The Life and Times of the Plume

Like so many tenacious willows standing splayed against a deep snowscape.

[sterling and various dendritic agates]

 [toast with a dash of salted butter, avocado, poached eggs with a dusting of grated Parmesan]

 Morning here was the long and the short of it.  I made like the wee housewife I am and wrangled laundry, cleaned all kitchen surfaces and badgered about the yard a bit tending hens and the such.  The highlight was breakfast.  Boy howdy.  Breakfast was delicious.

I’ve been suffering the most drastic chill, deep in my bones, all day long.  I usually get chilled in November and then finally warm up again in May — it’s most annoying and prevents me from wearing pretty clothing which is a deplorable curse.  To warm up, I went running, I was thinking in slices of poetry as I moved up and across the mountain.  To my ever living frustration, I write my best poems into thin air — everything about me is fluid while crossing the country at a run.  Why does it have to be that way?  Why can’t I light a candle in the living room at night, play some quiet music and weave some words together?  It’s enough to make me snap all my black pens into little pieces of kindling.  At any rate, I came off the mountain and was instantly chilled again, so I whipped up a batch of honey, lemon and fresh ginger root tea which tends to warm me beautifully from the inside out.  I am playing this album while I cook spaghetti to accompany my canned marinara garden sauce for a scrumptious early dinner.  However, what I really wanted to tell you about this afternoon is the fact that I am (mostly infrequently) a hoarder of the knowledge of the existence of things.  It happens most often with books, rarely with anything else.  If I read a book and fall in love with it on a cellular level — to the very marrow of my bones, I tend to not want to share it with anyone.  I want to pretend that I’m the only person on Earth that knows about it and that it was, in fact, written just for me and only me.  It’s hideous and selfish behavior.  I can’t help it,  I can’t.  I think it’s a genetic flaw.  The most recent book I have hoarded the knowledge of the existence of is the collected journals of L. M. Montgomery, volume one.  Yes!  This is the woman who wrote Anne of Green Gables.  My mum (on RW’s side of the family) gave me a copy of these selected journals about two years ago.   I tried to pick the book up on a few different occasions but it didn’t stick with me.  In late November, I picked these journals up for a third time and gosh, did they ever stick!  The timing was finally right.  I loved this book so well that I found myself stalling, I didn’t want to finish!  I read three other books and a fluffy trilogy to put off the ending of Maud’s personal diary but alas, finally, I finished late one night while in the bath.  I closed the book, shut my eyes and submerged myself entirely in my bath water simply to listen to my heartbeat thrum and remind myself that Maud was once alive and real and…oh…I don’t know how to explain it fully but when I read the final page of her journals and shut the book, I felt draped in funeral black.

I felt like I had lost a dear friend.

I know.  You think me silly.  But if you could only read her journals and connect with her, like I did, you might understand.  My only solace is that there are five volumes of her journals to covet, collect and devour.

I think Maud’s collection of journals are a Canadian national treasure.  I cannot recommend them enough.  You know, very well by now, that I am an avid reader of the journals and collected letters of artists, authors and sometimes other mildly famous people.  Journals are wonderfully candid — I feel like I get such an honest feel for creative process, struggles, failures and victories of an individual.  Just wonderful!

Copies of volume one are available here!  Catch them if you can!

Also, read this, if you have a free moment.  It’s an easy skim and it’s a gorgeous breath of fresh air.

And now, I must spaghetti myself.  A bientot!

xx

I’ve been working on a photo series called “To The Low Country:  People Of The Deer” and it’s been quite a lot of fun!  I don’t know if I’m truly capable of following through on a series concept (I’m so easily distracted, all the time, by new ideas), but I’m trying my hardest to write a few poems and dashes of prose to go with some of the images.  If you hear about it again in the future, you’ll know I was successful in seeing the project through!

Hello there, you wild pack of beauties!  I’m just down from a leisurely stroll on the mountain with Penelope Pie.  It’s delicious out there, delicious as a pack of wolves.  When the sun set below the mountains to the West the most marrow biting nip filled the air in every direction and I could feel the earth settle beneath my feet — settle for night and the swoop of owls and the flight of moonbeams.  It was soul expanding and brilliant.  I’m so glad I took the time to go walking.

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks contemplating the passing of another year.  I’m not going to spin a lie for you, I’m rather glad to see 2011 go, it was a rough haul at times and there were days when I didn’t think my heart and soul would mend…but they did, and I survived, and it is with wide open eyes and a helium heart (always rising, always rising) that I greet the new year.  I have entered it strongly.  I’m a different person this year, than I was last year, last month, last week…last minute — isn’t that the glory of constant change?  Something in me feels brawny and bonny.  I like it.

The greatest lessons I learned in 2011:

-Sleeping with a kitten from an Idaho cattle ranch will probably put fleas in your bed and those fleas will nip at you and they will disrupt your sleep which will annoy you greatly.  So don’t sleep with the kitten.

-There’s nothing half so delicious as a freshly laid egg, laid by a happy, free range hen.

-In this world, all you really can do is your very best.  Your very best will vary in caliber according to what you are processing as a human being in your heart and your mind at any given moment, according to your personal life experiences.  For this reason, grace for all is essential, and when you receive grace when you are ill behaved, you will understand why this is true, time and time again.  Everyone is fighting a fight that you can’t see or know.  Cut them some slack.

-Living away from my spouse, from the person I love more than anyone on the earth, for six months of every year, is a royal pain in the arse of my heart.  I won’t do it again.

-If you see an Airstream for $500, buy it.  Do not pause to ponder on practicality, just buy.

-When hate mail lands in your email inbox (and people always find a reason to hate or be unkind) don’t read it.  Just delete it and never think about it ever again.

-About myself: I refuse to be a snob about anything, anything at all.  It causes silence in others and I think that’s sad.

-To deeply and honestly love the souls of others is the greatest calling of all.  To love the eternal portion, the most unique and holy part of another is the greatest calling of all.  For me, today, there is almost nothing else than this.

-A hot bath at the end of every day is as curing as chicken soup (in my case, it is a sort of chicken soup).

How about you?  What were your greatest life lessons of 2011?

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Moving on, there are a handful of things I have to share with you.  First of all, I gave myself an automatic milk steamer and foamer.  It’s utterly magical and now I have tea lattes and cafe au lait constantly with the most beautiful mountainous frothy milk puff on top.  If you don’t have one, you must have one.  Do not delay.  I finished reading this, which one of you suggested to me, and really quite liked it.  What I especially liked (besides the exquisite writing style of the author and mystique of the main character) is that the story depicts the Frank Slide which is still disastrously visible when you drive the Crows Nest Highway across Southern Alberta.  Pick up a copy when you have a moment.  You won’t regret it.  I’ve been listening to this fairly often and it’s just as beautiful as only Feist can be.  My sister is working at this shop in Saskatoon so I was gifted mainly tea products from her at Christmas which has been a scrumptious gift indeed!  Go forth and tea yourselves!

Now, I am very hungry and am going to go gather a lovely dinner together.  I hope you’re all well!

Kisses.  xx

I can’t remember the last time I had a batch of rings racked up for you!  It’s been a while, hasn’t it?  I move in small and tumultuous seasons, out in my studio.  These past few days have been all about setting little stones, embracing color, rambling about with granulation and geometric embellishment…simplicity and texture.  These rings feature, from left to right: peridot, turquoise, pearl and lapis lazuli.  They’ll be made available to you sometime tomorrow (along with a pair of  bold and beautiful chrysoprase rings).

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2012/01/08/3791/