tofu scrambling (with fresh green chiles!) together/ fingerpainting finn

changes/ changes (the mere fact of consciousness, eyesight, love, moths, school, toys strewn about, 6 ams, whales . . .) [a whitmanian post]

things have been happening. life is changing! i do love the season of change--this one feels rapid and good--kind of stunningly rapid, i must say. . .
this whitman poem is alongside me during my changes of this week. . .i think i will have students read it--

this house with toys strewn about and afternoon sunlight is also often alongside me (or am i in it?)--

this little miss E recently turned 2, sassafrassy, reminding me how things keep changing changing--

and my little boy turned 2, as you know, and this notebook was a gift for him--but his mama has hijacked it as her 6 am journal notebook--however finnegan hinmself did paint the cover-- (and don't worry he has another one)--

oh right yeah and started teaching again, yikes, 8 am classes--but good and satisfying for the rhythm/ productivity feel it brings--

a little cosmic whale made for the aforementioned miss E (she loves whales and i can't say as i didn't jump at that, when i heard that i mean)----


some back-to-school apple-zucchini muffins--

and this huge change, my boy going to daycare twice a week for eight hours each day! indeed i feel alternately ecstatic (8? count them 8? hours all to myself on fridays???whoo--eeee so what if i'm grading papers etc. during that time?? 8 hours!) mixed with a mama-melancholy that goes like this--( 8 hours?? finn: 8 whole hours of finn's life that i won't know about?? ouch ouch!! an ache in arms/ heart/ brain) but never mind all that--he does love it so far--when i picked him up yesterday i was informed that finn is a "professional kid" in that he played all day, ate good lunch, even pee-ed on the potty, played played played and napped (what the??)--

and a final change of the coming-into-being sort--my friend katie's new baby, baby dai! hi dai and yay for you, new being. and this is a picture of the moth that i made for dai, that i for some reason immediately wanted to make for him as soon as i heard that he'd been born--


changes changes and changes and new beings and it is only late summer--hello, apples-

an encaustic pink along the gore-edge?

been spending some hours by the river, holding a vigil of sorts--it's been rising higher and higher as it storms every night around here; so the shore of the river keeps getting mushier and mushier as i sit there and attempt to draw/write/think--



also! (and here follows a list)spending our days lately--
--watching seahorse clouds above kent park lake after nice swim with friends;

--attempting to read poems while finn buries my foot;


--swimming in warmish lakes on hot humid days (not much refreshing relief, in fact a little gross, but still fun);

--oh! and drank my first rootbeer float of the summer, delish!;

baba the bear on a chair/ cat and duck drama

if you look closely you might see, in this first photo, a cat crouching on creek edge and a mama mallard quacking and circling with two ducklings (whom we've been privileged enough to watch grow up all summer on our walks on this trail!)


and here is baba the bear, being himself (i downloaded the "simple bear" pdf after doing a quick google search for free teddy bear patterns):

beauties of now II (play)

beauties of now, or, what is death, what is consciousness? (now)

the inexact minute of a birth; birthday trains and bears; august labor descrip with flame-out.; no photo, but dragonflies indeed

at this quite exact moment two years ago, i was thinking it wasn't happening: this baby was not gonna get born. but i found the courage/ craziness an hour or so later to push him from his stuck place under my bones, and finn was born at 11:03 or 4 pm(we can't remember the specific minute). he was born and now he is two; two! here's the pineapple upside down cake i made & we ate today in honor of that:

and here he is, crowned, with his new train set-up:

closer:

and this is him after unwrapping the skinny-legged bear i made for him last night! he swiftly named the bear "baba" after his beloved granpa, with whom we just spent the weekend, celebrating baba's 80th birthday and finn's 2nd(their b-days are two days apart)!

and there are many more pictures to come of recent adventures, soon, soon. we've been to county fairs and living history farms and to 80th birthday parties, so i have some sifting-through to do--

i've been thinking about the birth experience all day today. i'm not going to post pictures from finn's birth. and i'm not one of those women who feels the pangs of labor several years later at the anniversary of that sensation, as if my body were recollecting itself. but i will say that tonight, and today, and recently, the whole heavy hang of august gives me some quick flames from that time, some sensory-memory-feelers. it was august and i walked down the alley behind my house, sometimes stopping in full sun for a contraction:laboring. the circle faces of sunflowers were completely out in big social bunches at the corners of the alley, and the see-sawing cicadas were in full seethe. all sounds and colors hanging in the hot, heavy air of iowa summer. at transition i puked into the green grass!

well anyway, my growing baby! now completely out of me, for definite sure. it is a little melancholy! why, we can never say! tonight at the dusky time, we were in a nearby park called oak grove and there were hundreds of dragonflies swarming up amongst the oaks. i've never seen anything like it, and i didn't have my camera. they seemed like a bunch of remote-controlled machines, and it seemed miraculous they didn't tangle and crash, in their fast hummy buzzy flying. i guess they were just excited to be together ; i suppose it was just a dragonfly gathering place.

and for some further magic, just as we crossed over the train bridge walking home, the train pulled out from under the bridge, and so we got to watch the whole thing in motion.