WORDS

Words fail me. Words betray me; words thunder and quake at the thought of me. They are playing hide and seek. They turn to pillars of salt and scatter and blow with a wicked frenzy. My words discombobulate and look like a trailer park after a tornado. . Blinking cursers, a,b,c,d,e,f ,g …..all black and white. Staring at a white screen, my words at the ready, flowing from brain synapse to never endings circling my finger tips. Now my fingers ache to caress the shutter. My words have turned into photographs. Now my words form and I reach for a light box and glass.

Life is fast.

Bush: ‘Our entire economy is in danger’

No duh and YIKES!

I think it's time to learn how to sew our own clothes and start tending a garden.
I had this conversation with my Grandmother a couple of years ago. I told her that I didn't know if we'd be able to survive another depression. She was really quite sure that we could. I hope she was right. I'm not sure where it's going to end up. I am positive that it will end up just exactly the way it's going too, just the way it was meant too.

It seems I've crawled into this little bubble and became most comfortable.

I feel.........

like somethings about to change.

Buckets of Confusion....................

Another rendition of Freaky Friday perhaps:


The CAT is asleep in the dog bed,
The DOG is asleep in my bed.

I'll never be 28 in Wisconsin in August ever again. I'm finding this a peculiar notion. This is life however and you would think at 28 I would understand this.

Today......................

I AM moved by this..................

" It's ironic, really. All my pleasures are home ones: armchair splendor, the sedate excitements of domesticity. All I ask for are humble delights. A mystery novel in bed, the smell of Clare's long red-gold hair damp from washing, a postcard from a friend on vacation, cream dispersing into coffee, the softness of the skin under Clare's breast, the symmetry of grocery bags sitting on the kitchen counter waiting to be unpacked. I love meandering through the stacks at the library after the patrons have gone home, lightly touching the spines of the books. These are the things that can pierce me with longing when I am displaced from them by Time's whim." ~ from The Time Traveler's Wife

..............................and I wonder? What is my delight?

I Am

Not where I thought I'd be.
But I am not lost.

I AM...........

Delirious.

Divulging.

Descending on disaster.
Pending.
Stale.
Stalled.

Stagnate.

Girl IN NEED of:

Chrome and Steel.
Blacktop and Yellow lines.
Inspiration.
Creation.

I want to be fearless, just not to the point of stupidity.

Summer..........................

"This is summer full-throated and extravagant in a hot pure silkscreen blue. This summer explodes on your tongue tasting of chewed blades of long grass, your own clean sweat, Marie biscuits with butter squirting through the holes and shaken bottles of red lemonade picnicked in tree houses. It tingles on your skin with BMX wind in your face, ladybug feet up your arm;it packs every breath full of mown grass and billowing wash lines; it chimes and fountains with birdcalls, bees, leaves and football-bounces and skipping-chants, One! two! three! This summer will never end. It starts every day with a shower of Mr. Whippy notes and your best friend's knock at the door, finishes it with long slow twilight and mothers silhouetted in doorways calling you to come in, through the bats shrilling among the black lace trees. This is EVERYsummer decked in all its best glory. " Tanna French In the Woods

It's just that..................

I've had my heart broken, snapped right in half, by music
and I still sing my secret songs.

Misguided grass

Yesterday, I drove over roads that I was surprised to see paved. I was not wholly surprised to see grass growing from the cracks in the pavement though. I don't know if that pavement grass is really brave, or just seriously misguided. What I do know is that some days, some days, I feel like grass growing in the cracks of a one lane country road. It's like I'm living for the moment for some car to roll right over me just to feel the breeze flood over me.

I remember falling in love once .........

and it just so happened to look like this. Don't worry Montana...........I'll be back.

Stranger than Fiction.............

He gave me butterflies (here's where you add literally!)

The First Amendment.................

I want to say something, but I don't even know what that something is. There are just rivers of words floating around the pungent moat that is my mind. These days it seems I can't write my thoughts, I have to photograph them. The equation would seem to be less words= more pictures.
I've never been good at math.

I'm doing everything at the moment but sleeping.

The warm fuzzies..............

It's getting late. Gentry is asleep at my feet. I never thought a snoring dog could make me giggle so much. Alas, here he is snoring and here I am gigling.
I've been deliriously happy the past few days. It's amazing how finding purpose for your life, finding out why you are the way you are, can make everything right. I'm glad God designed me with a camera in mind.
Oh and speaking of Gentry, someone asked me the other day how big he is now.
I think this picture of him with my mom speaks volumes.

Captain Confidence's Coat Jacket

I've been up since early. I'm starting to believe that sunrise is solely dependent upon when I crack open my eyelids. You're welcome world. Light at the bat of an eye lash. Amazing. In an attempt to find out if this theory is indeed true I have spent the past few minutes opening and closing my eyes. I have to test my hypothesis. Turns out I do not control the sun. Humph. Point one to the world. At least it has one good thing going for it.

I need a dose of honesty shot right into my left arm. I choose left because it's closer to my heart. Maybe I needed it right between the eyes? I've been filling like I really do control the sun. Master of Light. No, not in that schizophrenic kind of way, but maybe in that narcissistic kind of way. I've been laboring under the impression(self induced I must mention) that maybe for where I'm at, I'm the best. Even as I write that I feel ashamed for becoming such an ego maniac. I'm not really an ego maniac. I've never been that girl. When you compliment me, it makes me blush. It really does. Who am I for you to notice me? I'm just here doing my own thing. Ah. It's been an unstable confidence. Yesterday I fell. I saw something that proved me wrong. Amen. Finally. I've sewn myself quite the confidence suit. I've used fibers formed from ego manic thread and unchecked narcissism twine. That confidence suit isn't a bad thing on it's own. It's nice to wear some days, it's just that, you need to sport those humble clothes too. I really am just a jeans and t-shirt girl at heart: common, unassuming, forgettable.

So how do you balance ego, confidence, narcissism, humility, and humble notions? How do you tame confidence? You have to have some of all of it. I do anyway. I think what I want is the confidence to say: "This is what I do. Either you like it and get, or you don't, and I'm okay with that." I just want to show up and be present . Yet, there is this voice inside and it's screaming for someone to see the quiet me, for someone to get it, for someone to feel it, for someone to know it because it's them too. It feels hypocritical somehow.

I feel a little deflated. Flat. Knocked off my feet. Ego eaten on a dry eggo. Ah geez.

Perfect Day................A definition(perhaps a run on sentence)

Today: cutting work, riding in a car all day, eating, girls, laughter, camera, pictures, captured moments, steep mountain walks,Devil Anse Hatfield, spring snow and holding hands with my baby................well, more like his tiny hand held my finger, but it might as well have been my heart.

I AM

Blessed.......................everyday, every minute, every second and nanosecond therein.

My house is quiet for the moment and all I can think about is photographs.

Diamonds are a grils best friend.......................

We played baseball yesterday............
We kind of played baseball yesterday.............
Okay, so we got out our gloves and tossed the ball around at the baseball park yesterday.
The grass was green, my glove was 13 years old and smelled like past springs, hand sweat, and a combination of the outfield and dugouts.
Gentry ran around pooping everywhere.
Two little boys stopped to watch. I'm sure they've never seen such a sight.

The Chair Whisperer

I spent an entire Tuesday afternoon with this chair. I feel we became intimate, but I know it's still keeping secrets.

I'm patiently waiting, but sometimes patience feels a little itchy and humid all at the same time.

I can already feel it breathing down my neck; the weirdness, the strangeness, the emptiness of it. I always get a little weird by the end of March. I've been this way for nine years now. By April 17th I'm amazingly numb and sometime that night I realized I've made it through that day once again. I'll never grow accustomed to saying it's been 9 years since, it's been 10 years since, it's been 25 years since but it will come even if I don't utter it.

They had Easter Egg colored baby fingers and my heart today. Had they asked, we could have dyed that too!

"Celebrate the first national Poem In Your Pocket Day!

The idea is simple: select a poem you love during National Poetry Month then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends on April 17.

Poems from pockets will be unfolded throughout the day with events in parks, libraries, schools, workplaces, and bookstores."

poets.org

First

The first day of spring has been greeted with snow! Ironic really.

Novella

I decided today while I was thinking under a blue sky, that I am most like a Steve Martin novella: surprisingly short, surprisingly complete, no time to fool around, full of words, wit, and all heart.

I'm just going to set in the sunshine today.

Scary's West

So occasionally I skim over the "blogs of notice" section. I do this because I'm often too lazy to find interesting blogs on my own and I like it when someone else tells me what to do and makes decisions for me. Often these blogs aren't that great, but this one is http://scaryswest.blogspot.com/
It's a lady in Montana who documents her life on a ranch. The pictures are amazing and the words are good too(two of my favorite things you know?). It's good medicine when you need your Montana fix.

Channeling Walt

Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

1
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

Signs

Spring peepers singing
Robins
unsteady baby calf......moo
little purple flowers
birthing tulips
New neighbors in dirt beds
The smell of possibility
GREEEEEEEN GRASS
budding Trees
sweet showers
rustic hammock cradled by a polite march wind
heavy sweaters in clear boxes
warm sunshine sleeping on my pillow

Missing Missoula

This very morning, before my eyes even cracked the surface of my eyelids I was seeing a Missoula morning. Missoula is always creeping on the back of my eyelids(and this whole time the world thought it was geographically located in Montana!)
I decided to get online and search for Missoula there too. It seems Missoula is everywhere, omnipresent.
This site helped by double vision
http://www.missoulapeacesign.com/

And so does this one
http://www.saroff.com/

“She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.”
~Oscar Wilde

Self Preservation

Where the sidewalk ends.

Through the Looking Glass

Song of Myself.










Mark Story told me I needed to put myself in my work more. I'm sure I took this more literally than I needed too.

It's just another one of those days when my words fail me and the silence betrays me.


Guaranteed by Eddie Vedder
On bended knee is no way to be free
Lifting up an empty cup I ask silently
That all my destinations will accept the one that's me
So I can breathe

Circles they grow and they swallow people whole
Half their lives they say goodnight to wives they'll never know
Got a mind full of questions and a teacher in my soul
And so it goes

Don't come closer or I'll have to go
Owning me like gravity are places that pull
If ever there was someone to keep me at home
It would be you

Everyone I come across in cages they bought
They think of me and my wandering but I'm never what they thought
Got my indignation but I'm pure in all my thoughts
I'm alive

Wind in my hair I feel part of everywhere
Underneath my being is a road that disappeared
Late at night I hear the trees they're singing with the dead
Overhead

Leave it to me as I find a way to be
Consider me a satellite forever orbiting
I knew all the rules but the rules did not know me
Guaranteed

The green feet

My days are better when I'm sporting my green shoes. I kind of feel like I've jacked Kermit's feet.

FALLING SLOWLY by The Swell Season

I dont know you
but I want you
all the more for that
words falls through me
and always fool me
and I cant react
and games that never amount
to more than theyre meant
will play themselves out

take this sinking boat and point it home
weve still got time
raise your hopefull voice you have a choice
youve made it now

falling slowly, eyes that know me
and I cant go back
moods that take me and erase me
and Im painted black
you have suffered enough
and warred with yourself
its time that you won

take this sinking boat and point it home
weve still got time
raise your hopefull voice you had a choice
youve made it now

take this sinking boat and point it home
weve still got time
raise your hopefull voice you had a choice
youve made it now
falling slowly sing your melody
Ill sing along


Sounds like photography to me.

Bertha rode home in my pocket book.

I went antiquing today. In a musty old booth, I met Bertha. Now Bertha is no average woman. She fits in the palm of my pudgy hand. She's framed by pink and fingerprints. She will for ever rest on scratched tin, rusting a little on the back, looking ever cross. There is a fair amount of negative space above her head and her sides. I think the negative space only reflects the negative pose, the negative pout she gives. Yet, there is something in her eyes and a little something in the corner of her mouth that makes me think that there is something more to Bertha than the negative. There is something sharp about Bertha. I imagine that her tongue was even sharper than the corner of tin she lives on, is frozen to.
I'll never know who Bertha really was. I'll never know what she was really like. Was her heart as cool as the metal I'll carry around forever? Was she sharp? Did she only look hard? Why did she tuck her hand under just that way? Why that dress that day? What was the cause, the reason for the picture? I'll never know how she wound up at that antique store. I'll never know who forgot her. I'll never new who felt free enough of her eyes to give her away.
Seems like there is a lot I don't know. What I do know is that she reminds me of my portfolio from this summer. She reminds me of everything forgotten, and then found again. Maybe it's not that she's forgotten but in the end after everything, remembered. Maybe that's what gets me. Maybe that's why I spent my entire summer shooting things people just forgot about. Everything forgotten has the opportunity, the privilege to be found again.............to be remembered.

2nd grade..................

Second Grade math is great birth control. You also learn to spell the word pretty in second grade. Apparently you spell it b-e-t-t-y. I didn't know. Second grade was such a long time ago.