a long moment

of time out here on the studio porch, catching internet connection from the neighbor's stream. olive's asleep in the sling, max and zhi were happy and easy on the trampoline for 30 minutes! only one cup of tea was spilled. the time is ending now. i surfed and feel like i wasted my time mostly. wish i'd been writing instead, but hey, maybe next time the allure of an internet connection won't steal me away from a potential moment of creativity. now everyone has joined me on the bench.....


i'm gonna see if a little flower cutting will lure them into the next bit of the morning. this summer cold is about to make me crazy...

pictures....

make me feel. if i need or want to cry a little, i can pretty much count on looking through some old, days or years, pictures to do the trick. am i just so sentimental? and that word, i have been wondering about it. is it like, you are feeling something, but it's really in the mental realm? let's see what it really means.

sen·ti·men·tal adj
1. affected acutely by emotional matters, often to the point of mawkishness
2. displaying too much uncontrolled or self-indulgent emotion
3. appealing to or expressing tender, often romantic, feelings
4. expressing or experiencing tender sadness or nostalgia
5. expressing deep, refined feeling (formal)

i would say i relate to # 4 the most. it's the strange feeling of nostalgia that triggers the tears. and somehow makes me feel as if i am looking at one of the most beautiful moments i have ever experienced. it's a bit like divine homesickness, i must admit, and agree with my friends kathryn and karlton on this. you see, i have a pretty strong case of this sickness, and am working working working to heal myself of it, so that i may live this life in love with the moment i am, not ones i have left behind.

and somehow this brings me to olive. the squirming beautiful love sleeping on my chest in the sling. scanning through all the pictures in my photobooth file, i was transported through our first 5 weeks together, and fully brought to tears. how do pictures have this power over me? is this what my grandmother's fascination with pictures was all about? mawmaw taught about the beauty and fun of looking through photo albums, but i now imagine when she was alone, she sat and cried while she looked. and then after her session, would get up, feeling refreshed and reconnected with her heart, and ready to live in the moment again. maybe it's okay to dip into your divine love of where we came from every now and then, if it has this heart-awakening effect on you. maybe it's good medicine. i am starting to wonder if a day without tears is kind of like a day without laughter....not such a good one. i am really becoming aware of the lightness and freshness in my energy after a few tears have spilled out. i've read somewhere about the specific chemicals in tears, and that you really are releasing pent up stressers and toxins that you're damn glad to get out of your beautiful body.

"Tears," said English poet Alfred Austin, "are the summer showers to the soul."

here are some more amazing quotes about tears. here is something else really cool all about the healing tears bring.

you know, my mawmaw lived a long time, 93 years. she was always known for her deep sentimental tendencies. i bet all those tears kept her free from disease.

and now i am reminded of how babies have a real need to cry, to release all the shock in their tiny bodies, the shock of arriving here on this sometimes foreign planet, the shock of their incarnation and birth, and the shock of having their soul attatched to a body all of a sudden. shocking, shocking stuff. but, i have one question, why don't babies shed tears. i'll find out later.

alright h, it's time to go out to dinner with your husband and infant. have fun, and find the moment you are in, now.