Sunday, April 27, 2014

hammocking.


We went hammocking in Discovery Park yesterday.
(I can't wait to get my film back)

Thursday, April 24, 2014

all of this, a gift.


I'm in Seattle this week visiting my Lillian. I stepped off the plane into rain and into the smell of green. Green everywhere. Green in your hands, green in the air, green on the ground and the trees and the streets. It smelled sweet and clear. There's something so beautiful about the poetry of rain. Today we went rock climbing and walked through hard rain to the bus. When we stepped out to SPU, the sun

Right now, I'm sitting at a coffee shop (Lillian's favorite) drinking a soy lavendar chai latte (Lillian's recommendation), wearing some of my new friend Kelsey's clothes. I shouldn't have packed any clothes at all, I'm borrowing shirts and socks and scarves from people I've just met. New friends. Good people. Community is rich here. The honesty and authenticity of the people here is intrinsic. I have never felt so comfortable, so well-known in my life, by people who were days ago strangers to me. I think that's the most startling and settling sensation. I feel known, I feel understood, I feel comfortable as I am, I feel loved. Pretense out the door. People are people and wonderful. They love. They swear. They laugh. They eat Thai food with leftover chopsticks in dorm rooms lit by twinkle lights. They run to class. They get stuck in the rain. They buy rice and beans for dinner and no one bats an eye when you say, Oh, I'm gluten free. They weep in front of each other. They're at home with their selves, each other. And holy. There's a sacredness to this fellowship, this real life, real people, face to face relationships, this growing and doing life together. A jumble. A song. We may not know where we're going or how we're arriving, but we're together, and isn't that better? Isn't that best?

Seattle feels like home. Seattle feels like a poem you heard once as a child being spoken on the street. Seattle feels like a song you heard as a baby being strummed in the next room. Seattle feels like a picture in a large room with white walls and there is a wide sea and a wet sky and a wildness and the frame grows with you. Seattle feels like home. I'm in love with this state. I'm ridiculously in love with this place. I'm head over heels, heart in my chest, hands shaking in love, in love, in love.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

He says Come.

I despair.

He says, My grace is sufficient.

I fear.

He says, I am faithful.

I weep.

He says, I carry you even now.

I yearn.

He says, I fulfill.

I wrestle.

He says, I will give you rest.

I become angry, hard and smooth like a cold stone at the edge of the water, without layers.

He says, Come.

I become bitter, brittle. I rattle in the wind. My teeth clatter. My hands shake. My soul overturns.

He says, Come.

I become fractured. I howl at God. I hide in my chrysalis, an empty husk housing my stone heart.

He says, Come.

He says, Come.

He says, Come.

Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

///

Let me walk, let me run, let me dance again.

Come.

Monday, April 14, 2014

In the spring, the sky rips open.
Forget coats, forget shoes, we shriek like
chickens and scatter, running on the broken

grass that’s gray shale under our feet. A silent
ocean. We lived ten minutes away once, and

packed up the car daily. I wish I understood.
My sister and I ran to the waves. We burrowed

out tidepools with our small hands and
laid in the sand for hours, collecting shells,

watching them move from the animals inside.
The waves washed over us, warm and white.

A bubble bath, my sister said, and when
my mother looked away, we cupped the

water and drank it, choking on the salt.

Sunday, April 13, 2014

six is a small age.


You're six years old and live next to your grandparents. Time is a smudged glass in a summer haze. You spend your days without shoes and watch your feet, praying callouses form on your heels. Your mother has a hard brush to rub hers away but you wait for the day when you'll be able to boast, look how far I've walked. Look how many layers I carry.

Six is a small age. Six is sweet plum dumplings in the summer. Six is cold ginger ale cans from a deep basement. Six is red plaid pants and thin cotton t-shirts. Six is leaning against your grandma's knees as she braids your long, wet hair. Six is a singing time.

In the summer, the evening smells like grill smoke and wet dew, burned wood chips and yards of flowers. People stand outside in their yards. Fine day. It is. The tree branches form shade over the yards like a suburban rainforest, and sunlight slips in rings onto the tall grass through the green leaves. You sit in your backyard, on the edge of the sandbox. If you're not careful, you'll get a splinter on the back of your thigh. You're always careful. You make a path in the grass from your house to your grandparents. Home is communal, a haven. You watch for smoke to rise over the brown roof of your grandparent's home. Tuesday, there is nothing. Wednesday, you wait. On Thursday, a puff of white settles into the air, a balloon rising with a halfheartedness like smoke from the hookah's the caterpillars in Alice in Wonderland smoke with a lazy ease.

Hookahs. Alice in Wonderland. You went to the bookstore with your grandma and picked out a large volume. Alice in Wonderland on one side and Through the Looking Glass on the other. You carry it to the register and present it with a proud smile. This is what I want. Later, you struggle through the pages, confused and unhappy by the strangeness. But this comes later.

That Thursday evening, you climb the stone steps to the small backyard patio where you grandpa stands in front of the grill. He has on a cream polo shirt and his hands are in his pockets as he watches the chicken on the grill. Hi grandpa, you say. He gives you a look that means, I know what you're up to, and with the tongs, snips a bit of the skin from one of the wings. Be careful, it's hot, he says, and your fingers burn when you hands you the piece of skin. It melts on your tongue, the fat sizzles and forms a fire in your belly.

He turns a chicken wing over and one drops into the embers. You know what comes next. He picks the wing up with the tong, brushes the charcoal from the edge, and winks. That's your grandma's. It comes everytime and you still laugh. It's tradition, in the smallest sense. He gives you another piece of skin before you walk on the cool stones making up the steps down from the deck. You run barefoot back to your house.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Promises and pasta.



Seasons come and seasons go. Winter gutted me in the worst way. The last week has been spring (barefeet, freshfaced) and the most noticeable change besides the absence of snow is that I'm writing again. In the morning. In the evening. I sliced through soft asparagus and had a thought like an earworm intent on burrowing into my skull. The idea wouldn't go away until I tapped a note into my iPhone. We walked around a suburb of Minneapolis yesterday (uncomfortable in our jeans because of the heat, I might add) and I filled pages in the streets. My dad pointed out an apartment building where my pre-marriage, pre-kids mother lived (your parents having lives outside of your own is a strange thought), and I scribbled a note. I attempted to write while walking, but stopped mid-sidewalk to avoid running into little kids finished with soccer practice, or the camera crew filming for the news outside of Sebastian Joes.

Not only am I becoming home with writing again, but I'm making photos. It's exhilarating. I had a terrible fear this winter that any iota of passion or talent I had towards taking images was an illusion. More accurately, that I had pulled off a feat and fooled myself these past years. Instead of being diligent and focused, I burrowed under blankets and became a hermit. I watched the entire series of How I Met Your Mother, baked sweet things, and didn't pick up my camera for weeks. We had over one hundred days of negative temperatures this winter and my mental state reflected the frostiness of my physical home.

I decided that upon graduating, I am going to pack up and move somewhere warm. Permanently. I'd prefer a state without winters straight from The Snow Queen, thank you very kindly. I don't want to jinx the temperatures and be attacked with a last-ditch blizzard, but thankfully, we're at the last leg of this season. Spring is here. The snow is almost all melted. We're exclusively wearing shorts and foregoing sweaters, even if it means shivering under the wide sun. My legs are white and my arms covered in goosebumps but fifty, sixty degrees feels like heaven. The camera isn't quite as unwieldy in my hands as I thought. I don't need an excuse to write, nor an explanation.

At the library on Tuesday, I hurried straight to the anthology, biography, and memoir section, tucked right next to popular magazines and manga comic books. I walked away with five pieces I'd been waiting to read, and I've started all but two of them. This made me think. Just as some people never re-read books and others continually return to their favorite pages (I'm fortunate to be with the latter group), some people start one book and finish it before beginning another. Others are messy, scattered, and decide to juggle three or so at once. Again, I find I'm part of the latter. At the moment, I'm reading through On Writing by Stephen King (I laughed and cried reading the beginning this morning, both acts surprising me with their suddenness), Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl (who I was first introduced to by Food Network), and The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (a book thought-provoking and painfully honest).

My sister and I made pasta for dinner. We argued about something stupid and seconds later stood mincing garlic and boiling asparagus side by side. I salted the asparagus water and poured peas into the green tinted pot. She separated garlic cloves and chopped onions. In the fridge, next to the chai tea, sat a pound and a half of mushrooms from Trader Joes. "Too bad mom doesn't have any wine to sauté the mushrooms in," Chloe said. We pan fried chicken with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper, and put together our first summer supper. Due to an unfortunately long winter, Minnesota tends to skip spring and collapse into summer, but I'm not complaining.

(here's the recipe we used if you're interested. The entire Martin clan highly recommends it, except for Samuel who dislikes peas, mushrooms, and parmesan cheese). 

All of this is remarkably simple. Painfully disjointed. Boringly honest? Perhaps. But here's what I'm thinking about: Peach light. Singing over piano keys. The green of asparagus in boiling water. Eli humming as he eats dinner. Wind on my skin. Gifts. I'm making and moving again and I'm sore from stretching, but it's a good feeling. Spring, I will keep you (please stay).

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Loving Your Skin is Never an Apology.

Hannah Nicole
Hannah Nicole
Hannah Nicole
I will tell my daughter, this is
how you love your body:
you step deep into the earth,
and let your callouses line the ground.
Do not weep, tell your skin
you are a poem. Your veins blue
under your skin run like water,
do not break through the surface. You
cannot throw a stone into the center
of a lake and wonder why
the shoreline feels the echo. Love
the round slope of your hips,
and do not regret that you are
soft. If your ribs line your arched back,
a gate where there is no captive, you
protect them. They do
the same. Do not beg for a home
you weren’t born into, do not whittle
away at your frame like wood under
a carving knife. A tree grows,
do not pray for shrinking. Praise your
legs for carrying you,
for holding you when you dance
with a boy and he kisses your small
perfect mouth. A bud. I beg you understand
becoming is not perfection,
loving your skin is never an apology.

also shared on my tumblr

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

on showing up and breaking open.


Here's the thing, I am trying to show up for life.

I am trying to give voice to my days. Trying to break open, as Mary Oliver would say. But right now, my life is in a middle-ground. It's neither here nor there. It's like a perpetual winter stretching our bones thinner and thinner. I want the marrow and thick of life, and right now, I'm in a milk white, blue-veined moment.

Frankly, (how I love that onomatopoeia of a word), I'm exhausted.

Yesterday, I was sick and slept all day. It was the strangest sensation to watch an entire twenty fours slip by and to be an observer of my life and not a participant. Yesterday was a fog, a veiled face and an unassuming moment. I woke up at ten, perhaps I'll feel better at noon. Then it was a quarter to one and I was uncomfortable. I stood up and almost fell over. I went into another room and curled up on a chair. How are you feeling? Better, I said, when I really meant worse. Sickness does something to your head. Mine shook.

I went and laid down on the couch and when I woke up next, it was four. I wasn't sure where I was. I heard voices and couldn't place them to faces. I was going to do yoga this evening, I laughed and moaned and rolled over. When I looked at the clock next, it was almost seven. In a span of eight minutes, the light in the room went from butter yellow to deep blue shadows like the evening was a bruise heavy under the skin. My stomach hurt but my head felt better. I fell asleep again. Then it was eight and afterwards nine and I ate some raspberries, watched reruns in front of a spattering screen, and finished the day like I had started it, asleep.

This morning I woke up and felt better. Not perfect, but better.

Sidenote, isn't that the case with almost everything in life? I feel better, but not perfect. Digressing. And mulling.

Besides feeling better, I also felt panicked. It was irrational but the thought of missing twenty four hours of my life set me into a frenzy. Were those yellow minutes stretching to hold the sum of my Monday simply gone? When my aunt flew to New Zealand, she lost a day. She skipped it entirely. For the rest of her life, she will have a missing Tuesday. I know that time is relative and dates are a construct, but there's a missing twenty four hours in her life that she never held.

Twenty four hours.

Sometimes life is really hard. That's an understatement. Writing about it seems like trying to collect water by pouring it through a sieve. Everything runs through me and I wonder, where to begin? Or, why? What is the balance between over sharing and being honest, and is there a disconnect that lies with the two? What happens when you have nothing to write at all, or what you have to say is boring, underwhelming, inherently ordinary? What then?

Sometimes, it seems like too much. I'm inundated with things I need to say, words that crawl under my skin, moments that leave me open-handed, chasing wind. Other times, I am a dry well, scraped raw and emptied of everything. Then I say to life, pour into me, in all your beauty and pain and joy. That's when life asks, will you give back? And there lies the act of showing up. Morning and morning. Returning to the page. Returning to the camera. Returning to the road, to the pavement, to the poetry, to the music, to the rhythm of your life. So I do and we do and we hope to make something honest, something that matters, in our twenty four hours.

Because, goodness, I don't want to live my life asleep.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

I'm writing a lot lately, except most of it's for me. Which is good but also strange. For the first time, I'm hesitant about sharing the letters and lines that make up the shape of my many, ordinary todays. It's not that they're all precious or beautiful, but they are all personal. Vulnerability is something I never eschew. I am a champion for honesty in everything. But sometimes life hits you hard. A car crash out of no here. A job loss. A heart change. Whatever it may be. And when you're left picking up the pieces, you need space to rearrange them just right. Which is difficult when you're putting them out there asking, is this right? Because that asking leaves little space to figure it out.

I'm tired of putting aside my wonderings instead of wandering through. I'll mess up, but you can stumble into your sweet spot through the struggle. They say you never forget to ride a bike and I believe that's true. However, there's a disconnect between your body and your head. The knowledge, the knowing, is in your bones, but you have to remember where it left you. Maybe that's a little like where I'm walking. Deep down, I'm steady, but this searching is on shifting sand and the light is just beginning to rise. The sun is opening and it's finding me picking up pieces that are a little bit bruised.

I don't know what I want. I don't know if I'm slow and steady or a hurricane. A poem or a song. There's a difference and sometimes I feel like I land in the middle. I call myself an oxymoron. I'm analytical and artistic to my bones, I love the solidity of what we know and the wonder of what could be. I cried in an exhibit at the art museum today and didn't realize it until I couldn't swallow.

There's this piece of art by Matisse that's just a few lines. It's called Nu assis, vu de dos, which translated is just Seated Nude, Seen from the Behind. It's simple and clean. Like you could take a pencil, pull the lead down a page, and you'd have the same piece. I'm finally past believing the appearance of grace is an honest representation of ease. Ballet's roots are snug in my life to this day, and one of the seeds that's grown is an understanding of the process. To make simple the complex, honest the confusing, beautiful the questions -- that is where good art lies.

The drawing was in a exhibition called, Women as Muse in the age of Matisse, and it was fascinating seeing the ways different artists interpreted women as a subject. Something I loved in the end of the description was an assertion that the views of the various painters were only opinions of those men. I wish I had written the description down, but the general gist was that the images were just that, images. Despite the artists best attempts at deciphering women as a muse, the end products were only ideals, depictions of differing thought processes, explanations, and even questions. I think that's beautiful. Some art tries to label reality as black and white, but our realities are best seen through collection of ideas, questions, not facts. Art unifies and connects when it's borne out of, this is what I see, tell me what you see too.

The piece by Matisse made me pause and stare. There's a loneliness in the image, a solitude that's matched the rhythm of my days. I wondered about the sitter. Was she lonely or did Matisse only give her that appearance? What did he see? What did he leave out? Matisse once said to his students, "One must always search for the desire of the line, where it wishes to enter or where to die away." and I've been thinking about it all day. In art and writing and life. I'm searching for the interesections and trying to find solid ground for that line to lay. Meanwhile, I'm meandering and mulling, I'm wondering and wandering. I'm trying to figure out the shape of this life I'm living. Where it's leading and what path it may take. This I can say, "The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance." That's a promise I believe no matter what waits up ahead.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

evening light wanes.

Chloe, in her natural habitat. 6:37.











Monday, March 10, 2014

thin places.


"The universe moves you, and if you move with it, beautiful things will happen." - Amber Dúron

Flow. I'm walking in flux. I'm falling into place with serendipity, stepping into promise and it's black mud and deep earth. This spring is a prayer we're stepping barefoot into, asking please. The earth is thawing. Today I watched the snow collapse into itself with tired exhales, the soft peaks dimpling into slush into water, running running running down the drains in the street where the children race bottle caps in the summer, and into the belly of the city with the twisting black pipes and the cold gray stones, and through the tubes narrow and upwards, and into the green light lakes and rivers we slip into during the summer to soothe our freckled skin, and into the air the water rises again and it's rain.

Flow. To let go. I repeat these words until they run through my fingers. We sat in a warm car under a sudden blackness and the radio was on, we sang until our voices were hoarse and we retreated into the warm cocoon of home to scoop honey sticky on our fingers into cups of tea too hot to hold. This is one of those moments, I think. I listen to the songs we howled last week and am brought back to those moments scraping around trees and pulling our souls clean from our chests. She talked about waiting on God, and I'm sitting and wrestling and working through this place like a snarl of roots, untangling. I want to know, I whisper. I want to understand, I weep. This is my own symphony, and the crescendo doesn't sit well. I'm rearranging. I'm asking, please show up in this place.

Flow. An entire flight and I wrote fourteen pages, three of them about the sky. What we love surfaces. What we seek finds us. Knock, and the door will be opened. "There is no other stream," said the lion. All I know is, I saw the sun set sitting above the earth and I wept. I watched the towns retreat like miniatures, little toy homes, saw entire cities stretch into pinpricks like a child's game, and watched the world round like a ripe orange in my hands, summer. I wept.

If these are the days that must happen to you, then let them come. Let them come and shape this little heart and shake these hands and let them lead to something honest, something sacred. Let this story matter, let mine be true, I fold these words into prayers.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

When we meet.

I don’t mind anymore that I don’t know you yet. I don’t mind that you’re a stranger. I have a lifetime to spend discovering the different ways your name tastes on my tongue. I have years and years to dip my toes into the waters of you, the you-ness of your eyes, your laugh, how your hands fold and clasp. I’ve had it all wrong, searching for a reservoir when you are the sea. Honey, I’m wading into my knees, I’m diving deep, I’m underwater with this mystery that is a question of who are you? Just as important, who will you become? Followed by, who will we be? I’m sixteen feet under and still swimming and someday, there will be you. You exhale air to my taut lungs. I let it go. If there are years that ask questions, these are scattered with inquisitions like, are you a tomato from the vine person and do you have callouses on your fingers from strumming a guitar? Small things. Make up a life things. I want to collect the answers like a gift. I don’t mind that I don’t know you yet anymore. My hands hold my hopes. I’ve stopped scattering seeds, I am waiting for good earth, mossy and smelling green. I don’t mind you don’t know my name yet. I have a lifetime to listen to mine fall from your tongue in every color.

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Life Goals.

Travel the world. Travel some more. Write a book. Make a film. Fall in love. Stay in love. Get married. Travel with my love. Write a book of us. Sing. Learn a new language. Gain a few pounds from eating through Europe. Spend a summer in New Zealand. Have a baby. Have another baby. Have lots of babies. Maybe just a few. Travel with my babies. Kiss my husband. Make another film. Write another book. Have a gallery showing. Buy an RV. Travel across the US. Be honest. Live in another country. Make pancakes on Saturdays. Make pie on Sundays. Buy a house by the water. Sell extra things. Open up our home. Plant a garden. Learn to play piano well. Travel. Go wedding dress shopping with my daughters. Go to little league games. Live out of my gut. Write my grandparent's stories. Kiss at midnight on New Years in Times Square. Get good at yoga. Move cross country. Start over. Stay. Meet the girls my sons love. Photograph what I see. Watch my husband become a grandfather. Spend my anniversary in Paris. Make a movie. Sell my house. Drink good red wine or bad red wine with people I love. Explore. Live with less. Get a dog. Make lots of bread. Stop being afraid. Cook through Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Wear dresses more. Start a traveling library. Ditch the TV. Kiss a lot. Start traditions. Keep traditions. Make cinnamon rolls and egg bake for Christmas brunch. Say I'm sorry, I love you, I need you, I like you, I miss you. Understand they're sometimes the same.

Thursday, February 20, 2014

What would happen if the internet went quiet?


Social media's primary motivation is recognition, the cry of here, I am. See me. We are searching for understanding in the form of a larger network, because what is the point in churning out updates daily if not to attract and captivate an audience? Sharing our work and thoughts, connecting with people, opening up our metaphorical internet doors into our homes, these are valid reasons to check twitter. But more often, we share to share. Liking becomes less about what we like and more about the cultural recognition it gives us.

Meaning is often based on cultural context, so it becomes difficult to play the game of what would our ancestors have done? Yet, what would they have seen in social media, in the internet in general? The age that we live in allows for greater communication than ever before. We are able to affect change, to widen our reach, and in powerful ways, influence our cities and the world. Networking makes connection comfortable and easy. Yet, in constantly connecting, we are losing our ability to communicate without the web to clamor behind us.

The primary function social media gives us a way to say, look what I'm doing, regardless of whether we are doing it or not.

My friend Alex and I were laughing about instagrams (ours, specifically) and the behind the scenes prep that goes into a seemingly uncomplicated and straight-forward image . . . from location scouting, prop styling, editing, etc. I'm not saying that these are bad things, just that our realities are skewed. It's not just about sharing our breakfast anymore — now our breakfast has to be beautiful. Which is fine. Art becoming greater in the scheme of our daily lives isn't something I oppose, but why do we do it? Is this all one huge game of follow the leader? I don't have answers, just questions. What would it look like to go off social media? What would it look like to communicate solely via letters? What's the function of blogs these days? Do we need this network? What is the point of it all? It fascinates me in a sobering way that we even have to ask ourselves these questions.

Society has evolved to a pinnacle where the thought of not having an online presence and not sharing our work puts us in league with the dinosaurs.

I understand the appeal, perhaps too well! But it saddens me to think of the opportunities I've missed because I've been plugged into this changing, growing, controlling network. I saw a haunting photo series done on individuals looking at their computer monitors and thought, that's me. I wake up to the phone, check my email hourly. I take snapshots. My camera roll is full of coffee. I can talk to people without talking to them! Everything is an instagram opportunity. I should tweet that. Did someone comment on my blog? The irony is I'm plugging away at this post on my site.

Do you know what's sad? I've lost the ability to sit in silence. It's difficult for me to be still. I'm rediscovering how to read without interruption. I'm trying to simplify my thinking into one line, not twenty different avenues all begging for my attention at once. I removed notifications from my phone awhile ago, but I sit and suddenly I'm checking my phone simply to check it. Is it that I, or we, don't remember how to even exist without constantly reviewing the never-ending stream of forever updating information? As I write this, I have about twenty tabs open.

We're spending more time cultivating our online personas than our character and personality in real life.

I woke up the other day and resisted the urge to check my phone. As I put my coffee in the keurig (yet one more example of our fast-food culture), I had a sudden thought, strange only so far as it was frighteningly obvious. Ten years ago, this would not be part of my normal routine. Take 2004. Instagram was nonexistent and iPhones were a thing of the future. Facebook had come out only recently and blogging was starting to gain traction. Smart phones existed, but compared to our phones today, we would have called them illiterate. Yes, we had the internet, the next thing was coming, but everything was relatively quiet.

I romanticize the past, but there's a marked difference in how we operate as a people with the increase of technology and the ease of networking. Please don't thing I'm proclaiming a cry of abandonment of social media. I've said before, I enjoy instagram. Yes, somedays (too many), I buy into the allure that is pinterest (darn you, dark chocolate flourless cake), and my business would not be where it is today without the help of social media. But I don't want to mindlessly ingest and consume without question. What does the role of social media play in our lives and how will it continue to evolve as we as a people and society grow and change?

The thought of Google Glass terrifies me, and the promise of always being connected sounds like a nightmare.

Contrary to the trends of 2014, I feel most fulfilled when I am less connected. The more I am in the "real" world (how clarifying we have to make that distinction), the more inspired, well-rounded, and content I am. The less connected I am on social media, the more connected I am in real life. I think it's dangerous when we enter into social networking as a natural occurrence of daily life, and don't recognize the dichotomy between what is shared and what exists. The argument could be made that social media is part of ordinary routines, but that's the gist of this post. We're at a place when sharing is synonymous with existing, and to go without sharing is a kiss of death, or really a refusal to cry, look at me. See me.

What would happen if the internet went quiet and we all just lived our lives?

This is something I wonder about when my phone is dead.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

today, like a promise.


This morning, I woke up late and ate a cold egg. It was panfried and slippery. My brother brought me a book and I read it to him, him little and round on my lap. I tickled him until his body shook with laughter. If you don't know, that's almost the best sound in the world. It's second only to listening to the slow breathing of someone you love.

This afternoon was a rainfall. I made a cup of coffee. I read the newspaper. I read a book. I played piano. The room was silent and I kept the lights off. It's nice to only sit under what comes through windows. A softness.

Later, I went to a coffee shop. I had a cup of chai. It's my staple though the sugar gives me headaches. This is a language I practice. The hot paper cup under my fingers, comfort. The quiet bustle of people, connection. A silent phone, stillness. I sat at a long communal table by myself, steadiness. In my hands, a book I love. That is called being. Everything was a study in solitude. A song from one of my favorite films came on, and I thought, yes.

How do you describe these spaces? A falling into place. A gentle nudge or a remembrance. That is called release. These moments mark me with rings. I see holiness in their wake. I will not call them serendipitous, but sacred. My ragged edges are softened by these places. The book was set down. I mouthed the words to the music and cried silently next to strangers. Yes. And again, yes.

Tomorrow may be a yellow sharpness in my stomach. My today was a promise. Yes, as it comes. That is called surrender. Another word is thankful, though we've forgotten. I'm carrying it like a prayer.

Monday, February 17, 2014

seven.

think



read

"It’s hard, now, to be with someone else wholly, uninterruptedly, and it’s hard to be truly alone. The fine art of doing nothing in particular, also known as thinking, or musing, or introspection, or simply moments of being, was part of what happened when you walked from here to there alone, or stared out the train window, or contemplated the road, but the new technologies have flooded those open spaces. Space for free thought is routinely regarded as a void, and filled up with sounds and distractions."
- Diary, by Rebecca Solnit

see


Daily Contradictions, by Katie Licht.

look


One Day in History, by Andrea Gjestvang

watch



listen



eat


Shaved Brussels Sprouts and Ginger Potsickers by Naturally Ella.

what are you enjoying + inspired by lately?