attentions, connections, cedar trees, first bear drawings, dreamtime, a story, a love letter, seahorse brightenings

thread/seahorse story
finn has been painting snowflakes, rivers and waves. i have been listening to alice coltrane, tinariwen, and meredith monk. now finn's snowflake is in the river, going to meet another river in the water, to spread out and diffuse, like sunlight. part of what i think about is how bodies can (if they choose to) eventually become part of rivers someday, like maps that contain other maps. i can never think a whole, complete, lovely thought. is this because of the internet? i know people who are in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. and 20s. we are all changing. these days i try to just pay attention and live. i have these sayings up around me: "singing makes me happy" "i can be a mother, writer, and teacher" "you are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and stars" "you have enough time" "no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should", etc. have you ever written a love letter to your child self? "dear little one, little self, did you get lost, are you okay, did you move through time? according to me, you are still writing your life." what you don't say in those kind of letters is how there might be threads that break off of selfs. for example, the male and female seahorse come to each other in the morning, in their separate homes, and when they see each other, they brighten--their skin literally changes color. and they trade dances and respond and brighten some more and eventually one of them stops responding, though, to the other. and then they go and have the rest of their day off doing something else. sometimes they do spend a long time brightening together, their tails hooked around the same shoot of sea grass. the moral of this story is, love will come back because it's like the sun. also, it's already here. but right now i am a thread caught in dreamtime; i am cedar trees on the cedar river, valentine's days, frosts on windows, paintings on easels, the boy who imagines himself as a dog constantly--as the baby of a dog. one of the very first figurative drawings he draws is of a mama bear, in blue. "the quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. the capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention." (julia cameron)

bath at three and a half

i love you on earth,

"mama, i love you" said finn suddenly--& urgently! tonight--"i love you on earth" he said

heart melt all over!

and now i am thinking the thing is, to just be fine, that is all we need.

just be fine.

i do dishes and worries start to pile up, worries & self-criticisms. when actually all i need to do is plan class tomorrow.

all will be well and i can be fine.

and you can be fine, we can be fine.

three quotes from fanny howe because this book, The Winter Sun, has been so good to me lately (piercing):

these are two doctrines yeats believed in, as quoted by fanny howe:

"1)That the borders of the mind are ever shifting, and that many minds can flow into one another, as it were, and create or reveal a single mind, a single energy.
2)That the borders of our memories are as shifting, and that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself."

here's howe:

"Are we in for a surprise?
The future is like magic. It wears no robes or veils but arrives naked, tossing its surprises to the right and to the left. How does it arrive? It neither comes from ahead nor do we enter it running. This is beacause it and we can only approach what is always coming toward it and us."

"Even while I have gone back over the words, i have never been sure of the need for it, the use of writing at all, the value of any completed poem, or the idea that writing might lead somewhere. I haven't really known what I was doing, only that I would keep on doing it."


"The winter has returned. The warmth that signaled spring has been replaced by an angry frost. The arms of the pines lift and drop in concession to a low wind. . .Someone only yesterday told me that the harm we have done to the world is now irreversible. At the same time we can finally look through a telescipe strong enough to see the beginning of the universe. It is not a beginning if it can be seen still happening from where we stand on earth. The cardinal whistles at the top of a spectral elm, or is someone writing on a slate of air?"

joys

joys story
Hello! We had our holidays and made some things--that was fun. Note: singing is a form of wisdom. Note: just want to throw this pen down and start living again. I mean throw this computer down. Note: "To resist the reality of time is to resist leaving childhood behind" (Fanny Howe). Note: "One day the sun admitted, I am just a shadow. I wish I could show you the infinite incandescence that cast my brilliant image. I wish I could show you (when you are lonely or in darkness) the astonishing light of your own being." (Hafiz via Fanny Howe). Also, I feel so much better when I feel loving going on in me, like wheels. When I can love openly. A big part of me is full of love, leftover holiday love but it's real, amazingly. I didn't know it could happen actually. Note: singing is not a form of wisdom it is what it is. I still wish I sang more, opened my throat. Miss it. Don't be embarrassed for me!

three boys nursing their babies (noam, jasper, finn):;;;;;;

creative finn::::::;

animal drawings pillow made for uncle james:::::::::::::;


two sleepytime owls made for a niece and a nephew:::::::

karla kuskin poem (one of my fave kid's poets) and painting made for another niece:

star city made by finn for his friend's birthday::::::;


papa and finnegan:::::::::::::::::

glitter cards:::;;;;;

the owl holds a leaf:::::::;;


cousins!:::::::;

time of love and decorating and baking. moonself. jupiterself. sunrise.

story of where things live
Finn says "I want to talk about things!" when we sit down in the morningtime. We are friends? he asks, often. Mama, we are friends? You're my mom? We are lonely? We make maps and pictures of snow. Rainy weird december days. Job interview! And now the waiting. . .Well what we do is, map and draw. Morningtimes have been at least somewhat consistent. I feel it is radical space, mom plus kid. Radical space of our creation. In fact all space seems like radical space . . .I am trying to create radical space in my life but it isn't easy and you already knew that. Sometimes as I write I listen to the whines of Finn. He grumble scratches--wants me to play. We play dinosaur island. Sometimes I realize how my attention is right here, exactly in the now, if I let it be. But I have to realize it. Loveliness of winter is right here: green wreath, which I decorate with red bells, pinecones, prairie grasses gone to seed, dried flowers. Writing poems from the perspectives of planets lately: Jupiter and Earth, to be exact. Here are some dirty windows and snowflakes looking in through the window; here are some windows/snowflakes/sunrisings looking out. Jupiter as a tall tree's heart; the other side of the snowflakes, our home at night; regular life too regular life; and a full moon rising near a grey gleaming windchime. As we draw and write, I ask Finn questions about where things live: Where does the sun live? In the grass. Where does water live? In the ocean. Where does pink live? In dragon's blood.

the yellow leaves

& many ideas in my mind, from Lewis Hyde's The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World: "The passage into mystery always refreshes. If, when we work, we can look once a day upon the face of mystery, then our labor satisfies. We are lightened when our gifts rise from pools we cannot fathom. Then we know they are not solitary egotism and they are inexhaustible. Anything contained within a boundary must contain as well its own exhaustion. The most perfectly balanced gyroscope slowly winds down. But when the gift passes out of sight and then returns we are enlivened. Material goods pull us down into their bones unless their fat is singed occasionally. It is when the world flames a bit in our peripheral vision that it brings us jubilation and not depression. We stand before a bonfire or even a burning house and feel the odd release it brings, as if the trees could give the sun return for what enters them through the leaf"

Thinking so much about gifts; what it means to be giving; the purposes for making things and for being--

as if the trees could give the sun return for what enters them through the leaf


Now I am moving this thing I am giving; now it is in motion. The giving moves because we move, and because we are alive, an ecology, a collective being. I am moving within your abundance and you are moving within mine. I guess I mean that the things within my fingertips--so often feel caged in there, I feel achey to let them out--and yet the giving inside can be moved instead of stagnant, can be thrown up into the air, juggled and swirled and released. I think.

the magic dreaming seeds of hickory hill park, sunny cold november--