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--

morning writing time and a sort of photo shoot/ radical acceptance

& thinking about these ideas, from jon kabat-zinn: "radical acceptance" is something one can achieve if one "takes in and responds to things as they actually are"---also "letting go of the stories we tell ourselves about how things should be"


"our desire to get it all done generates feeling chronically rushed or overwhelmed. . ."


here's where i posed finn, hoping for a holiday card:




but hey morning writing time: sometimes things are so right!

Of the first F / dragons and hammers

F Story ending with sunrise.
Finn certainly did learn to write an F this weekend--monumental! He learned to on the box of Halloween ghosties and pumpkin lights and other decorations that we were, sadly, putting away. Then he did Fs all over the place! He was f-in the place up. We went for a walk around the block, and he carried a piece of chalk and drew an F every 10 feet.

After the F moment, other things also happened. Scootering. The purchasing of blue lights, the hanging up of them, the witnessing of their circle shadows. The picking out of some new toys after a whole lot of cooperating. Also, the stickering of cooperation charts. The watching of the Muppet Show. The painting of a good dream and a bad dream (both dreams containing a dragon and a hammer; in the bad dream, the dragon is getting you, in the good dream it is saving you). The setting of the sun.

This morning we were up early (saving daylight), and as we plunked on the porchswing to watch the sunrise, in a cool reversal, Finn said, I miss the night, wanna go get the night back. Instead, we wrote. This is the new thing we do, I declare, as of today. I am trying to capitalize on the fact that I tried to explain to Finn that I'm a writer this weekend, and ever since then he says that he is too. So us writers, we get up at 6, and from 6 to 7 is sacred writing/drawing/thinking time. Every 10 minutes we are allowed to show each other our drawings/writings, but otherwise we are quiet and focused on our work. It was spontaneous this morning--but it worked out in a really nice way. And so now I declare it, right here, and hope it will continue to work. Come on, luck plus will-- !