By your side

Just call me Cover Girl. (I love covers. Sade did the original version of this tune.)

Spotty

W and S arrived last night and will be with us for a whole week.  I am very happy.

Yesterday was busy in a good way preparing the nest.  I find company motivates me to get some of those pesky/odd household chores done and done.

I had some quiet respite when I took the kids to the museum for their art class.

I've restarted Turpentine, a book that is wonderfully written, on semi-permanent loan from Barbra.

And a lovely rice bowl with squash and hakusai and mung bean sprouts and coconut aminos nourished me at lunch.  Dinner ended up being a big slice of Cap's apple pie.

My presence here will likely be spotty for the next week.  Have a good one.  Peace and love.

Nether

Mmm.  I like today's "poem of the day" over at The Poetry Foundation.

Nether

by Leila Wilson

The equilibrium of any particular aspect of nature rests on the equivalence of its opposites. —Piet Mondrian

Some land lives

so water can comb

it into grids. This

is why lowlands

tilt still toward

the sea. This so

we call our canal

leaning horse,

hat tempting wind,

somewhere a tear

in linen where

the loom bent

a heddle. We plant

lapis in the middle

of begonia boxes

hung from our

houseboat’s sills.

At night the eels

snug against

our houseboat’s hum,

water’s warm hem.

We hear them slip

itch into our floor.

Our houseboat lilts

when the bigger boats

slide us waves.

Our concrete floats.

We’re mostly moored

to stay. In the damp

bank where the ducks

hedge weeds,

our bikes sleep.

We lean toward wind.

Our pant legs thin

from all the rain

on our knees.

From here the horizon

gauzes above us.

We are half hidden

by light. We are folds

in fog. We stand

open on the deck

and beckon the silt

to settle. We wait

for a balance so grand

that any flicker

of inverse could

pull us up to spires.

Trust in me

Just heard this great song as the credits rolled on Mad Men.  The video images are random.  If it helps, turn the sound up and close your eyes :-)

On melancholy hill

Love it when a new song swoops in to shift my mood.  Go to YouTube to hear the song/see the video.

On Melancholy Hill/Gorillaz

Up on melancholy hill
There's a plastic tree
Are you here with me
Just looking out on the day
Of another dream

Well you can't get what you want
But you can get me
So let's head out to sea
'Cause you are my medicine
When you're close to me
When you're close to me

So call in the submarine
'round the world we'll go
Does anybody know
If we're looking out on the day
Of another dream

If you can't get what you want
Then come with me

Up on melancholy hill
Sits a manatee, love
Just looking out for the day
When you're close to me
When you're close to me

When you're close to me

The wrestler

I watched the first 40 minutes or so of this movie with Anna in the old place in VT ages ago.  Today I finally got around to watching the whole thing.  Man, was it depressing.  Mickey Rourke was stunning and the story was well told.  But, oh my god...painful and so so sad.

Some things I love

Love Donny Hathaway's voice.  Love the tumblr Songs You Taught Me.  Love that at certain times of the year, when the weather is just right, I get a free concert hearing the high school marching band rehearse from the field behind the house.  (Especially Lady Gaga tunes :-)

Freak

When I was little I worried a lot about what other people thought of me and how I presented myself to the world.  I was watchful and careful.

As a teenager and into young adulthood I explored and cultivated being 'different' and outside the box.  I stopped worrying about what other people thought of me, and shed my caution layer by layer.

Trying to have children (for five years) and then welcoming them forced me to strive for balance.  Not between being conventional and unusual, but between getting my freak on and taking care of business (I think part of the deal with parenting is that no one ever speaks to how much diligence and energy is required because if they did, not as many people would willingly have multiple children.  Or maybe it's because they're too exhausted or preoccupied to talk.)

This Fall has been an intense time of sensitivity for me.  I feel, simply and profoundly, involuntarily open and exposed.  Emotion, sensation, the moon phase, you name it, I am feeling it a thousandfold.  It's affecting how I take care of business.

I chopped into my finger yesterday and it knocked me out for the whole day.  I woke in the middle of the night and rolled over and my back started spasming.  I can't remember the last time that happened.  (This despite Cap so kindly working on my shoulders and back while we watched 30 Rock and The Soup...therapy for the body and the soul.)

Here's this morning's kicker.  I was looking at this page on my computer screen (Wendy is coming for a visit next week and has requested 'a fabulous coffee and baked good')...

and the intense aroma of chocolate began washing over me in waves entering my nostrils so powerfully I felt momentarily suffocated.  Now, there is chocolate in the room presently.  But, all was quiet on the olfactory front until this picture was staring me in the face, nearly an hour after I sat down at the desk.  And this chocolate smell, I don't recognize it.  It ain't coming from the bars I have (yes, I have two different bars-in-progress...)

Times like this I wonder if I was burned at the stake in a prior life.  Or lobotomized and put on medication.  Or placed in the special cave to live out my life of dreamy eyes and lopsided smiles/ranting and raving and raging tears.

Who knew indeed

Imagine

Less ouch

Cue song: ♪ it's my blog and I'll blog if I want to, blog if I want to, blog if I want to, you would blog too, if it happened to you ∼∼∼ ♪

(Well, you'd blog about what you wanted to blog about and maybe you wouldn't about your boo-boo.)

It's throbby but so far so good on the (lack of) infection front.  Neosporin is my friend.  (Thanks for the advice Kelly :-)

Ouch

Nothing says 'slow down' like slicing through a fingernail into a fingertip.  Quite.

Reading the body

Had a breakthrough moment last night. Mad props to Donna for the masterful, fluid and seemingly effortless assist.

I fell asleep more easily than I have been. It was still what I would characterize as a 'hard' sleep, the kind where I imagine I was frowning and had my jaw clenched for much of the night.

My stomach felt kinda sour, kinda dull ache-y when I woke up. Digesting things hard to digest. Maybe digesting things not meant to be digested at all because they should have been let go at the point of entry. Or maybe things more digestible if consumed in better calibrated doses.

Dark chocolate coated marzipan, coconut creamer/decaf hazelnut coffee, emotions.

Toe-danced for a bit and my Qi energized, pushing out yawn after yawn and making my eyes leak.

I feel a spot of warmth in my belly radiating out gently.

You are not alone

You are not alone,
I'm with you
I'm lonely too
What's that song,
That can't be sung by two.
A broken home,
A broken heart,
Isolated and afraid,
Open up this is a raid,
I wanna get it through to you,
You're not alone.
You're not alone,
Every night,
I stand in your place.
Every tear,
On every face,
Tastes the same.
A broken dream,
A broken heart,
Isolated and afraid,
Open up this is a raid,
I'm gonna get it through to you,
You're not alone.
An open hand,
An open heart,
There's no need to be afraid,
Open up this is a raid,
I wanna get it through to you,
You're not alone.
I wanna get it through to you,
You're not alone.
I'm gonna get it through to you,
You're not alone.

Mavis Staples produced by Jeff Tweedy

Pick me up

Was the plummet inevitable too?

After the high of the woods the rest of the day has been a little rough, especially the few hours right after getting home.

This helps:

This helps, too:

This helps though not as much as I thought it would:

Did manage to make a hand-me-down run to a friend's and a donation run to a local church thrift shop.  Also stopped into the library to drop off Plastic Beach and pick up The Immaculate Collection.  Then we picked up a schooling friend from his early dismissal.  Indian Summer is radiating upon us today so we headed to Rita's.

Trying to get motivated for dinner.  And cleaning the bathroom.

Woods

I suppose with Thoreau on my mind it was inevitable.  I went for my walk this morning in the woods.  I'm lucky to have this swath of trees on a bit of rocky mountain right here in town.

As the woods enveloped me, I nearly choked, the rich fecundity of the air was so qualitatively different from what was circulating through my system calling itself oxygen.  These trees resuscitate me unconditionally, every time I step amongst them.

I felt a wave of gratitude.  This was chased by creeping grief.  I sensed an opening.  Did I grab transformation or did it grab me?  I whispered words which felt so sacred and then spoke them louder.  The transcendental ecstasy I tap into is electrifying.  The calm that pervades afterward a balm.

Wind

Practicing just a smidge of Qigong I noticed the wind moving through the dense green of the enormous maple out the window.

I gotta get out there.

Shower first.  Hmm.  Hair wet.  Ooh.  Slouchy red hat.  Wait.  TCM.  Thoughts stream linear.

During Lung season, which is right now, one is supposed to take care with wind.  It is considered best not to go out when windy.  And if you have to, to wrap up thoroughly so the wind does not go through you.  Into you.  The wind carries stuff.  Old stuff, dead stuff, cold stuff.  During this season, the lungs are particularly sensitive, open, receptive.  (Mine have been exquisitely, painfully so.)

It's a dance for me.  I have always loved the wind.  It feels like a part of me.  I am an Air sign.  This morning it is beyond me not to go out into it.  Off comes the woolen wrap, under the hot shower I go.

I gotta get out there.

Thoreau

  image pulled from web.

"We live but a fraction of our life. Why do we not let on the flood, raise the gates, and set all our wheels in motion? He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."    -Henry David Thoreau

I came across this Thoreau quote today and fell into a memory.  Sent spiraling with a smile.  I dig this guy.

Lantern

Josh Ritter's new cd, on first listen, left me feeling kind of "eh".  I do like this song though.

"So throw away those lamentations
We both know them all too well
If there's a book of jubilations
We'll have to write it for ourselves
So come and lie beside me darling
And let's write it while we still got time"

Shades of blue

1. Toasted pine nuts for breakfast.  Satisfying and nourishing.

2. He looks like his baby-self in the very best way.  "To be awake is to be alive." ---Thoreau

3. This moment of zen was followed by a frolic in the water.  He is an earthly embodiment of "all in".

4. They sing and sing and love and love.  Almost bought it on iTunes but remembered the ever giving library at the last minute.

P.S.  Thanks to Cap for the awesome pictures of the kids at the ocean.