Foot in Flip Flop is Better Than Foot in Mouth

2011-05-12T11:17:00.000-04:00

I’m not exactly sure how it happens, I’m just sure that it does. One minute it’s a May evening, the green leaves are dancing above me, teasing me with the sky’s blue and white secrets. The river turns over and over, heading to wherever it’s going. The breeze perfumes the air with the smell of lilac, fresh cut grass and that earth smell of wet, humid soil. That dark soil from the bottom of the river, that after deep winter sleeps and deep winter thaws, shipwrecks and vacations amongst grassy spots. Dark soil that shades your feet and leaves lines in your bathtub. It’s 75 degrees. It’s 75 degrees in May and then at the drop of an eyelid, it’s -14 and snow is stacked as high as you can see. The wind cuts through me and an unfamiliar river is frozen over, tricking me into thinking it’s just more solid land, tricking me into thinking life can stay one way for ever. It’s January the 24th and I’m watching them drive you away in a long white car that I never want to see again. Well, unless that white car drives you back saying this has all been a terrible, terrible mistake. A bad joke, if you will. That white car though, it drove straight until I couldn’t see it any more and then I don’t know if it turned left twice and right three times, I just know that it never drove you back to me.

I close my eyes a little tighter. And it’s May again, only it’s May, three years ago and I feel your hands in my curls and my head rests in your lap and I see your dirty feet marked by dark soil and there isn’t anything around for miles that I’d rather start at. It’s just you, me and those dirty feet. You whisper that I was your greatest birthday gift to date. My birthday is months away, but I think seeing your face would be a grand gift too, but how do you go about putting a “you” on a birthday wish list? I push that December birthday out of my mind. I’m not thinking about tomorrows. That May there were only today’s and there sure weren’t enough of them.

By the river I sit. I keep my eyes closed as tight as I can. It’s the best form of time travel I’ve found to date. And sometimes, I accidentally find myself flipping through those May days. Today being one of those. I held on as long as I could, but the sunlight found away to break through and I had to open my eyes to this May day three years down the road where I sit in a swing by the river staring so hard down into my own eyelashes that I could watch the light refract through them. I can’t bear to look up and not for a long time anyway, because the sky’s going to still be teasing me behind the leaves and the water’s still going to be running home and you aren’t going to be standing right there. I see you more with my eyes closed.

I want to know.....

2010-08-18T19:15:00.001-04:00

The Invitation by Oriah
It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon…
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

2010-04-18T20:15:00.002-04:00

As the trees wake up and the flowers wake up, I yawn, and hear a rumbling inside me that must mean I’m waking up too.
And it’s been a long winter. It’s been long. I found my way through the snow. The inches, the feet of it.
But it’s past me now and I like unfolding like the maple leaf, the oak leaf, the tulip leaf.
I want to have a conversation with myself. I want to see who this girl is now. I just don’t know where to start.
I listen to the spring peepers signing in their cool waters and I can only here them thrumming and I can only hear their elation's and tidings.
And that’s enough for now. So, I will wait on the lighting bug. Their arrival is days away, but I know it is coming.
I’ll stand is dewy grass, one warm July evening and I’ll whisper my secrets. I’ll ask them my questions and they’ll light up night sky. They will burn green until they land at God’s feet and he’ll know what to whisper back.

2010-03-11T15:20:00.003-05:00

I’m meant for someplace else.

I don’t know how to explain it to you other than, it’s there, that someplace else, when I close my eyes.
It's stuck to the back of my eyelids.
Sometimes I see glimpses of it through brown eyelashes
if the light’s just right.

About loosing my nerve....

2010-01-18T22:09:00.001-05:00

I’ve tried to keep my nerve all day. But I am loosing it now. As lights go off all over the house, all over the neighborhood, all over the universe, I feel what today was. It settles, darkly ,inside of my gut, inside of my heart. It aches, and it pounds and I have lost my nerve. I don’t think it takes much to loose it. A change in lighting, a slight shift in breathing , a faster pace of a heart beat and it is easily sent propelling up and out of your throat and poof, it’s gone. Just like that. Your former nerve is just another tragedy in the atmosphere. Without it, I cry. And damn-it, I’ve tried hard all day not to cry. I fell like I cried enough yesterday, quietly onto my brother's back passenger truck window as we drove to dinner, later softly into my jacket on the way home, and then gut wrenchingly into you shirt when I went to bed. It’s just that, I don’t think there’s any stopping it when you loose your nerve like that, in the dark. Sometimes, your throat just betrays you. Sometimes the light betrays you. And sometimes, it’s just your heart.

I try to think about where you have gone. The best I can figure is that you crawled into one of those black holes you were so fond of. There you are on the event horizon and then you go. You don’t look back, just forward into that point of no return. I read once, that while you can’t see a black hole, it can be observed by the way it interacts with other matter. And since I can't see you, but I can feel you, that must be where you are. I am the other matter. We all are the other matter and you orbit us. I think that’s where you are, but I don’t know. Sometimes, you see, I see you in things around me. I see you in flowers, sunflowers always. I see in on a certain couch, under a certain blanket watching movies. I see you at Giant Springs walking there beside the river. I feel you as the wind blow through my curls. I see you always on the back of my eyelids.
You are everywhere and nowhere I can put my finger on.

I have waited on this day for months so, as I’ve wrote before, that I can understand what years without you are like. This day is here though, and I have lost my nerve for it. Instead, I want to go back 372 days and tell you that I love you and then maybe you would have stayed. I want to go back 380 days and get on a plane. It seems, I loose my nerve a lot.

So you're there where ever that may be and I’m here, where ever this is. And I hope you can hear me when I say thank you for loving me. Thank you for loving me when I was just a girl at a concert. For loving me when I was just a girl in black and white, When I was just a girl in crazy fonts and flashing cursers. Thank you for loving me when I was just a girl on a path, with curly hair and a foxy camera. Thank you for loving me when I was just a girl who was broken. Thank you for loving me from the tip of that one hair that always sticks up to the tip of those toes that you didn’t think were to bad(although, not as “nice as yours.”) Thank you for loving me when I was just a girl, just a nobody on a green porch swing on a May morning, swinging into the morning light, ready for the day. Thank you for kissing me in the rain just because if felt like the right thing to do. Thank you for the hours of words. Thank you for all the new people you brought me and all those Waitt’s were worth it. Thank you for the lessons both flora and fauna…..and foto. Thank you, simply, for loving me, even if love is rarely simple. I figure I’ll always feel like we were cheated of time, but I’ll never figure that I went through this life unloved. And I mean loved in that big unexplainable, honest to goodness, real, unconditional way.

I love you, you see and I miss you. Still. Always.

Everyone knows the yellow ones are the best

2009-10-24T02:02:00.000-04:00

I plunged my chubby fingers into a pile of yellow leaves. They rolled around in my hand damp and fragile. I pulled them to my face and took in that smell of left over summer. I just stood there, sniffing leaves. You know how everyone has a favorite colored M&M; how everyone swears they taste different? Well, leaves are like that, and the yellow ones smell the best. Some how, I know this isn’t the craziest thing I’ve ever done. It’s not the craziest thing I’ll ever do. What’s crazy is that I do these things and I write them down so the whole world can know that I stand outside on October mornings and inhale the scent of fallen and fading leaves.

Anyway, I stood there with this yellow, molding leaf in my red, chapped hand and I thought about the seasons. I know that the seasons are often used as a metaphor for the different periods in life(birth, youth, adulthood, death etc) and yet all I could do this morning is think about them and compare them to the ways I’ve dealt with death and grieving. It’s winter and it’s cold and jarring; a direct shock to your system that threatens to keep you frozen. When winter comes, the wind blows and it’s foreboding and it brings a sometime unnatural quiet. Then, it’s spring and the moments, the things you thought were long gone start to stir in you and everything starts to look new again. When spring comes the new green grass reminds you that we all go back to the earth, we all filter that grass. When spring comes, sometimes you get reacquainted with life. Then comes summer. It’s warm again, and you get comfortable under the shade of the tree , by the bend of the river. You hear the water rush by . You spend hours outside just reacquainting yourself to the idea of the warmth. You get days with more sunlight, and it keeps the dark at bay. The fall comes and reminds you that these things that once where, aren’t always. Fall comes and you cross your fingers and you hope to take in all the color you can. Fall comes you think you can learn a little form the trees. You hope you can get everything you have to get done before it’s too late and you can spend your days full and lovely and when the moment comes, you go out on those last few days in an explosion of glory. This is when you take stock. This is when you life and learn and you get prepared, you get ready for another winter and you hope you’ve soaked in enough color and enough warmth, enough understanding to make it through another winter.

So, here it is. Fall. My favorite time of year. My favorite time and yet, all I want is for winter to hurry up and get here so snow can blanket and freeze the ground. So winter can get here and the clouds can explode, letting snow cover up the remainder of this crap year that is 2009 in a blanket of white , giving 2010 a clean start. I want winter and this new year to get here so fully understand what year’s without you are like; a new year where I can practice this new forever. A new winter where I can finally see this new me and this old me can marry in some useful and suitable way.

I read this today. I guess I needed it.

2009-10-16T23:07:00.001-04:00

I really hate that a magazine made me cry, but alas............

"I miss you now more than ever before. But, I trust that God will open a door and show me how to go on without you to give me some hope and comfort too.

For you were my life and I love you so dear and it breaks my heart to not have you near. But, life goes one and I will too. I just wish it wouldn't go on without you.

All My Love......."

2009-08-19T00:44:00.002-04:00

It's been winter all summer long.
That means something, but I don't pretend to know what.
Just trying to formulate a thought before the white line meets the yellow line
&
all caution is thrown to the wind and the battery dies.

O’ you can never say goodbye to her you can never say goodbye Just goodnight

2009-07-17T02:51:00.002-04:00

It was a 10:30 dash into the sunset and saying goodbye in the dusk. Not a word was spoken. Not one syllable uttered, but in the silence you could hear it all.
And it’s dark now. One last night in Missoula .
I go out and sit on the concrete steps in the city dark, that dusky orange and murky black brown.

I let down my hair so that the smell of mountain air(the sweetest air I might add) , pine tree, Clarkfork, Blackfoot and Bitterroot River, and Missoula concrete can braid in between each curl, because I know 30 miles outside of the state line, I’ll long to smell it. When I breathe in deep enough sometimes I swear it I can still smell it, but that seems to happen less and less these days.

I watch people wander about the streets and even though I’m bare foot, my feet itch to be with them. I am them. I am Missoula too. I’m always on those steps, on that porch, or in that shop window even when I’m 2,300 miles away.

I look to the church in front of me and I stare at the steeple and I ask where I am supposed to be? I let my eyes pray. The only answer I get tonight comes in the rhythmic flashing of sleepy stop lights burning gold to black, gold to black. Proceed with caution. No definite yes, no definite no.

That courageous part of me says yes.
That yellow bellied coward part of me says, “you’ll never.”
It’s confusing to be part pioneer pilgrim and part ridge runner hillbilly.
I suffer greatly from whiplash.

The courthouse clock tolls midnight and suddenly my goodbye day starts. Time in Montana has a way of blurring but it plays a wicked game of gotcha and catch up when it has too, and for the first time in two weeks I feel it squeeze, I feel it rush past me like a lint ball sucking into a vacuum hose.

The clock strikes twelve with a violent last bell and for a second or two the street grows quite and glows street light, tungsten orange and the only sound I can hear is the quickened blab of my heart against my chest.

"I've been singing these songs about you Montana for so long without ever even knowing it."

2009-06-20T12:42:00.000-04:00

Walking the dog in the dark and damp backyard, it hit me. I’ll be driving out to Montana in ten days. Ten days and a couple thousand miles is all that stands between me and some of favorite places and some of my favorite faces. I let their names roll of my tongue :Helena, Great Falls, Garnett, Lolo, Missoula, Whitefish, Glacier, Ninepipes, The Mission Mountains, Amanda, Andrew, Annie, Becky, Brittney, Christy, Carl, Dan, Janice, Lindsey, Megan, Neil, Zola. Each syllable just as juicy and just as sweet as the next. Then I whispered Nic, and I felt heavy. This trip will be bittersweet in ways I don’t even know yet. Six months ago this trip was going to be a reunion, yes, but also a very telling few weeks on if I’d be making my home and my future in that wild west that both haunts me and delights me. A wild west that has the mysterious ability to fill me up, and at the same time leave me homesick for the hot, sticky wet of the green jungle in the heart Appalachian mountains, sweet ice tea, and people that are tied to my heart strings.

I thought about that as Gentry pulled me around the back yard. I have been so wrapped up in the things that were there, that were to come and that in a few seconds just flitted away to the point that I sometimes, don’t notice where I’m walking,where driving, or even what I'm thinking. He pulled me towards the part of the yard that the flood light’s sensor doesn’t read. I gripped his leash tighter as the yard when black dark. I just stood there for a minute, taking in the lack of light around me, but relaxing in knowing that I know this space. I know what’s all around me in the darkness and if I squint just right, I can make out shapes of things that are always there whether it’s light or dark. I looked forward and I began to notice a new light. I can see lightening bugs and I see the faint glow of some neighbors porch light across the tracks. I wonder if that’s what death’s like? All of the sudden you are in this new black dark of a space that was previous lit, and as you adjust to this new darkness, you see light, light that you’ve never noticed before. Is it like the lights going out? Is it that shock of black so sudden and intense that that is all you can focus on for a few seconds, minutes, hours, years? Is it just black until you adjust to the dark and see light in new way, a fresher way? You realize you are still in the place you’ve always known, but it’s just lit different?

I don’t know. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe that's just what you leave behind. What who you leave behind sees. Maybe death is just the opposite. A shock of brilliant light. Maybe it’s that magic hour light right before the sun goes down? It’s warm with a light so orange and peachy pink that if you could taste it would be surly be like a sherbet or push up pops. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I just hope, not matter how it’s lit, it doesn’t hurt. I often wonder what those last couple of days were for Nic. I couldn’t talk to him. I remember how I promised to be there when the time came. I hope he didn’t hurt. I hope he didn’t have time to be mad at me for standing at the end of a phone line rather than at the end of his finger. I have deep regrets. I’d say I could drive to Montana and back again a million times and those miles still would never equal how deep those regrets are inside of me. They flow like a river. They cut and leave behind boulders and stones piled so high, I don’t know if can get over them. Maybe you aren’t supposed to get over them, but just float by them from time to time and acknowledge that they exist, that they are now apart of who you are. These regrets, they are my own Grand Cannon.

I have three weeks and 5,000 miles to think. I have miles and miles of time to just listen. It’s long overdue. I’ve been wondering, who am I now, what have I learned, is my landscape so altered? Who do you become after you loose the man you thought you were going to marry and then shortly after your Uncle and Aunt? I’ve asked this a million times the past few months. When I do, all I hear the echo of the TV, the reverberation of sound waves on the radio, the blinking curser on the computer screen( I know it doesn’t technically have a sound, but some days it seems louder than my answers).

I have days and days in Montana. I’ve learned that I always find myself there. Even this winter when I went to say goodbye to Nic, I met with that stronger version of me that I didn’t even know that I had left behind. I was thankful to see her there. She carried me through. I get to see these people who are in essence, Montana to me. They carry that pioneer sprint in them that I understand. I found myself with them before, I’m depending on that once again. I’ll just be glad to stand in a room, a field, anywhere in proximity with them as we point our camera’s toward the same things. I’m also depending on that substance that’s inside of me that always, always gets through, that always finds away out, away through, away above.

I’ve never once wondered where God was in all of this. I’ve felt him all along and everyday, every last one, I am thankful for the ways he works in my life. I think often if not for photography, I’d never be here in this every exact moment, writing these very exact words. If not for photography, I’d never went to Montana. I’d never met these people who altered me, never seen these glimpses of big sky and up heaved earth that made me feel so small. If not for photography, I don’t know that I’d made it through these past months. I’ve leaned on it and I’ve depended on it. I’m never going to question God’s ways or God’s timing. I’m just glad to know that he knows. He has blessed me over and over and over. I'm glad he gave me a camera and glass and big feelings that I could never get out any other way.

I have great expectations for this trip I guess, but Montana’s big enough to hold all of that. And really, I can’t complain about any of this. These total crap times are what makes the good times good. These crap times are the times you grow. I’ve paused long enough to say ouch. Now I want my Band-Aid damn it. I want miles of road, miles of song, miles of stories, miles of laughs, and miles of big sky.

Six miles this way.

2009-05-06T23:12:00.000-04:00

Today, I thought the most reckless thing I could do was drive across a bridge hovering over a very pregnant and angry river. Overflowing river banks are nothing compared to finding myself alone with nothing but hours of waiting to fill my time. I had no place to be until four so I turned right solely because a sign promised me that there would be a campground six miles down the road. I spend most days looking for signs. This one seemed honest enough. I never saw a campground.

I need new glass or.................

2009-04-07T23:08:00.001-04:00

Maybe I just need to close my eyes for a while so that when I reopen them I can see the world a little different?

What you say to the dark.

2009-03-23T23:51:00.001-04:00

What you say to the dark.

I stood with the key in the door, face against the glass wondering if I should turn that knob or not. I've driven by the camp twice and up to it once and I'd never been able to make it out of the car. I was now at the door and I still didn't know if I could go in. I knew you weren't going to be in there, but something silly and unreasonable in me tried to convince myself that you'd might just be. I leaned against the door so long the glass fogged over from the combination of my breath and my tears. I turned the knob and I spilled into the kitchen and that old, familiar and wonderful musty smell greeted me and I've never wanted to turn around and leave so bad in my life. How can it be there, that house, that smell and you not be? You're just as much that place as I am. I loved you there. You sat on the couch, and you slept in that bed and you rested by the river. I made you peanut butter and M&M cookies and you cooked pizza in that oven. You touched that spoon and this one. You sat on the couch and did your breathing treatments while I read in the chair. I washed your ice cream bowels and your cereal bowels while you played video games as I rinsed them out and put them on the rack to dry. I liked the way that felt. I liked way that sounded. It was so normally average and common. It was evidence that you existed.

The living room was full of the outdoor furniture. I could hardly see the couch, and yet I expected you to be setting there on the corner with your big, wonderfully dirty feet stretching out before you. I could see you there, inviting me over. Oh, to grab that fuzzy green blanket and lay my head in your lap as we watch a movie. To feel your fingers in my hair and your warm hand on my back. I could close my eyes and I could hear your and feel you and see you there, but when I opened my eyes it was just stacks of green rocking chairs, that certain porch swing and dots of wicker chairs.

I headed past your bedroom knowing there was no way I cold pause there,even for a second. I remember on the mornings I'd wake up before you that I'd tiptoe past your room as quiet and as loud as I could. I didn't want to wake you up but I did all the same. I ran to my bed and I tucked my arms under me. The cold air rested around me but I stayed in that on spot until it warmed from my body heat alone, and that's all that I felt there, my body heat and damp cold pillow that only suffered more as I cried into it. I'd brave peek now and then through my curls and still you weren't' there smiling back and acting like you weren't just watching me. How can all that be here and you not be?

I lay there until the quiet bothered me. The trains rushed past and the dogs barked and both seemed louder than they ought too. I remember you said you'd hid stuff throughout the house and I began ripping into it even though I found almost all of it before you even left. Your letters and your t-shirt all remind me that maybe you knew all along that that week was it. I looked in every drawer and every cabinet and under every bed. I found nothing else. I still didn't find you. I remember when my aunt and I drove over and closed it down for winter, that as I boxed up the food, I found your cans of soup and how that made me sigh and that the other day at the house, I saw it in the pantry I found it again and this time it made me cry. Can you immortalize a can of soup? I may take it back and glue it to cabinet shelf. Just more proof you were indeed there.

I let the screen door slam the way I like it too and I went and sat on the river bank. I sat close to the fire pit the way we did that evening. I remember we sat there for a while even though it was raining. The rain pelted the river but the the trees sheltered us for a while longer and protected the fire. We ended up sitting in the screen room watching the fire fade out from there. I left when the ground felt too cold and the wind blowing off the water cut and pinked up my skin. I walked back through the house on more time, just in case you sneaked in while I was on the river. I locked the door and I sat on the front steps. I remembered you
setting there with me one afternoon talking about the cone flowers and the marigolds.

How can I be here and you not be? I'd rather talk to you than whisper in the dark.

24

2009-02-24T11:00:00.003-05:00

They pushed you by.
Deceivingly quiet I sat.
Inside stormed,"Not yet. Just a few more minutes please. Please?
They drove you away anyway.....

2009-02-19T00:18:00.003-05:00

Episodic?
Oh, yes please.

I fall apart.I hit the road.
I’m only as good as the charge on my mp3 player.
I take the long way home.

I am music, really,really bad music, until the tiny hours of morning.
(techno beats and everything)
Diet Mt.Dew has yet to equal a bubbly cure for insomnia.
Just thought I’d experiment.

A little reverse psychology.

It’s still just fizzy fruit juice laced with crack.
My heart feels like it will explode upon consumption.

I have pages of words, but I can’t find them.
How can I tell your mother of the ways I loved you?
How can the words I tell your father ever surface the way they sit honest and true and big in me?

We seem to be novella.

I am.........

2009-02-05T23:31:00.001-05:00

A quiet dark thing.

The Days After...........

2009-02-03T08:30:00.001-05:00

I don’t know what normal is right now.
I just know that nothing seems normal at all.
I keep sneaking back
to the blue shade of the mountain shadows.
I greatly disagree with the sun.
I'm finding solace in written words.
I’m still searching for my own.
10 p.m.. quickly becomes my worst hour.
I hate trying to sleep.
I lay there ready and waiting, sure that, that concept has
died too.
It’s one, it’s two, it’s three in the morning and dark
finally kisses my eye lids.
I hate waking up.
The previous days progress is lost in dreamless sleep.
I blink once. I blink twice.
I start all over again.

2009-02-03T08:25:00.000-05:00

You Left Me, Sweet, Two Legacies
by Emily Dickinson

You left me, sweet, two legacies,--
A legacy of love
A Heavenly Father would content,
Had He the offer of;

You left me boundaries of pain
Capacious as the sea,
Between eternity and time,
Your consciousness and me.

WORDS

2008-11-08T11:05:00.001-05:00

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.

2008-10-06T11:05:00.001-04:00

Life is fast.

2008-09-24T22:12:00.001-04:00

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.

2008-09-10T08:05:00.000-04:00

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

I feel.........

2008-09-01T23:05:00.000-04:00

like somethings about to change.

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

2008-08-29T17:55:00.001-04:00

Another rendition of Freaky Friday perhaps:

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

2008-08-19T01:08:00.002-04:00

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......................

2008-08-13T11:57:00.004-04:00

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

2008-08-10T23:47:00.000-04:00

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

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

2008-08-06T00:01:00.010-04:00

Delirious.

Divulging.

Descending on disaster.
Pending.
Stale.
Stalled.

Stagnate.

Girl IN NEED of:

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

2008-07-30T23:47:00.001-04:00

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

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

2008-06-30T19:14:00.007-04:00

"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..................

2008-06-13T00:10:00.001-04:00

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

Misguided grass

2008-06-07T22:51:00.004-04:00

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 .........

2008-06-02T17:08:00.004-04:00

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

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

2008-05-28T23:48:00.007-04:00

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

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

2008-05-13T22:32:00.004-04:00

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.

2008-05-09T01:39:00.001-04:00

I'm doing everything at the moment but sleeping.

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

2008-04-30T23:13:00.005-04:00

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

2008-04-24T09:14:00.009-04:00

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.

2008-04-23T18:28:00.000-04:00

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)

2008-04-14T23:05:00.012-04:00

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

2008-04-08T23:49:00.002-04:00

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

2008-04-05T20:00:00.000-04:00

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

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

2008-04-03T17:48:00.007-04:00

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

2008-03-28T12:02:00.004-04:00

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

2008-03-27T22:44:00.002-04:00

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

2008-03-25T11:45:00.001-04:00

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.

2008-03-22T21:33:00.006-04:00

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

2008-03-21T19:38:00.001-04:00

"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

2008-03-20T16:15:00.000-04:00

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

Novella

2008-03-18T22:19:00.003-04:00

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.

2008-03-18T16:39:00.000-04:00

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

Scary's West

2008-03-17T10:37:00.001-04:00

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

2008-03-16T12:37:00.001-04:00

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

2008-03-15T10:45:00.003-04:00

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

2008-03-09T11:23:00.004-04:00

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/

2008-03-07T21:17:00.001-05:00

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

Self Preservation

2008-03-05T11:29:00.001-05:00

Where the sidewalk ends.

Through the Looking Glass

2008-03-03T23:22:00.001-05:00

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.

2008-02-29T16:57:00.000-05:00

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

2008-02-26T15:07:00.000-05:00

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

2008-02-25T16:17:00.000-05:00

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.

2008-02-21T20:52:00.000-05:00

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..................

2008-02-15T18:15:00.000-05:00

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.

2007-12-22T08:05:00.000-05:00

Did I see you last night when I closed my eyes?

A metaphor with an i

2007-12-16T18:47:00.000-05:00

It's snowing. It's snowing and it's windy.
That's windy with an i---- if it were a windy with an e I'd be having a square hamburger right now. Always fresh, never frozen.

The snow some how finds a way to drift up my pant leg , down my sock and it seems to be the only thing I have up my sleeve. No magic there, just snow. Snow powered by wind.
It's the wind.
There is nothing good about wind. I don't own a sail boat. Nor am I'm trying to power my home with wind. My last kite is buried deep in the woods beyond my house. So the wind, the wind, is just a parasite today.
The wind just blows stuff over and it just pushes the snow around and in the way. It's not the snow that I'm afraid of it's the wind. If it were a mobster I'd call it Tony or Sal.

I hope the wind doesn't take me out.

Cataract

2007-11-30T21:27:00.000-05:00

I remember the day I stopped seeing the world in focus. It was at that moment that things became utterly and completely clear.

Alarm Clock...............

2007-09-27T13:57:00.000-04:00

The best part about waking up at 4:30 in the morning is possibility. Well, possibly. Some mornings the best part about waking up at 4:30 in the morning is going right back to sleep. This morning though, it was possibility.

A pondering I will go................

2007-09-21T21:15:00.000-04:00

Is knowledge and truth, in essences, the same thing?

Heavy lifting outside of photoshop

2007-09-16T00:45:00.000-04:00

I have felt like I have not had an actual thought for two weeks. I have been craving conversation. I have been salivating for a moment to converse about. I've never felt like I've had the ability to invent small talk big enough to be worth actually talking about in a small way. Thank goodness other people are better at than I am or there are days I feel sure I'd never utter a word. I hate the way small talk just passes around a circle like a game of duck, duck, goose. I think it's because, like I said, some days I don't feel like I have anything small to say. I am heavy. I think this has nothing to do with past consumed cheeseburgers or fries, but because I really am chockablock full of heavy thoughts.I tuck them away behind witty comments because I'm not sure the world is always ready for me to be anything other than the funny, silly girl.

I digress. I went to a movie tonight that gave me more than I had hoped for. After it was over, it weighed heavy on my mind. I was having thoughts so heavy that I didn't think I could physically remove my backside from the cushy seat. I walked out of the theater fogged with thought. Emotions were coming to me so quickly. I thought they would just spin away just as quickley, but they hung around until I actually felt lethargic with thought. I carried these emotions and thoughts out of the theater with me. I got in my car, my head felt so dizzy. I got home, but I'm not sure how I got there. I pull into the garage. I put my car into park, I hear a loud thud. It takes me an entire minute, 60 full seconds to realize that I have parked in my landlord's giant wooden shelf. Thank goodness for rubber bumpers.

I'm staring into the giant wooden shelf in the garage thinking about the fact that I am such a silly, naive, selfish girl. I should put my car in reverse and detach it from the shelf, but I just think about how most days I go about the world in my little bubble. Some days I don't really think about a world outside of mine. Some days I complain about mundane things. Some days I think I complain just to hear my voice, to feel the heat of my breath rush past my lips. Most days I forget that I've lead a blessed life. Tonight a movie reminded me that I haven't said thank you God in a while. Watching "The Kingdom", I was thankful that I have been given my life. I'm thankful that for now I don't know what war sounds like, feels like, smells like, taste like. I'm thankful that I don't have to decide who walks what path in life.

I'm going to bed. I'm sure I still be thinking about people that have sacrificed things that I can't even imagine sacrificing. I'm going to bed blessed.