Robbie texted me last July from the boiling black tarmac in Winnemucca, Nevada while he was waiting for a fire call and simply asked, “Would you like to snorkel in bioluminescent waters in Puerto Rico?” I told him I was born to do that very thing so he immediately purchased two round-trip tickets for $250 each and in early February we landed in San Juan and immediately began sweating.
We took a small plane out to Vieques Island where we spent a little more than a week exploring, snorkling, fishing, overdosing on Vitamin D, exclaiming about all the free range Paso Fino horses and shrieking at sudden iguanas (they seem to come out of nowhere and are enormous by my standards). It was a great trip and I did a terrible job of using my camera. There was so much to document and so many visual details to collect…and I did such a great job of being in the moment. Puerto Rican culture is loud, colorful and flavorful (just like me). On our last day on the island, before we flew back to San Juan, I discovered the cemetery in Isabelle II and wandered through with my camera. What beauty…those stark white, hurricane whipped crosses against an incredible caribbean sky…
Before we even left, I was talking about our next visit. But in the meanwhile, I have all the colors and textures to recall with such fondness. Thanks for flooding my senses, PR. I’ll miss you until I see you again.
I was telling a friend recently that the new year is a funny thing. We act like we get to go forth with a clean slate on the first day of the year but everything feels the same: life is all piled up all around, wobbling and wibbling in the wind. Despite all this “starting over” new year stuff, life is replete with brimming inboxes, half-finished projects on my studio bench, the letters I need to respond to, the grocery lists, the shrinking wood pile, the unreturned phone calls…stacks and stacks of living to do, tasks to never catch up with — part of me wants to catch up with it all and take a moment to swing the cat by the tail but I know it’s impossible. There is no amnesty! The new year demands us onward!
Here’s some of the work of my hands and my heart from the past two weeks of my life. I’m not sure what’s more fun, making these earrings or wearing these earrings! I love these designs, they’re such itsy bitsy builds. Every blade stroke of my saw, every hammer strike, every glide of the burnisher is prayer.
The boys in the hayfield eating away the chill of the night and day breaking in the Western sky and the sun pouring off the edge of the canyon wall like a cascade of fire.
It was a beautiful blue morning and we worked out the morning chores in fresh snow. The chickens wouldn’t leave the coop, poor things, they came out reluctantly, one by one, and we counted them up because we haven’t tallied them in a while. There are fifteen. We noted that our little Polish hen is missing. A few weeks ago two strange dogs were in our yard — a lab and a Pyreneese. The lab was sniffing around our horse paddocks and getting quite close to all our yard fowl. It made me nervous. I recall asking Robbie if he thought the lab would be ok around our chickens, ducks and turkeys. He gave me a noncommittal answer and I did my best to run the lab off our land. We went in the house for breakfast and when we stepped out the door again an hour later the lab had returned, dispatched two of my chickens and was tearing into one of the turkeys. I now have reason to believe my little Polish hen was a fourth victim.