journal entry

January 26, 2011

January 26, 2011 by The Noisy Plume

I spent the morning writing:

Last night was a hard night for me. It was a night of realization and recognition, the understanding that some grow faster than others, in some ways, the sudden awareness that our processes and development are independent and unique — beautifully unique.

I have a sudden, deeper understanding of the wearing effect that people can have on people, like the crash and spin of wave on rock — constantly grinding salt and sand into the clefts of a coastline.

We’re all dissolving away under the experience of others. Our faces become newly etched with each storm, with each sunny day. Our relationships have tides pulled through the seaweed by the moon.

Despite the living power of water, the sideways slip of currents, it’s calm in the depths where there’s no motion, no sound, just faint light filtering down, shifting though the clang and clatter of the surface, to rest in slanting beams and smiles until bright fades to black and the darkness settles in a solid, infinite pool.

All that quiet. All that deep dark. All around. Numb limbs. Numb hearts. Numb minds. Isolation. Peace? A sort of peace, I suppose, but still, despite the peace of the dark, most of us choose to claw our way to the storms and day of the surface, to the land of the living where water mixes with sky — no matter how that space might batter us and grow us, no matter how the surface might hurt. We don’t mind the growing pains, the slow etch of our souls, the veneer of self scrubbed away until we’re pink and squirming in fresh new being, once again. Once again. Over and over again.

I try. I try to stand without caution. Exposed and honest with only my soul wrapped around bare shoulders. I summon the waters, watch them rise high and crash down. I am submerged. I am dripping. There, a deep breath before I’m submerged again. I feel the cascade of grit, the many hands reaching, slapping, pinching, calming, soothing. I feel the water carve me a new face. It’s a face that understands the former selves, the past stances, the phoenix rising new from the mud and flame; ten times, one hundred times, one thousand times again. And still one million times more I die to old self and take up my new, silken cloak — smooth skin, fresh eyes.

Still the water comes.

I let it scrub me clean.

Why swim alone when the water calls us all to new essence, better hearts and peace? Why wash alone when there’s so much to be learned by washing together? Why stop the water from carving us anew? Why hold ourselves from the experience of fellowship with each other, even if it would render life painless, even if isolation is quiet and without thorns? We are whetted, one against another, with the blunt and fearful star spangled edges of our souls until our blades sharply sing, spark and know no defeat. The water cuts deep. We cut each other deep. There’s growth here despite the fields of scars that stretch to the horizon. We bow down. We rise anew.

I shed my old self, time and time again.

I continue, always, to take you as my friend.

I stand strong in the cold wind keen.

That which stands as coastline has an iridescent sheen.
____________________________

I feel an acute ache for the hinterlands of Canada,

a dull ache in my breastbone for home and North.

My heart is jabbed by the memory of cold green

water slapping the grey, pocked rock of Canadian shield:

shorelines, jack pines, birch, mossy forest floors.

______________________________________

I’ve taken four days to myself now, chipping away at interwebular correspondence, building with leather, walking through fresh snow (three walks a day since Saturday), reading, nursing my neck with hot water bottles, holding my puppy and taking my tea with honey and milk. This morning, first thing, I ran out to the studio and powered it up. I’m ready to work again. I had to shed something old to be able to take up the new.

___________________________________

Today I’m different than I was yesterday, and the day before.
There’s a constant growth here, a slow expansion of soul, ring by ring,
xylem, phloem, cork cambium,
resolute and bending.
There is wind sail. I withstand the storms.
Someday, someone will cut me in two, peer down at my cross section
and say:
“Here was a rainy year…”

___________________________

Let’s all go gently.

Filed Under: journal entry

I was a late bloomer.

October 31, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

:::Personal Journal Entry:::

October 30, 2010

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I’ve been a late bloomer most of my life. I suppose it’s better than being wildly precocious as so many girls are these days. When I remember awkward late bloomer moments from my younger years I often cringe, shiver in embarrassment and wish I could take moments back; draw them in as though they’re attached to thin silver lines. I want to draw them across the water of my memories, pull them from the lake of the past and lay them down as fragments of fuel on the fire I’m camped beside.

The only consolation is that we all have pasts riddled with some sort of “late bloomership” — if you can call the personal development of any one person late, early or right on track. The even greater consolation is that there are people out there who will give me second chances. For some reason, my strange and appalling awkwardness isn’t as fresh in their memories and they haven’t tethered me to the pillar of who I used to be. As I said recently, I’m not who I was. Things have changed me. Relationships have changed me.

Just like anyone else, I know and have known people who are nice and people who are not so nice. I’m leaving space in those relationships — room for others to appear as they truly are now. Time has passed. Do I even know them anymore? Aren’t we mere acquaintances, more often than not – constantly realizing who the other is and is not — if we allow our opinions to reform? That is, if we allow each other such graces and such spaces to discover, constantly, our developing identities.

Of course, we occasionally run into situations where others are not developing. They’re the same as they were ten years ago. They haven’t changed a bit. They’re tied in place by their past, weighed down with emotional baggage, content to lay about listlessly in stagnant and stinking waters. There’s not much we can do in situations like these except hope that some impetus wakes those individuals from their shadowy lives and begins to move them out of those old selves and into the new.

I suppose this is all to say that I want to give people space; room to grow. I don’t want to be guilty of holding others in a places they used to be. And I want others to give me this same space, room to grow, room to develop further still into who I am to be. I want them to know who I am now, not who I was when I threw that truly awkward tea party for my 21st birthday (Mum made me, please believe me.).

I want to move out of the shadows and into the light. I want to help others to do the same. It requires wiping slates clean. Continuously. Forgiveness. Being met halfway by others who are willing to reveal and build new bridges to new places. Bridges that suit exactly who we are, as individuals. Bridges that suit our contact and the level of vulnerability we share with each other.

The relationships I don’t tolerate very well any more (like they’re a sort of food that upsets my stomach, sets my system off, throws a wrench in the ecology of my life) are the relationships where others have me tied tight to who I used to be. They can’t see who I am now, despite all the light here. They won’t give me the space to show them who I am. Now. In this space and time.

I don’t want to be an individual who galumphs through life hardly dipping my toes past the surfaces of others. I don’t want to be afraid. To be in relationships that are experiencing growth, to promote healthy development in others, requires walking into unknown waters — intentional movement away from the safety of the shoreline. We need to feel that weightlessness of immersion. We need to feel the power and sometimes the terror of the waves. We need to feel the calm of the mornings and the quietude of grace offered to us and the descent of it on our souls.

Our feet need to leave terra firma; we need to learn that our wings are wide.

It takes trust. It can be frightening! And it takes courage. Always courage. But those amazing relationships that rise up out of such courage and allow for evolution are the relationships that last lifetimes.

People change.

They really do.

I want to meet them where they are.

I want to be met where I am.

If you go to where I used to be, you won’t find me.

This is who I’m becoming.

I’m very different from who I was ten years ago.

If you knew me then, if you know me know, I want you to know that I’m giving you space to become who you truly are; the you of now. I want to be able to say, you were like THIS, but now you’re THIS! My how you’ve grown! I love who you’re becoming. I’m proud of who you’re becoming.

I have a small clutch of best girlfriends who I am watching grow. Who I am anticipating the future with. Who I am proud of. We spend all of our time in the deep water together; weathering storms, floating on our backs when the weather is calm. We drift around together, out there, discovering the great unknowns. Experimenting with our lives, because our lives depend on it. We coach each other. We encourage each other. We allow each other space to grow, space to grow into new people, space to move out of people we used to be.

And I love it.

They don’t mind that I used to be a late bloomer.

They don’t mind at all.

They don’t mind because in their eyes, I’m blooming fine and right on time.

Filed Under: journal entry

Sketchbook Journaling: September 19, Scout Mountain

September 21, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

Note: This is a collection of my writings from my personal journal. A lot of it is thinking out loud, sorting through thoughts, processing the world around me with paper and pen. I share it with you because I think you’ll understand and relate to some of my ponderings. I’ve shared carefully here and know you will be careful in return. Thank you!

Love, JSL

It’s morning now. It’s cold. I can hear a cacophony of bird music breezing through the Douglas firs and the wind is singing careful arias in the aspen groves. Crescendo. Diminuendo. My hands are freezing. Each fingertip is an ice cap drifting on friction melted waters across the white of this page. And now the staccato of a woodpecker. How lucky am I to hear this symphony? How well it matches the score of my heart.

I’m brewing a second pot of Earl Grey, just to stay warm. Thank God the sun is just within reach of where I sit. As soon as it crested the top of Scout Mountain I could feel the air temperature swirling with warmth; like adding hot water to a cold bath. Ah. There now. A fresh cup of tea for my hands.

Penelope and I have been for a long walk and back. She looks like a small red pony galloping about in a tall Northern jungle. At one point, she located a handful of ruffed grouse that burst into flight and drummed deeper into the forest to escape her ferocity. At a bend in the trail, we stumbled into a few free range heifers. When they saw me they turned and trotted deeper into an aspen grove. With all the crashing and crackling of grasses and bush, Penelope was terrified and galloped down the trail, shrieking at the top of her lungs, until she was around the next bend and out of sight. Some watch dog. She’s all bark and no bite. I wonder what she feels when she is fearful. Is there the same thrumming of the heart that I experience? Is she grateful when I pick her up and speak those fears away — quietly and carefully?

The light here, as all morning light is, has been so soft and blue. It’s been easy to fill the memory card on my camera while sifting through the bits of detritus on the forest floor.

Each berry, each leaf is so delicate and unique. I want to honor each one with every individual image I capture. Each thing I see, each magical dapple of sunlight drifting down from a yellowing aspen crown, deserves to be remembered for the sacredness of its immaculate and unique design.

In the same way, I want everything I create to be uniquely concocted, special in its own right, worth claiming, collecting, cherishing, loving. I don’t think that’s too much to ask of myself as a creative person if indeed I do believe that my desire to create is a reflection of God’s ability to create. I look around and all is so good. There’s a crumbling humbling going on inside my chest. Who am I. What am I. This grace. This grace. I’m a child on my knees. There’s a bloom of faith.

I try to see the world around me fully; the detail, texture and holiness of each leaf, bug, branch, bird, fish and beast. I can’t help but want to catch everything in my hands in an attempt to cure this zealous curiosity that boils beneath the veneer of my senses. Is that wrong? In light of recent blog commenter harassment over catching and releasing fish, is it healthy to quench my curiosity? Is it healthy to allow my curiosity to go unquenched? Is it wrong for me, for my species, to interact so fully with nature, even if I’m graceful and careful in my quest?

Now the aspens are lit gold in the pour of sunshine through conifer. Penelope has climbed inside my down jacket and is keeping my core warm. The wind is moving through the wild rose bushes, swinging the rose hips like lady dancers on a light hearted stage. I’ve collected a bag of rose hips, the largest rose hips I’ve seen in all my life, to go in herbal teas this winter. I’d also love to encase a few in resin. Their color and shape is so sublime, organic, fresh and sensual. In point of fact, I’d like to encase this moment in this space beneath resin. I’ll wear it over my heart to help lighten the load on heavy days.

I can hear a shotgun pounding in the distance, every now and then. It’s Robert and Farley collecting dinner for our table tonight. How magnificent is that? To interact with nature this morning, to take what we need to feed our bodies and souls, and then to return to town, to the business at hand, to the grapes and plums staining the counter tops and splashing about until they find themselves locked tight in canning jars and sitting quietly on a pantry shelf until some cold day in winter we draw them out and sustain ourselves on their sun spun wholesomeness.

Oh. The wind. The wind. I find it remarkable that there are people in the world who have never heard the wind sigh like this, who have never been without the incessant white noise of the city. Urban living is beautiful and ripe with convenience and the steady flow of humanity! I sometimes fear I am out of touch with humanity. Has it hardened me, this hermit life, has it made me less compassionate towards humans? I’m removed from the scenes that present themselves to city dwellers. The homeless, the addicted, the impoverished. The living, begging and stealing of the streets; people selling all that they have, even their bodies, to feed themselves, clothe themselves, secure their next fixes. I don’t see them. Does it mean I don’t love them? Does it mean it isn’t my problem or I don’t care? Since I live in a wild space which is, ecologically speaking, just as vulnerable as a human being, is caring for this space my compassionate duty? Is this my responsibility instead? Do I tend to this space the way I would a broken person in a back alley? Is it right to see nature this way? If I need to do more as a human, for other humans, how else can I go about it besides sending money to organizations? I love elk. I love wolves. I love jackrabbits. But I need to love people too. We all need to love people. That’s where unity is. It’s not enough to just tolerate the existence of others, everybody needs love. I’m working on this concept constantly.

Last night, after the sun set, I looked up at the sky, imagined myself plucking a star as one would an apple. There are so many up there, burning and twinkling, which would I choose and would it be selfish to keep it under glass in the living room? Could I find a bell jar big enough for my pet celestial? The moon offered a bright silver pulse of light into the small morning hours. The window at my back, in the van, was open and thrust cool sheets of breeze down the small openings of my sleeping bag.

I didn’t sleep enough last night but I feel so refreshed this morning.

I haven’t showered but I feel so damn clean.

Robert is back now. Farley too. Happy. Manly. With birds in hand; probably the prettiest grouse in existence. RW and Farley have taken four of these beauties for our dinner table for the week and it was hard work and a fair fight. They look exhausted after hiking up to the top ridge of the mountain where a Douglas fir crown grows on nearly vertical slope to find this bird and bring it home.

I’ve just finished inspecting this large male up close. I turned him over and over in my hands, taking in his mustard yellow eyelids, his underwing feathers, his tail feathers….everything about him I took in slowly and carefully. Such a beautiful bird… I’m humbled by this harvest and totally blessed to be taking the energy of this animal into my body. There’s something so holy about hunting to eat, the effort of the work involved, the skill and courage it takes to so carefully end the life of a living thing. I feel so sad. I feel so thankful. Does everything always have to be so complicated?

In a few moments we’ll load up Talulah and coast down the mountain and into town. To ensure I return soon, I’m going to leave a small wedge of my heart behind. I’ll tether it to a tree and come back to tend it from time to time. It will be safe in these woods. Surely. It will be safe.

Filed Under: idaho, journal entry, nature, pocatello, rocky mountains

All in a Good Sunday

June 7, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

My dear friend Karen woke me up this morning.

Actually, I had been laying in bed, dozing on and off, for a couple of hours; cast in and out of sleep by birdsong and dappled sunlight. Karen knocked on the front door and told me to come to her house for coffee and cake. I agreed and then promptly gave her a garden tour whilst in my nightgown.

She has a lovely front veranda for sitting and sipping. The coffee went down slow and easy and we made breakfast out of blueberry cheesecake while our dogs romped about in her backyard. We discussed the weather, our perennials, our men and our dogs, among other things.

I spent the afternoon toiling in my yard. It was sunny! I cut flowers for vases. I reacquainted myself with the lawnmower and whippersnipper. I weeded, irrigated, watered, weeded again, moved the chicken ark, planted seeds and sniffed every single iris blossom I could find. I stretched out in the grass with Penelope and Mister Pinkerton and took the time to feel the sun on my back.

After baking a loaf of banana bread, while waiting out a blustery storm, I walked the dogs through my side of town. I picked more lilacs. I watched the sky.

And when I returned home, I finished unpacking my bags and boxes from my recent whirlwind trip. I dusted a bookshelf or two, arranged my pretty things on shelves and sat down to write this:

Journal Entry: June 6, 2010

The good news is there is no such thing as failure in art. That is, there is no such thing as failure when I sit down to create as long as my work is truly an outpouring of what is inside me. The goal is self expression. The goal is the interpretation and translation of my personality, my emotions and the world around me. Of course. Of course I want the outcome to be aesthetically lovely but not all parts of me ARE lovely. I am fallible. I am human. There is darkness here. Some of my attempts will fall flat or be classified as ugly and there’s a truth to be found even in those attempts. So why do I fear them?

Why do I fear the truth of them?

Why do I fear the darkness when there is so much sureness in the light and when I give voice to those voids, those terrors, those fears, are not they flooded with grace and understanding and light? To even attempt to convey them in metal and stone is to take them out of their hiding places and turn them slowly in my hands, in the pureness of light.

The thing is, it’s ok.

It’s ok to fail, if failure means I make something that represents ugliness and brokenness. Those are real things and if they pour out of me in a moment of despair, giving structure to THAT moment and those emotions is a very real thing. The beauty in this creation is the illumination of fear. The dissolution of fear.

The courage it takes when facing my demons, calling those demons out by name, and watching them dismantle under the power of grace and truth.

There is only rejoicing here:

The thick and thin of exploration, self awareness, inspiration.

The process.

Those two loves I must give: for my neighbor, for my God.

The dissection of everything in between.

And the growth that comes with all of these things.

Always reaching.

I’ve been so comfortable these past few months.

It’s time to push harder, to carve deeper, to break barriers and include

past fragments in new forms, structures and concepts. I’m up for the task, even if I’m down for the count.

_________________________________________________________

I’ve been so afraid, this week past.

Afraid to begin again.

Afraid of my studio space.

Afraid of my ideas.

But I’m not frightened anymore.

Even the darkness can amount to light.

If you’ve been afraid, call it by name, bring it forth, understand it and fling it into the light where it can be no more.

I hope you had beautiful weekends.

Thank you for your sweet congratulations for my darling smokejumper!

See you tomorrow.

The Noisy Plume

Filed Under: garden, journal entry, plume gables

And we were drawn into the rhythm of the sea.

June 1, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

Portion of Journal Entry from May 27, 2010:

…There were beautiful solo driving moments on this segment of highway, headed North through the leaping green of Humboldt County and up into the timber of Oregon. On one bend in the road, with the sun to my back, I swept smoothly around a curve, rushed along the flank of a painted white dot asphalt spine, and directly into a heavy sheet of rain. I felt the truck hesitate under the weight of the weather and then stumble onward. Blindly. I could feel the slow thickness of rubber on wet road through the steering wheel and the fortress of forest around me seemed to bow down so calmly in the rage of the moment…

Filed Under: driving, journal entry, norcal, oregon, rumors of the sea