hammocking.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

Loving Your Skin is Never an Apology.

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.

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