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 The warmth that signaled spring has been replaced by an angry frost.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--

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-- !