from the mouth of a mother

swimming in a sea of bliss

2012-01-27T16:48:00.001-05:00

...probably sounds like some horrifically lame song lyric, no? in the worst times, there is joy to be found, and that joy carries us through into new things. it becomes our strength. i know, more sap. i also know, however, what i can swear by, what i can cleave to, and where i can find solace.

on being seventy five

antlers

a calendar

a wish list dress (in my own size? could i fit the kids 12?)

her yarn

these cookies

happy friday.

things that have been on my mind (or open in my browser tabs)

2012-01-24T08:00:00.003-05:00

years of wanting this

leg warmers

screen-printed rag dolls! also - a mermaid rag doll

this yellow shirt

this cat pouch

this tobacco soap

and on my list of things pertaining to craft:

-this pattern for stamping

-this one too

-chalkboard blocks

-doll clothes

-doing this to our bookshelf

-making this

also, we've been painting:

and we got iphones, so now you can find me on instagram, as well as on flickr and tumblr

happy tuesday!

the best that i can do

2012-01-18T09:48:00.000-05:00

before, this was the best, this was the best i could do, read it, the best i could do.

and here? now? now it is the best that i can do. the best that i can do.

what do you say to the morning that keeps the dark, the morning with not enough minutes to compose what lives in your head? saturday, i applied to graduate school. yesterday, i told my professor/advisor that i had needed to find out what it meant to me, i needed to see that it wasn't a matter of reacting to the space around me anymore. i'm going into this next phase of my academic career expecting there to be a list of disagreements, a list of problems, a list of ways in which i am not doing what i am supposed to be doing. the retail ghosts haunt me, bony fingers around my neck, waiting to curse me for needing a place to relieve myself from baby milk, waiting to write me up for staying home to take care of a sick kid. with the way last semester went and the number of times i found myself on the couch at 2am thinking "shit…," praying to the gods of fevers and the barking cry, i could not survive. even last night tested me, with the restless sleep and the lost count of trips into her room. she groans and barks in the night, and i wonder sometimes if it drove me to a point of exasperation, anger. when she doesn't sleep, i hate the world. i curse the universe for sticking me with this creature who can't comfort herself, who does not hear me speak, i become a monster myself.

nonetheless, i applied to graduate school this weekend, took a deep breath, and those bones shriveled up. no longer are they fiddling with my hair; my skin is soft and smooth. my voice is hoarse from little sleep and coffee feels good and warm. i have a shawl around my neck, a shawl that i made with my own hands. i am finding comfort within my own means, within my own shell, and i will carry this into the next few months, and the next year as i carve a space for myself and then occupy it, understanding what it is that makes me indispensable. this is a tactic of survival.

how many days, or weeks, have i been tracking thoughts and hoping for a silent hour? we bought iphones. ironically, i hope to use mine to escape.

what were we doing here? truth: five things. truth: i was told once that you shouldn't be putting more into something than what you are getting out of it. i regress, digress, whatever.

what is marrow, anyway? "a soft fatty substance in the cavities of bones, in which blood cells are produced (often taken as typifying strength and vitality)." here is something i am comfortable talking about. substance. what lives within the parts that build the frame. you ask yourself what you've done, whether you misjudged months ago or whether you slowly pulled yourself out of the pool, inches at a time. you ask yourself whether it's a matter of poor communication or poor living. you ask yourself why you cut your hair, girl, why did you cut it and why did you buy things, why did you go to church why did you stop going to church why did you memorize the shape of his mouth why did you choose fragments and expect them to somehow morph into a whole, a different whole, why? i tried to write letters, but when i open up the book i've got nothing to say but borrowed words. have we been trying to make a story without first learning the groundwork, the blueprint? marrow: the movement, the humming, pulsing, vibrant, resonant matter that you'll find if you crack the skeleton. i can't give you anything more.

rinse

2012-01-04T15:56:00.000-05:00

VI. (from The Country of Marriage)

What I am learning to give you is my death
to set you free of me, and me from myself
into the dark and the new light. Like the water
of a deep stream, love is always too much. We
did not make it. Though we drink till we burst
we cannot have it all, or want it all.
In its abundance it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill, and sleep, while it
flows through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us, except we keep returning
to its rich waters thirsty. We enter,
willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.

-Wendell Berry

Grace
for Gurney Norman, quoting him
The woods is shining this morning.
Red, gold and green, the leaves
lie on the ground, or fall,
or hang full of light in the air still.
Perfect in its rise and in its fall, it takes
the place it has been coming to forever.
It has not hastened here, or lagged.
See how surely it has sought itself,
its roots passing lordly through the earth.
See how without confusion it is
all that it is, and how flawless
its grace is. Running or walking, the way
is the same. Be still. Be still.
“He moves your bones, and the way is clear.”

-Wendell Berry

The first of these, I plan to hang in our house to remind us of the pool from which we take and drink, from where we draw our strength. There is a baby crying here and while this sound usually tires me, today I am feeling much like her, going on little sleep because my own crawled into the bed at 2:30am and proceeded to sleep rather loudly and once I was awake, I was restless. I even tried earplugs, which didn't help whatsoever. Instead, I had the echo of silence and a muffled but still noticeable breathing, wiggly kid next to me and I could hear the other one asleep in the living room, he is not quiet either. I am the kind of person who needs to sleep in a space far, far away from everyone,everything. The second poem I felt in my bones this morning at yoga, the first class taught by a woman who had been in the two classes I went to in November. This is about my body, perfect in its rise and fall, the place it has been coming to forever. I found a copy of Our Bodies Ourselves, Pregnancy and Childbirth, for a buck. I brought home books from the library on stamping, and a book called knitting lessons (it's not instructional). What can we learn from what we do, from habit, from construction,creation,intentional assembly? The longer I sit here, the more I crave chocolate.

I read this, this morning. I want to make a space in our house for reflection. I imagined two button jars and words to remember: kindness, mindfulness. Moving the buttons from one jar to the next when we need to be reminded. Empathy. Can empathy be taught? Is it shadowed by intellectual maturity, drowned by practice and stubborn hearts? We don't teach it, we type instead.

I can't sleep. I have trouble sleeping. I think about this ring a lot. If only light was the problem. I wish it was this simple.

ineffable

2011-12-31T16:51:00.000-05:00

this post has been in the making for several days now; i keep coming back to the saved draft to add something else. i suppose that means we've had a productive week! i'm sitting at our coffee shop, i promised myself i'd get it together, and you have no idea how hard it is to write when your significant other is sitting right next to you. or maybe you do. either way. do you need to be alone when you write?

i was writing as i walked here, about the old houses and huge porches, the perfect windows and picnic tables and the house with the butternut squashes on the porch that have been sitting there for months. i passed a house with a picnic table instead of a lawn, a lot of really fat squirrels, and empty chairs splattered with paint. yes, i can write and walk. it's very messy.

so, what have we been up to?
well, yesterday one of my friends/classmates and i went and got some coffee (for her, tea for me) and wandered down to a very small and very packed used book store in town. the man who owns it is incredibly knowledgable. you could imagine hoarders, only with books, and he knows where everything is. i'm not sure how long he's been here, but he's got shelves to the ceiling full of books, and then stacks as tall as me in front of those shelves so that unearthing a solicited book requires digging out out from behind the masses. he knows what's back there, though. his books are more expensive than i've seen elsewhere (his prices are slightly more than john king in detroit), and you can only fit single file down each aisle (makes for snuggly book browsing), and his "desk" in the front is a little nest of book stacks with a hollow space in the middle for him to stand. he's got a drawer of cash somewhere in there, and a beat up yellow notepad where he keeps track of his sales/does math. we found a bird song book, and a signed copy (first UK edition) of Written on the Body by jeanette winterson. we then went to the bead store (there's a bead store in ypsi!) and the woman who works there (does she own it?) taught me how to make the wire for the bead with a headpin, and then gave me her tools. a two hour class in five minutes, plus the tools to do it? i am a lucky mama. it was a wonderful day, finished up with the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe (it was on tv, but we don't have cable, so we rented it instead and now i'm so anxious to watch the other movies in the series. believe it or not, i've never read narnia) and knitting.

today i missed the post office closing by 42 minutes (oops) and went out for more linoleum carving tools and jewelry supplies. i came home with just a few lino blocks and some earring findings. and now we're back at the mug, sipping some more white peony tea, savoring the last few moments of 2011.

here are a few notes from the last several days:

- i borrowed a certain movie from the library, and when i went to renew my materials it was not listed in my account. i looked it up in the library's system and it shows as "on shelf." i asked clay if i should call them and let them know that it is, in fact, on *my* shelf...he said it's no big deal. so, here it is, sitting in a bed of lies told to the dear city of ypsilanti. if you had plans to watch "tying the knot," you'll have to come over. i'm not giving it up yet.

- i couldn't sleep the other night, and after tossing and turning for a few hours i finally gave up, got some cookies from the kitchen, and curled up with Lighthousekeeping, also by jeanette winterson. i finished the whole thing. it was incredible. when i woke up the next morning (far too early for not having gone to bed until 3am), i found the bookshelf of jeff buckley at the time of his death, and it made me think about what books of my own i'd want to be on a list like that - what books were most memorable and influential in my life, my story? what would my bookshelf tell you? the winterson one would be there, and now i'm aching to see the innards of a lighthouse coupled with the time and capacity to tell my own story. the books says there are no concrete stories. and i think maybe, no concrete beings, until we are fossils and then we are just stopped, just caught and suspended in time.

i tried finding a few more of winterson's books at the library, and lo and behold they are mostly found in sci-fi. i've always been a self-proclaimed realistic-fiction person, but this road of interest lost in romance and disbelief in true love (at least in the way we obsess over it - is finding true love really the ultimate life goal?) makes the clips on the backs of most books almost nauseating. i don't want to slip into someone's broken fetish, someone's troubled home. with the exception of steinbeck because i've got a book on my to-read list that i'm going to find at the library later, i'm dreaming of a different world.

- i finished a cowl i was knitting.

- i bought a new bathmat.

- i've thought about a dream-list: a stand mixer, a desk from IKEA (I'd even be okay with this), a septum piercing, a finished tattoo, a pottery class, a big cozy chair for the living room (minus one of the couches), a rug for grace's room

- lately we've been going to a catholic church here and i'm really intrigued by iconography and ritual, particularly surrounding mary. mary, the mother of a son who was not her own. grace is not my own; grace is given and i am her keeper, her caretaker - i provide, but she is not my own. i am a vessel, too. have you heard of the series, the hidden world of girls, on npr? i've caught clips of it while driving, but i haven't listened to the entire series yet.

- i have a yoga punch card that expires at the end of january and i've used it maybe twice. that's 18 more classes that we've paid for (with groupon, but still) and not nearly enough time or motivation to use them. this is bothering me.

- every time i read this blog, i immediately need to go to the thrift store.

- i will grow my hair out to look like this.

- printmaking pictures that i like (one, two)

what are your new years resolutions? i've been quietly composing a list in my head, and thus far i have this:
-do more housework
-stay home more (i've got a real bad habit of running unnecessary errands - like, i go buy craft supplies or get a book from the library that i "need to have right now," only to put it on the shelf for weeks)
-knit something more complicated than a scarf or hat
-apply to grad school (this one isn't really a resolution, because apps are due by jan 21-ish). to be fair, maybe i should include graduate. almost done.
-re-read madeline l'engle's series
-tour a lighthouse, with grace
-go camping with grace
-make yogurt
-buy an ipad/netbook/something small and portable
-make soap
-drive less, walk/bike more
-downsize the bookshelf. i have a lot of books i don't want/didn't like/haven't read.
-read the books on my shelf that i own but have not read.

ofrendas/offerings/break

2011-12-23T11:21:00.001-05:00

source - a friend of mine in spain posted a photo of this scene on facebook and it immediately caught my eye. maybe it is the bright colors, or maybe the less-victorian-pristine, more-cubist appearance of the figures that made this nativity (belén) seem so welcoming. probably also why i love the strong lines of byzantine iconography. so visceral.

check out the note in this photo - someone saw the nativity in a cup of coffee

sheep

i am spending the day knitting away, coping with the 23rd day of each month in which i wake up to blood and the reminder that i am, in fact, woman with a life-giving space inside of my body (honor, honor). maybe life-giving isn't the word i want. i am a vessel, for many things. i am also a consumer of ibuprofin.

i would love to have this in my house

maybe some magnetic catholic paper dolls? the holy family set lets you put a shawl on mary that makes her pregnant again.

i love this image too; the plain, unadorned devotion and affection between mother and child.

a few photos from this set

one

two

three

what else is on my mind?
this dress, for new years. which is silly, because i will probably be in something comfortable and snuggling with the kiddo.

she's been drawing a lot. thinking about getting this book.

grace's drawings - the top "--A--" appears a lot on the top of her pages; she says the dash reminds you to pause and look at the picture. well, there you go -- a 4 year old's proper use of the em dash.

a peek at a finished present

books i picked up (one from amazon and the other from the library)

what i am currently reading

also, check out the postcard my friends made with the christmas photos i took for them:

i also made naan the other night. recipe here. i pan-fried them instead of baking, it worked perfectly.

then/now

2011-12-21T10:30:00.000-05:00

there are little chairs in my house. i am stretched out on the borrowed couch, drinking our coffee from our press. i turned on the bright eyes christmas album. there are little chairs in my house, tiny toys, baby dolls, small pajamas...there is a little girl asleep in my bed. sometimes she is a ghost of my childhood, crying heavy tears about bedtime and pressing her little belly into my back as we migrate across the bed until soon, she's taking up all of the space. i forgot to turn on the christmas lights.

she says there are three things she likes to do when she can't sleep: 1) draw. 2) stare at the christmas lights. 3) stare at the christmas tree. none of which actually help her go back to sleep.

i live for mornings. i live for being the first one awake, for slow sips of coffee and the tummy aches that surely follow. i have piles of projects around me that need to be finished for christmas. there is a little chair behind me, from her table in her room.

last night i wanted to dissipate, i wanted to evaporate into the kitchen air. instead, i stood there like a lonely, hollow tree and complained that there was nobody to call at two in the morning, that there was nobody to sit on my couch and make something with me (something i didn't have to teach them to do). there is no friend who wakes up at 6am with me, no friend to match my bedhead, no friend to flip on dora while we catch up on facebook while our babies watch television. there is no friend i can share the pains of being a partner/mom/student/person with, though there are a lot of pieces, a lot of people who pour themselves into some of the boxes. some of you know what it is like to parent, some of you know what it is like to be a single parent. some of you know what it is like to be swimming in a sea of papers. some of you like the quiet. i went to the mall at 8:30 last night, because i wanted a sparkly shirt for christmas or maybe i just wanted to be out. i didn't find one, and wandering the mall during late holiday hours was eerie because i carried with me all of my exhaustion, right in my arms. i bought grace new underwear, and somebody else's kid puked on the floor.

i came home and talked for a long time about what it is like to be in a relationship while belonging to a small church. when you're somebody's girlfriend, and that somebody is the son of a very involved family, the whole world is watching you breathe. everyone is trailing you like a shadow, everyone is recording your every move, making sure you're doing everything exactly right, exactly pure, exactly holy. you know what that makes you do? it makes you hide. it makes you find dark places where his parents won't find you. it makes you create this veil of responsibility that grows more opaque as the days pass you by and then you find yourselves behind it, curled up in a tiny dorm room bed to sleep, burrowed in a nest of guilt because you're breaking the rules by letting your bodies touch through your pajamas. everyone was watching. we were one without ever having slept together. we were one in a way that i have never been able to replicate. we were one in prayer and our own sort of ragged hope and hunger. we were one before i really knew what it was like to be one with anybody.

he met my daughter years later when my hair was blue and long and i sat outside an ice cream shop with my breasts hanging out, my baby drank herself to sleep. we pushed her in a swing. i wondered if maybe she was actually his, maybe i was the next mary and he was god, maybe she didn't come from sex at all. it was supposed to be us, right? married at twenty-two, with blonde babies and strong walls.

the upside to everyone watching was the inevitable presence of community and mentorship, in it's strange sort of pervasive way. and here is where i rest in memory, wondering how to trace my steps back to this place in which there was always someone there who knew the very deepest parts of you - probably because you prayed together, in a circle, holding hands. when we pray "our father," at the church we've been going to, i am powerless and frozen except for my grace who won't hold my hand anyway. i think if a stranger touched my hand, i'd flood the sanctuary with years of restrained tears. there was always someone to talk to, someone to pull aside into a quiet room to help you remember the proper ways to live. there are pieces of myself in the old church carpet, where we sat on the floor and begged for god to be near. my reflection must still be in the nursery window where i imagined the way our lives would unfold as i held someone else's baby.

and so i keep a list in my head of the problems i have with the church, the gates i've closed and the cracks that keep me from going back: i believe that heaven and hell are conceptual, not actual places: peace versus perpetual unresolve. i believe that sexual orientation is unimportant. i believe in the celebration of people, the body, and the wisdom and knowledge we possess to make choices. i believe in ritual and tradition in that they are spiritual practices. i do not believe in the practice of prayer as an attempt to persuade god to "reveal himself." i do not believe in the need to ask for salvation, or baptism as a means of acknowledging that choice. i do not believe that salvation is a choice, though i do believe that living an intentional, holy life is a conscious practice and therefore that impulsivity and carelessness are harmful ways to live (so, maybe this is where i can begin to define "sin").

here we are, in the morning, many years later. there are kid things in my living room, and an emotional four year old on my shoulder watching frosty melt on tv. i have a partner who at the very least, knows the songs we used to sing at church and the rules young christians are expected to live by. he knows what commitment and companionship mean to him, and he waits patiently for me to figure these things out for myself. he listens intently as i walk through memories, he unravels the panic that clouds my head when i'm suddenly debilitated by the presence of certain things and the absence of others. this year was a year of choice, but it was also a year of critical thought. next year will be a year of generation.

love the ones you love and serve them well

2011-12-19T23:55:00.000-05:00

she is four and a half and i still can't get enough of her sleepy face, no more sweet smelling breath and snores, still can't stop touching her hair, twisting it in my fingers until she yells at me to stop. when she was a baby, i spent endless hours thinking about the kind of mother i would be - intuitive, conscious, gentle, smooth. i dreamt of how to cushion vulnerability (mine and hers), about how to harvest proper traits. i think now about an altar in the hallway, a sanctuary for re-centering, more for me than for her. a place to kneel and rest my head, a place to remind me to always count to three silently before exploding. i don't consider, anymore, how to be "in tune" with my child. i don't try and listen between breaths and dare myself to match her needs with my wants and the ever-irreconcilable space between child and parent, we are, after all, separate beings (now). i keep turning inward, wondering what kind of place i am making, what kind of life i am teaching (instead of who i am to her, who i am, who i am). i must care for the soul, and i thought this as i sang old church songs to her in bed through tears because she breaks, she can't sleep, she says over and over that red is not her favorite color, and i want to wrap my arms around her as if they were big and thick and warm, instead of bony and awkward and small. i wish i was a bear, i thought, a big mama bear in a cave, and i'd hang up every lantern from the cupboard. i wish i could rest my head against hers and help her to see that the dark is not a scary thing. i pull myself in, waiting for quiet moments and clear air, to find there what i need to keep going. it is ember, a burning stone in my gut, that i draw my reason from.

i keep coming back to the concept of choice as a paralyzing reminder of everything we don't have, everything we're missing out on, and how we have to live outside of those lines; how can you know, that something else isn't going to make you happier? brighter? completely and wholly something different? maybe i wouldn't have tried on 50 coats today if there were only two. only two! can you imagine? and the two would have to be long and warm, because at least the sleeves could be cut or rolled and we're not warm enough in the winter, anyway, in our fashionable jackets looking nice while we trek through snow. can i save her from that? probably not. see that thing over there? i don't have it. i need it. it doesn't matter that there are a hundred of them at home. i don't have that one. just like i don't have a black and gold striped shirt for christmas eve, or a wrap sweater, or a girlfriend or a man who writes me letters or good cheese in the kitchen. i have plenty, but plenty is nothing when there are a thousand others begging for my hand. maybe this is what christina rossetti was getting at with goblin market.

she snores again and this time wakes herself up. she looks at me with wide eyes, huge middles, she can't sleep in her own room because she knows she's missing something out here (even if that something is nothing more than me sitting here on the couch with yarn). i can't make her stay in there, can i? close the door to stifle the cries? and yet, while she is the center of my world, she is also not the governing force. i am learning to take care of myself.

source

we did it!

2011-12-16T10:37:00.001-05:00

painting in green, sunday afternoon

red - last december

painting - last december

catching him with his book stuck behind his waistband - last fall

unedited, leaves - last fall

the library - last year

the semester is over. grades will be posted next week. i survived 15 credit hours, a mountain of illnesses, moving, many accomplishments, new jobs, and a plan for the remainder of my undergraduate education. this is the first year that i haven't filled my break with a job - my job runs with the school year, now. i am spending some time this morning, convincing myself that this break is well-deserved; that the countless hours put in (my day isn't over at 5pm when class gets out) merits three whole weeks of rest. i'm so happy (and relieved) that i could cry. i feel like i am walking around with a well of tears behind my eyes ready to burst at any moment. i did it. we did it.

so, i've got a list:
ypsi flea (sunday)
impression 5 (a really awesome kid's museum in lansing)
snow globes
tackling the big bag of yarn in my closet
hosting a naked lady party? the box under my desk is overflowing
lights at the toledo zoo, and the toledo art museum/glass house
wayne county light fest
make sugar scrubs and chai concentrate for christmas presents
printmaking
visiting with friends and family, but particularly a certain friend i've yet to meet in person, and my sister who gets in on christmas eve!

and of course, an ambitious list of books to read: on goodreads, because with no work and no school, we're down to our last few dollars until mid-january and books are free.

i also discovered an exhibit in chicago titled "write now: artists and letterforms." thank god it's there through april - i imagine this might be useful for my senior thesis, in terms of text functions and what craft can learn from composition (and vice versa). more and more, i feel like my focus is shifting towards narratives and their presence in various texts - academic, personal, image, art. in terms of community literacy, writing as a process and writing to learn, there are narratives present. these narratives are both a personal and social history, as preserved in some sort of thing that either looks like or functions as a text.

these little guys are waiting for their snow globes

a familiar sight - i've been spending a lot of time in this space

from my phone: impromptu printmaking this week, for ypsi flea and for christmas.

the christmas tree. grace has been decorating it all week.

happy break!!!

The End

2011-12-08T13:21:00.000-05:00

My nose is stuffy. So stuffy, that my ears are buzzing. Not too stuffy, apparently, to smell the wonder that is buttery popcorn filling the 2nd floor of Pray Harrold. And thus, I simply cannot be expected to work on my paper. Popcorn. Want. Now. Wait...I don't even really like popcorn. I don't like to eat it. Smelling it is another story. I am delirious. Unhinged. This morning I thought I lost a very important (read: Very Important) paper. Turns out it was in my folder all along. Coffee makes my stomach hurt. I can't hear.

This morning I woke up and plugged in the Christmas lights that are draped around the living room window. I pulled the blanket back up for a few more minutes and then forced myself to get up and heat up the kettle for coffee. I think I spent another 20 minutes trying to catch up on my blogs, and then I got sidetracked by the Block Printing group on flickr. Check it out.

one

four

a little set

ashley sent this to me in the mail for christmas, along with these birch stilts for grace!

Carving linoleum has always been difficult for me. I'm wondering if I either a) need to heat it first, or b) need different tools (I'm using a Speedball cutter). Given the plethora of products on their page, I'm thinking it's the latter. giftideacoughcoughcough. I wonder if the linoleum I bought there is an older version (it was the only kind they had several months back).

What else have I been doing today? Debating generic-singular pronouns. Thoughts on "they?" I think I want to be Grammar Girl for Halloween next year. I've also been quietly pondering the difference between gendered careers/clothing/various other applications as tools of control/demarcation rather than as a consequence of physique. See "If I Were a Man," by Charlotte Gilman Perkins.

mass

2011-12-04T23:28:00.000-05:00

I wanted the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,

whoever I was, I was

alive
for a little while.

(mary oliver - from "dogfish")

but i didn't want it to go away. i wanted to cup it in my hands, like the water he said i held too tightly, the water i tried to spin into yarn.

confessional

in the garage light musty confessional, i bring my
basket of frightened chicks
and a lace bra hung from my wrist
i come to tell you that i have a hollow band, i am an
empty bride.
an illusion, a silk and linen wrapped prize
i am rings made of wood on his hand.
i'll pour my tea onto the window ledge and call through the
iron shutters, i can smell the red velour carpet and the padded
vinyl backs of chairs, i can taste the spring air
heavy with dew.
i don't want anything from you anymore, and yet
i cannot uncurl my fingers
always a metaphor about holding on.

once it was shown with a fist (like this)
and i could see the sky oozing out between his fingers,
"you hold things like this," he said, "you try to hold the ocean in your hand."
and then he opened his virgin palm.
i know what the sticky sweat on his forehead tastes like, i
used to sleep in his blue jacket
"you hold things too tightly," he said, and we swore marriage, but his parents said we were too young
like good church kids, we wanted to hurry up and get married so we could hurry up and do it, hurry up and make babies that loved jesus.

once, it was shown with tears and years later over dinner i
find myself woven through his stories, i don't want anything from
him anymore, and yet i cannot uncurl my fingers to make room for
this one, the sleep-bringer and moon eyes,
i kneel at the confessional and wait for the stitches to fall out.

the one with water pooled in his palm, he comes in my dreams and we hide from our families in houses i've never been in so that we can be together, naked. once, i dreamt i was wearing only my bathing suit, but usually we never get very far before someone interrupts us.

i used to know what it was like to be one body with a man,
because he curled around me and his skin was soft.
we were one before we knew what it was like to really be one with anyone, we were one in the eyes of god because we prayed together and held hands.

i wonder if it does more for me to say we were never married, or if telling people that we got divorced would make me sound older and respectable.

i confess to holding on. i confess to holding my ground when my insides were spilling out onto the carpet.
i beg the shop light, star light to forgive us, to take the chicks and the lace bra off my arm, drop them into the well, and dress me new. i confess to loving past the hand that cups my breast.

5/2011

she saw the baptismal pool this morning, i should have let her touch it. i should have let her dip her hands in and watch the water drip from her fingertips, i should have let her splash.

i never wanted my past to go away. in my dreams, i run to it. i run to marriage and tradition. i run to the crunching of leaves beneath his feet. i slip into the breakdown on a rainy night on the road to somewhere, ready to peel the years that had gone by into a pile of unwanted clothing at my ankles. i gathered myself, though, i gathered the wrinkled mess at my feet and pulled it back together. i gave birth. i named her grace. i learned what that word meant and i learned its absence. i learned its struggle and i learned its way, i learned its place under the rug when we all had faces to keep.

i was alive, then. i was alive in light of the hands that prayed together, in the notes we wrote and the promises we made. we lived in words.

we live now, in routine that is sometimes habit, in tiny light bulbs and belly breaths. the past is a cave inside my heart, a chamber in which i could rest for a hundred years.

we are nobody's slaves. we are not saved by merit nor by prayer. why does the bell ring? maybe to call forth the ghosts, to awaken the dirt beneath this year's frost. there is too much worry about outward expressions and appearances. too many times have i been asked, "are you humble? moral? right?" to you, i stay buried, choked by sorrow over the loss of a soul.

i didn't want it to go away. this morning, we walked up the steps and said hello. through prayer, we pulsed our way along. i did not speak. i read the music. i let her draw in a notebook while she sat on the kneeler like i used to do. i tried to take a picture. maybe i left our bodies behind for a while, there, slipping back into dreams and an insurmountable past that i wish would be revived. and so, we breathe.

what shall we call him? oatmeal!

2011-11-27T11:46:00.000-05:00

thankful for frosty

christmas movies and coffee

five days off this week

she said, hugging dad

and blankets, i said coffee

and holiday lights

a table pile

of tiny dolls and empty

mugs in november

(brittany from the home ground has been soliciting seasonal haikus)

this is the first year since grace was born that i haven't had to work straight through thanksgiving. this is the first year we've been home for five days straight - wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday, and today - sunday. i haven't even looked at my homework. i've been crocheting non-stop, and finally got out my noro kureyon yarn for a shawl. we've watched the secret garden, and yesterday when our dvd player broke i went out and got us a new one ($20? yes please) and a bunch of christmas movies - frosty, rudolph, santa claus is coming to town. remember the claymation christmas films? we also watched whisper of the heart, a miyazaki film, that was absolutely incredible.

what's on your gratitude list?

chocolate covered cherries (one of my favorite holiday things)

this guy

^this kid (and my computer)

very attractive men who knit

the university writing center

a recipe for chai tea concentrate (haven't tried it yet)

family

a new (to us) couch

kitties (to keep the want-a-cat-in-our-home feelings at bay)

wool socks, always

banana bread

supportive faculty, the english department as a whole, writing process as scholarship, poetry, the library, coffee, kindness between strangers,over the counter,among friends, christmas music, choir, the spirit of a kid whose physical self is fighting some germs, downstairs neighbors, blogs, preschool and wonderful teachers, post-it notes, good soap and hot water, letters, peppermint...

more kid lit, library love, and warm woolens for the winter

2011-11-26T09:41:00.000-05:00

these are our latest library finds! we've got a great city library here, and my university has a huge children's lit collection as well, so we're never short on books. our city library even has a youth graphic novel collection (think graphic novels for preschool age, as opposed to the typical young adult collections), lego night and good coffee, and michigan also has MeLCat (state-wide interlibrary loan system) which is probably the greatest thing to have ever existed when it comes to literature.

click clack moo: cows that type (video here)

poinsettia & her family

red sings from treetops

wabi sabi (the link has a video interview with the author and artist)

inside of red sings from treetops

purple poetry

the cow/hen requests remind me of a certain occupy movement

closed. no milk. no eggs.

1. click clack moo: cows that type. hilarious. i immediately thought of the OWS movement, reading through the cows' requests and the "closed. no milk. no eggs," when the hens joined in. i thought of the unfair demands placed on retail workers this weekend, and what would happen if the entire staff joined together to say "we're not coming in. no workers, no products." i'm dreaming, i know. but, the solidarity amongst the barn animals is great, and in the end, the animals collectively retain their power and the farmer has to compromise. electric blankets for the cows! a diving board for the ducks! click, clack, moo. a case for typewriters to return to common use. maybe i should be rating books on whether or not they meet my ungendered/creative/funny/overall out-of-the-box standard? this one would get a 5 out of 5, for sure.

2. poinsettia and her family. cute. poinsettia is a girl, but she's pretty adventurous, and she describes the sunlight in the window as butter. we really liked this one.

3. red sings from treetops. this is poetry-based, a book about the colors of the seasons. the illustrations are awesome - most characters are wearing dress-shaped things, and it looks like the scenes are crafted from scrap paper. usually, children's poetry doesn't make it very far in this house (much to my dismay), but this one was a winner. a lot of alliteration, and great connections between every day concepts (like color) with nature and sensations. i think we might buy a copy. i don't want to give it back!

4. wabi sabi. this is a book about how a japanese cat got his name! he sets out on a search to find what, exactly, "wabi sabi" means. there are three parts to each page - the english narrative, an english haiku, and the same in japanese. we've been writing haikus for my friend brittany at the home ground. the illustrations here are also done with paper, and the video (linked above) tells a story about what happened to the original artwork. the book also reads top to bottom, vertically, rather than left to right as we would typically hold a book in our hands. we might be especially drawn to this one because it's a story about a cat, but this one deserves a spot on the shelf. it's also great for us grown-ups who seem to easily forget about the simple, quiet, undeclared beauty - although, children's lit seems to take me out of the grown-up over-thought world and into serenity. this is probably why i love libraries. more wabi sabi for big people: habitblog. alexisyael.

a few more links i discovered this morning on kid lit:
2012 bill martin nominees
motherreader - ways to give a book (2011 season) - nytimes best illustrated kid's books 2011

more that i'm looking forward to reading:
the wizard of oz graphic novels
little yellow leaf
the outspoken princess and the gentle knight (this is on its way through MeLCat)
and pete the cat is one they've been reading at preschool that grace has talked about non-stop for the last several weeks. i should probably read it, too.

we're off to (hopefully) sell some warm woolens this afternoon at beezy's cafe here in ypsi. here's a peek at what i've been up to:

kid lit

2011-11-21T00:06:00.000-05:00

a friend of mine recently put out a request for non-pink and princessy kid lit. usually, when people talk about undoing gender with their children, i find it hard to take them seriously because reversing the roles (ie: i buy my girl-kid trucks and gi joes!) isn't doing anything more than swapping the gender binary by having a sexed female adopt male hobbies and interests. so, myself and a few others have been searching for kid lit (particularly picture books for preschool age - how's that for alliteration?) that offers something more than just a strong female character with masculine qualities as an alternative. i want to start sharing here what we've found. i have a big place in my heart for children's literature; it's not strange to find me wandering the kid lit section of the library without grace on the weekends, collecting books with great artwork and interesting stories. i feel like there is a lot to sift through, a lot of books on the shelves with really lame, overstated moral themes or chaotic illustrations (not that the art is bad, just that it's not my thing), and a lot of really, really awful girl stuff.

i've been posting on goodreads some of the books that we read, though i'm not always great at keeping that list up to date. it can be found here. i've rated them, but haven't left comments. a few of my favorites from that list are when you were small, where you came from, can't you sleep little bear (and let's go home little bear), frog and toad, are you my mother, olivia, all of the mo willems books, the little fur family, and fletcher and the falling leaves. we've read quite a few more than what's listed there, and i'll get to updating that....someday. in the meantime, i'd like to create a list of standards for good kid lit that goes against the grain:

-gender doesn't have to be ignored, but should not be exaggerated. animal characters are a good way to go. the personification of creatures is entertaining enough to not need the explicitly gendered attributes. gender isn't prioritized. also, the olivia books have a strong and obvious female lead, and she has a picture of eleanor roosevelt above her bed. win. we read a lot of animal-character books. a lot of them.

-strong female characters shouldn't be loners! we read violet the pilot today, and i was disappointed with the number of times the book mentioned how much of an outcast violet was. sure, maybe this might appeal to kids who have felt left out, but it's a picture book....meaning that the demographic is likely not-quite-school-aged kids who, in my humble opinion, do not need to be exposed to the nasty attitudes of school-aged children yet, at least not for pages upon pages about how mean they were to this girl for liking different things and wearing dirty clothes. in the end, she stuck her ground, but the story wasn't as much about a cool girl as much as it was about a girl overcoming peer bullying.

-a lot of kid lit geared towards little girls/the female gender equates to lessons in morality, or a commentary on fashion. you will find a bazillion books on the library shelves about which tutu to wear to what event (barf). we've read enough of these. i want to see girls on an adventure! girls who don't need to be reminded that they are, in fact, girls! girls in science! girls doing something! another book that was recommended to us was grace for president. i didn't love it. i didn't want to read a book to my grace that started off with a "no woman has ever been president!" i didn't want to read to her about the competition between grace and tom, or a book with a message that "being a good person" is what matters in the end. i realize that elections are important. i also know that politics in america are grossly celebrified. blogger tells me that isn't a word, but you know what i mean. she'll learn about elections in school. she'll go with me to vote. i don't want to teach her that she's at a disadvantage. overall: not awful, but i didn't bring it home.

-we read banjo granny tonight. it's about a bluegrass-loving granny and her grandbaby, and it's definitely clear that granny is a she, and baby is a boy (his name is owen), but these characters could easily be swapped for grandpa and granddaughter and the story wouldn't be altered much, if at all.

-i asked grace today what would happen if somebody yawned so big that they swallowed the moon. i asked her if that person's stomach would glow. she said no, but then i traded the moon for some stars and there's no doubt there. for sure, that person's stomach would glow. THAT would be a great story!

here's what i want: stories in which gender doesn't matter and/or isn't overstated. i'll pass on the blatantly moral, especially when it pertains to family structure and values. no female leads obsessed over their dress collection. strong female characters should not be oppressed/teased/set up to overcome many obstacles before they can prove victorious/portrayed in conflict with their environment/parents/authority/peers/whatever. this shouldn't be too hard, right?

slatebreakers.com is a blog that was started by some friends of a friend. they review kid lit and whether or not the books (author, character) break the slate by challenging or questioning the world around them. yes, please. there are more young adult books here than picture books, but you can search the tags.

the amelia bloomer project is also great. the sidebar to her blog has the links to the lists of past years.

bitch magazine also put together a list.

all of this has come together as a result of a question i asked a new friend who is studying queer theory as it applies to motherhood. i wanted to know, as a married woman with two children (one of each sex), how she was working this into her every day. i've been asking myself the same question for a long time - how might i work to challenge what we see as normal when we talk about gender and family structure? grace is at an advantage: she sees her dad and i exist separately, meaning that we each take on the typical responsibilities of both mom and dad. her "normal" is also an extended family, and a diego backpack that travels back and forth twice a week. i'm also not a girly-girl - i don't shave, i don't usually wear very "feminine" things (though i do like shopping and i do like dresses), and clay isn't explicitly masculine (he's much more compassionate and tender than i am).

our house is not a gendered house. there are not designated roles for either sex. when children are raised in a home with both parents, they are apt to notice that mom does something more than dad, and it's no more than a simple observation....but that observation is then generalized to assume that all moms make dinner, and all dads go to work in the morning. we've got a pretty varied mix, here, and that applies at her father's house as well. her generalizations are probably more like "guys have beards" and "moms drink a lot of coffee."

anyway. expect more kid lit reviews as we go, and feel free to share some of your favorite books in the comments.

do you know the colors of the rainbow?

2011-11-20T12:57:00.000-05:00

tiles

friendship bracelets

the real chicks of central park

plants in a dresser drawer

feminist - kidlit

elegy/queer theory

2011-11-18T08:08:00.002-05:00

11.15.11

I want to sleep next to her. We would not get any sleep, though, she kicks too much and I sleep in his bed now, I have to sleep there just like we tell her that bedtime is bedtime and you need to go to sleep in your own bed (not on the couch, not promising sleep but meaning play). In those moments in which I am reminded of just how much I love her in thoughts that have no word matches, I think that there is no way in hell I could ever live polyamorously/with multiple partners. Through her, I am inevitably tied to her father - enough so that he still and will possess the ends of strings that root in the soles of my feet. He shifts, I shift. How do you people do it, you who leave defunct relationships when there are children and relocate as far as possible from one another, either physically, emotionally, or both? I do not feel like this break lives within my grasp. And yet, I push. I test the constructs of relationships. I'd like to think that I'd like to be with whom I want, when I want to. Is it a response to the Biblical cleaving of one man and woman? The recognition that as queer in theory but not in practice, I just don't want to slip into the norm? Is it that most women in my maternal family have been divorced at least once, if not twice, and thus I want to create for myself a new system in which we escape the institutional frame? I don't know.

And I remember, when my heart feels like it has slid into my stomach and I can only sum up our day with went-to-school-came-home-bathed, ate, and read a book, that the ties between parents are long and complex. The strings from my roots are tape worm, scouring her body and swallowing his own carefully hung threads, and we are there together despite miles and conscious departure, near-perfect strangers at a dinner table where someone else has served us a meal (that the girl wouldn't eat anyway). I am more territorial than men. I have my seed and I guard it like a bear. I am aggressive and loud, I am mad because obligations deafen me to the sound of quality time. And then, I know, even if I woke up every day and claimed my motherly right to govern her land and the vast internal forest that she keeps up there, I wouldn't be happy. He would not have me stay home to bask in her rosy cheeked presence. He would not stop blaming me for all the world's flaws and there would not be reconciliation beneath a red sky of risen sins and sadly policed moral codes. I would still be on the couch, mourning the loss of myself. And she is found, now, but no more found than she was in her very first apartment with empty cupboards and milk dripping, no more found than she was within the walls of his overcompensating assertions. So, my case makes a case against itself. I could not go back, I could not trace the trail, for I would end up in his gut and still without the time I wanted with her. I'd be without my words, and maybe grace without hers.

I move, in small breaths. I try to not look back, I am afraid that I will become dust or salt. I change my shoes, my clothes, I take away my hair, I run my finger down the freckles on my face and the extra skin under my breasts. Sometimes it is hard to fathom where we have been. Sometimes, I am grateful to pray, though I am not sure who to pray to. I wait for the house to be quiet in the morning and at night, I can only hear the clock ticking and even that is an irregular sound. She sucks in air as if she has been holding her breath or has just opened the doors to a secret garden. Who will give me what I want? Infinite time to learn this creature born of my blood, grown on my milk? Perhaps I should be a little girl again so that schoolwork, papers, would not keep me outside of her imagined world (I keep myself out). I could put her in bed with me so that I could smell her hair and mentally cocoon her back in the safe harbor that was my now-shrunken womb. I should harden, fossilize, maybe. I am buying into a myth. I love her too much.

I think the world mourns with me. I expect them to provide a story, a girl's story of myself at 40 and her dad at 43 in a winter where I don't give a shit about his fireplace and he leaves me be, me and my PhD and fat cats. I need to know that I'm alright, dear, that the world isn't mourning at all the loss of an assumedly stable couple, a pair of washed jeans. Nobody is mourning my failure to thrive in the fate of somebody else's surname hovering too close to my own.

I had coffee with a new friend this week and we talked about queer theory as it applies to motherhood. I need to explain that queer theory here does not (and should not always) refer to sexuality. In identifying as queer, but also as a semi-asexual individual (read: I just don't care about sex), I am considering the fringe - the outliers to the norm, the deviation or variation on heteronormativity in whatever fashion you choose. Family. Sex. Politics. Thought. This is a mentality, a conscious thought process that shapes the choices we make on a daily basis. If feminism is reclaiming things that have been taken from us as women (and yes, motherhood fits here), queer theory is deconstructing the various institutions we participate in and reworking them, forming an alternative, recognizing the outliers as viable beings in practice and letting them remain outside of the norm rather than trying to work for equality within it. Now, I've not taken Feminist Theory. I've not read anything on being queer as it applies to any of the above mentioned groups. However, I am a mother, and I recognize the differences within myself when I am pinned next to what "mother" should look like, and what I should be teaching my daughter about her feminine self; what "family" should look like and what mine looks like, and I am always thinking about what qualifies as "normal" (nuclear) and "abnormal" (everything else). I realize that not everyone buys into the concept of the nuclear family, but I also realize that it is so deeply ingrained into our culture that we may not realize the level in which we participate. Because I mourn the loss of my own haphazard attempt at the nuclear family (and my attempt to recreate it), I am still within the system. I do think that pair-coupling has value, and I understand why it exists. I do not, however, want to teach my daughter that one way is better than another, and when I recognize that I myself do not fit comfortably into the boxes of marriage and heterosexuality, I see a need for something different. I see a need for intentional practice of something else. I also want to be clear here: I am not promoting a divide between the norm and the outliers. I want to unpack what "motherhood" and "parenting" mean, what "natural" and "unnatural" mean, and I want to acknowledge what happens when we deviate from social expectations. What happens when we live in non-traditional homes? What does that look like? How do we raise our children in that space when the American culture still promotes the hetero norm (ie: marriage rights, media, public policy)? What happens when we do live within the norm and thus our case against these conventions is masked? This isn't just for those who live visibly on the fringe. This is for everyone. This is a call to question what we've been asked to participate in, and to understand how we appropriate those values (or how we don't), regardless of where we exist on the spectrum.

What happens when we take gender out of the essential self, and put it back on as a culturally appropriated piece, redesigned according to what we believe and what we value? Rather than claiming that women should be equal, why not rupture the system of male/female itself?

What we had talked about over coffee was that motherhood, while there is a culture and subculture attached to it, is still part of the mainstream. Feminism can claim it as a feminist act, but I feel like that equates to no more than saying I can both have a career and parent, too - I can be both domestic and intelligent. Queer theory attempts to unpack motherhood, it's gendered notions, and the practices within it - it recognizes the subculture of motherhood (alternative methods - any parent knows there are a billion too many books on innovative ways to raise our children) as well as the norm, and we seek to raise the question of what it all means.

red shoes

2011-11-11T17:56:00.000-05:00

ladies and gentlemen, my red shoes are slowly making their way towards death. they were putting gray goo in the sidewalk cracks on campus and that's all over the right shoe, and last winter i spilled hot chocolate all over the surface of both shoes and wasn't able to get the stain out. i've worn them for two years, and the soul is worn pretty thin. i tried going on a shoe hunt today, and had absolutely no luck. my requirements: i want it to cover my foot (like, i don't want the cold winter sneaking in). i also despise tying my shoes. i also have very narrow feet, so most slip on shoes don't get along well with me. i would prefer something not canvas, and i want something supportive as i will be trekking across campus every day for the next two and a half years and then some. i'm in it for the long-haul.

last fall, the leaves looked like rose petals on the ground

i'm also procrastinating the preparation of dinner by looking at shoes and eating trader joe's cats cookies for people with my feet up on the coffee table. nobody else is home. i'm almost motivated. almost.

in my dream world, these shoes are on my feet every day. in my real world, i'd probably be stumbling over the tiny heel and my feet are probably too narrow. still, i lust.

i'm not athletic. i don't even pretend. i just searched for "red shoes" on zappos for under $100 and these came up.

and now for boots: i bought these on a super sale from lands end. i like them, but they are SUPER light weight and therefore i wonder if they will be warm. then, i went to target today (for toilet paper and laundry detergent!) and saw these. they are a lot lower, though, and i'd like to be able to wear boots with tights and a dress.

these, on the other hand, in grace's size...let's just say i had a battle with my conscience in the shoe aisle. i put them back, because i got her boots at the second hand store for a few bucks, and they won't fit her next year anyway. still, it was tough. real tough.

red shoe-spiration:
little red hen
ruby slippers
for grace
these are great
red shoe art

do you have great red shoes? do you know where i can find some?

a review of space and time

2011-11-11T13:23:00.000-05:00

sometimes i sift back through old posts, wondering how i got here and what pieces i've let slip through the cracks of my hands along the way. i keep revisiting in my head the early winter mornings, dropping a baby off and then leaving for work, taking the back roads and finding comfort in the space along the sides of the road in case my car slipped on the ice. less traffic meant that i could drive slow, not quite a snail but not reckless, not hurrying down that road. it didn't matter if i was late. down that road, i didn't lose my sense of self in the whirl of the corporate blender despite usually being a few minutes behind and knowing what would happen if i clocked in late, snow or not. i did wonder a lot about what they thought, the hands that held my baby while i worked, i wondered if the flowers i brought were enough or if the thank you cards were heartfelt, enough, enough...and so sometimes i drive down this road to look at the tree that felt like a friend, out there in the field. in the morning, fog settled over the grass and the air was still around me (and my car), and the tree was like a naked scarecrow stuck there in a framable (but frameless) landscape scene. i don't move slow like this anymore, even writing this paragraph is daunting and a little bit suffocating.

i'm finishing my last winter semester of my undergrad. two years ago, i was finishing my first semester back in school. here i am in the space between, one year after that first post. here's a pre-back to school plan...i'm glad i've kept these so i can see the path i've taken. this is from last october, the wants and musings and the present, the "i don't want to be thinking six months out anymore."

and here i am. taking 15 credits, with honors contract work in two of those classes. i am working in the women's resource center, starting a campus parents student org after too many frustrating conversations about the lack of support we have. i consult in the writing center. i will be doing research and honors thesis work next semester. i have several scholarships, one of which magically appeared this morning. i've carried a 4.0 and hope to finish this semester with another. i will apply to grad school, and if all goes as i hope it will, i will have a ga-ship next fall (a mere few weeks after completing my undergrad) and will be teaching and working on an MA while grace attends kindergarten. i am pursuing the dynamics of writing centers, teaching, process and product within the context of academic performance as well as the overall commodification of everything. i'm involved with my daughter's preschool and am able to properly thank and support the individuals and programs who have helped sustain my goals. i am also working to understand gender and sex, and to question the constructs and limitations of marriage, relationships, and family structure. i realize that in many ways, i am privileged. i will, however, work to enable a statistically incapable population so that we can complete our degrees, outline and achieve our goals, and help to form the future (please don't comment on how cliche that sounds. i know).

Then, the cement. And learning again, myself as a person, myself and what a product of the previous 4 years I was. I am still learning this. I am still reconciling sometimes, the chapters of before He was, and after God was, and where We Are Now. Why did I start writing this? Tonight I finished my first semester back. I finished something on my own, something I planned. I have graduated from a necessary state of no-plans-allowed, to slowly being able to not only plan something, but to follow it through. To set a goal, and to do it well.

i can be a superhero without a cape, right? grace drew a picture of herself, me, and her dad, with respective G, M, and D on our shirts.

its past 8am

2011-11-07T08:13:00.000-05:00

and I need to be waking up the bug, getting ready for school, wrapping up the projects laying all over the coffee table (including the coffee). i can hear our downstairs neighbor running water for a shower, and this morning i heard little pitter patters and pulling, nibbling, there must be a creature in our attic (god knows what lives up there, the light is burnt out and i won't venture up there - clay will, though, with his head lamp). i like house-sharing, i like the energy in this space (of course, the noise is always respectful, unlike our next door neighbors).

we've been writing letters, sending (real!) mail, reading books...saturday morning, i went to yoga, and afterwards i went to the library and curled up there in a chair and read an entire (non-school) book from start to finish. i have told this story a hundred times. it meant that much to me, to be able to sit in a big open window and feel no obligation to any lingering homework assignments, to be able to say that for those few hours, time was mine. now, don't be fooled - most of the time, i love my homework assignments. i have spent nearly every waking moment (and probably sleeping too) of this weekend working on a paper on sylvia plath and confessional poetry, and i find myself writing my own poetry and wondering: if i hide behind metaphor, is it confessional? i think about the duality of women, the private and public nature, and how criminology theorists have labeled women as deceptive (we hide our periods and orgasms); we are expected to be fluid, and yet mysterious, right? as mystery is to be conquered, right? so, when women deviate from this behavioral pattern and open their thought process to the public eye without first polishing it, we are too honest, too blunt, and we've failed at the impossible (idealist) straddling of both worlds. i think about this as i write, wondering if it is better to hide behind metaphor, and often deciding that yes, it is better to hide, as the social consequences of saying what i might really feel are more than i'd like to take on.

but the point is, that usually i waste my weekends away running pointless errands for things we don't need; i am restless, i procrastinate. this weekend, i lived at the library. i lived in essays and books and a lot of coffee. it was so worth it. i feel like this paper has become my second baby, and not only that, but i've finished a hat (2 of 2 for an order) and i made scones. we visited friends. yesterday, we went over to the house of twin girls in grace's preschool class and we had a great time. when i was in preschool, my best friends were a set of twins too. i often feel like i exist on the fringe, as an unmarried undergraduate student whose social peers are generally professors, college grads, married couples, at least ten years older than i am, and so on...but i am learning that i have much to offer, much to contribute. and taking so much time to myself this weekend to be in a place that i find so satisfying, doing something that i needed to know if i could do (sit down and read a book from start to finish) was so rewarding. this will probably become an every weekend thing. and, the momma of the girls from preschool knows how to needle felt! i cannot wait to have a crafternoon, while the girls play.

i had thought about posting here about the book i had just read this weekend, too, and i might - several of the topics have been sort of a breaking point amongst friends and the divide that seems ever exacerbated by our differences only grows, and only pushes back further. i really loved the book, though, and i went into it with a very critical mind, expecting it to contain only the arguments of those i don't agree with. this was not the case at all.

source

a little bit of etsy love this morning.

and now i'm running late. oops.

what's on my mind

2011-10-31T15:39:00.000-04:00

-the birthday letter i finally wrote to grace last night (only three months late)
-you know it's good coffee when you reheat it in the afternoon from the press and it still tastes amazing (thanks ugly mug)
-giant mason jars full of water
-grace is still sick, and she's currently asleep on the couch next to me. i am so, so grateful to have even a few hours of laying on the couch with her, holding her, snuggling her, taking in the way she slowly begins to smell like me again after coming home from her dads - and knowing the smell on her when she comes home as the smell of what was, once. it is strangely comforting, and still surreal. dreamlike, maybe (am i dreaming?)
-lisa hannigan on grooveshark (and a tiny desk concert - she's gorgeous, and by that i mean that she seems so comfortable in her skin, her image, her...her-ness)
-writing real letters to friends
-colored post-it notes everywhere - squares and the tiny tabs. everywhere.
-working on a scarf for my mom, for her birthday. sent out a scarf and hat set today, and am working on the second hat of a two hat request. more cowls to come, for possible wintery craft fairs on sunday mornings
-wishing i had the makeup to paint my face like this
-we've watched so many episodes of yo gabba gabba
-a mouse parades around our kitchen, but he does not eat our food. i wonder what he is eating?
-this shirt (note the charity)
-an aching ribcage (you know, you feel it there) for the hundreds of replies i've had about starting a student organization for campus parents, solidarity, right? maybe we need to occupy emu (i'm kidding, but we need to request a change, and i can't even find the words to send a mass reply yet).
-this morning grace came to class with me and on the way (we walked), we picked up a dozen little red leafs and then we colored on them, stamped with them, rubbed over them with paper and crayon. i like this project too. and, i have an old leather jacket that i could do this with.

have you ever read "old possum's book of practical cats?" you should.

now, what's on your mind? tell me.

her face

2011-10-27T21:57:00.001-04:00

sunday we went apple picking

we made apple bread

today was spent in bed, grace is sick (it was scary) and i stayed up most of the night watching her temperature

i downloaded some vintage photoshop actions and have been playing with those, in between crocheting hats and disinfecting our house

last night was the rainbow variety show, sponsored by the LGBT resource center, i was honored to be a part of that

i spoke on two epic panels, yesterday and today, about my experience as a (queer) female - none of these labels fit me, so where is my space? i am heterosexual, but not. parent, but not (like you). student, but not traditional, but not this, that, and then

within the cracks that separate us

we find the threads that join us together, and the

words to conceptualize our experience.

language is a powerful tool.

the house is quiet now, the dryer is finishing the last of the sick day laundry, and i am curled up on the couch.

her face haunts me and i repeat the sensation of my cold nose on her hot, soft cheek

i go in her room to put clean laundry away,

make her bed

i leave the door open,

i don't look.
i hear the neighbor, or the radiator, and i think for a second that she is coughing, breathing,
tossing and turning in her sleep. it jolts me out of my head.

mostly monsterly (a book)

2011-10-21T21:58:00.000-04:00

this is bernadette. she is a monster, but she is not very monsterly. she likes cupcakes, and flowers, and hugs. we found this book for grace at the library, and bernadette reminded me so much of leann!

dog sitting for extra cash

venerated (a poem)

pumpkin rosemary hummus

this story of yarn made me giggle

we just made this granola

right now

2011-10-21T08:54:00.001-04:00

my friend leann's self portrait

i have a plethora of unfinished projects

i have two olivias on my counter

a half-full press of dark coffee and a

mug full of history

i have inspiration, pages i can touch

button eye dolls and popsicle stick

puppets

i have sock monkey fever

good words in my bones (the group is unlike anything you've seen)

sweater pieces only stitched together in

a dream, because

that's the only place i know how to sew

keys to tomorrow (today) and a gray

rug on my floor

one semi-organized desk and pictures of me drawn with

her hand, i have a round ponytail

no nose, and no glasses.

i've got 20 minutes before the thrift store opens and

i have (my own) work to do.

my morning scene

forget me nots

yarn lust

progress: honors thesis proposal accepted

fellowship app turned in

major papers done, a few more coming up

103/100, 53/46 on women/crime/justice exam (yes, i am super human)

zooboo this weekend

begin work in the writing center today

(thinking about what literacy looks like off of the page)

wednesday night snuggles with the bug, gracious and kind partner who knows when i'm about to lose it and how to help

we had a visit from the donut fairy,
got published in the echo.

wedursmonuesday

2011-10-19T20:37:00.000-04:00

i caught her bouncing on my bed, a blanket over her head
just like i caught myself listening to the sound of the
rain falling on the roof, right outside the kitchen window
the branches shadow dance in the top pane
i filled up her bath tub (a green rubbermaid bin in a shower stall) and the water
sits there still because she's pulled all of the blankets off of my bed and laid down her own, a rug,
because it's "apartment school," and there are 13 friends on cots.
we made muffins; they almost fall apart in our hands, perfectly sweet with tart apples hiding inside
i left my pajama pants and slippers on the floor this morning, just as i slid them off of my body and stepped
onto the floor,
they looked like they could be housing my ghost
bones with pants around her ankles
i have an exam in the morning but why can't i
take the time to make tea and listen
to the tapping rain and the hum of her imagination, the
heating of the water, the
558 items in my reader and photos of uncovered down comforters bunched up on somebody's bed
the lot behind our house was something that became overgrown with grass and the lights are still there, must have been a parking lot,
i found my last bag of gypsy cold care tea and i have a big mug to fill
the bath water is getting cold and the raindrops are louder (the house is still, imagination has ducked behind a closed door
these days slip through the space between my skeleton fingers and pool through the
cracks in my palm
her skin is full and her cheeks are still fat
spotted with freckles, pencil dots
fireflies
how did i forget the importance of writing every day
writing for myself
i still have a to-do list that says "write grace a birthday letter," from july.
remember this,
remember post cards and somebody else's correspondence caught on the back of yellowed paper, remember notes in your mailbox and why you buy new pens
"rest up," she sings, an orchestra of echoes in the hall
"rest up, so you can feel good again,"
the button eyed doll nods happily in reply.

welcome to college

2011-10-15T07:28:00.000-04:00

i've been busy. this week alone, i have worked straight through my breaks, completed two papers (one on observing my mentor as a writing consultant, the other on the power of language in renaissance literature, particularly as it relates to self-fashioning an identity), prepared a thesis proposal for the honors college, applied for a research fellowship within the honors college, finished an article and started a book by a writing center director whose theory interests me, battled more of the mystery stomach goblin, attended a collaborative assessment conference (a group review of an anonymous assignment to evaluate and develop our process as consultants), finished the second portion of a semester-long sociology research project (hooray for conceptual and operational definitions!), and completed a paper on one of anne sexton's poems. i've also come up with contracts to earn honors credit in current courses and researched courses that i hope are available in spring and summer. lastly, i've got a day-long (un)conference today (saturday). i've also somehow managed to, you know, bathe, be a partner, and tuck my daughter into bed. we even made it to the cider mill on wednesday.

i had actually taken wednesday afternoon off of work so that i could get everything done, and having the afternoon to unwind reminded me why i had put grace in full day preschool to begin with: those magical few hours after class in which nothing interrupts me save for the sound of the wind and the temptation to curl up with a giant pile of library books, all of which i intend to read but know that realistically, i'll never open most of them. time to study, to work, to get enough done so that when i come home i can be mommy, maker of dinner and bedtime story reader. this semester, though i realize it isn't only me feeling the chaos (it seems to be a campus-wide phenomena), has been particularly hard, probably because i took my "me" time and gave it to work, so that my days are no longer gifted with a moment of quiet. i've got a bad habit of taking on more than i am capable of, and i have to work so often times the tiredness and mental overload is brushed aside because realistically, my day can't change.

it reminds me of a poem we read in my poetry class this semester:

Every day our bodies separate,

exploded torn and dazed.

Not understanding what we celebrate

we grope through languages and hesitate

and touch each other, speechless and amazed;

and every day our bodies separate

us further from our planned, deliberate

ironic lives. I am afraid, disphased,

not understanding what we celebrate

when our fused limbs and lips communicate

the unlettered power we have raised.

Every day our bodies' separate

routines are harder to perpetuate.

In wordless darkness we learn wordless praise,

not understanding what we celebrate;

wake to ourselves, exhausted, in the late

morning as the wind tears off the haze

not understanding how we celebrate

our bodies. Every day we separate.

--Marilyn Hacker

i'm trying to pull time in when I can. i go to sleep with a cold towel on my face and i miss the way she smells. i wake up too early. i recognize that this is what i've agreed to spend the next year doing. it is hard, and i think about how nice it would be to turn everything off. to lay down for days, or to have even one day to go to the park. i miss my mom, i miss the comfort of her couch, i miss her cats and waking up to watch dora, curled up with blankets.

friday night write

2011-09-30T21:03:00.000-04:00

to be called, to be called by name or by thunder or by crashing chairs on old wood floors
centered by the bony cheeks that sleep below my feet
to be called by something greater than i (am)
i have food that feeds more than just my hunger
more than my
mouth and my tongue, my throat,
i thought about the words i would say to the dykes i've never kissed
all the girls with short hair, girls shorter than me and girls strong
honey on my lips
i'd tell her, god, you're really hot.
or hey,
how are you?
there is soup on my stove,
and wine in my heart.
some friends had pretty babies one friend brought me some books
there is good company within these walls, good minds in this space, cracked
ribs wide open waiting for a Swallow
forty sighs
laid on the table
little lion under the bed
good grace in my hands.

making split pea soup, eating zingerman's manchester cheese and honey on sesame poppy wafer crackers, discontinued wine, neighbor brought up the brothers karamazov and the urban homestead, mumford and sons timshel, i am floating on their harmonies.

on (my) health:

2011-09-27T16:27:00.000-04:00

i finally bought a honey stick. what a great idea.

because i have spent the last several days moving from the couch to the bathroom to the bed and back, and because i've fought it to the point of hardly being able to make it home from school this morning, i think it is time to address some health issues here (in hopes that you might have something to contribute).

anxiety has played a huge role in my life, ever since i was a little girl. i remember being no more than 6 (it was first grade) and having severe panic attacks outside of the classroom door. i remember not being able to stay the night with friends because at some point, it was most certain that i'd be laying on the bathroom floor feeling nauseous and completely clueless as to what was going on with my poor body.

fast forward to high school: i had stomach aches almost every time i ate. i lived on ramen noodles made in the back choir hallway with a tiny coffee maker to heat up water, and sometimes the breadsticks from the lunch line. maybe peanut butter and jelly. i would pray and pray (because at this point, i was an evangelical christian), and at some point the stomach aches subsided. i made it through mission trips to mexico in 2003 and haiti in 2004 (and there you have the story behind my wrist tattoo) without getting sick.

just before we got pregnant with grace, we had a rough summer. this was the summer i learned never to touch marijuana unless i wanted to end up in the hospital, the summer i had stayed with my dad for a short while, the summer after i had dropped out of a semester of college, nearly failed another one, and i could keep going but i'll spare you the details that i can barely remember anyway. point being: rough summer. a lot of panic attacks. a lot of stomach pain. i stopped eating red meat (which was mostly burgers anyway) and had mostly switched to soy for a bit because i had heard that red meat and cow milk can contribute to increased anxiety due to hormones in the milk. i remember picking the tuna out of a tuna wrap because i couldn't stomach the lettuce or the tortilla, but somehow the tuna was palatable. this was the summer that my weight had dropped to dangerously low, and someone told me that i looked really "great." you better believe he got an ear full, and i will never forget that conversation. at this point, i could barely work a shift alone and often called for help just to have company. i was swallowed up by my own emotional capacity - which can sometimes be an infinite black space - here is where poetry is born, but also where i have had to learn to exhibit much self control.

at some point, my stomach problems started to coincide with my menstrual cycle. last summer, i can recall several months in between bleeding (so, around the time of ovulation) that i was almost unable to function - i had missed class, cancelled plans, and i would lay on the floor until i fell asleep. i felt fevered, but without a high temperature. a few times, anxiety would set in and all i could do was wait it out. sometimes, it would be bad enough that my body would tremble, and i would lay there with a cold towel on my head until it went away. once, i almost passed out while driving and went to urgent care. the best conclusion we could come up with was that it was somehow associated with ovulation. recently, particularly in the last month, these problems have been so frequent and sudden that it's been hard to function, and i haven't been able to trace any food patterns that might be causing my body to react the way it does. i feel different now than i have over the last several years in terms of stomach discomfort (versus anxiety-induced sickness) and i'm carrying these immensely awful headaches around with me several times a week.

there have been times when i've felt like i was sort of in remission, or when the symptoms were dormant. i haven't noticed a stress pattern, with the exception of the summer mentioned, and the more recent sickness hasn't been coupled with anxiety as much as it has in the past.

a little bit of information: my younger sister has Chron's disease. there are auto-immune disorders in my family. my menstrual cycle has also been slightly off, which is highly unusual for me. this particular cycle was 4 days early, heavy for the first day and very uncomfortable, and then half way through day 2 i stopped bleeding and didn't begin again until over 36 hours later. my last cycle was a week early as well. i've been taking ibuprofin for the headaches and it does absolutely nothing for me. a little caffeine seems to help relieve some pain, but too much coffee and i'm uncomfortable again. i've also noticed that when i eat breakfast, i generally feel worse.

this has led me to look into celiac's disease, particularly the part about improper absorption of nutrients, as it relates to my size and especially my exhaustion. there have been more nights within the last month than ever before when i could have easily gone to bed for the night at 830pm. by 9pm, i'm too tired to put grace to bed and so i struggle between investing the energy to actively put her to bed, or surrendering to her hundredth plea to stay up on the couch watching me work (which usually results in her sleeping within minutes anyway).

basically, this is something i've been coping with for a long time, and this week in particular it has had a major impact on my school work and daily life and i'm comfortable saying "this isn't normal."

part of this is why i've invested in postpartum work (outside of the inability to be on-call right now) and pregnancy/parenting support. i understand the necessity of self-care, and more than that, knowing one's own body. sometimes, though, i think we care for ourselves like we care for computers and cars - we use them, but don't entirely understand how they work the way they do or what the inner parts are like. this is hard, especially for women, because our reproductive system is almost entirely internal. we are not socialized to care about what goes on "in there" and "down there," because we can't see it. i can't look past the fact that there are several feet of tubing inside my abdominal cavity, and assume that i can safely consume whatever i want and be completely fine. i want to know what quirks my body possesses, and what causes or contributes to certain responses both personally and generally.

this isn't normal. unfortunately, i'm also one of the several million people in this country without health insurance, and the cost of screening for diseases like celiacs or endometriosis are more than just the standard bill for an office visit. i'm willing to experiment with diet changes and homeopathy, even yoga or some kind of physical treatment. i've started eating activia yogurt (stoneyfield organic) and i'm hoping that regular probiotics might reset the gut flora if that's the case. i'm not one to take medication unless absolutely necessary, and would prefer to avoid it when at all possible.

what are your favorite gluten free recipes? flours? i'm going to start working with different foods to see if i can't trace any reactions. any thoughts?

it is the season

2011-09-26T07:59:00.000-04:00

as i'm sitting here on the couch, wrapped up in an oversized sweater sipping too-hot coffee, the rain is falling on my roof and there is just enough roof under each window so that i can hear the drops bouncing and then sliding down. all of our windows, save for one that is always closed, face away from the rain (the west) and so we can leave them open during even the worst storm. the weather channel says there will be thunder - we'll see. it is quiet now, quiet enough so that i could hear the wheels of the train coming through scraping against the tracks. i didn't grow up near the train tracks, but somehow into my adult life the sound of a train coming through town has brought immense comfort. i sat here last night going through a book of short stories that was a required read for a class i took last fall. last fall, when i left (for the most part) my job. last fall, when i stood on the edge of fear and crumbled a hundred times and spent too many nights laying in bed, shaking. last fall, when biking to the coffee shop in the morning and the library in the afternoon was routine. last fall, when landlords were neighbors and cats were sharing spaces and grace's bed was off of the kitchen and i started to write poetry, last fall when i hadn't a clue as to what the next year would bring.

i was folding the corners over in the book of short stories, to mark the ones i liked the most (which is probably 35 out of the 40 stories in there, and out of those 5, i probably haven't read at least 4). my neighbor downstairs likes short stories. he likes a lot of authors that i should have probably read as an english major but i haven't, probably won't, and will forever feel flawed for this. the rain sounds like teacher heels now, parading down the cement sidewalk in front of our house (there's nobody there, only ghosts).

it is the eve of october, and october is the month in which the attic frees the souls that have been waiting their turn.

october 2009: i have accomplished much of that, and i have the capacity to keep going. he is all pine and i am apple orchard.

and last year: here we are (there we were). i was falling.

will you join me in another "it is the month?" it is running into the last few minutes of my morning before we have to join the cars on the wet pavement and grace is still asleep, but i am glued here until this is finished. join me, will you? let's call it "it is the season." it is the season for family and friends, for revisiting promises to ourselves and to the universe. what are your fall resolutions? where do your hopes lie?

I told my mother on Thanksgiving that I planned on putting together a book in the next three years or so. I told her I kept this blog (that she'll probably never read) and that I had dozens of handwritten letters and thoughts as well that I'd like to someday collect and have published. I am a writer. I will be a writer until the day I die. (november 2009)

book (or just click the "poetry" page at the top of my blog, there is a button there).

the church bells are ringing now (or maybe the campus library clock). i have to wake the little face sleepy grace and get us out the door. join me, will you?

the places i dream of

2011-09-17T15:29:00.000-04:00

sometime, maybe two years ago, i saw a sign for a resale shop near the university. it was in an old, gray cinder block building with a collection of yellow school busses in it's parking lot. it's hours? thursday through saturday. perfect.

this morning, we were driving home from picking up a bookshelf we found on craigslist and i said "i'm going to go there today. i've wanted to go there for two years. i'm going to venture over there today." "okay," he said. "you do that."

turns out, the resale shop is to benefit the public schools in our city. their profits go towards scholarships for students as well as funding for teachers. i walked in and two men greeted me with absolute joy, and explained the layout. i wandered around. back behind a makeshift curtain was the "antiques" section. creepy old stuffed bears and dolls with dirty cheeks were piled on a table among dilapidated chairs and an old typewriter. beyond that was a tunnel-esque storage area - i wonder what the building used to be? it's huge.

upstairs: clothing, toys, kitchen items and books. i ran into a friend of mine and her daughters there and she said it was her favorite place because you have to dig to find things. well, my dear readers, i dug, and you will never, ever believe what i found:

the camper shoes i've been lusting over, in my size. in case you forgot: THESE.

i also got a few more things, and i'll wait to tell you the grand total until after you've marveled at my luck finding those shoes (in my size!!! did you SEE what they cost new?):

not pictured is a little ivory gap sweater for a friend's little one. are you ready for the grand total?

$5.30. out the door.

and with that, i will return to my homework and crafting. it's messy in here.

welcome home

2011-09-10T09:27:00.000-04:00

"can i have 30 minutes?" he said,

i was curled up on the couch with a new planner

the breeze here is a whispered prayer,

he gives me hope and tells me (without speaking) that i can

look forward, ahead

confidently.

i hesitated, feeling like we had spent the entire evening passing in the hallway and retreating to

polar spaces.

i was curled up on the couch, alone.

this morning i woke up to a message that my class had been cancelled,

he went back to sleep

i made coffee and the rain had stopped

i am curled up on the couch, and he is

starting the laundry.

i am carving stamps at our coffee table

he is running the water.

we moved this week, into an apartment together. i have had many moments of "oh my gosh, i just moved myself and my 4 year old daughter into a new home with another person," enough of them to fill my cupped hands and then some. breathe. stop. deep breath again. she rests her little hand on my collarbone and sighs in her sleep. i keep a pocket of warmth in my chest. she is in the blue room, and her teachers are so wonderful that many days i walk out to the car after dropping her off with tears that sting my eyes; there is so much joy in my blood, and hope in my bones. it is a busy semester, 5 classes and several projects beyond that, including a few conferences and family resource planning. i come home to hardwood floors, pictures of myself with a bun on top of my head from her school mailbox, and the smell of michigan autumn on his sweaters.

welcome.

september is ovarian cancer awareness month

2011-09-02T12:16:00.001-04:00

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many of you are familiar with the funding and publicity directed towards breast cancer research. ovarian cancer is known as the silent killer; it is often detected in its late stages and is therefore the most fatal of all gynecological cancers. its symptoms aren't abnormal: abdominal pain, feeling full and/or bloated, frequent urination: most of which are equally present in women who do not have cancer. detection requires ultrasound technology and/or a CA-125 protein analysis, which is not always accurate. there are no screening tests, and it will not show up on a yearly pap because a pap checks for abnormal cervical tissue and does not include a pelvic exam (which usually will only find cancer in it's late stages). the ovarian cancer national alliance has a great and informative website, which you can find here. pregnancy and breastfeeding, as well as taking birth control can reduce the risk of developing ovarian cancer, but if you have family members who have or have had gynecological cancers, you may be considered high risk. it can be hereditary, and men can carry the gene mutation as well. read more about risk factors here.

in honor of september as national ovarian cancer awareness month, i bring you some links on etsy that support ovarian cancer research. the above photo is for "i heart ovaries" stickers that a friend of mine made; his mother has had ovarian cancer and recently went back in for treatment.

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and here are some ways to show love for your uterus/reproductive organs, and please, know your risk factor and look into how you can support research and policies. currently, ovarian cancer research receives only a fraction of the funding that breast cancer research gets. perhaps this is evidence of the over-sexualization of america, or maybe it's as simple as breast cancer having a higher survival rate and thus more publicity/demand for further success. regardless - you may not be able to see your ovaries, but they're in there, and they need your attention.

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i'm curious to know whether or not there are connections between cotton bleaching and pesticides, and gynecological cancers/other gynecological diseases. do women who wear pads, or better yet, cloth pads have a lower risk than women who have used name brand tampons for the lifetime of their menstrual cycle? have the number of diagnosed cases increased dramatically since the introduction of commodity menstrual products versus a time in which cloth was standard? is this due to the products themselves, or should it be attributed to an increased at-risk population of women age 60+? what about the statistics required to be reported today versus different health care policies over time?

here is a link to organic cotton tampons by seventh generation. i use a diva cup, and am happy to answer any questions you may have about menstrual cups as i realize they are a little intimidating. bottom line: take care of yourselves, ladies. know your body. ask questions. talk about it.

autumn is singing

2011-08-29T23:10:00.001-04:00

*note: apparently we didn't go in 2008*

this morning her teacher said to me "i should have taken a picture of you guys. i bet you don't have one with all of you." she's right. we don't.

fall is lingering. we went to school today, and tomorrow we are packing and enjoying our last day before every single minute is claimed by something, somewhere (probably here, probably homework). tonight we went for ice cream. i swayed back and forth between wanting to throw her over my shoulder and carry her home like the fat little babe she was, and trying to remember to let her hop the stone steps through the neighbor's lawn this one time (again). we watched our pupils grow and shrink with the changing light. we promised to paint, tomorrow.

the cider mill opened this weekend. i was feeling sick, but the little bug and her daddy went (and brought me a donut home). here's to another year of pictures in the worm, and warm things on our heads and in our hearts.

i am also featured on indie ink tomorrow (8/30), please go check it out.

so you sailed away

2011-08-21T01:00:00.000-04:00

The purpose of having children, according to the teachings of the Torah, is not to create opportunities for our glory or for theirs. The purpose of having children and raising them to be self-reliant, compassionate, ethical adults is to ensure that there will be people here to honor God after we are gone. So the rules regarding child-rearing are not primarily about making children feel good, but about making children into good people. -Wendy Mogel, PhD. "The Blessing of a Skinned Knee"

i said last night that for the first time in a long time, i am looking forward. i am rooted. i am thick. i thought about the tree roots my dad found winding through his front yard, pushing up through the grass and bearing their knobby selves, like the bony legs of an awkward preteen -- no, maybe more like the thin, bent arms of an old soul, a gypsy woman with scraggly hair peering out from a dark forest bed. she crawled into her bed and with tired eyes said to me, "mama, all these stuffs are making me hot." each and every little guy i carefully put in place along the wall side of her bed, moved. who wants to sleep alongside an audience, anyway?

i said last night that i was finding my rhythm. it isn't the rhythm of a child, and it isn't the rhythm of the girl i once was when sundays were for service and it's not the rhythm of the raised hands during church songs (but it is), it's not the rhythm of a lost soul hanging on to one last thread of an unraveled man (because the thread dissipated and we are left with only an egg). it is not the rhythm of getting by. this is the rhythm of intention. you only lose what you cling to (probably because when you cling, you cannot see beyond what you are receiving; to live, you must think about what you are giving).

tonight, she proudly visited each guest at the bridal shower, asking if one needed a pen. she helped to open presents. she ate her own tiny pie, and she helped to put a pair of earrings on the bride-to-be's sister, whom she calls "that girl in the red dress." she asked what getting married was for, and i told her that people who love each other a whole bunch get married so that they can celebrate how much they love each other with a big party.

i love you very much, with sparkles still stuck underneath your hair and mosquito bites on your ankle. i love you with silly faces on the carpet and polite curtseys as you meet new souls. i love you when you hug every single person in the room before you leave. your joy is immeasurable. you are a river inside a paper cup.

Your child is not your masterpiece. According to Jewish thought, your child is not even truly "yours." In Hebrew there is no verb for possession; the expression we translate as "to have," yesh li, actually means "it is there for me" or "there is for me."

so you sailed away, into a blue sky morning

i can only think in pictures

2011-08-20T16:38:00.000-04:00

// it started here

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source (can we please do this to the trees in our yard? maybe parts of the porch?)

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// and moved into my house

words are coming.

i promise.

breeze

2011-08-17T09:12:00.001-04:00

look at this hair! it's so long!

this morning i am reading this, and i think to myself "children's ministry?" oh, no, it says mystery. our children, that mistery. i was singing her hymns last night, and by hymns i mean the only one i remember (and even then, i forgot some of the words and thus i made them up): i love you, lord, and i lift my voice to worship you, oh my soul, rejoice...

what i wanted to sing was "it is well with my soul." what i wanted to say was "hush now." i told her a creation story the other day, one that i had made up, one that had its roots in the native american stories we read in the spring semester, one like the story the man told on sunday at the church where we read our words that bled out like a fountain. it started with an old man spirit, it came when she couldn't stop crying about her carseat being crooked and the bottle of water being not quite cold enough and i was desperate, i was ready to pull the car over, i had already yelled at her once to "knock it off," and as the sun came down i wanted nothing more than to stop, sit in the stillness and open my book. or, stop, climb out of the car, and lay on our backs in the grass until we were ready to try again.

blackfoot lodge tales, girl. where are these stories today? certainly not packed away in museums - how can you preserve the act of storytelling, the art of tradition passed through words that slip off the tongue in a way they could never exist on a page? i found a copy of this book (which is free through that link) at a used book store in lansing - it's an original copy, 1962, no ISBN, first edition. these are the stories i want to tell my children. these are the stories i want to teach with, the stories i want to teach her, the ways in which i want her to grow. i want to be able to pull over while we're driving home and she's screaming in the backseat with all of her four year old soul, to get out of the car, and to lay in the grass - without having to say "no, not the playground." "no, you may not run in the road." "no, just lay here for a minute." have a snack. these are the moments you will remember.

children's ministry is collaborative work done through social organizations (and religious institutions, but is not limited to only this). it is the "it takes a village" mind that grows these hands that uplift and encourage, that teach children the stories of the past, that merges creative play with moral lessons and a heart for service and honor. honor your father and mother, little one, honor your elders, this we must not forget.

with the fall on it's way in (10 days until the cider mills open!) and a very brave and busy semester ahead, i am both nervous and anxious (don't get me wrong - it's such a positive light) for what is to come: monday through thursday, long days, school days for both of us from early morning until 5pm. thursday night, she'll be off to her dad's, only to come back and repeat her waking hours in a classroom while i busy myself with my own classes, books, and work. it is well with my soul. we will come home in the evening and tuck our feet underneath blankets with mugs of hot chocolate (or chocolate milk, or tea) and we will have porch mornings, time to remember what the freckles on eachother's legs look like, little corners in which there are infinite adventures, and of course - cider mill donuts and warm cider, as much and as often as we'd like.

i am reading "the blessing of a skinned knee," which uses jewish teachings to promote a way of parenting that relies on the sacred and intentional to run the home, a model that puts mom and dad in charge: ie: your house is not a democracy, and thus you end up with self-reliant children. more importantly, she talks about how our children are not our own:

The purpose of having children, according to the teachings of the Torah, is not to create opportunities for our glory or for theirs. The purpose of having children and raising them to be self-reliant, compassionate, ethical adults is to ensure that there will be people here to honor God after we are gone. So the rules regarding child-rearing are not primarily about making children feel good, but about making children into good people.

we've been working on manners, on "may i?" and consideration, understanding the space in which she exists as a space that is shared, given, and subject to mom as head of the home. the biggest change is subtle - the change in her voice, the way she says "ma-ma" instead of a mumbled "mumma," it is said with care - it makes me feel like ma from little house on the prairie or a farmers wife; the mama i've hoped to be, the mama i dream of, the mama who is seen as hope and a wide river basin, mama that is rooted firmly where ever her feet are planted, mama who is cozy and warm and smelling like all things holy. she asks "can i help?" and we remember, at bedtime, what we liked most about the day. i am not jewish. i have hebrew on my arm that i finally covered up last year with a chicken tattoo (because i like chickens, but also) to ease the embarrassment that happened when people would ask about the (incorrect!) word in red ink.

i miss spirituality. i miss ministry. i miss the hymns. i miss the teaching of something greater than oneself.
(but you probably won't catch me in a church, unless i'm using the space for my poems)

and yes. it is also knitting season. and the season in which cool breezes sneak in the window at night. note to self: get a basket like that for my current projects! i have a little less than two weeks before the fall semester begins - i am in nesting mode, in make-warm-things-as-fast-as-possible-while-finishing-as-many-books-as-i-can. what are you making? reading?

Inside the Box with Leann

2011-08-13T10:52:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine had an opening reception for her art show last night at Liberty Street Brewing Co. in Plymouth. Leann makes voodoo boxes, and she also makes rubber stamps which she had out on a table for us to play with (and pipe cleaners!).

i had only brought my phone, so i apologize for the crappy photos, and i didn't take any pictures of the art that was actually on display!

Last summer, Leann taught me to carve stamps and let us use some from her box:

bat stamps are my favorite

Stamp carving has become something I really enjoy, and the repetitive stamping all over the page (as you can see, that's what I did last night) is probably my favorite thing. I've carved quite a few of my own, mostly on rubber erasers, which you can see here. I've seen some, however, that aren't hand carved, and so this morning I set out to learn exactly how those are made. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like something I can do at home, which makes me sad, because I see so many of them on Etsy and I want to be able to get the fine lines and details that are harder to get with the tools used in hand carving (not that I want to underplay the art of handcarving - check these out!). Here are two videos on carving:

Here's an album of the art up at Liberty Street, and the boxes will be up through at least September, so get yourself down there and if you feel so inclined, contact Leann for purchase! We bought the Happy one, which I don't have a picture of, but I'm very excited to hang it up. I pinned quite a few stamping photos to pinterest yesterday, too, they are here.

What are you waiting for? Get stamping!

clay is crafty

2011-08-12T12:31:00.000-04:00

sorry for the quiet. we are busy over here.

2011 and beyond bucket list

2011-08-08T11:01:00.000-04:00

a short list of (mostly crafty) things that i want to do before the end of the year, soon, sometime, not later, not never.

-learn to screenprint
-learn to make soap
-take some form of dance or yoga regularly
-crochet soot sprites
-make little stuffed guys, like totoros or owls
-convince grace that forest spirits are real, and go on an adventure to find them/build a fairy house
-make a scarf with the pink linen/rayon yarn i've had for a very long time
-knit a sweater (or a shrug)
-legwarmers (and dpns)
-tiny paintings
-buy a tent and go camping (often)
-return to using my french press
-make coffee cozies
-notebook cozies
-hand dyed dolls with button eyes (see dharma trading co.)
-sew apron tops (have an apron rack in my kitchen)
-wear my long wrap skirt (i know, it's silly, but every time i put it on i feel really...skirty).
-handspin yarn (on a drop spindle)
-restore my dad's spinning wheel (and steal it!)
-shave my own head
-nap in a hammock
-make it through my "to-read" booklist
-365 self-portrait project
-go to grand haven with brittany
-graeters ice cream.
-set up shop at a craft market
-submit poetry to contests, magazines, journals, etc.
-pumpkin cheesecake
-learn ASL
-have short bangs again
-ukelele, banjo, guitar, harmonica <---learn, play, make a sort-of-band. have family music nights.
-learn to properly tie a head scarf
-birth doula training
-start teaching postpartum classes (and thus, i must certify...*sigh*)
-renaissance festival
-harry potter (i've never read/watched any)
-watch lord of the rings again
-take grace to the drive-in theatre
-write a poem about who i would be in another life (or several of them)
-servitude
-finish my chicken tattoo
-septum piercing
-nostril piercing
-plan stained glass piece for back (oh someday when money grows in my garden)
-make something with purple potatoes
-take a pottery class
-take a drawing class

what's on your list?

make things part two

2011-08-05T14:21:00.002-04:00

impressive

2011-08-04T09:58:00.000-04:00

I've spent way too much time on etsy this week, but I can't help it - I've been so impressed with some of the shops I've come across. I ordered that make things tank top, the seller was wonderful (she's shipping me a smaller size because the one I chose ended up being huge), and then a few of Grace's birthday presents came from etsy as well - the log home from Eve's Little Earthlings, and the mask/wrist cuffs, plus mama's lotion and patchouli oil from Featherheart Trading Co. that we picked up at the Rust Belt Market (I found her shop on etsy first). I also got this shirt, from Red Prairie Press, and I have to say - it feels nice to put something on that a lot of care and thought went into (though I can't lie - I could spend hours in Forever 21 looking at all of the floral prints and stripes...don't hate me). And, I got a congratulations/going away to Spain gift for a friend who will be teaching there as a Fulbright scholar, plus a surprise for my love (his birthday is this month). Browsing the shops has renewed my crafter's heart - I've got so many ideas, and not to mention my dear partner and his closet craftiness - he was sending me handwritten and handmade things in the mail when I was avoiding the universe (and oh, she had a lot to say to me), and I think we've got a busy, productive future in the works. (We also looked at a friend's old apartment with a massive yard and several giant raised bed gardens...need I say more?)

So, first on my list was to make these legwarmers, but when I did the long tail cast-on, the 34 stitches weren't nearly enough to reach from end to end. Help? (Also, one thing I want more than a lot of things: a tent. and a camping date).

Here's what I've been loving on etsy:

source

i'd really love to start spinning - my dad and stepmom also have a spinning wheel that just needs a few parts; i dream about it living in my house. i'd love to take lessons.

i think these are really beautiful

very seriously wanting to buy this for myself

this leather wall pocket is beautiful

another thing i would really like to have

this might be my favorite find of all (and the artist is from michigan)

source

words cannot express how much i want this. modest bathingsuit that is practical, yes!

hey little guy!

The end of the summer semester that was coming about like a leaning tower about to topple over has smoothed itself out - my Chaucer prof got stuck in London coming back from a conference, so we had another teacher for Monday and thus he cancelled our final exam and extended our final paper by several days, which means I can breathe easy for another day. I have an exam this weekend, and then a Grisham novel to read and take an essay exam on the following weekend, and then about a week and a half of work in the women's center before the fall semester starts, particularly an initiative involving breastfeeding mothers which I am ecstatic to be a part of. I'm wrapping up a conference proposal as well, and I've got a poetry reading on the 14th, plus the rebirth of the Gathering of Writers - it's going to be a good month, and my wonderful friend is giving me a massage tonight...lucky me!

Also, in case you missed it, Bon Iver was on NPR's Live Concert series and it was incredible. Listen here.

finished projects

2011-07-31T10:50:00.000-04:00

i've had both of these cowls (my first attempts at knitting in the round aside from grace's green hat) on the needles for months. they are now finally finished.

and because i can't not share this with you:

grace and her "sister"

clay made this. the little silver piece holding the copper ends together has since come off, but for a first attempt, i was quite impressed! :) there will be more to come!

wasting away/building a castle

2011-07-29T12:03:00.000-04:00

inbetween library cataloguing and satisfying my need to look at stuff, i'm going to share with you my friday morning things i love on etsy/what is distracting me from work and homework. ready?


source/must find pattern

source

love this/source

two please (actually, crap, it doesn't size big enough for man hands)

need (they are from michigan!!!!)

for grace's heart/i love all her prints

to make

and lastly,

this is my new desktop background.

around our home/in our skin

2011-07-28T15:27:00.000-04:00

if i were smart, i would have waited until after the bath crayon art extravaganza began to sit down with the sd card from the camera. if i were smarter yet, i would have made myself some tea (in my new steeping cup). anyway, i thought i'd show you what's been going on around here over the last few days.

tinkerbell magnetic paper dolls

an amazing log home from eve's little earthlings (check out her blog, too! she's having a giveaway through 8/4!)

grace brings things like this home from school every day. i am running out of space.

rainbow girl. she has become a character in our drawing stories. she also represents the extent of my drawing skills.

block puzzle: six different pictures to make, they all look like old story book pages

it rained

the biggest tomato

a baby cucumber

some little purple flowers soaked in rain

the tinkerbell magnets and wood block puzzle are from ypsilanti's the rocket. we had a gift certificate that i must have won from grace's preschool art show (i vaguely remember entering a drawing), but ypsi is the place to film movies now and thus it is nearly impossible to get anywhere downtown there. yesterday we were lucky; it rained, thus, delayed filming.

also not pictured: a super amazing purse i got at target this morning, and a math book that i got for grace from their dollar bins. i am very excited to use them.

currently on my wishlist:

source

this project (i almost took some stones from target's landscaping, they would have been perfect!)

gosh, i love her scarves so much.

a little camper. can i live here, please? also, i love you blogs and coffee.

i adore this

do i really need to say anything? i would wear this every day.

i would also really like this

this

bears

bears again

cups

pink and purple

i so badly want brightly colored flower print denim. i can't help it.

get mittened

silent things in the works? knitting. working through the nastiest of epic bedtime battles. reading chaucer, studying social problems (and apparently online exam problems, like why i keep getting multiple questions wrong on the exams when the book is right in front of me, and not being able to view the correct answers so i can correct my notes in case i somehow missed something, oh god how this drives me insane). preparing for a possible conference. brainstorming postpartum care packages, observing childbirth education classes, rethinking the consequences of divorce, separation, redrawing family lines with my eyes closed so that all i've got to go on is the natural self, outside of the books and social myths. breathe. rain. thunderstorms. more coffee. library organization. laundry. patchouli oil and nag champa lotion, still, every night, in the bath, after the shower. raspberries.

make things

2011-07-24T23:30:00.000-04:00

today we celebrated grace's birthday with friends and family

and i wore a dress that made me feel like i was wearing next to nothing, the fabric was so soft and thin

and then a storm rolled in, but it only thundered a few times before the quiet night air arrived; i told grace that the sleep bringer would come and put some sleep fairy dust over her eyes to keep them closed. the sleep bringer fairy is so tiny that you couldn't see her if you tried, and she doesn't want to be seen anyway so she only comes when she's pretty sure your eyes aren't going to open again. don't try to sneak a peek...she'll run away, and she's too small anyway.

i bought myself this tank top earlier this week:

source (i would also like this and this)

and thus, i promised myself that i had to start making more "things" if i were going to wear that shirt guilt-free. see, i realized that i have this awful habit of dreaming - like, a dear friend of mine has this sponge-like memory, because she devotes a significant amount of time reading and very little time say, going to the thrift store because she had a creative spark. i get that this is silly, but i had yet to have that moment of "work before play," in which i understood that creativity can rest until work is done and then the creative indulgence is much more sweet and syrupy on the tongue. it's not that i haven't had time to read for pleasure, it's that i usually choose to do something else. i am reworking my priorities, and it feels good.

saturday morning i went to the rust belt market in ferndale. it was phenomenal. the vendors were incredibly kind and invested in one another, and the music was an acoustic duo with huge smiles. i came home with these goodies:

the body cream and oil are from featherheart trading company, which is what brought me to the market in the first place. i was nervous about buying anything patchouli without smelling it first, but this was exactly what i had anticipated (a single drop goes a long way, but it's not going to leave a trail of hippie footprints behind you), and the nag champa body cream is soooo silky. i put some on grace after her bath tonight and she rubbed a little onto my back - it has a shea butter base, so it's just yummy.

the lilac shoes are from a kick ass gal at detroit vintage who has some killer boots and i was all ready to buy this high waisted red polkadot wiggle skirt, but then those shoes...they pretty much lept onto my feet and refused to be left behind. the yellow you see in the photo is a great vintage dress that just needs a belt (it has loops but didn't come with anything). amy, you'd love it. i also got some bath salts from kathryn's botanicals (she doesn't have a website) - goat's milk, and lavender. i put some of the goats milk in grace's bath - she gets her milk from whole foods, and has a whole line of delicious soaps as well.

so, the market? you should go. every weekend.

i'm slightly interested in applying to be a vendor there - there was an illustrator with a booth, and i thought it might be do-able to present a multifaceted mix of things//poetry+cheap vintage (which seems to do really well there)+stamped notebooks+knits. the question is a) would i make enough to cover the cost of space, and b) what do you call an eclectic mix of stuff that doesn't really fit into any single category? two woolen fish: a lot of great stuff.

and, because i promised myself i'd make stuff (and my stamp carving tool is being a pain in the ass), i bring you photo booth pictures of recent and current projects:

this one is just waiting for a few glass beads to weight it down, or maybe a wooden bead that both ends can fit through. the yarn is debbie bliss andes and it's probably the softest thing you'll ever touch. now, what else to do with it?

twentysomethings, publications, and green space

2011-07-22T13:11:00.000-04:00

somebody turned four

the huron river review spring issue arrived in my mailbox, and it is uh-ma-zing. amazing, really. see here for more photos, the first three poems published are mine!

my mom works for a doctor who also loves poetry. he sent her home with this for me (to keep? to borrow? i am not sure).

a french braid, sideways

i have a garden!

a cucumber spiral

bush beans

one tiny weird looking tomato

the most lush part of the garden, where beans, cucumbers, and tomatoes all have grown together, exceptionally larger than the rest of the garden

because I have far too many tabs open in my browser

2011-07-21T23:59:00.001-04:00

my google reader line-up says hello. so does my pinterest account. i realize that i could probably stare at these lovely images all day long, but most things are more fun when shared!

blankets. particularly this one.

very serious short hair lust. or serious bangs. or really short hair, particularly short sides. sometimes i like this, and a little longer like this. or, forget it, and i'll just wait for this. you can see more of what i like here.

I told myself the other day that I could buy this if I sat down and made something. I started to carve some new stamps, and my lino-carver-guy wasn't having it. I have a half-carved mustache, and no make things tank top.

i love this so much. so much, that i might justify the nearly $40 that i'll be paying to get it for grace. the good news? i'd order a size 6, so hopefully it will last a few years, right?

a really great poem

another really great poem

a beautiful photo shoot, particularly the shot of the little one in front of the stormy sky (dear thunderstorms, you could come hang out in the midwest for a bit, or else we may end up like this.)

decorative paint (i love the clouds, and the children's room)

does this guy not look like he's smiling? he's a glossy black cockatoo chick!

i would love for grace to wear this. oh my gosh! i just realized she's local!

this is incredible

mr. art and mr. snow (i love her art)

this makes my mouth water

Indie Ink Writing Challenge: Five Years Later

2011-07-21T16:36:00.001-04:00

Five years ago, I was standing in a mall jewelry store trying on obnoxiously luxurious rings. I had a row of diamonds, perfectly placed on the glass case. He stood next to me, money in his pockets and a grin that fit his rough jaw…he was the moon, and I was laying in his bedsheets. We weren't actually going to get married. We had no intentions of planning a wedding, and he was still technically married to a woman he had fucked a few times until he lost his mind, you know, he's like that. He never bought her a ring, and they still made their vows.

I was his muse. He wanted a ring on my finger and I wanted to spread my legs on his couch while he dipped his paintbrush in the black ink and scrawled it onto the paper. Sure, we slept together. We might have even made love. It might have been the best I'd ever had, if such a thing existed, I certainly haven't had anyone better since.

He left me then, or maybe I moved away for the scruffy guy shelving books at the library that I caught staring at my thighs when I had gone out after yoga in one of Grayson's t-shirts and my really short shorts. I got up one morning, realized I loved him too much for my own good, and left for a few days. When I came home, my clothes were balled up in a trash bag outside our apartment without a note, and I jammed my key in the lock a few times until I realized that it was done, we were done. I slept in my car and read a lot of books, then. I didn't fight. I drove past the apartment now and then, but the lights never came on. He was gone.

Why am I telling you this? This morning, I got an email. In it, a picture of the spot on the inside of my arm where he had bit me a little too hard. It said, "I love you, bird. Be with me, until the moon goes black and our bones turn to dust." It was from my Gray, but it was dated five years back. Five years ago, while I was out screwing the boy from the library because I couldn't get Gray's god damn chest out of mine like a knife had pierced us through together, he had written me to tell me that I was more than his muse, more than a mannequin girl for him to do with as he pleased. I was screwing another man because Gray didn't love me like that, and the message never made it through. And here I am.

I live with my cats. I make meals for one. Sometimes, I wrap the ends of my hair around my finger and try to remember what his teeth felt like as he pulled me in. He was an incredible lover - rough, usually, but still soft when my limbs begged him to slow down. His tongue was like velvet on the fuzz of my palest parts. Should I bother writing him back? What do you say to a proposal that finds its way into your hands five years after your silence sent its regrets?

My challenge this week was from Billy Flynn: You open your email and there's a message waiting for you; it was received today but as you look at the sent date you realize it was sent 5 years ago. I challenged Brad MacDonald with the pieces left her body. Interested in participating? Check out the Writing Challenges link here.

happy fourth

2011-07-20T23:19:00.000-04:00

we are going to have the most beautiful children someday, he said. we have the same eyes. (2/06) we have the same eyes that got us one beautiful child who has blue eyes, blue eyes like my mom, blue eyes like my sister, but not quite like theirs. she's a lot like me, you know, pulling the ones she wants in close, and then kicking them out, fighting for her space like she's suddenly drowning in a mattress sea. she got me good tonight, the soft part of my thigh is still sore. love me, love me, she says, rub my back, i can't sleep. i rub her back, and she curls into my armpit and then turns away and each time i lean in, she scoots further until she's hanging off the edge of the bed. i sleep like this, when someone else is there. trade spots with me, she says, but really she means that she wants the whole bed to herself.

when she was one, i wrote to her:

i want you to always feel hopeful. i want you to remember that "stuff" doesn't matter. i want you to feel rich and intelligent. i want you to love music as much as you do now, and i want it to carry you when life feels routine. i want your dreams to be colorful and romantic like mine tend to be. i hope you inherit your dad's slowness, i am always busy and he breathes so deeply.

and then she was two, and i wrote her the letter that is now the last pages of my book. when she was three, i think i wrote this. a few days ago, she asked me what birth was, and whether or not some of our friends were there when she was birthed. she tells me that her friends at school all have birthdays sometime, days that they were born. we looked at pictures and watched old videos. we were all born, once, slimy and sticky and wrinkled and sweet. tonight i told her to kiss me, because it would be the last kiss from being three, and to snuggle me, because it would be the last snuggle; next time we kiss and snuggle she will be four. she swears she'll make a really goofy face when she wakes up. i'll be up early, writing the next birthday letter and figuring out what we should do with ourselves before the heat becomes a heavy shadow.

grace's birthday wish list

2011-07-18T12:45:00.000-04:00

i figure i should take the opportunity to share grace's (ahem....definitely not my) birthday wish list. and i want you all to know, that i dream of a space like this, in which everything is beautifully organized in its proper basket. a few more dream spaces: one. two. three. four (clouds on the walls!).

or anything from her shop

squirrels in love! one for her daddy's house, and one for mine! i'd like one of everything she makes.

i love this log home. and the woodland creatures to go with it.

this rainbow dress

pinafore shirts are great for summer (alright, i must start sewing)

bandana pants!

this is a definite, because grace wants to be super why

a little baby swing!

for this tree house, with this play set

and a few wishes for mama (for real)

in case you are planning on getting miss grace a present, please don't take these as serious suggestions, as you will probably find me much more excited about them than she will be. practical ideas are: colored pencils, polly pocket stuff, anything olivia (the movies, perhaps? we have quite a few books), my little pony, and tinkerbell shoes. or nothing at all, because she's a kid and would be happy to play with a cardboard box. um...you could bring a cardboard box. she *did* ask for a "walking dog with a leash and a collar but not a real dog." remember these (only they weren't remote controlled - the leash was the wire)?

grace hates the market, but that's okay

2011-07-17T11:56:00.000-04:00

please excuse my poor phone-camera pictures, sometimes carrying around a dSLR is not an option.

yesterday, we had a family day. i can count on one hand the number of these that we have had (i'm not counting the awkward saturday diner breakfasts that we suffered through with minimal words so that we could have "family time" after the split), and this was by far the best of them all. the entire day was like a meditation on being, outside of the norms that we adhere to (really, like adhesive) and the expectations one has for a two-home, co-parenting family arrangement. i will say this: the number of people in my immediate circle coping with divorce is plentiful. i have a lot of mixed feelings on the subject, not because i question their choices, but because it raises a lot of questions that i have suppressed, quieted, over the past few years - i've been in survival mode. breathe. keep going. move along now.

we went down to eastern market. grace, for the last week or two, has been in this place in which she behaves as if everything is torture. walking around the market? torture. riding in the car? awful. being at home? terrible. eating breakfast? i've offered all of the wrong things. she battled us the entire time. it was still fun. it is strange to see the other parent parent your (collective) child; we ended our relationship when she was still so small, and so this is essentially all that she knows - two parents, parenting individually. it's also nice to have another parent there who is much bigger than i; grace is 41 lbs now, and i am rather tiny - wrangling her in a crowded space is really hard, and it smushes my ego into the ground and then stomps on it when i'm faced with the fact that my size is detrimental to my ability to control my (wild) child.

grace is captivated by street musicians.

we went to goldfish tea afterwards, and i could have spent days upon days in that space. i've joked before about her dad's tea cabinet and how it moved in when i moved out, but the truth is that i really like tea and i find the ritual to be peaceful. i think i'm just so wrapped up in the busy-ness of life that i forget that peace is only a few minutes away if i would just stop. the owners have an almost 5 year old daughter, and they had princess dominos and magnetic poetry on a baking sheet (picture is not mine, or goldfish tea's). genius. you should have seen my face when i discovered the magnetic poetry as we were leaving. even more reason to go back. goldfish tea is in royal oak, which is about a half hour away from where we live now (everything is a half hour away from here) and the birthing community out that way is wonderful. if it made any sense whatsoever, i would happily move out there in a heartbeat. even the mommas at the parks are nice.

we also went to LIFT, where there were lots of hello kitty things and other japanese(?) toys and a ton of really awesome tshirts that i wish i would have bought. another day, right? i do not need a $26 tshirt with a bird riding on a whale printed on it. i would love to screen print myself, though. sometimes i think between grace's dad's illustration abilities and my writer-mind, we could come up with some pretty incredible children's stories and tshirts to go with them. the finger puppet is from the art-o-mat that they had there, which is a cigarette machine-turned-art-vendor that features local artists. i have a little wood block painting (everything is the size of a cigarette pack) that we got from one in northville, and the guy working at LIFT had a few himself - one was a painted ceramic eggplant that said "read it and weep" or something, and there were also painted wooden coins. the machine has a binder on top that tells you about the artists and what they make, and you put in $5 and choose which you'd like.

then, i baked some parmesan tomatoes and went to a doula dinner last night at a friend's house. she's a massage therapist, so if you're in the ypsilanti area and looking for woman-based, attentive, and excellent care (pregnant or not), i would highly recommend her. i've been trying to sort through what my role as a doula might be in this area, and as a full-time student and limited on-call availability, i'm realizing that i can be quite valuable as a back-up care provider for birth doulas, in addition to longer-term postpartum care. one of the women i talked to last night was part of a program in the dominican (maybe it was guatemala?) where women were cared for prenatally, through childbirth, and then they were offered care through the first six years! it went something like, meeting once or twice a week for the first six weeks, then once a month, and so on, into childhood. i would love to implement a similar (though probably less extensive) care package in my postpartum work, especially involving several families at a time in small community groups that meet regularly. this allows me to be the facilitator rather than the care provider, and it empowers families to seek fellowship and resources amongst each other which is key for growth, and ultimately a component in preventative care, plus it offers a better alternative to online forums which i feel are nice, but not remotely comparable to the intimacy and support you gain from face-to-face interaction. this is really the foundation of my practice, and partly why i chose the name evolve (also, i'm really loving my website today, so please go look at it and smile with me).

we got a bunch of these dyed and glittered daisies for my mom. grace saw them and said she had to get some for her mima. sweet girl. they are waiting for you on the kitchen table, mom!

crap/shit/f.../serendipity

2011-07-15T13:09:00.000-04:00

1) i recently deleted 800+ photos associated with my google account, not realizing that those 800 photos were what orchestrated the imagery on this blog over the last three years. excuse my languge, but...fuck. i apologize for the big white empty squares in the places the pictures should be. i am working on restoring them (only i have no idea what any of them were, so...i'm running on memory).

2) i did, however, figure out how to attach a paypal button to purchase my chapbook right from this site: poetry. there, you will also find more information about the Gathering of Writers that has met in Plymouth for the last several years - the group has been hanging on by it's wonderfully worn threads and is home to a diverse sea of talent - we are the crossroads between Ann Arbor and Detroit. I will be co-hosting/running the event alongside a few other dedicated poets, and we'd like to invite you to join us as soon as we have a final fall arrangement. we may be back as early as August, so please keep checking back. you can thank serendipity for this one, and if you'd like to know the story, ask me next time we meet. days like these (cue kim taylor), i am reminded of my roots and their strength, their sturdiness and resilience. walk on.

3) i just requested this man's book, American Prophet, through MeLCat (as if I don't have enough to read?) and am so looking forward to getting it!

4) last night, i went skinny dipping for the first time in my life. i am not a naked person (well, we're all naked people, but bear with me) and after an exceptionally stressful (but not the bad kind of stressful) day, it was relieving to take everything off and listen to nothing but laughter and the rubber-band frogs.

fridays are by far my favorite day, it is my day of peace and quiet and (mostly) my own time. i'd like to make these for dinner soon. what am i doing inside on this not-too-hot beautiful day! oh. writing a paper. right.

more info on kim taylor (in case you missed the above link) can be found here.

Indie Ink Challenge - Imagine

2011-07-13T10:01:00.000-04:00

this is a work in progress

i held myself up in my room
every single door and window on my mother's house,
locked.
i held myself up in my room while my daughter was at her daddy's house
riding her bike in the apartment complex parking lot
swimming in the pool
i held myself up in my room and refused to let them in,
i refused to spread my legs for the
institution of marriage as
the measure of all things that are right.
i held myself up in my room and kept my
sex
to myself
because the things i carry are heavy and i can't rectify
the splitting of cells
there's no shame in divorce, you say, as you embrace all the parts of your liberated self
no shame in divorce but we can't terminate
pregnancy
no shame in divorce but the gays
they can't marry
and i am not
heterosexual but as long as i participate in the heterosexual definition of marriage, it's fine
we're fine
so i held myself up in my room with
the doors locked and one window cracked because i like to sleep under the breeze
and i waited, i waited for the peace treaty to make its way under the door,
for the lines that define family to be
reconstructed, for
dirty fingers to be put back in their pockets, imagine there's
no heaven
it's easy if you try
no hell below us
above us only sky.
i held myself up in my room and let my hair
grow long, my legs become the furry sticks that they were always
meant to be because i take after my
dad
i braided each gray strand together into a rope, and i held it down to save my
children from the
shipwreck.
i held myself up in my room until the ground pooled with tears and
sweat, and we
paddled out into the sky in a wooden boat
i held myself up in my room because i know
that it gets better.

Illogical Being challenged me this week with "Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try..."

I challenged Michael Webb with "we tried to work it out."

a list of things i'd love to do on a day off (ahem, today)

2011-07-12T09:43:00.000-04:00

now that the rotten tooth has been removed and the next appointments are set, i finally feel like we're settling into a rhythm here for the remainder of the summer semester. there are a few things i would...shift (she's not handling the transition to a different room and teacher and friends and helpers at school very well, the school is practically a ghost town for the summer and so several of the rooms have combined, but i could just be projecting my own disappointment onto her), and i've been feeling pretty under the weather, but those things aside, we're planning a fourth birthday party and i've got some great ideas for that! today, however, is a day off (minus the homework i have to do).

so what would i do, in my dream world (that i'm going to continue to pretend exists until i have to get up out of this chair and return to mama-land)?

i'd wear this dress to the toledo art museum, and visit the people called women bookstore

also from sally jane vintage, this post features photography from the only journalist present on the train ride RFK's body took to arlington after he was assassinated. and, some fashion photography. speaking of photography, here's another, from q's daydream. i love her blue dress.

i'd read this book, or i'd finish reading this one i've already started, sitting under a tree in a park somewhere while grace ran off her immeasurable amount of energy.

or maybe we'd stamp.

from yellow owl workshop

maybe i'd build a little homeopathic/aromatherapy collection and figure out what, exactly, each thing does. maybe we'd have a day of thrifting (because on my dream day off, grace likes thrifting and participates joyfully rather than hiding inside the clothing racks). and then, maybe we'd have a dyeing party for the thrifted treasures that need some more color. can you dye fabric with espresso powder? maybe we'd go to some vintage shops and have a lunch date. or maybe we'd make our own margherita pizzas.

lastly, i'm featured on

indieink.org today

neighbor cat, spirit spit

2011-07-10T23:59:00.000-04:00

tonight i had the honor of reading poetry at spirit spit with several other local talented artists, namely wl bush, anne (who hosts an open mic at the scarab club behind the DIA in detroit), carmel liburdi (you have to listen to her sing), and joe kidd. spirit spit is hosted at spirt of hope church on MLK and Trumbull. the church itself is beautiful, i had forgotten how much i love old sanctuaries, old architecture, the peace that lingers there is immense. we climbed up the spiral staircase to the bell tower and rang those bells, a poor sad song because i had no idea what we were doing, we didn't know how to read the charts and make a chord, but we rang the bells anyway. next time, i will remember my camera. also, i think the church has people's yoga (read: free) there on thursday nights, and they are LGBT friendly - the september spirit spit will focus on the LGBT community. it was an absolute honor to be invited to read tonight, and by far one of the most memorable events i've been to.

a space utilized to define space.

2011-07-09T21:20:00.001-04:00

a hot topic, and possibly the "you're burning on fire" hot topic (as grace would say) in this house (and by house i mean my head) and among the women i know is that of co-parenting, family structure, and more specifically, communal/collective living.

it is no secret, if you have read my poetry, if you have ever caught a whisper from the ghosts in these walls, that i yearn for peace between these two souls trying to cooperatively raise a third. this is probably often masked by anger and resentment; most of the time, i'm not sure whom or what i am more pissed off at: myself, him, the system, social constructs, my inability to handle stress well, fear, etc.

can i paint you a picture? it goes something like this:
mom and dad are equals, intellectually, emotionally. both parents agree to support one another throughout their child(ren)'s remaining adolescence. this might be done financially, surely emotionally, and possibly materially in the form of housing and other such things. are you following me?
mom and dad do not maintain a romantic relationship, but mom and dad remain companions. mom and dad may or may not involve other individuals, under the same roof. family is therefore redefined, reshaped, reformed.
i have always pined after communal living. i have tried it once, it was unsuccessful, but i'd like to blame various other factors (and possibly a lack of experience) for the spats we had.

i remember a sermon i heard once about the locusts in the book of joel, and how they ravish you when your heart is full of....let's say, less fruitful things. resentment. regret. guilt. things that do not bear fruit. it acted as a metaphor for the things we hold on to, and the way they eat at our bones and harvest little that is good, little that provides nourishment or nurture. my question here is how to build the framework of a non-traditional family, while still existing in a society that serves and preserves traditional values?

ie: i have a really hard time letting go of the guilt i carry for raising my child in two homes. i hated it as a child, i swore i wouldn't do it, and i'm doing it.

ie: marriage both terrifies and fascinates me. i don't know how to cope with the growing number of couples i know, particularly the female halves, who are splitting up and embracing their newly single selves. you go, mamas, but my heart is breaking because i wonder at what point we decided that we could call it quits so easily, making "right" and "wrong" people, an abstract concept, the scapegoat. it makes me question daily what i might think, want, or feel in ten years (because we evolve!), and how i might handle that.

ie: the exaggerated pressures on family structure make moving in with a significant other absolutely panic-inducing. coupled with the bit of shame i feel (probably self-imposed) for cementing the two-home life in place, some times i think i'd rather just stay where i am (at my mother's house) for awhile longer, still forcing a two-home childhood for grace, but not establishing permanency anywhere, yet.

ie: why am i so afraid of permanency, particularly when it involves a very wonderful other person? this is the problem with searching for the "right" thing (or one): we inevitably question whether or not we've found it, every time we are presented with something else that might have potential to be the actual one, as if the secret to happiness lies within the stars somewhere and not within our own two hands.

there are days in which i hope that he doesn't ask if we can somehow bring these two worlds together, there are days in which i can barely avoid the crash. there are days in which i am reminded of how miserable we made each other, and there are days in which i feel like i am face to face with an attractive stranger whose face resembles my daughter's and i wonder if i knew him, somehow, in another life.

i told someone last night that we had tried to work it out, and then i stopped in thought - we tried to work what out? certainly nothing that compares with the several years of marriage behind the woman i was talking to. certainly nothing substantial enough to merit a statement like that. our history lies within an inexplicable connection and low hum under the skin, into my bones, a tug at the hem of my skirt by an invisible one, yet to be born. it exists in someone else's song, and somewhere our roots gathered and knotted themselves together beneath the grass and here we are, grown and i'm still holding on. i am perfectly poised between shared marrow and the pressing guilt that waits for me on the other side. and so, i linger. i refuse to use a knife. i take careful, quiet steps, and i leave a trail of stones behind me so that no matter where i lie my head, i can be found if i am needed.

there are days in which i long to escape, days in which i imagine a new life, and days when i understand that new is nothing more than a mixing of what is on the pages before, and the pages ahead. i am the catalyst, the body electric.

there are days in which i am swept away by a man whom i love in ways i did not know i could love, and rather than cupping it in my hands, i ask a thousand questions about why i feel powerless in redefining what family means, how we might ever emerge from this still whole, and when i'll feel like the universe has given me permission to let go.

i wonder sometimes if the better answer would have been to remain. i wonder what honor's limits are. i had decided long before we left behind the carpet she was born on for hardwood floors and a walk to town that the weighing of my happiness or hers was an infinite, unresolvable comparison - by choosing to leave, i eventually chose my own happiness, believing it to be an investment in a better life for everyone. i wonder, sometimes, what it might look like if we had stayed together - not necessarily as a couple, but as parents who chose to stay under one roof, in the same space, until their child was grown. i wonder what our problem solving skills would look like. i wonder if we might have exploded several months in and caused a greater catastrophe than we ever thought possible, or if we would have become more socially and intimately adept. i wonder if we might have sometimes slept in the same bed with her little naked self between us, promising us each our own space, but not so much distance that the realization of our own subjectivity was unbearable. often, i believe i could do this. other times, i see what i would sacrifice in order to try. most times, i don't know that he would hope for the same things i do. i wonder if such a person might exist that could be in a relationship with either of us who chose to retreat to a collective unit at the end of the day.

i know that love is a choice, and that family is biological but also socially formed. i know that were my current relationship to end, i would find love again, and many more times, though none would be able to replicate nor replace. maybe it is this that bothers me - the absence of absolutes, the magnified choice that rests on my shoulders - there is no "right," though there may be many "wrongs."

i finally finished "our babies ourselves" today and what struck me was the dyad that author merideth small talks about on every single page: the parent/child dyad, the intuitiveness of both parent and infant and how that bond is established within the first hours, how we must listen to the cues of our babies and learn to read them, how when that continuum is broken the child will become withdrawn. are we not this same way, exhibiting this behavior as adults? do we not withdraw, pack our bags, and leave when we realize our needs aren't being met? we are masters of seeking satisfaction elsewhere (be it internal or through others), we have no need to stay when there is the promise of more, bigger, and better. as infants, they have only themselves. i find it interesting that in a society that emphasizes individualism, we are most certainly quite dependent on others.

i present to you my sea of family woes. i have a long list of possible situations, some as simple as open and enjoyable conversation that seeds and fosters growth and stronger threads, despite living separately, finding ourselves wrapped in the arms of people who love us and who honor the crumbled road we've wandered. some are more extensive, some are radical, some promise me less self-doubt and others require me to abandon everything i've cleaved to thus far, rooting myself in a spot of land that is waiting for my toes to burrow in and a hammock in the yard.

this is not an easy road.

teeth and paper

2011-07-08T14:28:00.001-04:00

somebody had a giant tooth pulled this morning, a bad tooth that had been eaten away up into the roof of her mouth. i must advise you, parents, that brushing your children's teeth is not enough. i have learned the following:
-fruit snacks are evil (so are raisins, probably)
-floss at night
-toothpaste isn't as important as brushing
-have many adults on hand to pin down a screaming child
-some kids just have bad teeth
-more milk, please?

she handled it....decently. the procedure itself was less intense than the prepping (i took a few good ones to the pelvic region), and it was over and done with in about 40 minutes. maybe an hour and a half after we got home, she was content with pudding and was making silly faces and wanting to play with her daddy. we'll see how it feels as the weekend goes by. it's weird to see a giant hole in a little one's mouth - i had most of my teeth pulled as a kid, not because of cavities, but because they weren't coming out and/or the big teeth were already coming in. it was kind of cool to be on the observing side of things as opposed to the one getting her teeth pulled, though obviously watching your child undergo that kind of procedure is really, really hard to do.

yesterday i bought myself a notebook to use for doula/breastfeeding/women's resource center work. my notes from the doula workshop i attended last fall are spread amongst binders, my planner, and any spare piece of paper i could find, and i'd like to take notes as i go so i have a reference spot that is portable and easy to navigate, ie: something i can bring to a client's house, and something i can add to at meetings. i've been reading "our babies ourselves" for many, many months now and we just got another of merideth small's books at the WRC; i'm also planning on reading "after the baby's birth" as soon as i have some spare time and space in my poor head. here is what i'm reading instead:

social problems

also, i have a lot of freckles

lastly, my ears are stretched to 1/2". they have been this way since before grace was born, save for the one time i sized down. i've been thinking about sizing down again, as i'd really like to have some hanging designs and finding some that don't dwarf my face (or rob my bank account) in this size is not an easy task. i'm also, actually, slightly bigger than 1/2" and not quite as big as the next major size up, as most of the 1/2" i look at tend to be really small, whereas the 5/8" are much too big. truth be told, wooden earrings mask the stink of ear funk (i know, gross) much better than metal, acrylic, or stone. i've been wearing stone for a long time and just switched over to these faux amber tunnels that at least don't encourage the smell. i used to have big spirals, at 1/2", and i own a pair of clear glass claws in the same size. i'd really like to wear these, but not so huge!

check

out

the

jasper

(these even come in 9/16 which is probably what ideally, i would wear)

(these remind me of a stormy sky)

if i had my septum pierced (i'd love to have my septum pierced)

if my ears were smaller (and especially if i shaved my head - i think i have a thing for shaved heads and twirly earrings): twists, golden horn.

also, this is a funny little thing on family composition that i found on merideth small's blog. the little icons are highly amusing: i am wearing pearls. we are all white. you can't be anything other than the pictures they give you. co-parenting is not an option.

sara o'leary and story wishes

2011-07-06T11:21:00.001-04:00

last night, grace asked me if i had ever seen a star with a tail. this came up a few times over the last week, once while we were driving too, and she seemed totally floored that clay and i had both seen shooting stars. someday, little one. i didn't see my first until i was 17.

i have a little notebook of character/story ideas, and little pictures in my head that i keep safely there until i come across someone who can draw and wants to work on a story with me. i'd love to write some children's books, someday. oddly enough, bringing the books home for grace isn't the first thought i have when i see one i like - instead, it's "that would make a great tattoo!" but then, i wonder how the illustrator would feel about another artist recreating their work on another person's body. i wonder how i would feel about that if it were my own work. either way, i've got a little collection of story wishes, and yes, most of them involve stripes of some sort (in case you haven't gathered my small infatuation with all things horizontally striped, particularly things relating to little ones).

here is a book we picked up at the library, written by sara o'leary. the second one is also her book, and one we bought while i was purchasing this semester's textbooks on amazon. we also got singing away the dark, illustrated by the same person who did o'leary's books, julie morstad.

one of my favorite posts on sara's website (link above) is this: on tiny houses for writing. i also very much love this one, in which she notes how her books are categorized as family, questions, and humour, which she says pretty much sums up everything she's ever written. it reminds me of todd parr's books, and the way certain little ones would cling to them when i taught preschool, and the great big open arms and hugs the pages give you when you look at the pictures and share the stories. we just read the family book, and one of my favorites is it's okay to be different. usually the black and white, simple and subdued drawings with lots of space and raw edges are what grab my attention, and not so much the bright, bold colors that todd uses...but his stories are so great.

oh, we're also very into olivia right now.

she's a black and white pig in stripes. need i say more?

another striped book that i love.

sara o'leary's books are featured here, on simply read books. i want to read them all! i also found this through sara's blog: how to draw...penguins. the author/illustrator has several other books; we've read this one: the way back home.

this weekend we went up to lansing for a princess day (note the crown above) and stopped at two used bookstores, both owned by the same guy. when we got home, i decided to pile up all of the books we've accumulated since january of this year, most of which were used or free (a few were new). we have a major book-acquisition....problem, if such a thing could be considered a problem. check it out:

this doesn't include clay's books or the books i've bought for grace. imagine at least two more columns.

Indie Ink Writing Challenge: every june and july

2011-07-06T00:13:00.001-04:00

every year, we melt down. every year, we crack into a thousand pieces. i know that part of grieving is working through that grieving, it is a process, it is an ongoing thing that doesn't exist in segments or parts of stories - you can't just grieve in one chapter and then move on to the next once you're all grieved out....because new experiences, new things, they trigger the old wounds under the leaves, and so you grieve a little more, and you mourn little pieces as you go, and june and july and the heat and the memories of grace as a newborn and the broken air conditioning and the rocks in my chest, and then the frail self that i was the next year, the self that felt so open and raw and naked and honest and inside out; then the hurried panic of moving into my stepdad's house, working through my ex's new relationship and live-in-girlfriend, then returning to school, moving out to ypsi and moving out unexpectedly and all of the hurrying, rushing of that, moving again, and here we are. maybe i'm just burnt out, and it happens every june and july. here we are, in a puddle. it is not the arc, and it is not the end.

i can feel her chubby legs on my hip. i can smell the milk on the soft part of her neck where it meets her shoulder. i can feel her velvet hair on my cheek, and i feel like she bas been almost four, for almost four years. i hardly remember the sink baths and whether or not she woke up a billion times a night. instead, i remember the uncertainty, the bedroom hideaway, map sheets and the soaked thirst, the endless minutes spent staring at her face in utter disbelief that i, the churchy girl, choir kid, true love waits ring on my finger for those years that i prayed on the bedroom floor, met a boy who sold me a laptop after the one i had (that my church boyfriend's parents had bought me) was stolen out of my car, broken anyway, and now i am holding his baby, a baby i had grown, fattened, sung out like the entire world rested upon my belly. it feels like centuries have passed. i have written this story so many times, sometimes it is about somebody else, and sometimes i tell it as my own. the inner space that came about after dragging our insides across the hardwood floors of a bitter home, that sacred center has been filled with homework and an infinite measure of balance, paint, and churning bones. the ache i feel when i see the little appliquéd outfits with bowties and elephants, it does not come from the place where i bleed. it comes from my ribs, my chest, and the glass chards that are still perforating the floor that exists deep in there.

i am mourning a break up of friendship, a thread chopped.
i am catching flower petals beneath the table with my eyes closed.
i could swallow the tear kissed freckles on her cheeks with the hugeness of my heart and how it swells when she cries.

my prompt this week for the indie ink challenge was from tara, who gave me this quote: "if you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say?" - stephen levine.

stephen levine is an american writer who specializes in grief. i wrote this before i knew that (i looked him up when i was finished). wikipedia states that he "draws our attention to grief's more subtle incarnations." well then, i sleep in a bed full of grief's ghosts.

We walk through half our life

as if it were a fever dream

barely touching the ground

our eyes half open

our heart half closed.

Not half knowing who we are

we watch the ghost of us drift

from room to room

through friends and lovers

never quite as real as advertised.

Not saying half we mean

or meaning half we say

we dream ourselves

from birth to birth

seeking some true self.

Until the fever breaks

and the heart can not abide

a moment longer

as the rest of us awakens,

summoned from the dream,

not half caring for anything but love.

-stephen levine, half life.

well, stephen levine, and tara roberts, i answer you this: i wouldn't make a phone call. i wouldn't measure my life in the last moments and what i could do with them. it reminds me of the last few times my daughter nursed, and how the thought of the last time broke me, shattered my heart right there in my bed, as she drifted off to sleep there. i had planned on giving her a last time, but eventually i stopped paying attention, and i sang her a song each time she curled up at my breast. i stopped wondering, i stopped anticipating the end, and only knew what was in my hands then and there.

i challenged alphy michaud with "i used to carry you around in the pocket of my shirt," and you can read his response here. the book that inspired it is this one.

Indie Ink Challenge - When I Grow Up

2011-06-30T15:21:00.000-04:00

My challenger this week was Tara from Thin spiral notebook. She asked, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" This is my response.

when i was a little girl, i wanted to be a writer
i dreamt a storm of words
and read them off of index cards for
a contest.

when i was a teenager, i thought i'd be a photojournalist.
i took pictures.
i could communicate
decently, i had a lot of
thoughts.

when i was a teenager still, i wanted to be a missionary.
i wanted to hop aboard a train to california and
start over, ride through the mountains and wake up in a
strange, sterile bed.

i went away to a private school near chicago
my roommate carved little wooden boxes with heat
and i was on my period.
i prayed
a lot
i prayed that god would tell me what i was supposed to be doing
where i was supposed to be finding the answers
because they certainly didn't exist within my
self.

i called my mom the next morning, promised i'd
walk home and leave my things behind if she didn't come pick me up.
she came to pick me up.
i never said i wanted to be a mother
but i dreamt once, about his kids, blonde hair and blue eyes and their ghosts still haunt my skin
like his notes still swim through my creased palm
when i grew up, some,
i wanted to be a mother.
when i became a mother,
i grew up, some.

i spent a long time skipping class
reading books on midwifery in the library at school
or whatever else i was
doing wherever else i was
i can't even remember why
maybe i was asleep.

there are many attractive, male english professors, and equally as many strong women in my field.
i realize now that there is a difference, and an important one at that,
between lit professors and the ones who teach you how to write well, and i know that defining each as such sounds better than simply stating that i am
now
finally
an english major.

when i was a girl, i wanted to be a singer
like celine dion
my grandma told me i should probably think of something different.

my mom told me to be a graphic designer.

i've always wanted to play the violin. when i grow up, i want to play the violin.
we're all growing up, aren't we?
have you ever heard of a person growing
down?
grace said to me today, "have you ever heard of a person taking a bath in the toilet?"
no, i haven't
but i'm sure somebody has.

i think when i grow up, i'll be 40 or some number that equates to grown children and retroactive satisfaction,
thanking the Lord, whomever he or she may be

maybe i'll be standing in front of a classroom
i hope
i hope i won't be destroyed by delays and i hope
i won't harbor anger for the ones who haven't arrived yet
or the ones who never will

when i grow up, i will be repeating
give, give, give, give
give of the heart and remember that resentment is
a selfish tool that takes the blood from our bodies.

when i grow into the silk at my waist, the morning milk that sits and waits,
when i grow up
i'll have ten children, a job, and
a few books.

I challenged Sir with "somewhere over the rainbow," and his blog is here.

did somebody take the spring away?

2011-06-27T12:16:00.000-04:00

yesterday i was invited to the home of two beautiful, talented women who make art about food and write about the ghost waters of detroit. a home with wood floors and a little spirit girl, of instruments and a garden-yard. it was a circle of somewhat single mama's, each of us different in age and in story; the girls put on shows, and we read our papers, shared tea and fruit, talked about plates and folk and somebody else's treasures. we were the space around and the space between.

today marks a new semester and i am suddenly feeling less enthusiastic - maybe it is that the last two have been so rewarding that i forgot how much work was left, how much there still was to do, how the space i've made for school has been safe and cushioned and now the edges are raw, now i am staring at the july that lingers, knowing there are a good 8 months or so to get by, wondering what the rest of this year will bring and then, what the rest of our lives might be like, or at least the next chapter. i'm reading my reader today, catching up on the last few weeks that it's been ignored, knowing it will probably be shoved behind dirty laundry or lonely weekends again soon.

polenta gnocci
prayer flags (because we should pray to something, even if that something is just the spirits within ourselves)
the best dog face

i planted the cucumber babies yesterday, but the dirt we got from the michigan recycling place in livonia is rocky and dry, and i'm worried that it's the wrong kind of dirt, if there could be such a thing. i dug up a little more space for some tomato plants that one dear mama sent me home with yesterday from her own garden, but i need more dirt, and i'm about to go buy a big ol' bag of it. i planted some watermelon seeds too, and i thought they had sprouted, but then i realized that the sprouts i thought were watermelon weren't just in the watermelon spot, so...the bad dirt did grow *something*, just not the something i had intended. i'd kind of like to plant some potatoes, too, but i'm wondering if it might be too late. can any potato planters chime in? that also requires digging up more of my mom's yard, which she might not love. i have plans to make some super cheesy fries tonight.

i am loving this picture, and knowing i need new earrings. my yellow stones make my holes itchy, and i have a pair of wooden plugs that i got for next to nothing in a trade and some steel tunnels, but what i really want are some spirals or rings. or anything from here, but especially the pear tree.

if i had a million dollars, i'd be buying this and this.

i am loving these how to's:
think positive thoughts
a creative rut
veggie cheat sheet

my heart is in a thousand places right now. my indie ink writing challenge prompt for this week is "what do you want to be when you grow up?" i've already written so much. our library in the WRC is growing, too, and i'm resisting the urge to corral the ones i want to read and run away for a weekend with no phone, no laptop. only my glasses, and my body. maybe i will. the urge to escape is overwhelming, but it is coupled with the desire to settle and grow and birth and move. i can feel the low hum in my chest, and the angel song in the air.

can we live in an airstream?

also, guys, i'm trying to make an animation of grace jumping off the porch. i've tried the cs3 tutorials, and all is well until i try and open or upload the file. then, i've got nothing. either a blank movie, or a single frame image. help?