{Stacked Up}

"I'm a walking, talking enigma. We're a dying breed." -Larry David

{Gentle}

Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring and whimpering in the rooms rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds that thwack like rubber bands in an open palm. -Marge Piercy To Have Without Holding

{Old Soul}

There is a beautiful thing inside you that is thousands of years old. Too old to be capture in poems. Too old to be loved by everyone. But loved so very dearly by a chosen few. ~Nikita Gill

{January love letter}

“My dear, In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm. I realized, through it all, that… In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back. Truly yours, Albert Camus” This is worth reposting both the pictures and the quotes. Especially in the heart of winter...January of all months. One day I will like January. It is my mission to figure out a way to enjoy January, specifically in Minnesota. So I'll make it a point to take out my camera and try to capture some pictures today. I've been organizing photos that go back years and have gotten lost in old images. But I get twitchy and can sense when it's time to make some art. It's above 20 today so I don't risk my fingers becoming frostbit and/or frozen to the shutter of my camera. I also won't offend anyone with the ranting of cuss words that flow off my tongue when it gets too cold. It's just figuring out what to shoot. Everything is white and grey right now and I'll have to pull deep to find a nugget of inspiration....but I accept this challenge. It's on January!

{Aspirations}

She tastes like nectar and salt. Nectar and salt and apples. Pollen and stars and hinges. She tastes like fairy tales. Swan maiden at midnight. Cream on the tip of a fox’s tongue. She tastes like hope. Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone Hope is a beautiful thing and these days I feel it coursing through my life again. Despite a day spent of crabby patty row, I find these days are filled with possibility and wonder. This is remarkable place to be again. For some time, I moved through my days in slow motion, spinning in circles with a few shuffles backwards. I'd wake up and throw darts at the day, letting it lead me like a dustball in the wind...which is out of character for me. I've always had goals and direction for my life, keeping in mind flexibility to life's unexpected surprises. I GET life will hand eveyone there share of lessons but my god, am I ready for smooth sailing. I prefer to laugh more than cry during the day. Feel things and have drive toward dreams. When those are missing, it's like living in one of the mazes I remember from the movie the Mazerunner....Let's try this way, bam {knock head into cement wall}, nope that hurt. Bad. Proceed to the crying part. Now it's more like the movie Up, with a beautiful colorful house effortlessly lifting towards a bright and promising direction. Quite lovely and much preferred state of being. And my dreams aren't nightmares anymore. I dream so deeply and soundly. There are movies in my mind. And I enjoy the show instead of waking up, drenched in sweat and filled with sheer panic. I am grateful for the opportunities and the new people that add so richly to my life. Sharing with me the journey of recovery and rebirth from brokenness. They listen, make me laugh and just understand the complexity and grace it takes to boldly move into a new direction. Leaning heavy into faith. This will be a good year. A hopeful year. A happy year And I'm sure filled with surprises and sweet sweet grace.

{Cradle}

“I had lines inside me, a string of guiding lights. I had language. Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines. What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination. I had been damaged, and a very important part of me had been destroyed - that was my reality, the facts of my life. But on the other side of the facts was who I could be, how I could feel. And as long as I had words for that, images for that, stories for that, then I wasn't lost.” ― Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

{tucked away}

"Only mystery allows us to live, only mystery.” ― Federico García Lorca I did not play the Powerball, but hypothetically if I did play and it turned out I won...Besides purchasing my farm home and a small island on the equator to retreat to January through March (there had to brome drama on a subzero day).... I'd always have flowers to surround my life. And to surround the people I love. They make me happy and add color and zest to the day. Even when they wilt, I still find them beautiful. And for the most part there hasn't been a flower I've met that I haven't appreciated. Well, perhaps the Lily but only because it reminds me of funerals and leaves me gasping for air. flowers are like letters, they send messages, tell stories and leave memories which warm my heart.

{Greyton}

You will remember that leaping stream where sweet aromas rose and trembled, and sometimes a bird, wearing water and slowness, its winter feathers. You will remember those gifts from the earth: indelible scents, gold clay, weeds in the thicket and crazy roots, magical thorns like swords. You'll remember the bouquet you picked, shadows and silent water, bouquet like a foam-covered stone. That time was like never, and like always. So we go there, where nothing is waiting; we find everything waiting there. -Pablo Neruda

{Sticks and Stones}

“Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read. Fought against it for a minute. Then looked out the window at the rain. And gave over. Put myself entirely in the keep of this rainy morning. Would I live my life over again? Make the same unforgivable mistakes? Yes, given half a chance. Yes.” ― Raymond Carver, All of Us: The Collected Poems

{Maps of Being}

“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don't.” ― Stephen King, The Stand

{Bright Spot}

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose or if your wish be to close me,i and my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility:whose texture compels me with the colour of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands -e.e.cummings (somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond)

{Shots of Grace}

A life is such a strange object, at one moment translucent, at another utterly opaque, an object I make with my own hands...” ― Simone de Beauvoir, After the War When I was in high school I took a career interest inventory that indicated farming/agriculture as my top compatible career. I laughed this off of course and for years made jokes about how far off this was to my personality and vocational dreams. Years later, there is nothing more I desire than a hunk of land off in the country fields with a barn, cows, chickens and all things farm related. Today I write this just so I can keep the focus on the dream. It's my hope to have lots of land, away from the city but close enough that I still retain my social skills and can shop at Target once in awhile. There would be lots of land and less city sidewalks and noise. My time in the city was wonderful but it's time to move on into more peace and serenity. I'm still really forming what all this looks like in my head but I know I would work for myself again and morph my counseling background and love for art. Perhaps teach classes, photograph, create art and use art to assist in healing and personal growth. Having the space and the lifestyle that supports serenity and personal growth. I know I love to be in movement once the day starts. Whether it be working with my hands to cook or planting to flowers to hoola hooping and painting with my kids, it fuels further energy and creativity as opposed to sitting at a desk job or cramped into a concrete school building with one token window to let the light in. This has really been a key insight for me, understanding that I'm a very hands on, visual learner, worker, doer in life. I have always been wired toward self-employment but I have learned it takes focus, determination and most importantly, which I've noticed lacking in my life previous, thick skin...or resiliency in the face of adversity and failure. And boy have I failed epically over the last decade. Whew! Personal relationships, career, parenting...ad infinitium. As my heroine, Brene Brown has inspired in me that courage comes in rising after the fall. And in these falls I've actually found what I don't want and keys towards what I do want in my life. What is necessary to be healthy and purposeful. While I certainly would have preferred and easier softer way, life deals out the cards it believes necessary for soul healing...and the grace to mold it with one's own hands.

{Second Sight}

Sometimes, you need the ocean light, and colors you've never seen before painted through an evening sky. Sometimes you need your God to be a simple invitation, not a telling word of wisdom. Sometimes you need only the first shyness that comes from being shown things far beyond your understanding, so that you can fly and become free by being still and by being still here.... ~David Whyte, from 'Pilgrim'

{Artist Date}

“There is such a place as fairyland - but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know that it is fairyland until they have grown so old that they forget the way. One bitter day, when they seek it and cannot find it, they realize what they have lost; and that is the tragedy of life. On that day the gates of Eden are shut behind them and the age of gold is over. Henceforth they must dwell in the common light of common day. Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again; and blessed are they above mortals. They, and only they, can bring us tidings from that dear country where we once sojourned and from which we must evermore be exiles. The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland.” ― L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl

{A New Year's Favorite}

Though she be but little, she is fierce!” ― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream The start of the new year brings purging of the Lightroom catalogue. It's always a treasure to find old wonderful photographs from when the kids were little...and these just melt my heart.