i don't know what else to say. feel too plaintive and exposed. how does everything connect?

love and empathy sometimes seem like drowning forces, though i know they're really good. this story is also about how i realized recently that finn didn't know i was a teacher. he knew i went to work but didn't know i was a teacher.

i have been grading. i have been falling asleep at the keyboard at one in the morning, grading and planning. i have been behind. dishes have stacked up. my life is there, precisely, in the middle of that stinking pile of dishes from tuesday through friday. now i sit here, bilberry and honey lotion rubbed into my feet (by me), friday night, showered, dishes done, blogging.

we went to a parade today! we have also done fun things recently like--visit the raptor center (where they care for injured birds, like owls, eagles, kestrels)with kid-friends annika and ellie.

i thought i'd include some pictures of me being a writing teacher. just to try to integrate, figure out how it's part of all this, this that i am. see it's a part!

finn has been crying out "i miss the sun, i miss the sun". . .on rainy days, and just when darkness hits so fast so quick at 6:30 now. . .

another part of my story right now is that my book of poems is going to be published! by rescue press! it doesn't seem real yet, seems unreal. i don't know what it means but it makes me happy! and now i feel free-er to concentrate on other poems, in some way. thank you!

lately i feel like i have the capacity to let things go, to exist, to just feel blessed (hopefully). blessed not in a blind, bland way. blessed in a hard diamond way, as in, i am learning this, and it is hard to learn this, but i am. i am being taught, recently. i feel teaching-ness all around: taught to let go, taught to not force things, taught to be resourceful and soak beans (simple), taught to be able to change, taught that things don't go according to plan, taught that one can scrape by in a very very close scrapey scrapey way and not die because of it (of course), taught so much about giving gifts; what giving means, and how it can expand things and also hurt things. i don't know. my head is swimming with learning. i hope i can get it all. i take notes by just sitting here. the bare beauty of what is, hopefully. mind-can, mind-cup, mind with major arteries, awake.

lights and "comfty" places around our october house (because that's what finn says)

2011-10-21T22:04:00.001-07:00

from the fossil gorge again, with huge ravens and ancient iowa ocean (in autumn)

2011-10-21T21:32:00.000-07:00

we went one day last week, in a gorgeousness that is now past. . .we'll try to hit the woods again this weekend but i fear that recent rainstorms have knocked all the leaves loose. no yellowness, perhaps, for us. we'll see.

thinkin about, lately: rocks. and how much i like them.

a happiness of sunpatches, grass, running (hickory hill park last week)

2011-10-12T21:18:00.000-07:00

we went on a walk in the darkness with the moon

2011-10-04T21:44:00.000-07:00

october moon walk story for you
it started out that we went walking when there was some daylight left, but then had to turn back home to get dinner out of the oven (quiche). fragmented walk. the moon was out when we returned to our walk later. it was a half moon and it was october. and it is. we counted pumpkins. we put seeds in pockets. some of us had our pants on backwards. one person had on lightning shoes that streaked orange in the dark. or, the darkyness, as he liked to call it. there were questions. the dog, q, was good. now he constantly asks for stories: tell the story about birthday, about the walk in the woods, about the house, about the time we built the lego castle. stories of halloween. tell about the moon, and the walk we went on in october. that night, he asked me to tell him the story about the people who live in the house and love each other.

looking around this is what i see

2011-10-02T13:20:00.000-07:00

some more photos from last week; getting into pumpkins, rivers, rocks, brooding skies:::::::::::::;

with a million stars you try to pin it to the sky

2011-10-01T22:14:00.000-07:00

days & nights in a swirl

2011-10-01T21:22:00.000-07:00

happy october! my favorite month: it is so golden. And so here are bits and pieces from recent daily life, lately, scattered right here and swirled::::::::::::::::::

I go down to the iowa river occasionally, to walk and be with the river--sometimes i write there too; i did this day::::::::;;
it was just some mama and q-dog bonding time, yes:;;;;

and i've been dreaming of sewing soon, soon, piling up piles and dreaming::::

the above is my favorite bedtime poem, i just really love it:::::;;and bedtimes are so nice in the autumn aren't they--just the best::::::::;
this is a dino train; a dino line-up; officially, the dinos will all get in the bathtub now:::::::;;(and those dinos are a crowded closet score!)

this is bedtime; finn's good old blue bed that was his crib too (rarely);;this week i did get a big mattress but he said he missed his old bed after one night, so we returned to it::::;;;;

work on one poem (worshipping, presenting, offering, protecting, rejoicing, praising,mourning)

2011-09-29T09:22:00.000-07:00

El Greco--"View of Toledo"

I've been working on the poem assignment from Aleta: she asked me to include "El Greco's icy blues, Egyptian profiles and repetitions, and a watercolor you sent me for my birthday"

Ilooked up Egyptian repetitions and I found the text that follows at this link: http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/publications/pdfs/egypt/egypt.pdf:
FORM IN EGYPTIAN ART
Clarity, Balance, and Stability

Egyptian artists developed ideal forms that became the standard, or conventional,
way of expressing desired meanings. The major figure of a composition,
for instance, was usually larger than the more subsidiary ones, and its poses(standing, walking, sitting, or kneeling) were the most stylized. Even for subsidiary
figures a limited number of arm and hand gestures were used to explain
what the figure was doing.

The following are commonly used poses and gestures:
worshipping: both arms extended forward with hands upraised

presenting: offering both arms extended forward with an object held in one or both palms ready to receive offerings seated with one or both arms resting on one's
lap, palms down

summoning: one arm extended forward with the palm open

protecting: both arms extended out to the sides with the palms facing forward

rejoicing: both arms extended out to the sides with palms turned away from the body

praising: crouched on one knee, one arm raised and the other held against the chest with clenched fist

mourning: arms raised with palms turned toward the face

Balanced forms and compositions, clear outlines, simplified shapes, and flat
areas of color were used to create order and clarity, and figures and scenes
were arranged in horizontal rows (called registers). Momentary, fleeting images
such as expressions of emotion or strenuous physical activity were not often
treated because they were transitory, not permanent features.

here is a small poem culled from all that! (i think i will make several poems from this assignment; i love the idea of putting poses ((like still dances))in poems.):::::

Poem (Emotions are not permanent)

Space and breath, the opening seeming to go on and on.
My root hangs down listening and is not yet emptiness.
It is intimate nutrition, the kind folded into the book of birth, the kind

One morning when I find myself in my body. There it is: the space
I’m not in, the low creating cry. Love birth emptiness.
The certain brown canoe making its way up a shallow muddy river.
Red oars. Up there is a town we love, with celebrations.

I stand, raise my arms up, and turn my palms toward my face.

kids in the apple orchard (f. & e.)

2011-09-14T20:49:00.000-07:00

"But every day a beautiful morning
Falls like an egg into the hand
Of someone passing along the road"

from poem "June 10, 1936" by Robert Desnos
(trans. Wm. Kulik)

weekend essay (what we did)

2011-09-14T20:39:00.000-07:00

big bowl of popcorn + friday night movie night pizza night (the secret of nimh!)= happiness

also painting with paints in the morning, good and fun:::::::::::

then the animal cookie backyard tent picnic teaparty under the walnut trees' canopy (really we need helmets so as to not get bonked with walnuts right on our noggins)::::::::::::;;

hey devonian fossil gorge head (day story)

2011-09-06T20:40:00.000-07:00

a good day.
on labor day, we went to the devonian fossil gorge, explored, had a picnic: a truly beautiful timeless day, a day that has swirled off now and is a moon made of windows; one of those smooth unripplable days; the tiny frog we saw hopping amongst the ancient iowa sea remains took our day off into the grass with him and let it become an atmosphere; because it was just so ineluctable and that good. cheetos, apples, water, 375 million year old imprints, skipping stones, the moving clouds and solid blue sky, the kayakers we saw with red oars on the iowa river, the marigolds noam brought his mama as she gave birth to his little brother, a curve in the road where i dreamt of my iowa farm, hilly & different shades of green, in the morning we ate fresh homemade waffles, i don't even know what one million is.

story of our walk plus what you would've seen, walking around my house, a few days ago

2011-09-06T20:16:00.000-07:00

finnegan and the walk.
today, going for our after dinner walk around the block--but the dusk caught up with us--days are shorter! we were in the dark and could see the beautiful half moon very well, after the trees got out of the way. we walked through the alley and peeked in people's yards; kid yards were by far the most interesting. this is the walk on which we established that we live on the earth, not the moon. also finn has houses all over the neighborhood. "that's my house, my own house" he'll say, pointing at a nondescript house. i tell him he has to live with me for a little while longer. i say that also someday we may get our very own house, with goats. who knows!

the happy apple eater

2011-09-04T15:11:00.000-07:00

the return to a buried self

2011-09-04T14:31:00.000-07:00

the following is from Amy King's interview with poet Arielle Greenberg; found here: http://vidaweb.org/gynocentric-anthems (it's annoying but i've never been able to figure out why the URL web paster thing on this blog doesn't work for me!). . .i guess i'm cut-n-pasting this here because of Greenberg's honesty, because of our lives, because of how much we all try to do and we can't do it all. we can't do it all. we're just livin'. . .and really what is it we want? what prize etc.? we want to have it all but we can't have it all. sorry! i'm thinking of the shock i felt when someone told me, "that's just what you want,you see. that's just a desire. you don't neccessarily get to have what you want. no, you don't get what you want."

and also really, maybe sometimes what we want isn't right, or is impossible. i think the dividness, the divided feeling, that's what i can't stand/ that's what drives me to anxiety, stress, unhappiness. when i'm divided in my minutes constantly, between mothering or creating, for one example. it's no good. really, i choose anything else, besides that dividness. yes. here's the thing:

AK: You have many proverbial irons in the fire: editing, teaching, writing, mothering, moderating, etc. Do you feel like you’re juggling too much sometimes? How do you get things done? What obstacles do you face and are you able to absorb or ignore them without feeling like you’re doing a disservice to your own work? What takes priority in relation to your assorted literary hats?

AG: Yes, I do feel like I’m juggling too much. Yes. All the time. Not sometimes: all the time. I cannot overstate how divided I feel, how much I wish I had more energy and time to devote to each aspect of my life, how hard I struggle with where and how to cut back, do less, be more present, simplify. This is the number one anxiety and reality for me these days. I could fill this interview with the banal details of this all-too-common struggle, which feels really charged and political and relevant to me despite its banality. (This very debate has been everywhere in the press lately, too: see the Boston Review’s July/August 2010 forum on feminism, work and family.) I feel like it’s important to say this very plainly and loudly here because I want to be honest with anyone reading this that, to resurrect an old Second Wave aphorism, I do not actually think it’s possible to “have it all.” I cannot figure out a way to be the mother I want to be, have the paying job I want to have, and do the unpaid creative and domestic and community work I want to do all at the same time with any modicum of serenity or contentment, nor do I see a way to combine these with the activism or friendships or other things that I desire. I try and fail; I keep trying and failing. I can’t see a way out.

Here comes the Too Much Information Department: I’ve been pregnant or breastfeeding for the last six years straight, which takes a huge emotional and physical toll. My youngest child turns one this Sunday, and it’s a fraught time for me spiritually. He is most likely my last baby and I am mourning the loss of that phase of my life, difficult as it is. At the same time, I’m sleep-deprived and still nursing and so hormonally, there are a lot of parts of myself that I haven’t been in touch with for a long time: my libido, my body, my dreamlife. And of course this has an impact on my relationship with my body, and with my partner, but I’ve realized what an enormous impact it also has on me as an artist: for example, without access to my dreams, I don’t think I can tap into my poetics. And I think my sex drive is related to my creative artistic drive: I’ve noticed that when my libido is awake, that’s when I get really interested in listening to music, seeing films, and all those things fuel my own creating. And of course there is just the reality of very little time to myself, very little time alone, very little time period. So mostly these days I feel like I am waiting for the return to a buried self I hope and pray is still within me somewhere. And yet, despite all this, I wish I could be an even more available, consistent, present mother than I am. I would not choose to mother less intensively, with more outside childcare or more time away from my children to write. That is not a choice that appeals to me.

So yes, I do feel like I’m doing an enormous disservice to my creative work. My family comes first, and then the obligations I do for pay (and though I am enormously fortunate to also care deeply about what I do for pay, that caring means more energy given away), and then the obligations I do for pleasure and fulfillment, and then, at the very very bottom, and often dropped entirely off the list, is my poetry. That’s the truth, Ruth.

many things: making maps to explain poems. finn off to pre-school in goggles oh i mean "spiderman eyes". finn and noam, energetic enthused friends.

2011-08-29T21:18:00.000-07:00

i will never explain a poem i will only draw rivers and boats!

the fall garden, will not be planted. the "raised bed" i fashioned will remain half-full of dirt (until next spring!).

poems will never understand themselves. they will become maps.

i will write a book of birth and hide it in the map.

superman dance pose.

milk sea child.

here's a small song:

All

all my circling was for this
all my getting off the boat and getting on again
all my search and text and need
all my quiet and tapptapp searching
on the internet every night
look up not insane not depressed
lookup can you say you are a pacifist

in all honesty all my circling was for this
all my circling and what i want i have

friend paintings made at george's (the bar)/ streamering around at the farmer's market

2011-08-29T20:57:00.000-07:00

A Finnegan in Black-eyed Susans

2011-08-25T14:13:00.000-07:00

slow slow summertime/ fast fast fast (husking corn then eating it)

2011-08-15T22:53:00.000-07:00

no poems today: no notes even really. just journal blather! and i will spare you that. it was a good run, though, with the posting every day a little poem-y bit, and i am just going to keep on keeping on with the poem assignments when i have a chance, and posting them here. but i was hit by a whirlwind family visit this weekend, and there is more visitin' to come (yay!) soon! and then also: the looming monday-i-have-to-teach on the fast fast horizon. good-bye summertime. you were beautiful, and full of barred owls, and full of crazy hot weather, and then weirdly cool weather. and i had a good run of writing in you yes. and i feel like you're gone, totally slipping out of my hands. so i will just have to love autumn instead. . .

time and a summer day (bluegrass at the apple orchard, dragonflies, and moonrise)

2011-08-11T21:40:00.000-07:00

today i have assigned myself to look at "old" poems i haven't looked at for awhile, and see how they are doing. which also means looking at notes, and hopefully finding something there too. so, that's what.

and here, first, finnegan playing with soaking beans:

SEED’S EYE

silent as a watermelon. but there's a huge heart beating
Underneath skin beyond fields
Oocytes and zygotes little tails
Hexagrams, ovals—pods too—
There in cockeyed rushes--
The salts and the reeds and the pulsing walls;
quick liquid and exiting—little swimmers--
to an electric thought
I AM THE THING WHICH GETS BORN

<

The Hopi view of time seems to me to have a certain kinship with the Chinese idea of “seeds”, which are called “the first signs of time.” “The seeds,” we read in the I Ching, “are the first imperceptible beginnings of movement, the first trace of good fortune (or misfortune) that shows itself. . .” The material world arises according to the Chinese in the following way: First there is a preexistent image (trigram); then a copy of this takes shape in corporeal form. What regulates this process of imitation is called a pattern. . . . The movements of the lines and images, and of the infinitesimal germs of events symbolized by them, are invisible but their results manifest themselves in the visible world as good fortune or misfortune.”” (p. 120 Psyche and Matter Marie von Franz)

now everything is born now everything unfolds and time itself is such a mystery

2011-08-10T22:25:00.000-07:00

some birthpoem-notes for lenore's 3rd baby before it is born a la the poem assignment she gave me! (re: comment section in idea! post)

:::::::::::here at the birth-window::::::::::::::::

window to the other world but it is made of our bodies;
you can’t see through it
but you can see it—

jon kabat-zinn says something like, there is no place you can stop the sky and say that, that, that right there—is the sky

there is no place you can stop birth and say that is birth. here comes the head, here are the shoulders, the belly. . .

which of those is birth?

is it after everything is born? is right now birth? what if i feel a contraction two years before i am every pregnant? or what if i dream of my baby's name before i even have my period?

when can we say we are born, when can we say that was birth, when can we say now everything is born?

- - - - - - - - - - -

there are a lot of questions circling around birth and its energies, physically and soulfully. also there are questions about now. because i like it, i am going to type out some large sections from jon kabat-zinn's book "coming to our senses"; these particular passsages are on what he calls the "nowscape":

“Everything that unfolds unfolds now, and so might be said to unfold in the nowscape. We’ve already observed how nature unfolds only and always in the now. The trees are growing now. The birds are flying through the air or sitting in the branches only now. The rivers and the mountains are in the now. The ocean is in the now. The planet itself is turning now. One physicist, writing about Einstien and time, observed that change in something is the way we measure time, and anything that changes in a regular way can therefore be called a clock. In fact, it is more accurate to be saying that change is the way we measure time than to say that time is the way we measure change, since time is in and of itself such a mystery. Everything changes, and so there is time. Everything changes, and so we experience time. Everything changes, and so we can experience change by stepping outside of time for a moment, and becoming intimate with what is, beyond the abstraction that is the mystery of time.” (235)

“There is no time other than now. We are not, contrary to what we think, “going” anywhere. It will never be more rich in some other moment than in this one. Although we may imagine that some future moment will be more pleasant, or less, than this one, we can’t really know. But whatever the future brings it will not be what you expect, or what you think, and when it comes, it will be now too. . . We can spin off into the future, rail about the past, think that things will be OK someday provided this happens and that doesn’t happen, all of which may be true to one degree or another, but it still has you missing your life and, in a sense, all life.” (236)

“For now is already the future and it is already here. Now is the future of the previous moment just past, and the future of all those moments that were before that one. Remember back in your own life for a moment, to when you were a child, or an adolescent, or a young adult, or to any other period already gone. This is that future. The you you were hoping to become, it is you. Right here. Right now. You are it. Don’t like it? Who doesn’t like it? Who is even thinking that? And who wants “you” to be better, to have turned out some other way? Is that you you too? Wake up! This is it. You have already turned out." (240)

We Live in a Mysterious Trace of Dreamtime (2 poems) [aug. 9]

2011-08-09T21:28:00.000-07:00

I write about and think about dreamtime a lot. I'm not sure quite yet what exactly it means to me. I am learning about it. Since this concept comes from an Aboriginal tradition, one might find it annoying that I'm into this: seems perhaps gentrification or the thinking equivalent. But I did come by this idea honestly; really, it was one of those things where I came across the word somewhere and liked it so much. Maybe I even made it up. And then it kept coming back to me, through various readings I was doing--I was reading a lot about pyschology then (2 years agoish). One of those coincidences, where you discover something for the first time and then it keeps popping up everywhere you turn. I think it's such an awesome concept and so rich--perhaps like the idea of consciousness outside of time. It's a relief to me, just as hearing Team Dresch and Bikini Kill was relief to me when I was 17. At any rate, here are some cut-n-pastes from a website:
http://www.crystalinks.com/dreamtime.html:

The Australian Aborigines speak of jiva or guruwari, a seed power deposited in the earth. In the Aboriginal world view, every meaningful activity, event, or life process that occurs at a particular place leaves behind a vibrational residue in the earth, as plants leave an image of themselves as seeds. The shape of the land - its mountains, rocks, riverbeds, and water holes - and its unseen vibrations echo the events that brought that place into creation. Everything in the natural world is a symbolic footprint of the metaphysical beings whose actions created our world. As with a seed, the potency of an earthly location is wedded to the memory of its origin.

The Aborigines called this potency the "Dreaming" of a place, and this Dreaming constitutes the sacredness of the earth. Only in extraordinary states of consciousness can one be aware of, or attuned to, the inner dreaming of the Earth.
"Dreaming" is also often used to refer to an individual's or group's set of beliefs or spirituality. For instance, an Indigenous Australian might say that they have Kangaroo Dreaming, or Shark Dreaming, or Honey Ant Dreaming, or any combination of Dreamings pertinent to their "country". However, many Indigenous Australians also refer to the creation time as "The Dreaming". The Dreamtime laid down the patterns of life for the Aboriginal people.

Whales & Guitars

The grass has whales inside it, tiny whales with experiences. the whales swim up and between rungs of the water or space ladders. dimensions perhaps overlap. a small green whale seeps in from one dimension. that one whale is human. oh shush you haven’t found any whales at all! way back in time before written or spoken words it meant something to stand up and sing. if you have a voice, be like a whale, or be like a finger. the really good whale is laughing; the good trees have big gaps between leaves. that’s where the whale laughter floats down.

Roots of What Leaps/ A New Person

Together what I am is love for food and minutes
In blue chair yonder sits one river and one (blue) heron

(just kidding)

They have a companion:

She, what leaps, has just climbed on the boat I can feel her senses. It’s me with senses!
Weird, huh? I can feel her sensory organs.

Pure poop of a sentence, edges and angles.
Like eyes spreading out.

We are in mystery dreamtime trace of what is equal to the air.

My brother is on the boat, and has the face of the blue ocean
And I know I will be grass one day, scattered, various, going up.
This is equal to how my soul is right now, on some level, shattered, but going up.

Pulsating, winking. My soul! My body outside here doesn’t show this. See; look.

The boat itself has the face of a butterfly, pure poop.

But here is where I am shattered through it again!

It appears I am one thing but really I am all of this swimming fantastically around.

The only way is to be grateful for any abundance—
My face which equals my brain and the air, says lie in light and be summer be light.
I will try to be summer be light though my eyes are spreading out and dissolving—

See how the grass turns into loops as it hugs my barefeet? See how I'm crushing small green whales?

On the boat there is grass growing! A field, growing in the wooden boat—
And she, what leaps,
stands up, sings songs, looking ahead,
untroubled and riding

sudden storm & whalelet [aug. 9 in for aug. 8]

2011-08-09T21:03:00.000-07:00

yesterday we had a sudden afternoon rainstorm. then at night my computer got frozen! so i could not post. but i did write a little bit about a creature i've named a whalelet. or a whelky. or a seed whale. half-whale half-person. for the Awesome Poem Group that i meet up with lately--the assigment being to write about a fantastic creature in an ordinary setting. i don't think that's what i did, but i did something. notes. everything, everything is notes.

The Whalelet, The Seed Whale, and The Whelky

Weird, the whalelet and the seed whale and the whelky—

The whalelet dined on flowers.

The seed whale ate star matter.

The whelky caught brilliant muddy bubbles while lying on his side—

The whalelet came to openness as a result of his nutrition. As a whale, he sat painlessly under trees. He waited for sudden rainstorms to come along and blow the leaves out of the tree. His favorite feeling was when wet leaves were stuck all over his skin.

The seed whale discovered his talent was connectivity, as in electric star currents and building blocks. He loved watching the snow carry the moon because that is what it did. He was invisible. He’s invisible still. He is not visible.

The whelky, funny, came to emptiness as a result of his eating habits. As such, he sang a little song:

If I let myself, I will be let
Trees are letting us let ourselves
Someone or something created that
I am shards of proudness

I will let you and let you again
The open wideness the wideness opens
I have disappeared into what reappears later, leaping
And I will let you leaping let you leaping let you—letyouletyouletyou, leaping

Sudden mind.
Let go.
Good retreat into ebb & flow!

2011-08-07T21:59:00.000-07:00

I have been working on this assignment from McIntyre: Please write a poem about the places you have been but no longer are.

These are some notes, in which I am jamming together sentences, making paragraphs, and thinking about places as emotional places; you will recognize the last paragraph from yesterday's post. Notes! By the way, yay, I've been doing this, keeping it up for a week now, and it's been so good for me, for my writing mind, so thanks for indulging me;;;;and now, Notes!:

Sentences and Paragraphs

It’s a lot different to be in the room with a dead person even if they can’t talk. Even bees breathe. I am looking forward to painting and drawing with Finn this afternoon. This feeling is a place where I have been. Another place is self-awkward and not writing a children’s book. A struggle with never thinking lightbeams only thinking scritch and what else do I know. Center of everywhere, center of friendship, the crickets in high grass, get back to the making that is just for the joy of it, get back to the new kind, after difficult places.

Where have I been that I no longer am? What is a place, now? Place, place, place. Place where I am now: place where I no longer am.

No longer am I in an ocean or a sea. I have been in places like that.

I have also been in a situation in which I feel uncomfortable and compromised when I should simply be so full of love. Nervous breakdowns,low-grade depressions, anxiety and stress, moving once or even twice a year, upheaval, no money, crisis in parenting and being an authority and being kind and firm at the same time. Crisis in loving each other. These are places I have been. I have hung on a linden tree branch in labor, staring at a clinging cicada shell. And I have been to the place in that dream I had with windows.

First the moon came closer through the trees until you could touch it. Then came the bubbles streaming off in symmetrical cityscapes at the top of the grass. Next came a whale upstream—appearing like a grey and blue sun around the bend, and then jumping over a rock, into the field with the compass plants. It could have been where we stood two minutes ago. Therefore be bold and present.

Therefore (aug 6)

2011-08-06T23:53:00.000-07:00

River of Whales

First the moon came closer through the trees until you could touch it. Then came the bubbles streaming off in airy rows and cityscapes at the tips of the grass. Next was a whale appearing like a grey and blue sun around the bend, and then settling on its side into the field with the compass plants. It could have been where we stood two minutes ago. Therefore be bold and present.

oort (aug 5)

2011-08-05T23:45:00.000-07:00

aware of the oort cloud

airy chambers in each ear, this hairpart fraction of daylight, having given what may occur what may occur. blight of wheat, breath change, monocrop, the birds flying low over the house, each motion, the pig genes in the corn plant, anything like seeds, the smart solid sun, the haiku of a sunflower, boy child, semen, cement, dirt, pumpkin seed, earth, comet, gravel, sulfur, corn, growth, sunflower, weed, cracks, grass, the sun. makes sense in a circle the magic of each hair told what to do by something. brain at the center of breath.

whale is called by a voice/ ashes of the soul is a potato [aug. 4]

2011-08-04T23:06:00.000-07:00

Katie’s assignment:
"My poem assignment to you is this: A whale is called by a voice, surely it is her true love or something beyond love. She is called from the ocean to swim up a river and the waters become ever more muddy and shallow and the banks become more narrow and slowly, slowly she carries on, fueled by ardor, by hope."

I love this one and I am going to work with it for awhile. As you know, I love thinking about whales and writing poems from their (emotional and sensory)perspective. Yay! So here are two different poem-things I've been working on, from this prompt (2 formed notes with titles:):::::::::::::::::

0000000

now i will catch and be caught by a whale.

when i was born, let me tell it.

and remember the room, liquid , the people, hands
remember my circle came, settled and was myself. i was 5. had felt bad and went to him
his head thrown back and dead. i was born while it was snowing. and is confusing.

death is not the border of love.

----------------------------------------------------------
River Whale

The flowers are in my mouth and the stems taste like fish faces
A greeny fern gets me
That’s how you are and I am lonely
I sit with my loneliness in my blood
Like a wolf listening to a tree
And it sounds like wood

castles, a cat cake, and dreamtime birthday haikus [aug. 3]

2011-08-03T23:23:00.000-07:00

finn's third birthday: he has an ear infection, conjuctivitis, and a chocolate catfaced cake.i, his mother, have stayed up late working on haikus for the poetry group i recently joined which meets tomorrow:::::::::::::::;;

birthday in dreamtime 1

face of an old tree is the rain
separating strands of the moon
into what happens

birthday in dreamtime 2

down from the moon comes a baby ladder
it is the mother of our boat
our boat is all we have and it has a ladder also
dangling from its bottom like a root
(it is seeking as it dangles down, to touch a whale)

birthday/dreamtime 3

I was a calf, a baby whale, and a foal
and you were my mother
searching for me with your face and licking me clean
roots dangling from your tongue and teeth
everywhere the smell of earth everywhere
mushrooms popping up in the corners of your mouth

birthday/dreamtime 4

I am in the boat with my imagination, courage, and breath
you are one person I love and when I make a noise to greet you
it is the deep noise of whales

birthday in dreamtime 5

now there's a ladder, strong and invisible, from the boat to the sycamore
from the sycamore to me
I want to be within this changing meaning changing

birthdaydreamtime 6ish

does a thought itself have thoughts?
frozen pea on the floor,
I should be so full of love.
I should be so full of love
who have been made free by the sun and the moon and the clearness between

house notes-thoughts; still life:--tomatoes, photo in white frame, queen anne's lace/light/ dust, mopped kitchen floor & amazing kitchen witch [aug.2]

2011-08-02T22:46:00.000-07:00

codi gave me this starting point for working on a poem: "... how about a poem about those houses and moves. Possibly a physical description of each (maybe just a word), plus a descriptive word or phrase about an overwhelming feeling or experience from each place." and i have been working on that today. i listed the 23 houses by street name in chronological order and gave some descriptions for each. . . which got me thinking on the nature of houses & apartments--people moving out and in, leaving their traces and stories hanging in the air, their sounds melted into the walls:::::::::::::::::i'm excited for this poem assignment, think it brings rich possibilities!:::::::::;;

Shall I write about love in each house, how does love happen in each house? Think about the major things that happen in apartments and houses we rent out: we conceive children there, we fight, we kiss, we play, we make poems and songs, we sweat and breathe, we cry in our beds alone, we sleep, we hold resentments, we make food. I am thinking about what happens in houses.

A house. Dangling for hours like a thread in dreamtime above my head—
And what will I do when I don’t have any money, yellow bee?

What should I do now that Finn calls cicadas morning bugs?
What about our backbone’s elbow,
Our gift of anything,
This boat that is full of us?

What if each house was a boat?

I want to make each house a boat.

Each house is a boat: each house is a boat: each house is a boat (23 times).

But can there be a place where everyone is?

Can anyone tell me where?

Come forth and speak.

"But the space of birth is who I am now.

Birth is my boat now, still, even though three years ago."

I planted him; I pushed him out; a full growing tree; cicada’s eeee-eeee.

Three years ago right now it was storming and Finn was brewing in my body:

Tomorrow, three years ago, I stand, dancing out a full hip-swaying contraction in direct August sun, next to a clump of tall sunflowers.

peaches & animal friends picnic & notes for poems [aug 1]

2011-08-01T22:33:00.000-07:00

Notes from today (arrows to poems?):

The whale says, now my head is between trees instead of water

Blackberry blackness and the whale chatter of birds in Iowa

What we have is the summer, to change in

and the dreamtime urgency of bumblebee

Walking away, I will just nod my head lovingly and say I see I see, I see that you are feeling this way. . .

The roots are praying for something as they grow down, seeking

I love lumbering things

I only know where things begin, not where they were before

This whale I'm becoming! if I try hard and close my eyes--
Soften soften--

I want happiness but it will a new kind, kind that comes after difficulty and fire and troubles.

Every single person's belly is rising and falling as they rest like birds asleep on the earth, in a crook of earth

in the book of hours a translucent wing pasted to each page

and also:

2011-07-31T14:24:00.000-07:00

also, thought i'd show you our new house:

and here are some scrap garlands i started to cut out, for decorating a three-year-old's birthday party purposes:

(who knows if i will really get it done. . .)

and i've been painting things i'm grateful for on pieces of sycamore bark. not sure why. may be making mobiles for faraway friends, mobiles that are really too delicate to send in the mail:

finn at the county fair, which was fun but also depressing, since all the animals were so very hot and uncomfortable. . .

the summer things

2011-07-31T14:17:00.000-07:00

other summer things we have been doing. . .

--sitting on this front porch swing at our new house. . .

--making lists of what to do/ trying to be deliberate/intentional. . .

--completing the summer reading program from the public library. . .

--reading lots of new books with great animal paintings--that i have been finding at the awesome crowded closet. . .

--eating watermelon in wagons. . .

finn (and blueberry) in blueberry land. . .

2011-07-31T13:50:00.000-07:00

sum-sum-summertime and we went blueberry picking! at noon on one of the hottest days. so then we went to the splashpad, of course. i freaking love summer and am just trying to be really really in it, savor it, like frederick the mouse in that leo lionni kid's book--i'm trying to save up the colors and warmth and poems, for the winter days. . .and also just for the sake of now.

thanks so much for the amazing poem ideas that you commented & emailed me with, from that last idea! post. i LOVE this. and in august (tomorrow) my plan is to post everyday for the first three weeks, august 1-21. . .i'll post a poem or notes from the assignments you gave, as well as updates on our summertime, with photos. yay!

love blue

p.s. you know why the title of this awesome elsa beskow book is so funny and fitting:

idea!

2011-07-09T18:51:00.001-07:00

(O I have effortlessly stolen these images from all around the web. . .none of them are mine, you see. . .)

I am in the middle of what I have dubbed "Writing Week". Finn is at his Granpa's with his papa. It's been 4 days, I haven't done any writing, and I miss Finn terribly, it is kind of terrible! But it's also good I know I know! I do need this, also desperately. O contradiction always.

The first three days I had to teach--so that wasn't nice to count it as Writing Week. And on the second evening I got sick with the fever that Finn had on the 4th of July, and so the next day, the last day of the Comp class I've been teaching, I had to cut it short, as I still had a fever. Then, yesterday, came home after that class and stayed in bed all day and night again. But! This morning, 4th day of Writing Week, woke up feeling good finally,unpacked things around the house, unpacked my desk stuff especially, notebooks, washed clothes, hung them out to dry, dug a small garden patch, worried that it might be too close to the house and that the house might have lead paint on it--in essence, I did no writing. I did not write one poem.

I thought alot. I mean, sheesh. This is the longest time I've had to myself in three years. (I think that's probably why I got sick too--like the sickness you get on vacation, right, after finally letting yourself relax after stress, you know?)

And you know what, maybe that's all I need, just to think, that's like the pre-writing, just lying down, thinking. Or walking, gardening, hanging clothes out, whatever.

My friend (and fellow blogger and fellow poet) Melissa once wrote to me, in a snail-mail letter, that, on an evening she had all to herself to write, she started crying as she started writing, because she had been "so strenuously avoiding it". That's a little bit how I feel right now. And that's why I mention it.

I also mention it because I am thinking about the nature of friendships, and community, and blogs. And the ways we share ideas, now. Melissa and I started our blogs (of the same name) at the same time together, shortly after we had both become moms. We weren't sure what our days would look like as our babies grew to toddlers (and beyond), but we were pretty sure we'd have to be satisfied with recording the small things of our days, the small things, like one basil plant starting to grow. One toddler's new dress. A poem or a line we caught on.

Well I mean. I guess you know there are posts like the post in which Melissa announced the birth of Curran, her second baby. Not such a small small thing. . .no not at all. . .!

So here I am, strenuously avoiding writing poems by typing this up for my blog, small indeed, and whatever that can mean, now, in this context. I also,ironically, owe Melissa a letter, since she wrote me way back in January I think. But somehow since this blog is more for the general public it makes it easier to sit down and just type.

But is it for the general public? Really it's just my friends and family who read this, that's who this is for, really. My dears. So we keep up.

But still it is a constructed me, isn't it? It shouldn't be completely bare anyway. . .

And it's not that I'm strenuously avoiding writing to Melissa. It's just that the writing of a letter requires a different tone to the time, you know. One has to prepare and be purposeful and do it right and focus.

Another thing. I am here, in Iowa City, in the new house! Still camera-less, unfortunately. . . (Incidentally, this is Quinn-dog's 13th place of residence and she is 11 years old; Finnegan's 4th, and he's not yet 3--but almost!; I honestly cannot count how many places I have lived--in my adulthood, since leaving the parent-house, let's see, okay, this is my 23rd place since age 18. . .and I,I,I am 34. . .)

This makes me think of my friend Codi, part-owner of the awesome Home Ec--another place that has been a great community-center for me in the last 3 years. It makes me think of her because her thesis project is (and she is still completing it, I believe) that she will make an art piece in which she embroiders all of the houses she has lived in.

Yes awesome.

Also.

Most of you, because you are my friends, know that I have been in a rather stuck and sticky place this past year or so. Kind of crisis-like in ways. No need to get into all of that, except to say things are getting better, on all the levels, & so that is good.

But there's this one lagging level. . . I'm at a stuck place writing, you see. And again again there's no use even getting into that except to say::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::PLEASE EVERYONE LISTEN, EVERYONE WHO EVER READS THIS BLOG LISTEN I HAVE AN IDEA!

My idea is that each of you will give me an assignment to write a certain poem, and write down the instructions for that poem in a comment that you leave here. Kind of like Yoko Ono's assignments in Grapefruit, but with the idea that there's a poem at the end of it. But it's really wide open:::just give me an assignment, an abstract idea or rigid stipulations for a poem that you'd like me to write.

Oh man I would love it if everybody who ever reads this thing commented with a poem assignment, even if you never have commented! Or if you feel shy just email me the poem assignment. That is fine of course and no pressure my little seedlings!

(And since I just called all of you seedlings, why then I just thought of how I would love it if the poem assignment you gave me had something to do with seeds, midwives, babies, mothers, wizards, psychopomps, rivers,love, whales, or fathers. But really anything! anything!)

And all will ultimately be done in the spirit of this blog, small things, friendship, love, astonishment, ideas/projects/dreams, us supporting each other. . .

And then, for awhile, since I am camera-less, I will be posting these poems that you have assigned me to write,after I finish writing them, here on this blog. I will probably also post about other writing things too, a little bit more, as I do this project (in which you are involved! yes you!). O idea, idea, idea. . .

Then who knows what happens next! I do not.

love blue

yarrow and my eye (just sayin hi)

2011-06-27T08:52:00.000-07:00

hi-----

-----i am in the middle of moving and just saying hi! indeed i am in my old bedroom with nothing but this computer and a stack of books, gradebooks, notebooks(for teaching with you know). . .for the internet is on here but not there. you see?

-----last night, in the backyard of our new house, i sat on the stoop and just watched the fireflies. it was a stormy night. it was beautiful.

--more later, with pictures.

---happy summer

(I am) fortunate, various, full, & finding a new way

2011-06-12T21:13:00.000-07:00

Slowly slowly I am shedding myself. Have you ever felt this? My curly crusty old skin came off and now I'm this. Or. What is it? I don't know; I don't know if it really happened. Maddening! Here are my tasks for this week:

And:::::Superman can only be blurry! And check out the black rocking chair beyond him--'twas found free on the roadside----

Flip to this fact: moving again. Here are the colors I have chosen for this new place: Songbird for living room, salmon for my bedroom, almost aloe for Finn's------and here's to new things, and what shall be new, and even though there's no such thing as new, if you think: matter is neither created nor destroyed (and always really old------)but old is not the opposite of new!

Did I mention that today I feel new? I feel new. It's oddish, like an awkward baby bird whose wings are too big, thus causing an off-balancing and a tottering and a falling over and a getting up (several times). Well I feel new, odd. (Roethke: "I'm odd and full of love"). It's also good, a lift--a mood lift--I've been eating lots of veggies and taking fish oil pills and exercising--and eating much less sugar. Perhaps it is working?! After not eating sugar for a few days, I did notice, upon eating some chocolate, that sugar is a crazy drug. I've also just been letting go, letting go, letting go (notions of control). Again, perhaps, perhaps it is working!?Here, Finn and I paint on the porch; this also feels good; this was this morning, Sunday morning:

Hey and! New blue notebooks, came in a pair, & now it is time to write please yes. (come on, all expenses paid 2 week writing retreat??!! . . . need it.)::::

Oh, at the farmer's market, up in the tree:

And making a tofu-garlic scape stirfry, market bounty:

Feeling fortunate to shed who I am and walk into the new and not new. Feeling various, feeling full of the mystery and thinking about love all the time. (Don't understand it.)Feeling blessed by that boy who is growing, growing--and just trying to stay present for that, and that, and that. Self! Who? Guitar! Doesn't Finn look like he is 5?!

Thanks for sharing with me this strange place of pause and stretch before lots and lots of changes--(some of which already have happened, making them new and not new. Not quite born yet alive already you know--slow, like summmer. I will simply sip, and notice, and let go into it.)

(iowa) boy in green hills and corn

2011-06-12T20:48:00.000-07:00

today we had the fun of visiting a friend's aunt's farm 20 minutes outside IC:::::::

waves and sayings and the world (randomly created this title by poking my finger 3 times in a wm. stafford book)

2011-06-02T21:43:00.000-07:00

finn loves batman!:::::::;;

on a recent visit to the springfield zoo::::

this is a place down by the iowa river, a place i love:::::::

at grandma & grandpa's, finn got to play with the old legos which are so cool, really:::::::

light catch in grandma & grandpa's kitchen, morningtime (rainbows going all over as we swing the prism)

2011-06-02T21:07:00.000-07:00

from my life (or: my life, a visual argument) (or, the rhetoric of small things)

2011-06-02T20:56:00.000-07:00

wine, candle,notebook+ a teaparty last week + finally planted veggies+ stack of books savored + new hanging plant= magic, evening

2011-05-18T20:11:00.000-07:00

day of phlox + day of monster in violets + day of walking on the trail= love feelings in skin

2011-05-18T20:02:00.000-07:00

finished quilt + dandelions+ violets+ planted basil= a good day

2011-05-18T19:55:00.000-07:00

Everything Hard is Blessing Us (been collecting some wisdom, some star-seed. . .)

2011-05-03T13:47:00.000-07:00

i still have no camera, and it is making me sad. soon the semster will be over and i will get a new one, i think. in the meantime here are some things that have been affecting me quite a bit; been doing some reading on buddhism & the like & of course poems: books that are quoted from down below: "buddhism for mothers" by sarah napthali, "when things fall apart" by pema chodron, "coming to our senses" by jon kabat-zinn,"ten thousand lives" by ko un, "firekeeper" by pattiann rogers.

happy may!
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

"It may be when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey."
--wendell berry
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

"Accepting the mystery in life, refusing to jump to our usual automatic conclusions, a humble attitude of not-knowing--these are what help us to be open and sensitive in all our interactions."--sarah napthali

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

"When you yearn for things that you cannot name and you grieve not knowing the course, be certain that you are growing as all things that grow, and rising towards your higher self."--kahlil gibran
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

the "vein of gold" is "the area in which you are most truly yourself and from which your gifts and interests mesh and interact most smoothly and powerfully."
--julia cameron
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
poem by Pattiann Rogers::

The Family Is All There Is

Think of those old, enduring connections
found in all flesh--the channeling
wires and threads, vacuoles, granules,
plasma and pods, purple veins, ascending
boles and coral sapwood (sugar-
and light-filled), those common ligaments,
filaments, fibers and canals.

Seminal to all kin also is the open
mouth--in heart urchin and octopus belly,
in catfish, moonfish, forest lily,
and rugosa rose, in thirsty magpie,
wailing cat cub, barker, yodeler,
yawning coati.

And there is a pervasive clasping
common to the clan--the hard nails
of lichen and ivy sucker
on the church wall, the bean tendril
and the taproot, the bolted coupling
of crane flies, the hold of the shearwater
on its morning squid, guanine
to cytosine, adenine to thymine,
fingers around fingers, the grip
of the voice on presence, the grasp
of the self on place.

Remember the same hair on pygmy
dormouse and yellow-necked caterpillar,
covering red baboon, thistle seed
and willow herb? Remember the similar
snorts of warthog, walrus, male moose
and sumo wrestler? Remember the familiar
whinny and shimmer found in river birches,
bay mares and bullfrog tadpoles,
in children playing at shoulder tag
on a summer lawn?

The family--weavers, reachers, winders
and connivers, pumpers, runners, air
and bubble riders, rock-sitters, wave-gliders,
wire-wobblers, soothers, flagellators--all
brothers, sisters, all there is.

Name something else.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

(paraphrased) from pema chodron's book When Things Fall Apart,
here are Three Methods to Deal With Chaos & Difficulty:::

1. no more struggle:::::::meditate; relax as is; accept; work with the monster in your mind; say "hi demons it's wonderful you demons came!"

2. poison as medecine:::::::use difficult situations as fuel for waking up; feel the bad things, breathe them in, breathe in others' pain as well, and let it out on exhale; tonglen meditation (take your hurt and turn it to love)

3. regard what arises as sacred, a manifestation of wisdom::::::world is sacred; instead of looking for something else, work with what is
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

poem by Ko Un:

Hui-ja

With hands still wet from washing dishes, she goes out
to the black alder grove, and cries to her heart's
content until

her dead mother's face appears. Star-seed sprinkled in the
sky, stars appear.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

two things i love the most

2011-04-12T16:12:00.000-07:00

i have been putting two birthday packages together for two dear friends since february! but i think, i think i may be able to send them off this week, actually.

as a result of package-putting-together activities, today, i got to do something i love so much:::which is, listen to a mix that i made, all in a row, deliciously. . .and! while listening, was able to do another thing i love almost more than anything else ever::::paint on the porch with my boy, on a gorgeous blooming sunny day:::::::(and, even got to document it which i also love! ((using the old camera since we still can't find our camera)) )

love to all of you and may you do things you love nearly all the time!

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
update on my situation:: i didn't get the job. . . but i'm not crushed and in fact excited, trying to see it as opportunity to figure more things out. . . so don't worry about me and thanks for all your positive thoughts sent my way. . .

a blessing, love images

2011-04-03T11:11:00.000-07:00

i wrote this in my notebook this week:

"When I have forgiven myself and remembered who I am, I will bless everyone and everything I see." (from where? i will find out, didn't write where in my notes)

i have also been compiling love images:

1. a pregnant belly being rubbed by a loving partner with coconut lotion
2. receiving three juicy letters in one day in your mailbox, from faraway friends
3. the room in which you were born, full of shadows and water and your parents when they were young, and alive, and welcoming of you
4. a poem written to you by your first love
5. planting violets in black earth with your 2-year-old son in April. . .
6. playing music with friends, eyes closed, listening to each other.

adjectives iowa everything

2011-03-23T22:05:00.000-07:00

today driving finn to the doctor hoping he didn't have an ear infection (he didn't: just his molars paining him) we crossed over the iowa river of course.

iowa river! finn said.

yes! i replied. and you live in iowa city!

iowa people!--he said, pointing at the iowa people. on iowa bikes! he said.

iowa crane! he said pointing at the crane.

iowa clouds!

iowa puddles!

iowa bells!

iowa sidewalks!

iowa mountains!

I also like this right now

2011-03-19T21:35:00.000-07:00

from William Stafford poem "Vocation"::::

Now both of my parents, the long line through the plain,
the meadowlarks, the sky, the world's whole dream
remain, and I hear him say while I stand between the two,
helpless, both of them part of me:
Your job is to find what the world is trying to be.

spring, soon::: & Super Moon to you!

2011-03-19T21:15:00.000-07:00

tonight the moon is the closest it gets to earth!

we have lost our camera, so these photos are from the video camera. . .

they are some bits and pieces from the spring break that has gone by, i'm afraid. . .

we went to the zoo;

we fed goats, who suctioned granola off the palms of our hands like anteaters;

sat on lions;

sat on dinos.

we got lost and crossed/re-crossed the mississippi river 5 times.

before all that, we had impromptu jump-on-the-bed sade dance parties with ellie & lauren.

now: now spring break is almost over and this soon-inteview that has been hanging over my head (my excitement, my nervousness) will soon be over. . .think good thoughts for me this tuesday--for that is the day! (and when i say day, i mean like all day--the interview is from 8:30 am to 3:30! gulp)

and then i will be on the other side of this thing called the applying/interviewing process for fulltime teaching. . .and just awaiting the news. . .

and hopefully back in better connection with the living & awesome parts of the world-

patience, patience.

(happy spring & happy super moon! & may you kiss a crocus as if you were an anteater)

Currently Blowing My Mind: Poet Ko Un. . .

2011-03-17T20:35:00.000-07:00

The Boy in the Cave

Each and every person’s eyes all shine in the sky.
The sea under the sky
is limpid through and through.
It seems the crying of countless newborn babes can be heard
emerging from the sea
230 feet down
260 feet down
that far down everything can be seen in the sea
limpid
limpid.

Above the sea the sun eventually sets.
It will rise again tomorrow.
Rise
and set again tomorrow.

Ah, the sunset glow over the whole East Sea!

Some hundred miles out from the shore
out in the East Sea’s open sea
amidst
the surging of golden, fire-hued sunset waves,
an island
now
beginning to breathe—
Ulleung Island.

Ulleung Island’s Taeha Cave.

There was a child
born at sunset.
Soon he had grown to be a boy.
Possessed by spirits, he would talk with the stars
when the wind dropped
he kept company with ghosts.
When one fisherman sailed out and failed to return
he comforted his sorrowfully weeping wife:
Your husband’s alive.
No one believed his words.
Nine days later the fisherman came back home alive.

In the evening sunset
spirits invariably came down into the boy’s face.
When night fell he kept company with ghosts.

He’s possessed, they said,
he’s crazy,
and in the end the boy was rejected by the village.
He can’t catch squid, they said,
he can’t row either
all he does is play with the stars
play with ghosts
forgetting errands he’s given
he reads and rereads old books
till they’re worn to shreds
he reads books that are no earthly use
out here in the middle of the sea,
he’s cursed with bad luck, they said
spitting as they spoke.
He was forbidden to go near the racks of drying squid.

His mother grieved.
His father often beat the boy.
Returning late
he’d beat the sleeping boy with a stick.
Finally he turned the boy out of the house, saying:
There’s no place here for any ghosts.
His mother wept as she dressed him in leather clothes.
Surei!
Surei!
My dear little Surei!
She sobbed.

The boy Surei was obliged to live in a dugout high in the hills.
He spent all the summer nights
bitten by gnats
bitten by mosquitoes.

In a dream his deceased grandfather appeared to him.
In his dream
he raised up the reclining Surei.
In his dream the beard, that had been black in his lifetime,
was a white beard reaching down to his breast.

Quick, go into that cavern further up.
There is your place.
There
you’ll find a book to read to your heart’s content.
A book containing tales of your great-grandmother
your great-grandfather
thousands of your ancestors.
A book where some day
will be written tales of tens of thousands of your future descendants.
A book you will have to read without end
is there waiting for you.
Get in there, quickly.

He woke from his dream.
The sea sunset was at its peak!
Gazing out at that blazing sea
that blazing sky
he called out:
Mother!
Mother!
Then he entered the cave his grandfather had indicated in his dream.

The moment he stood before the cave
the boy’s soul changed completely.
Every kind of ghost vanished,
every kind of nonsense was abolished.
He found himself with a quite empty heart,
a quite empty, blank-page soul.
He grew full of memories of tens of thousands of years before
presages of things to come in tens of thousands of future years.
All is limpid beneath the sea.
Surei gained a new soul from the darkness down beneath the sea.

A blind owl flew up above the cliff.

The boy Surei entered the cave.
At first he crawled forward.
Then he began walking.
Bats swarmed past him.
Surei advanced as though someone was guiding him.
He felt no trace of fear or uncertainty.
The familiartity of things new
familiar novelty.

Boom

The space inside the cave reverberated.

Boom
Boom
Boom

In the darkness a bluish light vibrated.

Boom

There was a stone slab
and on the slab a stone book.

Boom

The grandfather he had seen in his dream appeared then vanished.
From that day on young Surei
turned page after page of the stone book
and the cavern resonated
with the sound of his reading.

From that day on, whenever the boy
turned over one by one the heavy pages
one tale after another
passed ponderously over.
The world’s lives
the world’s joys and angers
all the world’s tales
the world’s deaths
tales of all the world’s sentient and insentient beings
one by one all those dew-like stories
one by one all those cloud-like stories
one by one stories
like flowers
like floods
like hurricanes
like breezes
like tears and laughter
so short-lived
so short-lived
and by that shortlivedness avatars of eternal nature one by one
every time he turned a page
passed over, without lingering.

Gradually the pages of the stone book grew lighter
light as butterfly wings
as dragonfly wings,
as leaves that dance as they fall.

The world’s time did not exist inside the cave.
No telling if it was autumn or no
if the winter had come and gone
when all the island cried out and howled
in blizzards
if the next year’s spring had come
if the wild poppies had blossomed and shed their petals
or how many years had passed.

In the outside world
one year went by
another year came
a century ended
another century came
a thousand years passed.

Because of you, this world is full of sunsets,
this world’s long-lasting long stories will never end.
This evening too the stories
of ten thousand lives, of people’s living and dying, will have no end.

At this moment the outside world is in the hair-ruffling wind.

Eternity’s young boy Surei! Eternity’s stone book that knows no end! Stone songs! Stone tales!

. . . . .

From Maninbo [Ten Thousand Lives], volume 30. Copyright Ko Un. Translation copyright 2010 by Brother Anthony and Lee Sang-Wha

more shadows and also scenes from birthday chaos life with surprise cookie at the end

2011-02-26T21:14:00.000-08:00

here is a letter to you, dear friends. thank for birthday wishes i am sorry i haven't replied to them yet-- if you in your busy lives have even noticed my lack of reply and lack of presence here on this blog (unlikely!). but here i am back for a brief window of breath and hello! the good news is the thing that has kept me super-busy up to today was the preparation of a teaching portfolio that is the equivalent of a first interview for a full-time teaching job i applied for at the college where i currently teach. it is exciting! also i received the news that i made it to this first tier of interviews last week! and then it was that by today i had to gather and order and contextualize those teaching portfolio materials! and i did manage to send it off today, by the skin of my teeth as per usual, after spending way too much time going through every single sheet of paper i've taught from and graded in the past 5 years. . .f***###!!!!^^@@!!!! actually, it was fun. but i am just slow at these things. i did my best. i did my best. and i was true to who i am as i completed, gathered, and wrote what ended up being a 60-plus page document. . .

on my 34th birthday i went with finn to the natural history museum and met w. & e. there, then went to lunch at delicious fairgrounds;;; and then did pleasurable errands like buying myself a star lamp i've wanted and a caterpillar/butterfly poster and an iowa native plants poster and a good speaker to play music through my computer;;;and a sleepytime cat made by a fabulous grace, and more than all this i feel rich and blessed! to be honest i was afraid this year i would be very sad on my birthday but indeed i was not:::the day in its ordinariness still had the special birthday feel.

here i am doing goddess pose as a shadow:: this is how you should think of me, how i am, at age thirty-four::::::;--;;;;::::::::::

then finn in this next shadow series runs up to me::::;

love of sun on water, sun on water, sun on water, changing things:::::

went to the kid's museum:::finn painted::::he painted a moving castle, which is the only thing he paints, talks, and thinks about:::he murmurs moving castle moving castle (no scary parts!) in his sleep (( howl's moving castle is his favorite movie))

also f & e played at the lego table, so did the mamas, because legos are the funnest:::::::

this is what my bed looked like on my birthday::::notice how new sleepytime cat loves to curl up with sleeptime owl:::::they love each other::::and we all love maira kalman, jon kabat-zinn, anne carson, h.d.& barabara guest and being uncertain as the main quality of our lives:::

the lamp i love::::

birthday room of chaos and strewn-about papers (which matches the surrounding decor of house with strewn-about toys, pee-d in pants and undies, dog pee, fleas, 55ish unread ungraded student papers, book piles, undone dishes with crust, and general pleasing hairiness with dirt salt and snow, perhaps a little more pee or snot, somewhere, and a poop cookie ((as finn said today--not trying to be gross, not even understanding really what grossness is--this was in the midst of our list of other kinds of cookies; we were making a list of cookies as we drove to home ec to get a cookie, dreaming of all the possibles: fig cookies,peanut butter, raspberry, chocolate chip, poop cookies))

and thus ends my letter to you my friends! it is refreshing to write and be back here with you! love blue

shadow-play and snowmelt creek::::::in days that the sun came out, last week. . . .

2011-02-26T20:51:00.000-08:00

we discovered so much at hickory hill park, this day last week which was a little window into spring. everyone got excited about spring. . .and then it snowed again, you know, last couple of days. i was going to get myself some tulips, said to myself: i must have some tulips for my birthday. today, went to get myself the belated b-day tulips, and they were a sad sight at our iowa grocery store, let me tell you: browned at the edges, sickly looking. no. instead i got the red berry-like flowers, not sure what they are called. but they are surely a february flower. . .and i was, after all, born in february. as were several amazing new babies, i've heard (welcome rowan! welcome curran! so glad you've arrived safely you little february baby boys!!)::::::

also, finn discovered his shadow in a big way in the park on this day. he really wanted to know where it went to when it was gone. it was interesting to try to explain how light works, and where the sun goes, etc. quite a job, this mothering thing! also yesterday finn put his arm on my lap and said, mama, play with my arm please (usually, it's some little animal that's plopped,and mama, play with this horse, or this dinosaur, please)

the latest in his bath documentary: bath at 2 and a half!

2011-02-26T20:38:00.000-08:00

the way we play, lately

2011-02-06T12:19:00.000-08:00

we play with hedgehogs in this dollhouse, picked up at a garage sale when finn was a little baby. . .& lately peter and i both add little embellishments; he's been fashioning paper fireplaces, clocks, fridges; i cut out little pieces of blue felt and made quilts, pillows, a rug--

finn is into the animal imaginative play now, so into it. he still plays with his trucks and cars, but now he loads them up with animals. or else he creates characters for them as well, always starting the conversation with something like "hi! are you? I am a car! want mac-n-cheese baby?" (ordino, penguin, cow, hedgehog, etc.) yes and his "how are you" is always missing the "how". . .

affirmations, drawings, creatures [there was a woman so ecstatic her belly was clear and you could see inside it and there were babies in there]

2011-02-05T20:58:00.000-08:00

i have found myself recently drawing lots of doodles with babies inside bellies;;; i kind of can't stop. it makes me realize how much i yearn for next baby, if ever there is to be one. not very soon--if ever there will be one--but o, not very soon.

it's okay. here we have winter going on. last night i listened to the show on "being" called "the soul in depression". . . i am going through lots of self-helpy steps towards getting out of mine. it is working! here are some of the results of some of the steps i've been going through--

blizzarded

2011-02-05T20:54:00.000-08:00

clearing out the old mind-webs (please indulge a long list)

2011-01-28T21:12:00.000-08:00

example of a list you might see here (33 for nearing the end of my 33rd year)
1 write a poem
2 apply to jobs for summer
3 go on an artist date
4 playdate or just hang out
5 finish f's quilt
6 write a children's book with l.
7 bake bread and quiche
8 walk or dance ASAP
9 shake and silence (yoga on thursdays)
10 write letters to friends
11 blog
12 write a list
13 write a poem every tuesday like m.
14 write a song every friday okay
15 begin collecting poems for children's book anthology
16 make children's album actually too
17 record things on my hand-held recorder
18 get some new books and music
19 organize everything for all classes that i teach (3 this semester)
20 make finn a happy corner and train pants
21 make sure everyone i love knows i love them and value them
22 find whale poster and miro poster (blue whale jumping out of water and miro’s blue i-iii)
23 paint with watercolors and then little line drawings on outside
24 finish & send thank you cards from the holidays
25 write out affirmations and quotes beautifully, and hang them on the wall
26 swim with f
27 find new pants
28 walk quinn all the time and love
29 finish all the books i’m reading it’s annoying to read things for so long
30 send out poetry manscript and hard earned cash to first book contests
31 finish cover letter for the full-time teaching job i’m applying for
32 finish c.v. too, boo
33 finish knitting projects and other lovely things for all the new friend-babies and cousin-babies on the (soon!) way

from here it looks like this

2011-01-28T20:20:00.000-08:00

dear friends, this is what it looks like these days all around my desk, which is in the upstairs bedroom now, which is my room (now). kind of self-helpy i guess. but, i like it here. i painted that "happy" on those cool little tiny canvasses, intending to make a happy calm-down-and-feel-good corner for finn in his room (also hoping to make a beanbag for that calm down corner) but well for now i have hijacked that happy and stuck it above my window, inviting some in, perhaps. otherwise these days i am trying to be okay with the unknown, with living in the unknown, more okay with it than i've ever been before, trying to kiss that unknown which is, in fact, unknowable. hee hee!

finn keeps talking about going to the seashore. i agree with that, i tell him. so, if anybody's got an ocean for me, send it over. yrs & kindly, a blue whale

dance boy etc.

2011-01-18T21:17:00.000-08:00

some things! like, we have been playing, outside & in~~~we even went to a "kid-friendly" music show;;;;;and finn spun around with fellow toddler noam through many songs.;;;;i pulled him in the purple sled to follow the trains in the gulley by our house;;;;AND! i made a bag for a friend's birthday that i've been trying to make for a year, exactly. and i think it took an hour and a half to make, or so.///what else? just finn playing naked with trucks. . .

my walk down a snowy street. . .berries birds & sky;;;white, black, red

2011-01-18T21:03:00.000-08:00

me & my senses went for a walk in the snow, to a friend's house to write with her, and talk:::::it was so beautiful. . .and all the birds were out, socializing and being themselves

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, be patient, love the questions,

2011-01-10T20:14:00.000-08:00

it's one of those times in life when words and ideas and poetry literally start to seem like bread; like i want to eat them; they are needed; beyond anything else; yes; it is like i need to eat them. how else can i explain? lately i have needed comfort and have taken comfort in the following:

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. . .Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." --Rilke

"Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese,
harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things"
--Mary Oliver, from poem "Wild Geese"

"Ecological studies offer a picture of nature less focused on the terrors of combat than on the dance of communal collaboration, a picture of the great web of being. Struggle and death have not disappeared from the natural world, but death is now understood as a factor in the ongoing life of the community rather than a failure in the life of the individual.
This transformation of images of reality--from fragmentation and competition to community & collaboration--has gone on in virtually every academic discipline for the past fifty years."
--Parker Palmer, from book "The Courage to Teach"

those are my comfort words, for now.

and then here are some things that have been happening in my house--

finn is in love with the show Pingu;; here, he watches little sister Pinga be born, for like the hundredth time

and i have begun and almost finished! a penguin-whale-nautical-stars-ocean quilt for finn! or maybe it's just a pieced blanket! nevertheless--

and, finn and i together made Quick Whole Wheat and Molasses bread--recipe from "How to Cook Everything"--and it was so yummy--fresh with butter and cinnamon and honey and peppermint tea--love!

comfort!

on getting rid of what isn't you (on being a self and what has changed me, in recent)

2011-01-10T19:28:00.000-08:00

still feeling new-yearsey! and thinking about self and things of the self on that kind of grand scale.

so i wanted to make a list of things that have changed me in 2010, all in good ways i think, for better or for worse:

1. yoga nidra (a sort of yoga focused on meditation; a class was offered during the holiday season and part of the advertisement for it was that 20 minutes of yoga nidra could feel as refreshing as 6 hours of sleep!)

2. the goddess pose in yoga (it opens one's hips in wild ways. for me, it was where so much tension and emotion had been stored for the past 2 years--since the tug-of-war i did with my midwife and birth team during the pushing part of labor. . .but, wildly, doing this pose in the class i took over the holidays released so much of that. now i do it everyday.)

3. the john o'donohue interview on the american public media radio show "On Being"

4. yoko ono's song "rainbow revelation", which i always think about (the idea of the transference of emotions--seems so hopeful like "bless you for your jealousy it's a sign of empathy")

5. finn's becoming his 2-year-old self;;;my subsequent turn-change-burst into being an actual parent, that of a 2-year-old. it took awhile for me to find my footing here on this parent-mountain but i will say slowly, slowly it starts to feel smoother; as others have said, i think it is all about keeping your sense of humor and silliness intact. . .it is also about being a good person, which is really really hard.

6. the Rosemary Wells book "Carry Me" (i think this kid's book is beautiful, tender, and amazing--"little blue light outside my door. . .")

7. reading poems to Finn from the book "Switching on the Moon", edited by Jane Yolen

8. thinking a lot about immanence, about being yourself, about acceptance, about postive parenting, about the idea of honoring each other. i get this idea of immanence from starhawk--it's the idea, as i read it, that the inherent value of the world is the world--that what is here, what we are living, is what we need to honor and value. (and, i might add, enjoy!)

enough listing! here are photos from the recent visit to grandma & granpa mcgregor's house:;;;like finn playing with this long-armed turtle--

and then there's this pink-face self portrait from the a frozen walk downtown in the first week of the new year--

Finn feeding the birds with his grandma. . .

of christmastime 2010 (the value of the world is the world)

2011-01-03T20:24:00.000-08:00

this year it is a relief the holidays are over, although we had some wonderful times. but: i want to just settle and feel good! can this happen? perhaps.

i am tired of writing lists, of telling myself the things i must do. instead, for a few short days, i was writing affirmations of things that i CAN do, if i so choose (it's not like i have to. these are just affirmations, see?). little encouragements, perhaps. or like the blue engine says, i think i can i think i can i thinkicanithinkicani think ican

AFFIRMATIONS FOR 2011

i can be myself
i can write
i can be patient
i can enjoy what i'm doing
i can learn new ways and tricks for emotional situations
i can create
i can read books that i enjoy reading
i can love
i can change
i can know myself well enough to change
i can imagine
i can build on acceptance
i can wait and work silently for good things to happen
i can sing

-------------
--------------
there was a beautiful snow on christmas eve in des moines; finn and i went out and played for a little while--

i managed to make a few things--i made finn this little felt mat to vroom his cars on; then i cut out some other embellishments for the mat; a fox, a lake, a fish, mountains, sun & moon, etc.!

finn received a potty present--new underwear, stickers and a potty chart--at his baba's house, he wore his undies on the outside of his pjs all day, like a superhero--

a couple other thingys i made for friends (along with a few things others made, as well!)--

and i am adding right here that this boy is wearing a beautiful scarf knitted by wendy;;;

random makings, heres and theres--in this first photo, finn and i drew the picture;; adrienne made the remarkable crayons!;

at the aquarium

2010-12-14T18:52:00.000-08:00

at the shedd aquarium in chicago, with mr. charming owen-pants! and much to finn's delight, we took the train to get there. . .

good december of small things

2010-12-07T22:30:00.000-08:00

what else? well, small things. like i embroidered this little train on one of finn's hoodies.

and i got a couple of new notebooks/ sketchbooks--and in them i am writing ideas for children's stories--it is something that, right now, i am actually finally doing and i feel the most excited about. the first story/ poem is called "places where the sun gets caught" and it's about things in november that are beautiful.

this is photo of my boxes and piles of fabric that i have not started yet started holiday crafting with yet. i am existing in a sort of state of paralysis, with long lists of things to make, and feeling unable to start at night after finn is in bed--which is when i could do it. you know but it's semester-end. probably one night, peacefully, i'll just start cutting and ironing and sewing methodically, like an elf. . .
happy boy with tree and excavator! (or elevator, as he calls it)

that's all & i am wishing a good december to all of you, of baking and writing and painting and sewing and knitting and whatever it is you do!
love blue

strands and bits of light and warm places;;squirrel squirrel popcorn string;;;poem [river]

2010-12-07T22:07:00.000-08:00

we've been looking for lights and warm places on our cold cold around-the-block walks;;;;we've been making paper chains and snowflakes and santas;;;;peter even strung some popcorn for the tree;;;;;squirrel squirrel squirrel squirrel squirrel!

here's a part of a poem, thinking about light and all and happiness:

I am watching me watching me with light showing piles of air layers inside it.

I have been running towards it.

I will hold this ship on my finger
To the right or left I will lean
I will not say anything
I will climb in the boat
We are all there
My mother
My brother
My sister
My younger brother
The midwives in their shadows
The psychopomp in grey finery
The seedlings sprouted in little pots
Myself
This notebook
My baby—now a child
Peter
All of the people who come to love us
The cycles of light, food, air water
The cycles of throwing up if you need to

I will hold this on my finger and enter it.
The form is too much and will be inside it.
Inside it the hypnotist

The language is short like
Nuts.
The language is doors or
Hairs.
The language is eyes in
Piles.

And I meant everything I said to the river
When he challenged me he sprung the light sponge-bits of floating bones to the surface
Here are your father’s bones!
Here is a water spider!
Here is everything made of light!
Here is the shadow across it!

That a river is aware of his body being entered—that a river has a body.
That it had a voice which was thinking of me.
That I could return it and say,
I have to decide where I am speaking from, river.
I have to decide what I am as I write.
I am sewing a tooth on my arm
I am repeating silk and grass, worm and moon, spider and dream. . .

The world bears us.
The world bears me.
It is all day long thinking.
The world wide web the world wide web.
The river is thinking
In fits and starts.
It is throwing stars into its brains and mixing it up at night when it can

I am mapping a river in the river
And it is answering itself
Which could be any number of things.

Which is like me. I had bleating and goat-like tendencies.
Everything is tender and new
I am a meaning of it
And I am in the present
So I can’t talk right now. . .

Why don’t you go outside. To recover
And can we talk? We are broke in her window
The spider walks to shore to show us all. It is not wrong to be gazing on life

I am the decision! I have the answer of who is your friend?

The future inside itself in the movement of my body

Poem poem poem in the river there are my father’s dogs, running.

He is catching these walls of no energy exhaustion
We are playing and being . . .

taking a bath in the third house [bath at 28 months with friends peewee boat and peter the whale]

2010-12-07T21:55:00.000-08:00

finn is really into his bath friends! he remembers their names and talks about them when he's not in the bath. it's also kind of awesome how he always names his myriad toys "peter" or some variation thereof, when i ask him the name. . .

also today at breakfast he started talking randomly about turtles. he said something like "turtle hungry, mama!" and i said "well what does a turtle eat?" and he said "rocks!"

the finn plus christmas tree series [after trimming the tree--]

2010-12-07T21:48:00.000-08:00

what i know about a true kind of education

2010-11-24T12:32:00.000-08:00

this is elly, with a "caterpillar" on her head:::::: it was one of my last days of babysitting her! we will miss her charm around this house::::but we will still see her plenty. . .
i got finn some new flannel car sheets in an attempt to get him to really, really love his bed and WANT to sleep there, and sleep through the night. . .something i am dreaming of right now; something that, towards which, i have had to really really reach for any patience that is in my soul. this is only the latest in a string of strategies in which we try to get finn to sleep in his own bed through the night; or at least only waking up once! who knew that humans would need to be taught how to sleep? when i think about it, it does makes sense. and also the fact that finn slept between the warm bodies of peter and i nearly every night of his life for over 2 years. . . and also the fact that we haven't been the most consistent of parents; we put the futon by his toddler bed and we would lie next to him; we put the futon sitting up and we would sit next to him; we put the futon next to his bed and he slept in the futon with us; we, finally, recently, relapsed into letting him sleep in our bed when he was sick. no wonder he is confused! now the strategy is, we took down his toddler bed and set up the futon as his bed, and we sit next to him holding his hand as he falls asleep. i still end up sleeping in his futon with him for half the night, but it is getting easier, and i just have to be consistent and patient. . this sleeping in his own bed, this is its own kind of weaning. sad and happy, sad and happy and difficult, all at the same time. . .

we went to des moines last weekend;; we are staying home and having our own little famiy thanksgiving this year. i wonder if it will feel a little lonely tomorrow? but i am looking forward to centering, starting on holiday crafts and gifts and decorations, and just being in our warm house together during this little oasis in our hectic semester (almost over now, really!). and also looking foward to baking! i am baking pumpkin pie and wheat germ rolls as well as roasting a whole local (kalona) chicken with rosemary and garlic and butter! i have never done that before. . .but i must say that in this whole recent period of my life--in which i am working so hard on centering, feeling okay, and feeling a sense of accomplishment in the here and now-- baking and cooking at the end of every packed week has been a real place for me to go to work meditatively and dissolve some of my stress-flames. where was i? oh yes, des moines. there's a new sculpture park there. . .this is one of the pieces, lit up at night. can't remember its title;; shall we call him the letter man?

been doing tiny bits of patchworking, here & there--

finn and his baba, as he calls him--

and i have been returning to this book, "positive discipline" again and again lately, working through finn's late-night hour-long fits, among other things! that is one thing to be thankful for right now: those fits seem to have subsided, for the moment.

i am also thankful for this kind of glimpse of returning faith that i have had lately;; i am regaining my faith in myself, and remembering that it actually doesn't matter--about teaching jobs, life-paths, money:::that it actually will work out and be fine:::::i mean as long as i can just keep my faith in what is most important to my being (faith that it will return):::that is, my faith in creativity and imagination. i think those are the most important things. my sense of exploration, play, and love. yes. and remembering my true education: my education in experiment, friendship, spontaneity, risk, humor, music, listening, improvising, expression as freedom, everything (even silence) as music, the IMAGINATION that is freely interacting and touching others' imaginations as blessed as blossoming, as my true education.

when i was experiencing my true education (and i think i still am, but the time of which i speak i was mostly in my mid-twenties) i learned to listen. to be open and free. to find and look for fresh powers of being and creating. this sounds nostalgic and glossed-over--and i am well aware that the times of which i speak also had their ups and very-downs--but bear with me, i am trying to get at something here--

this true education--it is a wellspring, i believe, that i can draw from, and it is one that i have faith in. i am thankful for it, and thankful for all of you, my creative friends and loved ones in your various forms, for helping me experience this. it is something i think of so much lately, and am so grateful for. i realize this all may sound vaguely abstract and/or vague. do you know what i mean, about true education?

there is one more way i could put it: my true education was a natural outgrowth of creative friends . . . it happened naturally; it was authentic. it is why i feel like a fraud at times doing anything other than playing music (especially teaching, applying for poetry contests, etc).

i have been doing lots of thinking on creativity itself, inspired by some random reading i've been doing (as in, grabbed-a-book-off-the-shelf). . . more on this later.

happy thanksgiving--

november branches november moon, boy plays drums in kitchen

2010-11-19T20:53:00.000-08:00

an anne carson poem for november

2010-11-12T10:09:00.000-08:00

God's List of Liquids

It was a November night of wind.
Leaves tore past the open window.
God had the book of life open at PLEASURE

and was holding the pages down with one hand
because of the wind from the door
For I made their flesh as a sieve

wrote God at the top of the page
and then listed in order:
Alcohol
Blood
Gratitude
Memory
Semen
Sons
Tears
Time.

some more halloweenyness and hello november you curling death month

2010-11-05T18:13:00.000-07:00

quite possibly we found the last dandylion::::and finn really did love his pumpkin bucket so much:::::::our house at night (especially on halloween) looks like this:::::::and then all the kiddos, wrangled up and on or near the steps of the porch!

i will now leave you with a passage from poet barbara guest;; it is sort of novembery, to me:::

". . .the body moved, but with a stilly motion the way a wave curls over a birthday where nothing remains except the foam streamers, like giggles after deep laughter, like death closing in."

he is a tree with an owl living in him

2010-10-29T19:58:00.000-07:00

yesterday i did no writing and instead made finn's halloween costume;;; (check it out A i have re-purposed that brown/orange sling you made finn as a baby! it is now a tree trunk!):::::::::there was a halloween parade downtown last night, and i finished the costume 10 minutes before the parade::::::::::::happy halloween everyone

p.s.he wouldn't wear the leaf-hat for long; halloween photos always seem to be blurs, isn't that so for the toddlers? however he did wear my wizard hat down to the parade. mystical tree wizard child.

heres and theres of our october

2010-10-26T18:46:00.000-07:00

shaving with papa:::

plan-pile for a shirt for f!:::

the very rudimentary beginnings of a love-quilt:::;

hey those little dreams do come true:: finally made this quilt-strip pillow (pattern is from "Handmade Home") for help with finn's no-more-milky (or was it to help me?)::::

THE ACORN MOON!!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::finn with uncles and papa and jack-o-lantern

kitchen window, green tomatoes (eventually made into fried green tomatoes by p.)::::::::

happy street name in my neighborhood:::::::

where the sidewalk ends is actually several places in my neighborhood! (the sidewalk just mysteriously disappears in the grass)

Like plants (astonishing thing) [and you cry]

2010-10-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

today i went to find books at the university library, and i found an astonishing thing. i found a book called "talking about death". this is a book that has been ingrained in my psyche since i was a child. my mom or another adult in my life gave it my brother and i when our father died. i poured over this book again and again as a very young child. it's those watercolor drips: that's what i thought death was. i couldn't read yet, you see. but this book is full of the kind of paintings that are pictured here. i think in my loopy proto-understanding of letters, i thought the word "death" itself was a watercolor painting; you see it so much in this book in this bold handwriting. anyway, i'm not sure what it means, but i'm glad i found this book (my mom couldn't remember what it was when i asked--she said, i know that we read elisabeth kubler-ross; so i looked up books by kubler-ross, and browsing nearby through the other 5 books dealing with children and death, i found this one).

of course i bursted out crying as i looked at the paintings and realized it was the one i'd been searching for--cries of astonishment really, at seeing these ingrained-in-my-child-brain images and dealing with the overwhelmingness as they encountered by adult-mush-brain. but this crying only fits with the week i've been having--i've been showing the documentary "food inc." in my classes, and i cry during class as i show it everday, in both classes-- (sheesh!inappropriate!)-- at the lame cows, at the child who dies of e-coli, at all of it, the food industry terribleness.

it's been that kind of week, a cry at the clouds week, a cry at anything remotely emotional you encounter week. cry, i say! cry with purpose and astonishment and plain old feelings, all the better that you may cry!

view from the afternoon porch where i did sit and read

2010-10-15T20:52:00.000-07:00

hey::in a tiny miracle, i managed to get finn to nap even when both kids were wide awake (and screaming at times, alternately and simultaneously). then, i went and sat on the porch, with sleeping baby ellie on my chest, and read a book for like 3 hours. it felt good--

trying to catch and keep light/ delight

2010-10-15T20:28:00.000-07:00

it has been a good week; it has been a good day! i have been feeling what i can only term delight! (alongside normal exhaustion, work, etc.) also the light has been beautiful, and i keep trying to catch it--in our backyard at sunset, or today at sunset in hickory hill park--

in this photo, notice how finn plays "fetch" alongside q-dog:

finn discovered this newly-mown path in hickory hill; we were both in love with that sublime delicious green hill, but it was barbed-wired off:

monster cat likes to hang out in the middle of the street and then i try to teach finn not to run in the street but of course his favorite thing is to chase monster saying mo'ster! mo'ster!

this was the closest i came to really really catching the october light i love, but i'm not satisfied:

don't you feel tired looking at the running boy? here are some calm toddler-less pictures, still trying to eat light-----

notes & thoughts of this day [needs popping up in short sentences/ susan howe/ soft belly]

2010-10-09T21:01:00.000-07:00

i need to clean this room, which i am so lucky to have i know, but it's hard for me to think in here right now. i need to link to this blog post that i am loving: http://jennifernew.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/ca-reer-noun/ [o happy thinking about mother-artists, us, how we do it, and we do do it!]. i need a candle for right now spirits to enter right here. i need to do autumn cleaning, i mean like shake dust out and get it aaaall right before winter. i need to be happy in october, my favorite month with my favorite light (and shadows). i need to be creative as in stand up and stretch. well my strategy was that i would list these needs/thoughts in staccato repetition in order to show how my brain shuts itself out & down and then sits there in helpless paralysis but so far this is unpleasant!!

so funny then, that lately i have been thinking a lot about positive thinking, how it can change everything and it is my brain-spirit's mixing with the air and thought of the world, but indeed i do control it [as in calling your child spirited instead of difficult] [or being grateful for what is now & good rather than what is past or maybe, & makes you feel bad] [as in, fears] [all of this also relevant to that blog post above that i linked to, as in tilly woodward: ". . .But what I really want, ultimately, it to give people permission to value themselves. . .when you confirm goodness you are taking an important step. When we confirm people's goodness over and over, we allow them to be that way..." ]

on friday we picked finn up from daycare and he had a 104 degree fever. he is okay now yes but it has been harrowing [especially i suspect because i'm not ms. seasoned mom who has been through a lot of illnesses with many kids. . .also a bit of a hypochondriac myself]

there are about 5 or 7 (or as finn would say, four, seeven, eight) old friends that i haven't spoken to in over a year: ;;;;;;;; my human-web:::i need to manage it more!! you know?

this is pitiful! well here are some notes i took excitedly, [i must say right here there are fewer things in the world that make me feel more centered than reading and taking notes, especially if it is a book that is just zinging with the things i need to hear, to buzz & hum and all that] and:

"A mother's thread or line is ringed about in silence so poems are"

"In what language shall I address you? Self-assertion by letter writing."

"October strips off cover and quiet conscience."

"A poem can prevent onrushing light going out. Narrow path in the teeth of proof. Fire of words will try us. Grace given to few. Coming home though bent and bias for the sake of why so. Awkward as I am. Here and there invincible things as they are."

[[above from Susan Howe's book The Birth-mark: unsettling the wilderness in American literary history]]

one final thought concerning meditation: in whatever form you choose to do it, simply taking some time to notice your thoughts, your breathing, and your body can open new passageways in your mind, i really do think. i especially love soft belly meditation: just do this, think soft on the inhale and belly on the exhale; do it only for 5 minutes, even, if that's all you've got----

good night, i'll imagine all your breathing bellies now as i fall asleep-----

or maybe i will stay up and sew a pillow------

or perhaps a

bag

or a

poem-thing

or
read

and draw
or clean
and

sing

10/3/10: on this day we said bye-bye to mama milk [ bittersweet bittersweet]

2010-10-03T20:26:00.000-07:00

file under: a perfectly bittersweet thing:::::::tonight we said bye-bye to mama milk. i think it is finally. we talked about it as finn went to sleep:::i said, you know i love you and will always cuddle you and hug you. and he said, yeah, very softly. i said, mama loves you so much and now it is just the time to say bye to mama milk. and he said, yeah, very softly again. and i said, you understand then? and he said yeah. and we held hands and i cried in his hair as he fell asleep. aaaah bittersweet f-in mamahood.

and right here i'd like to mention this phenomena: do your experience this:::the daydreaming thing as you lie with your child putting him/her down to bed::::this thing can get frustrating! ever since finn has been alive i have dreamed of doing so much that i will never be able to possibly do! are these technically dreams deferred, and if so where do they go? yet i do have the time/ dream-space to dream these things for i am often putting a child down for nap or bed! tonight's fantasy went like this:::well it was actually like i was scheming, putting this blog together all the while along with everything else::::i dreamed this: that the blog post would be all about finn's weaning, and this very perfectly bittersweet thing of my baby disappearing and becoming a boy, a wonderful boy indeed, but not a baby anymore:::;and also! i should help finn more, i fantasized, i should give him a coming-of-age party, a weaning party. . .i should make him a pillow with quilted strips with awesome robot and squirrel fabric on it.. . .and in that pillow i should embroider his whole name. . .and and and i should go downstairs and make some walnut spice muffins while i'm grading papers, and that way in the morning i will surprise him with muffins and talk a little bit more about how grown up he is, help him adjust to this change!! and maybe i'll get the pillow done tonight too. . .and record it all, all of it, on THIS BLOG!!

anyway, no muffins and no pillow yet, but here i am. . .

and it's not over there! he woke up as i was leaving his room (damn creaking futon!) and insisted i come back. i had been lying next to him holding his hand for quite awhile, as is our custom (though last week he went to bed 3 nights in a row on his very own!). and then it turned into one of these i was stuck in his room forever (papers to grade downstairs! papers to grade! and they were calling me, too, with their little baby voices) and he just wouldn't fall asleep and it became frustrating (after an hour and half or so) and so i had to give up and call on the papa, and now here i am, not grading papers, no, but writing this down right here right here (do you see where i am writing it??) right HERE!!! and thus continues our night of bittersweetness, as i tell you more about our day:

finn was apparently delivered in this package from australia, and when he popped out he said TA DAAA!! [he may have inherited his mother's performing gene]

and it was that earlier this day we went on our weekend walk in the gorgeous hickory hill park::::::

and i photographed this baby maple, which was the most glorious blazing thing, standing right in a patch of mid-morning sunlight, the earliest changer in the woods:::::

and now i may go grade those papers///or might just continue reading in "the spirited child: a guide for parents whose child is more intense, sensitive, perceptive, persistent, and energetic":::::::because really maybe i will find the magical sleeping key somewhere, the magical stress-reducer, the thing that makes magic in our lives and makes us magically understand each other's temperaments::::::and lastly i'd like to find the thing that creates more time [maybe that is just called turning your computer off??] bye!

love, b

october it is [new shapes of days]

2010-10-01T20:47:00.001-07:00

the days are going by.
there is much to do,
and busy-ness seems to blur all action,
to blur life as we live it!
i know you feel it too.
the shapes of our days
are changing a bit--
it's october, the sun sets sooner,
there's orangey light around.
my ideas for my self are always the same:
self, i say, self, you need:
1. good sleep
2. to exercise the demons out
3. to write

also to love, find purposes, all that.
to sing to my boy, to learn his new ways of playing.
for did i mention: everything is new with him!
he is talking all kinds of talk,
he is throwing all sorts of fits,
he is helping his doll-babies go potty
and giving them stickers (just as we do
for him)--
he is loving a book called "billywise"
about an owlet learning to be brave enough
to jump from the tree and fly--
he is helpful and shreds the lettuce for taco night.

how can i pay attention to everything all at once?

this week, wild, p. & i went to madison: the kiddo stayed home with the sitter! my first night ever away from him!
we saw the national, who have been mentioned on this blog before, at the orpheum theater in madison. i realized driving up there that it was the same place i saw ani difranco when i was 18 or 19. i mean like you know 15 years ago or something.

anyway, onto other random bits of the past week or so:

the sun shining on a lake in madison, from car window:

some slender flowers off the path in hickory hill park:

finn looks at a creek in hickory hill:

i bought a yard of this awesome tree fabric:

what are you doing except entering a cloud

2010-09-22T21:52:00.000-07:00

hi i have been gone from this blog for so long! things take long to get done! i was caught in a downpour downtown this week; then i went into prairie lights and bought a new book, and i love the first poem so much in this book. i will not type out the whole poem here! this is merely a part! (it's by nathaniel tarn and called "Pursuit of the Whole & Parts):

what are you doing except entering a cloud
so that your task is to become ever more pure
until no shred of remembrance of any part remains with you
and thought of any part immediately drowns into the whole,
[the thought or apprehension of the whole]--and you are
now so desperately wretched and one-sided. No, it is the
stubbornness, the innate cussedness [and stubbornnes] of the part,
any part, [any part whatsoever], dropped by circumstance
into a consciousness, [birth taken in a consciousness]--
as part of a whole, you understand, you cannot,

[absolutely cannot] do without that part-enabling whole.
It is that stubbornnes which links you to the moment,
to the circumstantial existence of yourself in time,
as if you were a note in music, or a bird
in a flock of birds disappearing into winter
and the moment is the only thing you truly possess,
can every possess, the very definition of possession
and that possession is the possession of a part, a part only,
indeed the moment [the very moment], is nothing but a part,
and never yet of a whole. (. . .)

*i keep wanting to make posts and talk about happiness and epicurus and this stuff we've been discussing in my classes (i'm excited about it) and also how finn is going through a wild willfullness at the same time as he is doing so many new cool things and just becoming himself and how today was such a hard day and i almost lost it and i yelled! but! i have to teach tomorrow in the a.m.! i cannot talk about these things or anything!

happy autumn!

in the tree/ woodsy/ mama-heart-melters (finn + adelaide on the lookout for baby deer)

2010-09-09T18:51:00.000-07:00

oh, these little people, looking rather like elves as they climb in a tree insisting it's their "house" and holding hands for a well-photographed heart-melting bit down the path in the woods, and throwing pinecones in the lake, getting muddy, throwing their tantrums too of course (that's the un-photographed bit--doesn't usually show up on blogs! see that happy refreshed looking boy? the night before this traipse in the woods he had an hour-long midnight temper tantrum, who knows why, and continues to have them now, through awake and not awake hours, i guess the terrible twos they call them?? i know, i know, it's developmental. . . .still come on finn we do have to put your pants on if you want to go to the library! ((etc)))

i was excited to go to the woods on this day with such company--shana and adelaide and finn--and i must say i am doing all these fall things early in my excitement!! i was remembering last year when we walked in the yellow-leaved woods of this same place, squire point. but, it's a little early yet for leaf-changing; still it was so beatiful in the last greens of summer, on a 70 degree day. and i am still making pumpkin muffins and some butternut squash soup this weekend. i want to! for i love the autumn! and i will go apple picking too, and make applesauce, if i have to squeeze it out of my eyes, with cinnamon and toasted nuts and footie pjs and all the good autumn things, so!!

pants is happiness! (on a growing boy)

2010-09-07T19:56:00.000-07:00

what you will see on this post are many many photos of finn wearing the pants that i made him. i made them from the "quick change trousers" pattern in the new book by anna maria horner--(thanks mom for sending me the pattern!!). i am very excited about these pants! it's something about reversible pants--i mean, come on. yes. and then of course i am brimming to make a billion more; it's so fun to pick out the different fabrics, like making a quilt.

oh right but first a quick shot of my loves:::::

alright, on to happy pants:::::::

p.s. that plain fabric (the linen-y off white)used to be a sling in which i carried the boy--

on the nature trail, and in the spirit of the small things (wispy, curly, feathery, tangly)

2010-09-03T21:24:00.000-07:00

lemonworld, or, this post's for lauren and her beautiful baby ellie (the birth of small things)

2010-09-03T19:40:00.000-07:00

dear friends, today i found some writings from the week before and the month after finn was born. i realized as i was reading them that this blog was born out of those writings. this first long passage i wrote the week before finn was born:

To be a mother: acceptance of a certain death of myself (accept that i will die for love). alice notley says something like "i believe in the debt to nature: sex, children, death."

acceptance of small and big things that i (will) do with the minutes of my life. acceptance (needed) of the very smallest things: dailiness.--to enjoy life even in its lonelinesses. even in its overwhelming fullnesses.

let things surface, like water does. eventually it will float up or be waved to the shore. i was (am)what is called a late bloomer. i understand curling tight until absolute ripeness.--principles of creativity. some things have to fight for survival (the girl's hand on the skull in candlelight). you don't want to be rushed. you're born when you're ready. what is the word for body, mind, instincts, soul, all together? what is the word for the one complete mechanism? is it possible to finish thoughts and not be anxious?

i accept the small things--the just-one-form of the flower.
i accept the small things--without glory, attention, without even a self.
i accept the small things: one step one breath.
i accept the small things: one glimpse of the moon.
i accept the small ways--small motions we must adhere to: feeding a child. one hair on the raspberry that must be plucked.
i accept the small things: one beat, another beat inside that.
the small things: an organism.
i accept what is small: that i must let my life be quiet, too, let it breathe in sound and not constantly take part in the grand scale.
i accept: one inching motion toward part of a poem.
i accept the small way i falter towards full acceptance of myself as a poet, lover, mom, friend, worth-while being. i falter. i accept. (right now). it is small.

there are those things that are small and 'parts',
there are those that are small and whole.
in reality (paradox) it seems all is both.
but we can make a distinction. . .

i accept how small things shall seem at times: me struggling, with air, at the edge of what seems like nothing or irrelevance.

-------and this i wrote a month into real-live-baby motherhood:

of the small things (poem at one month old)

one green lightning bug floating between linden tree's upper branches
neck smell stuck in one corner of one bounce of air
a day in which i am awake and all that i will do, all day, is put tape on a box
and pick up the dropped stem of swiss chard, deep pink, from the kitchen floor
but ignore the butternut squash bit stuck to skin--
parking the car and waiting patiently for the two rabbits to move
so i don't kill them
however the dead gold chrysanthemum head's caught in the web
across the porch--a web abandoned by its spider--
the point of adults is that they shouldn't exist
is the thought that goes on and on in vastness
as blue as a blue sheet of light breathing across the desk

- - - - -

and i want to dedicate this post to lauren, in her first months of mama-hood, and in all the drippy difficulties and overwhelmedness thereof. dear lauren: you are good! also here are some closeups of ellie sleeping, in her beauty--

also, here's what i am grateful for on this day(lemonworld):

1. the national's new record, especially the songs "blood-buzz ohio" and "lemonworld". because. finn and i had our first all-out dance party to those 2 songs, spontaneously, and it made me so happy and it made me remember who i am! i am a person who dances spontaneously and feverishly! literally, this dance party helped me so immensely; sounds silly, but. . .
2. also i am grateful to those 2 songs for another reason. because they give me that feel of falling in love, love-falling, like so excited and everything's going to change and be amazing;; full, dreadful, painful excitement. not neccessarily falling in love with one person, though that is fine too, but even the way we fall in love with a friend, a group of friends, an era/ aura/ particular time in our lives, even the way we fall in love with music again, or words.
3. after grocery shopping today, finn and i were driving to the post office. i looked back at him, and he was car-dancing, shaking his head side to side and wiggling about. i do declare my heart was thumping in a glad way that he would dance so! oh i believe the song was "lemonworld". . .d.d.d.d.d.d.d.d.d....