Reggae & Ray-Bans

Life is feeling like reggae and Ray-Bans here.  It’s all sunshine and groove.  It’s so strange, people keep asking me if I’m stressed out about the impending summer relocation and my honest answer is, “Nope!”  I’m just so darn excited, I can barely keep my socks on, which is actually fine because it’s barefoot weather here and I’m wandering around like a summer child already and loving the cool of the shade under the big blue spruce.  This morning, I took a little quiet time to sit down and write a handful of letters to friends, near and far.  Then a pal stopped in for coffee on the front porch and we had a dandy old time talking about the dark of winter, life lessons and naturally, our summer plans.  It was delightful.  All the fruit trees in the yard are blooming right now and it’s easy to waste an hour meandering through the grass, watching the progress of the poppy patch and wondering which plum tree will produce the most fruit this year.  Springtime exists because of the natural cycle of our planet, axis tilts, proximity to the sun and all that technical, scientific mumbo jumbo jazz.  Did you ever think, more importantly, it exists just to crack our hearts open like the knobby little oysters they are, once a year, every year — so that we can find ourselves stumbling around, punch drunk in love with nature and each other, all over again.  It’s such a romantic time of year.

I’m wearing all my favorite lipsticks in not-so-gentle colors to celebrate.  I’m like radical confetti descending on the shoulders of our friends.  I’m like a lightning bolt of love adding bubbles to your champagne.  Come over!  I WANT TO HUG YOU!  I’m an adoring spazz.

Robert and I, when we aren’t exhausted, have been watching the first season of Pushing Daisies which has us utterly enchanted and much to Rob’s chagrin, it has me wanting a lot of new dresses.  Have you seen this series?  But my gosh, it’s hilarious and darling.  We’ve been working quadruple overtime here but every now and again, in the evening, we watch one episode of this show and it makes me laugh so hard and I say, “cute” a lot, when referencing it.  At night, we flop into bed like little opossums, so exhausted, and mutter reminders to each other before we drift off to sleep.

What’s going on in your neck of the woods?

A Handful of the Random

 1.  I just had a letter arrive by mail.  A real, gorgeous little letter and I just knew, as soon as I started reading it, that I’m going to have a beautiful pen pal relationship with this gal.  I am so lucky to have a handful of majestics when it comes to pen pals.

2.  The winter weather we’ve had blustering through the valley for a few days now has dissolved itself in the night.  The sky is still white, the air is cool, the wind is sharp but the snow seems finished.  I’ll miss it.  Two nights ago, I went running, and the snowflakes were falling so thick and plump that the entire front side of my body became plastered white as I cut through the wind and over Red Hill.  I love springtime weather.  The ups and downs of it.  The way everything must stand staunchly and not be moved by the gusts and sleet.  It’s the final test before the rewards of summer.  Last night I went running and it was surprisingly cold out.  My breath and that of the dogs formed white solid against the stars and moving over the ground felt miraculous.  Spring and fall are my favorite times of year to run, the temperatures are so brisk and refreshing to be out in and moving quickly through.  I have to run fast, to stay warm.  I pretend I’m crossing a mountain to get to my tiny cabin where a merry wood fire is waiting for me.  I pretend there are no roads.  I pretend I’m running to a neighboring tribe where a friendly wigwam is waiting for me and a feather decorated woman in deer skin is smudging sage.  That reminds me, I’m going to go pick sage this afternoon.  I’m excited to bundle it.

3.  I sometimes imagine the bodily electricity it takes for me to run.  The synaptic firing and catching of information, faster than all sonic everything.  My body is a glorious machine!  A perfect machine, even in its subtle failures and irregularities.  If I feel like blowing my mind, I sit back and imagine everything my body is doing at any given moment in time.  It’s an astounding and amazing thing to attempt to fathom.  I give myself the imaginary bends from diving too deep, too fast, and then rising into the wonder of it all.

4.  I wonder how doctors choose to focus on any one part or function of the human body?  If you were studying to be a doctor, what would you choose to focus on?  Mitochondria?  Ears?  Rough endoplasmic reticulum?  Leukocytes?  Mitochondria, I’ve always loved that word.  In grade four I wrote a short story for a contest.  I desperately wanted to use the word mitochondria in the telling because I had been reading about them in the encyclopedia and loved the way the word rolled off my tongue but also the function of mitochondria in living things was fascinating to me.  I constructed an entire story around the word and it was a very good story and I should have won that contest but I didn’t.  The judges may have thought the tale was too well written for my age category.  Or perhaps they didn’t know what a mitochondria was.

5.  The prettiest girl I have ever seen walked by the window I was seated beside while I was out for breakfast this morning.  She had on mauve tights, a long cobalt blue coat, and she had sea foam green hair.  I can’t remember what her face looked like, it was pale and seemed pinched by the cold of the wind, but I thought she was so beautiful, like a lost mermaid in the Rocky Mountains.  Do you ever have the urge to make best friends with perfect strangers based entirely on the colors they are wearing?  Oh.  I had that urge today.

6.  There were the sweet international students strolling on campus, mostly delicately Asian, with their cute little keychains dangling from their little backpacks.  They take such small steps when they walk.  I’m from the West.  When I walk my stride gobbles ground.  Do you ever marvel at how much space there is here?

7.  I was listening to a wonderful interview on NPR this afternoon featuring the 2012 Iditarod winner.   He seems so lovely, well spoken and passionate about Alaska, Alaskan huskies and Alaskan people.  Bless his heart.  I could have been a musher.  I could have been so many things.  How do we wind up where we are?  I could be a marathon runner and I suppose it’s not too late to start except I ran so many races in high school that I’m tired of the sound of pattering feet behind me, the waiting for the sound of the gun…too much regulation…now I like to run the wind into the ground and chase the mule deer through the sage brush.

8.  Potato delivery.  This is how Tater Tot arrived at The Gables.  In a Tater sack.  Naturally.

9.  I was just telling a friend recently that I used to like green very much but then I started liking blue and now blue is my favorite (also, dove grey, mustard, salmon, orange and magenta).  Not just any blue though.  I am drawn to cobalt and navy blue.  Dark bright blue and dark blue.  When I wear these shades of blue I feel like I look fresh and lovely, they feel so good to be in.  If I see cobalt when I’m out and about, I inhale sharply.  There’s just something about it.  My grandfather has piercing blue eyes.  He’s rather Norwegianish looking.  He is gorgeous in fisherman blue.  My eyes are a uniform, dark brown but I feel as good as he looks in blue when I wear blue.  I wonder if my preference for color will change throughout my life, like tastebuds?

10.  Tater dug a large hole in the lawn.  Rob has filled it with dirt and seeded it with new grass.  I can hardly wait for the baby grass to begin growing.  One of my favorite things to pet is fresh, baby grasses.

Smells Like Maple Syrup

Suddenly, I turned a corner and there was the terminus of yet another week, just one breath away, and the week to follow was there too, humming with possibility and the soft thrum of feathers in the wind, and every other week from here to the end, standing patiently in the aisles, waiting to run their courses.

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Hello!  Hello.  Today is February 25th and I think I have finally come out of the cave, as my friend and I like to call it — times when we hunker down and disappear for a while to catch up with ourselves and to really sink down into our work for a bit.  Just this morning I have spent hours reading and responding to most of the online correspondence that landed in my inboxes for the month of February — I am sorry that you had to wait so long and am always so thankful for your patience.  It was hurly burly work, happy work!  Life this month has felt so fast and whirling, I’ve felt mostly unsettled in my day to day activities.  My work has been here, there and everywhere.  I have opted out, time and time again, of computer work in favor of spending time in my studio space which, on especially ordinary days, has felt so terribly fruitless.  But I have to hand it to myself, I kept going out there, I kept sitting down to work, I pushed through and I’m glad for that.  I did manage to break through a wall this week and produced these little enameled fellows, which you have already been introduced to.  These rings will likely mean more to me than they’ll ever mean to anyone else, this can be said for any finished piece of creative work, I think.  When I look at these rings, I see a recent month of broken confidence, one full year of carefully letting someone go and my own eventual homecoming, in from the cold of the night, to my rightful places in the arms of so many things.

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In other news, the Airstream smells like maple syrup!  Robert has officially finished sealing up all the old vents and antennae holes with riveted aluminum sheet making the entire trailer weather proof until we get around to installing the kitchen and bathroom units next fall.  Just yesterday, he applied this maple leaf patch which brings a beaver shaped, luminescent tear to the corner of my sweet little Canadian eye.  I think it’s the perfect touch.  We have decided to also put a life-sized decal of ourselves locked in a passionate kiss on the back of this rig so that when we roll down the highway, people can really feel the love [JUST KIDDING].  I say this all the time, but it bears repeating, I feel so blessed when I look over my life.  Robert and I are never afraid to dream about what we want for ourselves and our family, and then we’re equally fearless when we step out and make those dreams happen.  Everything is so good, even when it isn’t.  I love that about my life.

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I have been practicing reverse psychology on the weather gods.  Just yesterday I told someone that we had skipped winter here and run straight from autumn into spring.  I feel like winter never arrived.  And most ridiculously, the roses are now putting out cheery little leaf buds which is enough to make me put away my skis forever!  This said, yesterday I looked up at the heavens and exclaimed, in a most conniving tone, “My!  How beautiful this lovely springtime weather is.  I hope winter never comes.”  Wouldn’t you know it, I woke up to hideous, cold winds — swooping down off the mountains — and a dash of fresh snow on the ground this morning.  Officially, I am a weather manipulator.  I’m going to see if I can bring in a hurricane this evening or perhaps a flock of flying squirrels.

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Lastly, because I was feeling sentimental and pretty yesterday morning, I made an Alabaster Bones Necklace.  What a throwback!  I still love the design, most thoroughly.  It was such a pleasure to make and a sweet, pale petal on the tuxedo tails of the week.

I hope you had a marvelous Friday night: dancing heels, gin and tonics, red lipstick and handsome sailors just off their ships with deep pockets full of jangling change.

xx

Post Scriptus:

On the stereo.

On the bedstand.

On my feet.

Oh, you rising star.

It’s been a stunning morning here.  Once again, the sky is full of stacks and clumps of clouds and the wind is strong and brazen.  My world is flickering in and out of light and shadow as the wind rearranges the sky — the elements are always toying with each other.  I woke up chilled and have been shivering at the kitchen island, sipping cups of coffee and tea while doing some writing.  When the furnace kicks in, it blows hot air directly up my pant legs.  It feels like heaven.  I’ve been reading from Anne Truitt’s Daybook again (and again and again), revisiting the pages I dog-eared over the summer months.  This morning I passed over her writings from August 12:

Unless we are very, very careful, we doom each other by holding onto images of one another based on preconceptions that are in turn based on indifference to what is other than ourselves.  This indifference can be, in its extreme, a form of murder and seems to me a rather common phenomenon.  We claim autonomy for ourselves and forget that in so doing we can fall into the tyranny of defining other people as we would like them to be.  By focusing on what we choose to acknowledge in them, we impose an insidious control on them.  I notice that I have to pay careful attention in order to listen to others with an openness that allows them to be as they are, or as they think themselves to be.  The shutters of my mind habitually flip open and click shut, and these little snaps form into patterns I arrange for myself.  The opposite of this inattention is love, is the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy and allows mutual discovery.

ZING!

Doesn’t that pass through your heart like an arrow made of white truth with flaming fletches?!!!  It does mine.  How often have I pinned someone in place and prevented them from being who they are?  Likewise, how often have others pinned me in place like a squirming butterfly on a white card, unable to rise into who I am?  Gosh!  We need to quit it!  Just quit it.

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Three other things:

1.  We have one pumpkin left.  I will turn it into soup.

2.  I will take the dogs walking in the sunshine and wind this afternoon.  There will be quadruped riots in the snow and cheatgrass.

3.  Do you ever feel yourself rising, like the first star at dusk?  If so, imagine how many people out there have cast a glittering wish at the broadness of your twinkling back.  You’re beautiful.  Because you are.  And because I say so.

xx