summer’s gone

I had planned to hang out at home in my “comfort zone” and spend the day in a secret sort of struggle about how hard it is to write and trying to capture everything while journalling, and my ongoing project of thinking about and discovering color….blah blah blah.
instead, my husband and daughter and I, along with 2 other families, headed out to Wetmore Pond, a nearby wilderness area where we had an adventure on a quaking bog, picking cranberries and getting fresh air; and where I happened to discover some amazing colors I had never seen before. This experience was fantastic and certainly pushed my limits of perception further.
This photo was taken while standing in the center of the quaking bog, in the middle of the valley bog wetland. The bog vegetation ( and sedge, tamarack, cranberries) forms a mat half a meter or so thick, floating over water and very wet peat. Walking on the surface causes it to move –in a very queasy way-– larger movements causes visible ripples of the surface. This was very squishy and it felt crazy to step onto a HUGE floating “land” mass. WOW.

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Building a kind empire out of coffee, bricks, glitter, snow, fire, and poems.

I am bulding a kind empire. It is being lashed together so carefully with tiny little strands, giant hanks of sparkling beads that glitter in direct light. I am tying the sweetest of knots, each one a blessing, a  peck on the cheek, a soft breath blowing dandelion-seed wishes swirling out into the universe. I am making the strongest connections, hand-forged with faith and trust, with giant bolts and thick hemp ship’s rope. It’s made up of words, the only thing we really have to work with. Words both sublime and dangerous, lacy and speckled, powerful and divine. It’s meant to ride out the transition between frozen and wet, this slushy muddy time, this “dirty end of winter”.

We are spending the whole day outside again, in hats and sand, snow boots and tee shirts. With sap and fire and bricks and snow and blinding peaks of just born grasses.. With Sugar Camp Grilled Cheese on the menu and s’mores and hot smoky tea.

The winds are here. The storm will certainly rise and stretch its mean beak right at us. And we will be safe here in this nest of stones, fire, smoldering poetry, and kindness. Come on over and pull up a seat.

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so, what’s your favorite color Mavis?

backlit cedar…

and birch-against-the-sky. thanks for asking.

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things to make and do 2009

BE:

positive

abundant

prolific and fulfilled

gracious

sweet

a creative force to be reckoned with!

MAKE:

stamped message jewelry

a penny rug

embroidery

wool needle case

capes!

knickers with foldover elastic

scissor case

draw birds and horses

banners

braided rug

quilt

more hula hoops

sugar free ketchup

DO:

re-construct Etsy site

print 100 (40 more to go)tee shirts

play the banjo ukelele (in public)

move forward with graduate school

Do Daily:

be outside

tidy

draw

walk

express gratitude

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dirt, moss, and citrine.

The warm wind pushing off the cold for one more day.
Rubies and garnets and birth stones form past lives. Chalcedony and wire. Feldspar and tonic, dirt, moss, and citrine, all colors forever dovetailing perfections and tiny heartbeats.
Darling.

The moon serpent was hanging halfway between the two birches, their papered bark rustling, it’s crescent slicing the air into heat and freeze, thick and scrawny, lonely and overwhelmed.

What will this day bring?

* Birds of all feathers, tropical and misty and north woods and calliope specked and striped bumble-birds. time canopies and swing daddi-os. Spiky headed peckers with doo dads in their hair.

* Sweaters! With flair and fanfare. With stitches and flowers and pockets full of glory and the real antidotes to boredom and sadness.
* Stars! Twinkling and dreamy and bright and dim and sharp and fine tuned like heaven’s headlights. Like a rose saddled and backwards riding out the dawn days into heaven’s headlights of mornings.
* Fever pitches of rosy cheeks and warm caresses. Sweet nothings and sweet every things and sweet every thing in between.

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Harvest Day

Today we went out to harvest anything that was left in the garden, and to put it to bed for the winter. I dug up 5 pounds of beautiful Kennebek potatoes, and Miss Moon discovered the “fairy potatoes” featured above. Then we ran around in the leaves, hula-hooped, posed warmly in front of the birch trees, and soaked up the last golden bits of sun.

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grace period

I’ve lived on a dirt road all my life…. Floating luminous, sparkly sunshine taking my breath away sudden and weightless, in a space with no pain and no worry and no past, only present to being so happy and full and blooming and buoyant. The beach here is an amazing place..fat girls rocking tube tops and tiny two piece suits, hanging out with skinny greaser mullet guys, and somehow this all occurs as sexy, maybe my brain has had too much sun today. Other people, twenty or fifteen of them standing waist high out in the lake, the cold water, playing frisbee and drinking beers. I love this crazy town.

Verbena had woken up very early this day and was determined to walk around her whole town taking photos of every one she met. It was something she had always wanted to do but never had given herself the permission before. Today seemed like the perfect day. The sky was glowing and luminous. There were some huge puffy clouds leaving glistening shimmering shadows on the sidewalks. The oak trees were whispering and gently clicking their leaves together. Verbena’s one wish for today was that fear of running into Four Car Joe would not surface. She would not have to create some sort of excuse to weasel out of so called “polite” conversation, some sort of reason for why she had kicked his little cement man in half, (because to tell the truth, Verbena did not have a good excuse for that. She honestly didn’t know why. It had just seemed like the thing to do at the time.) She hoped that this fear would not keep her in her house-that she would be able to leave and do the things she wanted to do. Her life up until this point had been a collection of many beautiful days all strung together. Skeletal barns dancing their slow lazy waltzes with the air and the sky the same color, that grey slow winter day. These days had wheat colored ditches, the ferns were all done for the year fiddle heads dried up and popped off. On these days there was often no joy to be found, but Verbena had enough joy stored up now that these were among her favorites and so it went well for her. Days of blue moons and reading nooks and warm saunas and friendly happy dogs, skeleton keys and camp trucks headed off to sauna parties up at big lake and fish frys. Whole days in the trees, way up, having climbed so happily. There were one hundred different descriptive words for snow, and a hundred words for sorrow too. Happiness had about fifty and lust had nine or ten at least. Verbena was determined to settle on a few more.

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Presque Isle Fairies

We saw signs of them everywhere, dancing on sunbeams and glinting wings rushing through reeds.

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