: :

: : 

shakti and the midges

As I mentioned, I had the good fortune to be taken to a migratory bird refuge north of Salt Lake City- literally an 80,000 acre of asylum in the middle of the desert. The birds there make the air breathe and they are brave and ravenous. Every one of these birds comes to be nourished before they're gone; some stay on for a while, others just blow through, but no one stays permanently. So I thought it was a perfect setting to give up and be nourished. There happened to be a midge hatch- a lunacy of bugs so heavy it bent the grass. These bugs do not bite do not even have jaws. But they serve as a kind of living energetic scrub- you move through the clouds of them and emerge feeling more awake and aware (and a little put off.) I made myself stand near them. Uncomfortable at first (the way I feel with any act of receiving,) and then more at peace and finally completely stilled. It was rocky and disorienting at first. Like that idea of inhaling and exhaling equally: when I make my inhale equal to the exhale it has always been somewhat unpleasant. A strange thing to be so thrown off by one's own breath... But I'm sipping a little at a time, readying myself to let It in. Whatever It might be.


 

did you ever know about birthdays?

Did you ever know about birthday dread?

It feels like that a little. When you turn 30 I mean. Which I did, recently. No big deal right? Except that it did feel like a big deal, and that made me feel silly. I'm not usually a person who plays into things like existential angst, or aging phobias. But I did feel like a door closed a little harder than usual (with a little gust to follow, which came in the form of a two day snow storm....) It was more like leaving the husk of a soul-shaped skin behind and wriggling forth into raw and silvery newness. Not particularly pleasant, but bracing at least. 

So I decided I shouldn't invest in that new german eye serum or go get grown up looking lipstick. Instead I endeavored to surround myself with profundity, potency and power. Light, too, and laughter. 

These things have made all the difference:

Outrageous Openness by Tosha Silver (An actual life changer. The kind that comes when the Virgin Mary shows up in your yogurt.)

Honey From A Weed  by Patience Gray (It has been so long since I have read something so beautiful.)

Vegetable Literacy the newest by Deborah Madison. (Divided into family?! For example: the Knotweed Family and The Former Lily Family, in case you need to shriek with joy when you peruse a cookbook.)

The Round House and The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse: A Novel  both by Louise Erdrich.  (Bone strippingly powerful writing. Yeesh.)

Light on Yoga  by B.K Iyengar. (In case you haven't recently been floored by a need to reform in the direction of humbleness.)

And I've been carrying around my squat little notebook and watching happily as it gets thicker and more bent and more tattered. 

So these have been blessings. The key being, I think, to relinquish the tar pits of the surface and plumb clearer, cleaner depths. Spring struggles here (as it always does,) and I am reminded that the effort to be drawn up and out of our closed-circuit cycles of self-criticism and the angst To Do Something With Ourselves is neither surefooted nor swift. Rather it is mucking about and accepting the mire as part of a larger plan, even if we don't have the right maps and scale weights. Thanks goodness.

rifts

H and I spend summers apart. It's ok. We stretch ourselves to gauze, aching across many thousands of miles and then homecoming, like a comet, smashes the world apart with light. Sometimes this is the best part of the year, but during the actual time everything feels abstracted and thin.

I save myself by writing letters, maybe he is saved by them. For me, loading all of my words and pictures into an anonymous blue box and knowing it will sit unassuming on a communal table, winking and shivering until he picks it up, is gleeful.

And sometimes I really like to look back through what I've made. It doesn't feel like Work with a formal W. But it is shockingly relevant to that word, which is odd. For love.

but really

Whew!
But really.

: :

When I was at the age, I had a diary. I didn't keep it very long because of diary-guilt- you know, where you  come back to the diary after letting it digest its contents quietly and you feel so terrible? "I'm so sorry I've just left you here!" That commitment was difficult so I ditched the effort. It wasn't until RISD (well, more accurately, CCAC,) that I realized a sketchbook is a different deal. It waits with inexhaustible patience and this is the kind of light that really matters. And somehow, after time away, you can't wait to get back to it. No one's feelings hurt.

So maybe that's what's happening here. But anyway. Speaking of sketchbooks, some pictures here. Old ones, new ones - mostly old ones.

: : : :

: :

angsts

self battles. real ones.

: : :

looking back on words and pictures from other lives and other seasons. it's a powerful thing to remember the mundane, and to revel in those things that still remain powerful.

on dilemmas

on dilemmas, and how they might wind and crank the mind:

: : :

: : : :

lines and strokes

: : :