Make it New: Mending at Rock & Sling

Happy Not-Quite-So-New-Year, friends! So 2019 was quite a year, and I have spent very little time with this blog. I have instead been up to my neck with various and assorted Things, some fabulous, some not-so. One of the best things is that last fall I went back to school for a master's degree in English. Do I dare say I've resolved to post more here in 2020? For today, here is a link to my new post over at Rock & Sling: Make it New: Mending.




Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Messages

On vacation last week.

It was a mini-vacation, tacked on to picking up Middle from camp and taking Oldest to freshman orientation (yes--we are there, and it feels both unreal and part of a natural progression and that is all my heart will let me say about it right now.) And our mini-vacation was a highly imperfect thing for many reasons, but now, a week out, the glowing moments stand out and the less-glowing will hopefully/probably join the canon of remember whens we can mostly laugh about now that they are at a safe distance. Now, a week out, the glowing moments are scattered generously through our trip, and our day in Cuyahoga Valley National Park shines especially bright.

It is right and good, that in a beautiful place set aside for wild and wonder and exploration one will find messages. Subtle, overt, intentional, imagined, serendipitous--there for the receiving. And for answering. We found the first four below. The last was Youngest's answer. May we remember it all.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

New(ish)

Slowly, slowly, I am adding things to Bark Bread Designs. And learning things, and reading things, and trying to catch some of the ideas that flicker in my head. If I can get them onto paper they stay longer, grow brighter. Some make it into the world, which I am glad for--the whole birthing process, and holding what I've made (poem, paper thing, mended thing) and sending it forth into the unknown--I love all of it. Other ideas--I have to remind myself to enjoy all those sparks flying around inside. All that light and warmth.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Signs of Life + Signs I That I Lagged a Little Too Far Behind on the Trail

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Coptic Stitch Journals

These days I have to think in terms of projects. While I work on one the others wait, patiently or otherwise. I finish things, but usually not within the time frame I had imagined. Some days this is frustrating, but other days I can totally bask in the warmth of knowing that I do finish things, contrary to how I saw myself when I was much younger, and not only that but I like the things I eventually put out into the world. Most days that is really a whole lot of warmth, and it is helping me to get more comfortable with the backlog of Things Waiting.

One recent project is this group of hand bound journals/sketchbooks/blank books. Pink is not a color I turn to very often, but back in February I was recovering from influenza and bronchitis, thinking about how nice spring would feel, and probably feeling the influence of Valentine's Day everywhere I turned. I wanted pink--glowing, tender, robust, healthy, promising pink in deep-breathing, loving shades. I also wanted to play with watercolors and so, slowly, these journals were born.

Somewhere towards the end of finishing one of these journals, I had the impression that I was creating a small world. And hopefully someone else will take this simple small world into their hands and feel the call to create their own world or worlds within it. That is my hope for these little blank books. I think our souls ache to create and birth and converse as much now as ever in our history.

This, too, is an encouragement when I start to get overwhelmed by all the Things Waiting. They will be finished because they are needed.

These three are available in my Etsy shop, Bark Bread Designs:

These two are available locally at an antique store, along with some other items I have made. (If you are interested in these, please message me.)

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Introducing Bark Bread Designs

So I spent much of 2017 making things. Writing and submitting, still, but also making the most lovely little tangibles I could manage. My visual poem Shift was the first project, but I have also been working on a number of paper creations: earrings, blank books, a few necklaces. And I finally have an Etsy shop, Bark Bread Designs, open so I can share them with the world. Please visit! I have more to list, more to learn, and a bunch of new ideas to try, so stay tuned. I'll keep you posted.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Make it New: See it New

It is an honor to be a guest contributor on the Rock & Sling blog today. And it was good to re-read my own words. I know I am not the only one who carries the weight of current events, personal struggles (those of my loved ones as well as my own,) and what amounts to a daily battle with chaos around on her shoulders. It is only natural that we get tired. Playing with a teleidoscope last December felt like escapism at first, a place for my soul to rest during a busy time. But it became something more, reminding me that transformation is a powerful powerful thing. You can read about it here.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Yes.

Does it matter, 

the way sunlight pokes through the blinds 

and lands on a vinyl seat at a Chinese buffet 

where you have come to redeem the day? 

Yes.

 Every ounce of effort spent towards good counts. 

Every bit of good you catch coming back counts, too. 

Those fairy tales you loved as a child (still love, it just feels a little different now,) 

that endless Story of good vs. evil? 

You are in the middle of that story, 

finding endless variations on it day by day. 

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Long Live

The checkout line at the grocery store was long. The list of things-unsolvable banging around in my head was long. My face, a little on the long side anyway, was maybe a bit longer than usual.

The gentleman in front of me, as he finished gathering his bags, leaned in to the clerk and said with a nod towards me, "I'll reward her with a joke since she's been waiting so long." Or something like that. And he turned to me with a smile. "What animal has more lives than a cat?"

I could not even pretend to have a clue. "Frogs. They croak every night." He grinned. The college student behind me was clearly amused, and the cashier, too. We all smiled, exchanged looks and smiled some more. I cannot remember if I thanked him, but I hope I did. I can at least pass the moment along. Because long live kindness and generosity. Long live laughter and compassion, and what Youngest recently referred to as softness, as in soft-heartedness. Long live taking the high road. Long live truth and honesty. Long live seeing the good in the mess, or at least seeing what it could be.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Found, 3/21/16

Spending the season of Lent looking for signs of the Divine in the world around me.

This leaf-lace is a gift from Middle. She left it in my open violin case while I was teaching so I could share it here later. (She found it, by the way, while looking for four-leaf clovers--a particular magic I have never stumbled across myself, but which she is able to find every time she looks.)

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Found, 3/3/16

Spending the season of Lent looking for signs of the Divine in the world around me.

I ran into one of my violin students on campus at the local university the day I took this picture (some days I collect pictures, in anticipation of a busy week,) and I looked lost enough that she asked if she could help. I had been trying to decide where on the crowded path to kneel down to take pictures when really I could have dropped to my knees anywhere; this alternate world (alongside how many others?) was right at our knees and elbows.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Found, 2/12/16

The plan is to spend the season of Lent looking for signs of the Divine in the world around me, and to share what I find.

It is a special kind of finding, catching soft strains of Mozart coming from his room late at night. He first heard this music when he was four, on a story CD borrowed from the public library. We listened over and over, and I plan to never forget how long it always took for him to put his socks on in the morning, busy as he was singing "Der Holle Rache." For months now, he has gone to bed with this music playing softly in the background. I imagine how the notes work into head and heart, how rich it is to sleep with these phrases braiding through the body, vining along muscles, nerves, synapses. Bird man and prince, music and silence, the Temple of Ordeals. All of it finding its way in. Something new finding its way out.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Light, 12/9/15:

Today's light: bright, in dapples and stripes. Thoughts flash and flow on a morning run; it feels as if with every step my feet are pulling them free from the earth by the roots.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Light, 12/4/15:

Today's light: sun through a frosted car window. I took pictures before scraping. There was not time, but also there had to be. 

When Oldest came out he helped me scrape. But not before stopping to take pictures.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Thankful, 11/23/15:

For the feathers I keep finding, gathered off the floor on the final night of the musical and brought home as treasure. For the things that find their way in. 

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Thankful, 11/15/15:

For flowers that bloom while everything else is dying. For the sometimes-gift of feeling out of step with the world around you.





Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Thankful, 11/2/15:

For the moments (however brief) I can look at a fallen leaf and see a love note.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Flight

1. Small plane to St. Louis

This plane

is about the size of a minivan

(9 passengers + pilot)

a metal dragonfly, belly full,

moving point to point.

We thread our way between storms,

the radar screen dead-center in front of me

an ultrasound, searching for heartbeats,

tracking a birth.

Bright sun, warm, on our left

sheet of rain poured sky to earth on our right,

and a rainbow flies along beside us

for five, ten minutes, maybe more—

my seatmate and I take pictures.

Then he turns full to the window,

this young man who speaks French

with his traveling companions and English with me,

and sings into his phone, eyes fixed on the sky.

I can barely hear over the engines

but I know this is music, not speech.

He tells me later he made a brand-new song,

just then, in French.

We talk about living in a small town,

about feeling what lacks.

“It’s hard,” I say.

“How do you make it work?”

Maybe he meant job-wise, maybe not.

I answer with the only words

I can think of in the moment:

“I look for the beautiful things.”

2. St. Louis to Dallas

Each time a plane takes off

there is a moment of violence—

we are pulled up off the ground

whether we will it in the moment or not.

Soon there will be weightlessness of a sort,

ears contracting, the plane leveling off.

It makes more sense, now,

why the windows should sit so low,

top edges riding at nose-level:

the view is of the ground.

It takes effort to look up into the sky,

even from here.

Below us as we rise

the boats on a lake

pull graceful white trails

behind themselves,

like waterbugs

or maybe angels.

3. Dallas to Albuquerque

Aisle seat: the plane is my sky

the passengers my floating clouds.

Think of all the stories

streaming through the air

in neatly-packed containers

at any given moment—

going too slowly, maybe,

or too quickly, or too sadly.

Watch them gathered in airports,

waiting to fly—

mostly they ignore each other

but they’re all so damn beautiful.

Every flight is a masked ball,

a library,

a thousand different ways to fall in love

soaring through the air

hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

Wandering, Not Aimlessly

This weekend we spent a fair amount of time wandering as a family. It reconfirmed my—what should I call it, my mission? —as a treasure hunter. There is joy in this work. Every time I start to think it is a rosy-eyed, easy thing I am reminded how much wandering is necessary, and dirty hands, and muddy feet. Always an act of faith, and a blessed thing as well. Because every time I think the supply of magic might have been used up I am proved wrong.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email

These Moments

1. Last week: my students performed, 35 of them, 3 Bach minuets in 5 parts. It meant everything to make sure everyone had something significant to contribute to the whole, regardless of where they were in terms of age or development or ability. It worked. And we all got to be in the middle of that big full sound. I posted a video here, on the Violin Project page.

2. Over the weekend: Middle’s confirmation of faith at church. Immediate families stood with the confirmands at the front of the church during the ceremony, and extended families, friends, and supporters were asked to stand with them from their spots in the pews as the pastors prayed for each individual. I didn’t know it at first but the youth of the church stood the entire time, for each of the kids in front. When I turned around and saw them all standing together at the back—it cracked my heart open. The next day a friend told me that she, too, had been standing for Middle. Knowing your child has people—that is beautiful. Seeing that fact—that is exquisite.

3. We had an impromptu photo session Sunday afternoon, the kids all spiffed-up, in the front yard. Things have not changed. Posed family photos are as hard to get as ever, and I have a fabulous series of pictures along with dialogue no one will ever let me share publicly, plus one “acceptable” picture that will eventually make it onto Facebook.

4. Oldest, who has been wearing glasses since he was three, got contact lenses today. I’ve seen him without glasses plenty of times, but this was different. I was witness to him seeing his world differently—an echo of the day we walked up to our front door, him in his first pair of full-prescription glasses, stopping, bending over, taking in this world he hadn’t realized was around him.

5. Youngest, these days, always wants the radio off when we are in the car. “Let’s talk,” she says. She is a good foil for the introverts in the family, inclined as they are to hide by the end of a long day.

I told more than one person that I was afraid of this month, going in. But here we are on the last day of April, and everyone is still all in one piece, even with the Easter Sunday emergency room visit. It has all been good, rich stuff—performances of all kinds, all five of us, and so many other things—I’ve been trying to hold these moments that have risen up in the middle of it all inside of me, and time just keeps barreling forward. How does one do this life thing? How does one not do it?

Which brings me to next month. I’m going to take a break from the blog. There are projects waiting for me, asking for their proper time. A transition from school days to summer days, also asking for its due time. And honestly, some dreaming to do. I will see you in June.

Subscribe to Dreamer by Email