we are strangers once more // journal no. 1

I'm sitting in a Starbucks in the hazy middle of daybreak. It's barely light out, despite the clock hitting 8:03 in the morning. The rain is percolating, dripping, falling slowly and softly on the windows flushed green from the gray sky. Outside, trees are blowing, the dark clouds barely warm from sunrise. In just seconds, it goes from a pale gray to charcoal horizons, trees pulling their hands through their hair, turning and rushing and bending low. They're shaking and the rain glints from the headlights on the road, falling insistently, pounding on the outside. It's dark indoors, the outside spreading a smudginess into the flickering light of Starbucks. Cars zip by quickly, skipping the drive through, skipping the place, and slip through the rain.

People come in, wet and tousled from the deluge, laugh, say they're escaping from the storm. Instantly, strangers become friends for minutes, united over terrible weather, worried about the storm that's passing, gathering around each others phones to glance at radars, bemoan over the clouds of blackness coming in. Strangers that for seconds, are more, could be more, than the minute passes and they step outside, run to their cars under the heavy pattering and pounding of the rain thick in the air. I've got a grande vanilla latte with soy milk, and then they are gone. The tables outside echo with the slap, every second more droplets tap out their pattern, the sound dulled by heavy glass windows and the faint hum of electricity. The water outside is soupy, splashing in puddles up to the middle of car tires as they rush through. It's so deep outside that waves are made and they crash on the cement. It's strange, unsettling, to see cars that size swallowed up in water that was just minutes ago suspended in air. Every so often, lightning opens up the dimness of the sky and reminds us that the power could disappear in an instant.

People come and go, regulars filter through those looking for a decent cup of coffee, and people see each other for the first time. These bonds created over a strangers phone, from people trapped inside because of the weather, who only know each other based on their daily cup of coffee, surface. A group of people, finding solace together. It is a rainstorm that brings us together, and yet, the sun persists in coming forward, pulling apart what was being built. And so we go about our days, waiting for these collective glimpses of humanity, reading between the lines and usual orders to see something a bit more, a yearning for relationships above else.

The rain pounds but the sky clears. A bird flies across the murky clouds, an ink stain in the weather, and the cars roll by unknowingly on the freeway, forever apart, forever mysteries. Thunder rumbles, the rain abates, hardens, rolls on surfaces and fills the pooling tables and streets, and yet, we are strangers once more.



jottings and thoughts from a few weeks ago.

we weave neighborhood evenings.

In my someday dreams, I have a home in the country, a small place to tuck littles to bed into under fields swathed in gold. There are chickens outside and the ground is dirt soft, wild green grass thick with patches of wildflowers, the perfect place to run barefoot at dusk. I have windows that let in the sun and fresh flowers in each room. It's painted white and there is a swing to rock back and forth on and talk as the evening dwindles. Outside there is room to yell and laugh and sing because the sky cannot protest. Inside it is quiet and cozy and content. The attic leaks when it rains and the cellar smells like sage and we're always missing a scrabble tile or two. Coffee drips continually into cups ringed with circles and there is a perpetual pot of tea on the stove. We eat apples from our trees and pick carrots, tomatoes, peas fresh from the garden. The table is wood. The chairs are mismatched. The socks are patched. The curtains are linen and the bedrooms small. But we are together and we know the taste of laughter.

These are a few of my dreams.

I wake up in the middle of a home surrounded not by sky or earth but other houses. Other lives stitch themselves into the pattern of your own. Everywhere you go, whatever you do, you cannot help but tweak, pull, tangle, change the string next door. But there is beauty to that. There are no backyards, there is one backyard. Everyone congregates in the middle, going from home to home to say hello or to see if others would like to bike across the neighborhood. We borrow tape and return gluesticks borrowed the time before, walk eggs over for recipes in kitchens that are one short. There are runs to the store that happen and drives to town for coffee or frozen yogurt. And in the evenings, there is always noise, loud laughter, names being called, the thumping of feet on the ground.

Someday will be here soon enough. In the meantime, I am learning to be content in this  neighborhood home, right here.

where the answer is no longer a question

in the evenings when slowness grows in the cracks
under the table,we drop crumbs for what
will, load wood down
with our worries, we lick the backs of spoons where
sweet potatoes once sat, how is it going?
is it good?
is it good?

creak, around, back there is a loose hinge
on that chair be careful ;
creak, around, back there is a sorrow
howling under a laugh,

four places where apples
waited, plucked there is a pie: one
tree at a time i will say to you,
your hands in mine, whether they are smooth or
rough like woodsy bark, deep smell oak,
the fragile white saplings who know
to grow,

(we are seedlings learning; uprooting does
not always lead lonely lives, branches
bow low)

I hope you are ;
brave
with all the i hope fluttering
fragile bursts of a seed
breaking breathe (it is not easy it) is
best

you are welcome any day to leave
your worries at the door, sit at the table,
where the answer is no longer a question,
but a yes.

dry. jottings.

I find that I'm at my lowest point creativelywhen I haven't taken time to createfor myself.I feel dry, all I make slipping from my fingerscrumbling, cracking, clay to dust,what I thought was, is only a fleeting glimpse,
so I sit and wait on inspiration,a lackadaisical sort of stillness,that is stifling and humid in my lungs,instead of being wide-eyed, waiting and creating and moving,expectant,open,ready.
the times I am most inspired are when I push through
the sludge and haze, the bitter blueblack of seeming emptiness.there is necessity in the journeythat adds meaning to the discovery.
It's so important for me to make time for personal "work."the last few weeks have been busy and devoid of it,and I've been sensing the difference, feeling it deep deep deep. So here I go,
pour in, pour out,
learning to be filled as I go along.
pushing through uninspiration only to findwhat I was looking for, a spark, a light,a flash of gold in this dichotomy of beautiful and broken,was there all along.

sun yellow and chlorine.

I learned how to swim
in a small pool with yellow bars peeling
locking inside from out,
when I was enough, old,
we
lived in california
where it was always brown,
always burnt, the earth continually
freckled.

in between I sat on the
edge of the drenched sun
pool,
shifting on the
itchy concrete sandy from
use.

once, I dove
my breath somewhere between
the ladder and the
unbroken surface,
I jumped shaking reluctant,
and almost slapped the depths
with my toes.

there was water up my nose that
I didn't plug
and my eyes burned from pool water, my
throat tasted raw, my tongue
licked with chlorine.

despite the California sun I huddled
in my new bathtowel
done,
and watched the rest of the kids jump.

it seems like that a lot.
first, I dive headlong,
right away
my stomach lurches, I
go. then I sit on
the sidelines wet from
bare feet and watch.

this summer, i will

(inspired by beautiful mollie and beautiful andrea)

i will go barefoot and run barefoot at least once

i will pick peas from the garden, ignoring the mosquitoes

i will watch movies with grace for the first time

i will intentionally play with the boys

i will play piano again and not care if it's badly

i will take more walks, evening, morning, daily

i will say a hearty yes to adventures, big and small

i will recognize grace everyday

i will watch the sunrise, watch the sunset, watch the skies

i will make more food, good food, and enjoy it

i will go to the farmer's market and let myself spend frivolously on produce

i will be free

i will eat more icecream

i will journal more and fill out one moleskine

i will listen to my gut

i will take up sketching again and not worry about being "bad"

i will drink more water

i will freckle

i will embrace spontaneity

i will shoot more photos and print more photos and do it for me

i will be unafraid to take chances

i will focus on being healthy, not skinny, and wear what i feel good in

i will s i m p l i f y

i will allow myself to spend lazy mornings dreaming about next year

i will go camping even if it's only in my backyard

i will roast s'mores even if it's only on the stove

i will go chilly swimming under the stars in the blackest of night

i will purposefully turn off screens

i will bike with chloe and grace to the library at least once

i will try five new things (starting now)

i will rest

i will go berry picking and come home stained red

i will focus on being true and brave

i will listen to and for stories and take time to be present

i will bake shortcake from scratch, whip the cream, and eat it with strawberries on the porch

i will

Woodland 2013 // Film

Woodland 2013 from Hannah Nicole on Vimeo.

And we'll hate what we've lost but we'll love what we find
And I'm feeling fine, we've made it to the coastline

A smallish film of sorts, all iPhone videos from last week at the lake.
I wish I had taken more, but treasuring the ones I have.
Perfectly messy, imperfectly right.

51 weeks until we're back again.

words from woodland.

The water tastes tinny, even if you drink it out of a plastic cup. There are three shiny metal cups painted copper and maroon and orange juice, milk, water smells like minerals when you drink from them. Always, there is the sound of the lake, lapping the shoreline, crashing on the smooth rocks during a storm. The silence is overreaching and encompassing -- not so much silence as the absence of it, a quiet contained solely in the water, birds calling and beckoning, wind pulling through the trees in tight weaves, the hum of semis and trucks going everywhere and nowhere only a distant rumble in the glint of the bridge, boats speeding up and slowing down and causing ripples that ebb and flow away as quickly as they've come, cabin doors slamming shut and voices raising in love, irritation, laughter.

It smells like nothing else. There's a lake smell that sits on your skin long after you've showered, an underlying tone of campfire smoke and the green smells of trees and growing things. In the distance, the clouds hover quietly on the horizon, the other side of the lake obscured by a haze settling misty on the trees. You can heart cicadas and insects in the weeds as clearly as the loons willowy weeping cries. They echo across the water, undulating in sync with the unfolding of the waves. Late at night when the world is obscured by darkness, punctuated only by stars, you hear the loons singing across the lake. Then, the water is still and each sounds breaks, slices thick into the clarity of the night like the quick snip of scissors through hair.

Walking in the morning is the surest way of falling in love with the place, with the light, light everywhere, falling dappled on the camper, streams on the path, slipping through windows in leaves and trees, shining hot on the splintery wood of docks ringed with water. After a boat passes and leaves the echo of its motor strumming, the water becomes insistent, splashing on the rocks like a two year old in tears, only trying to say, "look at me?" How often do we look but forget to see? Dragonflies fly over the surface of the water, against glass, and they skim the tops creating small ripples that stretch until they are no more, mere memories.

If the day is cool enough and the water still, you can see to the bottom and the light slants, wavering and warbling a hopeful song on the rocks, the fish, the powdery soft sand on the bottom. It's clear and green and deep blue and strange, like resting on the edge of a city we've never seen. Everything is refracted with the touch of a rainbow and it's all hesitantly quiet, growing lake algage, making homes for silver schools of minnows house hunting and slipping under creaky docks by the thousand, the gentle uncurling of water not touching the life below.

It's still and hopeful on the dock. Lake life leaves me understanding everyday life better, has a way of quieting my soul like nothing else.



hesitantly writing. slowly sharing again. it feels a little awkward, but good, like biking for the first time each summer, the pedals turning in and around and the first shakiness of staying upright, the sun on your skin. hoping to settle back into this space, with the ease not unlike unpacking from a trip, steadily, reposefully, reflectively.