what are you doing except entering a cloud

hi i have been gone from this blog for so long! things take long to get done! i was caught in a downpour downtown this week; then i went into prairie lights and bought a new book, and i love the first poem so much in this book. i will not type out the whole poem here! this is merely a part! (it's by nathaniel tarn and called "Pursuit of the Whole & Parts):

what are you doing except entering a cloud
so that your task is to become ever more pure
until no shred of remembrance of any part remains with you
and thought of any part immediately drowns into the whole,
[the thought or apprehension of the whole]--and you are
now so desperately wretched and one-sided. No, it is the
stubbornness, the innate cussedness [and stubbornnes] of the part,
any part, [any part whatsoever], dropped by circumstance
into a consciousness, [birth taken in a consciousness]--
as part of a whole, you understand, you cannot,

[absolutely cannot] do without that part-enabling whole.
It is that stubbornnes which links you to the moment,
to the circumstantial existence of yourself in time,
as if you were a note in music, or a bird
in a flock of birds disappearing into winter
and the moment is the only thing you truly possess,
can every possess, the very definition of possession
and that possession is the possession of a part, a part only,
indeed the moment [the very moment], is nothing but a part,
and never yet of a whole. (. . .)





*i keep wanting to make posts and talk about happiness and epicurus and this stuff we've been discussing in my classes (i'm excited about it) and also how finn is going through a wild willfullness at the same time as he is doing so many new cool things and just becoming himself and how today was such a hard day and i almost lost it and i yelled! but! i have to teach tomorrow in the a.m.! i cannot talk about these things or anything!

happy autumn!

in the tree/ woodsy/ mama-heart-melters (finn + adelaide on the lookout for baby deer)

oh, these little people, looking rather like elves as they climb in a tree insisting it's their "house" and holding hands for a well-photographed heart-melting bit down the path in the woods, and throwing pinecones in the lake, getting muddy, throwing their tantrums too of course (that's the un-photographed bit--doesn't usually show up on blogs! see that happy refreshed looking boy? the night before this traipse in the woods he had an hour-long midnight temper tantrum, who knows why, and continues to have them now, through awake and not awake hours, i guess the terrible twos they call them?? i know, i know, it's developmental. . . .still come on finn we do have to put your pants on if you want to go to the library! ((etc)))

i was excited to go to the woods on this day with such company--shana and adelaide and finn--and i must say i am doing all these fall things early in my excitement!! i was remembering last year when we walked in the yellow-leaved woods of this same place, squire point. but, it's a little early yet for leaf-changing; still it was so beatiful in the last greens of summer, on a 70 degree day. and i am still making pumpkin muffins and some butternut squash soup this weekend. i want to! for i love the autumn! and i will go apple picking too, and make applesauce, if i have to squeeze it out of my eyes, with cinnamon and toasted nuts and footie pjs and all the good autumn things, so!!

pants is happiness! (on a growing boy)

what you will see on this post are many many photos of finn wearing the pants that i made him. i made them from the "quick change trousers" pattern in the new book by anna maria horner--(thanks mom for sending me the pattern!!). i am very excited about these pants! it's something about reversible pants--i mean, come on. yes. and then of course i am brimming to make a billion more; it's so fun to pick out the different fabrics, like making a quilt.

oh right but first a quick shot of my loves:::::

alright, on to happy pants:::::::








p.s. that plain fabric (the linen-y off white)used to be a sling in which i carried the boy--

on the nature trail, and in the spirit of the small things (wispy, curly, feathery, tangly)

lemonworld, or, this post's for lauren and her beautiful baby ellie (the birth of small things)

dear friends, today i found some writings from the week before and the month after finn was born. i realized as i was reading them that this blog was born out of those writings. this first long passage i wrote the week before finn was born:

To be a mother: acceptance of a certain death of myself (accept that i will die for love). alice notley says something like "i believe in the debt to nature: sex, children, death."

acceptance of small and big things that i (will) do with the minutes of my life. acceptance (needed) of the very smallest things: dailiness.--to enjoy life even in its lonelinesses. even in its overwhelming fullnesses.

let things surface, like water does. eventually it will float up or be waved to the shore. i was (am)what is called a late bloomer. i understand curling tight until absolute ripeness.--principles of creativity. some things have to fight for survival (the girl's hand on the skull in candlelight). you don't want to be rushed. you're born when you're ready. what is the word for body, mind, instincts, soul, all together? what is the word for the one complete mechanism? is it possible to finish thoughts and not be anxious?

i accept the small things--the just-one-form of the flower.
i accept the small things--without glory, attention, without even a self.
i accept the small things: one step one breath.
i accept the small things: one glimpse of the moon.
i accept the small ways--small motions we must adhere to: feeding a child. one hair on the raspberry that must be plucked.
i accept the small things: one beat, another beat inside that.
the small things: an organism.
i accept what is small: that i must let my life be quiet, too, let it breathe in sound and not constantly take part in the grand scale.
i accept: one inching motion toward part of a poem.
i accept the small way i falter towards full acceptance of myself as a poet, lover, mom, friend, worth-while being. i falter. i accept. (right now). it is small.

there are those things that are small and 'parts',
there are those that are small and whole.
in reality (paradox) it seems all is both.
but we can make a distinction. . .

i accept how small things shall seem at times: me struggling, with air, at the edge of what seems like nothing or irrelevance.

-------and this i wrote a month into real-live-baby motherhood:

of the small things (poem at one month old)

one green lightning bug floating between linden tree's upper branches
neck smell stuck in one corner of one bounce of air
a day in which i am awake and all that i will do, all day, is put tape on a box
and pick up the dropped stem of swiss chard, deep pink, from the kitchen floor
but ignore the butternut squash bit stuck to skin--
parking the car and waiting patiently for the two rabbits to move
so i don't kill them
however the dead gold chrysanthemum head's caught in the web
across the porch--a web abandoned by its spider--
the point of adults is that they shouldn't exist
is the thought that goes on and on in vastness
as blue as a blue sheet of light breathing across the desk

- - - - -

and i want to dedicate this post to lauren, in her first months of mama-hood, and in all the drippy difficulties and overwhelmedness thereof. dear lauren: you are good! also here are some closeups of ellie sleeping, in her beauty--





also, here's what i am grateful for on this day(lemonworld):

1. the national's new record, especially the songs "blood-buzz ohio" and "lemonworld". because. finn and i had our first all-out dance party to those 2 songs, spontaneously, and it made me so happy and it made me remember who i am! i am a person who dances spontaneously and feverishly! literally, this dance party helped me so immensely; sounds silly, but. . .
2. also i am grateful to those 2 songs for another reason. because they give me that feel of falling in love, love-falling, like so excited and everything's going to change and be amazing;; full, dreadful, painful excitement. not neccessarily falling in love with one person, though that is fine too, but even the way we fall in love with a friend, a group of friends, an era/ aura/ particular time in our lives, even the way we fall in love with music again, or words.
3. after grocery shopping today, finn and i were driving to the post office. i looked back at him, and he was car-dancing, shaking his head side to side and wiggling about. i do declare my heart was thumping in a glad way that he would dance so! oh i believe the song was "lemonworld". . .d.d.d.d.d.d.d.d.d....

hickory hill park, late august

playing

in apple orchards--


with feeding babies in slings--

and spinning--

and more babies in slings (and see that baby head in corner? that's a real baby--baby ellie-- in a sling and isn't it so cute that he insists on the sling for his baby now?)

multi-tasking play--

drawing on windows--

in which the animals go to school--