whale bath (19 months old!)

discovery (the iowa i love)

i (we) have found a new place. it is in swisher, iowa and it is called the kava house cafe! and it is only 10 minutes from where we live now, which makes it extremely valuable to us. also. swisher,iowa is really one of these magical little towns, nestled in hills with houses close enough to the small-business town square to walk, yet with a cozy rural feel. the perfect rural/small town. at least on this quite magical sunset occasion in which we left the kava house, feeling happy after reading aloud poems and drinking coffee, and just in general making this discovery, and then to drive amongst the houses and see the beautiful sunset! we stopped the car and took a picture.

because play pleases the goddess

we have been trying to carefully plan finn's toys, especially because we have such little space these days. i've been thinking about the idea of 'un-toys' too, inspired by other blogs. well anyway, despite all that, we decided to add to what finn already has--thus, i went on a fun thrifting trip and outfitted finn's kitchen with a bunch of random kitchen utensils (including a melon baller, a potato masher, a tiny whisk:::we love you crowded closet!!). oh also bowls,a whole picnic apparatus, hotpads, and empty maple syrup cans. also! found this awesome dollhouse furniture (a piano! a flowered couch and chair!) at artifacts; we will paint these eventually. and happily,happily.

new ritual

started this week: reading outloud together every night (the whole family)--we're reading the kalevala, finnish epic-myth. [golden eggs & creation, a mother raking the death-river for her son's body parts, and transformings/wizardy battlings.]

mother of geometry

you see i am the mother of geometry; i made a mail organizer [rectangles & numbers]--

i got some new fabric, to curtain & pillow this house--more rectangularity(but when??)

i saw my own blue shadow plus baby, next to corn shadows, & thought,what shapes!--

yet i drew in happy shapelessnesses with finn, well mostly this was him--

i witnessed the end-signal of winter in this dead corn and its parallelogrammed-out shadow hallway infinity--

i saw these plops of paint, oozing out of shape, ready to be painted with--

and then i saw this boy painting the plate (content with moon-shape)--

in a star death shirt to be sure! cosmology, mythology (and to be someday,now, made into a smock)--

and then to witness this wiry ball of corny hair in the crystalline snow (billions of trapezoids are what we see, i believe)--

and finally to stack blocks with this boy, square upon round square upon square that is cubed-- (mother of geometry)---

that our excitement is what carries us [whale-barn]

something strikes me about a barn that i pass everyday in the driving that i do now. i go around the bend, i see it, something strikes about its white peeling agedness, and i always think of a poem right then, and then [now] i can never remember it.

this is why i want to make a movie about everything i see in iowa as i drive along, especially those old pregnant and forgotten whale-barns.

a barn is the whale of the midwest in its landlock.

a whale is the barn in its seabind.

because of you reading this, i figured out how to write it.

[the imprint of a laugh in the book of birth]

a year is made of small yearish pieces called minutes or days or even weeks

yearlong projects i wish to complete by doing small things all the time

*embroidered words everyday or every other day [quilts]
*weekly recordings of me & finn/// sounds, music, poems,
him learning language (for example, the song "hi!" we wrote on piano)[songs]
*weekly vision exchanges with 3 friends [communings]
*of love i should be so full/ book of birth [poems]

[incremental]