a birthday shirt

made for zhi's #4! (way back in july... we might as well be in antarctica now as far as i'm concerned with the temperature now in the 40s in the morning)...  this was so satisfying to make, late at night, in 2 consecutive sittings, one to choose fabric and pattern, and cut, and the next for the construction....made even more fun with david hanging out balking at how many patterns i have stashed away,  or doing something on his laptop right in the vicinity.  

here we are out back of the trident, where zhi asked to have a birthday tea party.  my girl.  (this might be a tradition now, cause she asked for this same thing last year)    in the above pics, she has her hands in the drying position for the glittery nail polish that mimi just applied.   mimi showered her, at zhi's request, with all sparkly things in this treasure chest.....the glitter glue is now all over many things in our house, and i've learned to love it somehow.  something about the freedom it represents to me, the wild love zhi uses her sparkly glue with.  and now there are glittery glue mounds to brighten my day in all sorts of random places where her art has dried, yet dripped.  i have tried to scrape them off of a few things, but on the dish towels and baskets it doesn't budge.  

i love this shirt on her, and used up all of the  1/2 yard, which was all i had of this fabric that i bought in a huge fabric buying phase i had a couple years ago.  it felt so good to find this perfect use for it.  i mean, does it say 4 year old girly birthday or what?  and same with the pattern i had stashed away for a year.  using stuff in my stash makes being a craft-pack-rat feel more like being a resourceful squirrel, just planning ahead for these exact times.

female pain-body

hello pain body.  how nice of you to invite me for a visit!  the female collective pain-body is so deep and treacherous, i feel honored to have the strength to survive it every month....which i barely do.  barely.   my family needs armor for this time of the month....or better yet, i do, because it feels as if i am being attacked at every turn, either by not being respected, listened to, or loved.  i know this isn't completely true, but i associate all dissonance in relationships with these feelings at this time of the month.  ANYWAYS!!  no, seriously, PMS needs to be respected in this patriarchal culture....that's probably how it was created it in the first place.  i keep thinking of the orca whales we learned about on a whale watching boat in vancouver, and how they are totally a matriarchal species.  and the oldest female whale in the family we saw was 93!  all the whales in her family traveled with her throughout their lives, even with her old age, they stayed with her, she was their leader.  if obama wins, michelle will be the real leader, just from behind the scenes.....that's what i'm feeling.   

like this sunflower, women have within them the power to bloom physically.  we all, males and females, have it emotionally, spiritually, mentally, but physically, women can actually bloom with new life, assuming they engage in a mating ritual.  and along with this physical ability,  women also have the ability to bleed out ghosts from the past with each month they do not begin the process of blooming.   it is so  powerful to have this ability, a magic of sorts.  natural magic.  the cleansing and purification that happens with each bleed makes a new and fresh place for fertility of all kinds to grow with abundance.....

it does not feel very pretty to be associating with the collective female pain-body.  but it is very pretty deep red blood that flows freely from our inner ocean.  it even smells like the ocean, kind-of like seaweed.  i love this smell.  i like to catch the blood in a cup (sometimes even in my hand) and take it outside to give it back to the mother, to nourish the plants around our home.  i like to paint with it, and .....just kidding!!  but once i can get through the pain-body experience, i can see how clearing this part of the female moon cycle is, and how what we release is similar to the scraps of food we compost....it is extremely nourishing and full of life-giving nutrients for the next cycle of life on earth.   the earth will provide me, if i am lucky, with the nutrients to grow and evolve through another cycle, and i will return the richness back to her soil, where it all begins again.  i feel extreme gratitude for this experience, once i am through thrashing around in the sad and traumatized collective female pain-body, that is.

.When the heart grieves over what it has lost, the spirit rejoices over what it has found. 

  – Sufi proverb

the county fair...

we were so excited to go to this fair.  we talked about the rides a lot before we got there.  especially the motorcycle one.  we parked on the opposite end of the fair from the rides, so we visited with some farm animals first, of course, as we made our way over.  JUST as we got to  the motorcycle ride, it started raining very hard.  too hard for the rides to run.  max didn't get over his disappointment until we got home 45 minutes later, and told him as a consolation prize, we were going to play a video on BEARS!!  (nice to have that up my sleeve).  and what do you know....we were visited by a bear a few days later, and it decided a good spot to poop would be right out front of our bedroom window.  after eating all the peaches on our tree.  

as we were leaving the fair, there were sirens going in all directions because there were some funnel clouds spotted nearby.  i asked david as we were driving away, what would we do if we saw one.  he said we would just drive in the other direction quickly, because they only go about 35 miles an hour.  i don't know if he really knows that for sure.  lately i've been calling him on some of the information he gives me, just like, 'how do you know that?'....and there have been a couple times too many where he can't tell me.  so i go and check out his info on line or in a book and yeah, he's just making shit up.  ha!  is this a male species trait, or what?  trying to puff themselves up a bit, maybe?

a book report.

Housekeeping by marilynne robinson book report……

 

 

These are my favorite passages, after reading this book for the first time.

 

-----My mother was happy that day, we did not know why.  And if she was sad the next, we did not know why.  It was as if she righted herself continually against some current that never ceased to pull.  She swayed continuously, like a thing in the water, and it was graceful, a slow dance, a sad and heady dance.    Page 213

 

I don’t need to say anything more about why and how this touched me.

 

But I do want to send out a big powerful prayer to ask for any and all assistance in freeing me and any others in my beloved earth family, all 6 billion of us, who suffer from our own versions of this sad and heady dance.  That sounds so cheesy to me right now, asking for help in a single sentence, for all of us, so simply.  But why not!  To hell with my fear of cheese.

 

 

-----I have never distinguished readily between thinking and dreaming. I know my life would be much different if I could ever say, this I have learned from my senses, while that I have merely imagined.   I will try to tell you the plain truth.      Page 215-216

 

The plain truth.   That is what I am in love with, and have the hardest time myself in knowing when I have moved beyond sensing, and slipped into storytelling.  It happens so easily, so naturally.  And it is sometimes impossible to know the plain truth because I am so involved in my stories.  So what ruthie did to attempt telling the plain truth, was simply state what happened.  And Not what was going through her head when it happened.  That is a smart way to go about revealing the plain truth, giving it a chance to breathe on its own. Giving yourself some space for a moment, or as long as you can manage, until you’re off and running, the master of story that you are.  I would just like to remember and stay clear about what really happened, and when my mind stepped in to fluff things up.   That sounds like it could be very helpful to me and my innate abilty to complicate and color things to the point where I no longer know where I started or where I am going or what I am doing in general.  Oh yeah, breathing?

 

------between darkness and water the wind was as sour as a coin, and I wished utterly to be elsewhere, and that and the moonlight made the world seem very broad.  Sylvie had no awareness of time.  For her, hours and minutes were the names of trains- we were waiting for the 9:52.  Sylvie seemed neither patient nor impatient, just as she seemed neither comfortable nor uncomfortable.  She was merely quiet, unless she sang, and still, unless she pulled us outward from the bridge.  I hated waiting.  If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation.  I expected- an arrival, an explanation, an apology.  There had never been one, a fact I could have accepted, were it not true that, just when I had got used to the limits and dimensions of one moment, I was expelled into the next and made to wonder again if any shapes hid in its shadows.  That most moments were substantially the same did not detract at all from the possibility that the next moment might be utterly different.  And so the ordinary demanded unblinking attention.  Any tedious hour might be the last of its kind.    Page 165-166

 

Wholly holy fuck.  i am deeply in love with this passage. Is this woman, ms robinson, a mystic or what?

 

 

-----I have often wondered what it seemed like to Sylvie to come back to that house, which would have changed since she left it, shifted and settled.  I imagine her with her grips in her bare hands, walking down the middle of the road, which was narrowed by the banks of plowed snow on either side, and narrowed more by the slushy pools that were forming at the foot of each bank.  Sylvie always walked with her head down, to one side, with an abstracted and considering expression, as if someone were speaking to her in a soft voice.  But she would have glanced up sometimes at the snow, which was the color of heavy clouds, and the sky, which was the color of melting snow, and all the slick black planks and sticks and stumps that erupted as the snow sank away.

   How must it have seemed to step into the narrow hallway which still kept (as it seemed to me) a trace of the rude odor that the funeral flowers had begun to make before nona could bring herself to throw them away.  Her hands and feet must have ached from the warmth.  I remember how red and twisted her hands looked, lying in the lap of her green dress, and how she pressed her arms to her sides.   I remember that, as she sat there in a wooden chair in the white kitchen, smoothing her borrowed-looking dress and working her feet out of her loafers, sustaining all our stares with the placid modesty of a virgin who has conceived, her happiness was palpable.     Page 48-49

 

mmmmmmmm.  I have read this many times. It reveals more to me every time.  I especially like coming back to this passage, after having read the book, and seeing that Sylvie was introduced as a happy woman.  Because as you get to know her more intimately, and you discover how removed from society she likes to be, it is hard not to wonder and imagine that she is very unhappy.  And now I wonder actually if Lucille is the most unhappy, how she ran from the blatant differences (or were they differences at all, or just aspects of herself that she could not get comfortable with?) of her aunt and sister into a life focused on conforming.  And when we conform, what are we conforming to actually?  Someone, or a group of people, who seem to have traits we desire?  My question is are we trying to be less like ourselves, and more like others, or are we honestly trying to evolve?

 

 i appreciate this book so much.  thank you ms. robinson for writing it.

 

8/4/8

 

 

simplicity is once again on my mind. What keeps me from it?  Right now, I can identify stuff as my main obstacle.  Too much stuff everywhere, material, non-living, often cotton based, things.  Meaning clothes, but also toys, both kid and adult.  I had a big cleaning spree this spring and weeded through a lot of books, that’s the other space taker-upper in our house.    Why why why is it so hard for me to get the amount of things in our house to an amount that feels simple?  I am a typical American in this way, I realize.  A consumer.  But also, I am a collector.  I have a hobby of visiting thrift stores, and bringing home things we might be psyched to have one day, even if it’s in 20 years.  I guess this might be okay if we lived in a bigger house.  But we live in a 1400 square foot home, no basement or attic.  There are 5 of us, and 2 cats.  And because I am developing this new need for space and simplicity, things are not fitting.  I am ansy to clear more out now.  I am excited too.  And then I go to do it and I am kind-of overwhelmed…I am flooded with memories attatched to everything.  Whaaaa whaaaaa.  I am so sentimental.  And I think of the potential in every thing.  I recently cleared out the bath tub toy basket.  The kids never wore the goggles or played with them, so out they went.   I wasn’t thinking about how they were david’s swinning goggles, and cost $40, and that it was almost summer.   So, when I get myself to purge, this is a risk I have to be okay with.

I am.  I will pay for space, is how I am going to look at it.  Purge ….i need help, I want help.  I want clarity so I can make snap decisions I won’t regret.  Once I purged a bunch of old art work I did in college, and of course I’ve missed it numerous times.  I hate that.  But it is a risk I am willing to take again and again in order to achieve a sense of space and freedom in our home.  And now, to top it off, max has apparently developed a card catalog of every toy he’s ever owned, and randomly remembers them, sometimes 3 years after they were purged, and I have to go through a whole run-around with him about it’s absence.  I can handle that though it is annoying to have to.

 

Ah, deep breath.  Deep clear, spacious, free breath.

lucky

I am lucky.  In many many many ways.  Lucky.  Look at my babes.  That right there is as lucky as it gets.  But there’s more.  We have a house, and food, and water, and a toilet.  We have some free time.  I can make my daughter a shirt for her birthday with beautiful fabric from japan, on a stellar antique sewing machine I 

scored at an estate sale.  I have a husband who loves me.  And I love him.  We don’t always see eye to eye.  But we try our damndest  to keep our marriage together.  We don’t have sex really at all these days, but we are trying to get back to a place where sexiness flows between us.  We are not just ignoring the issue.  I want a new tattoo, and I can get one.  I have a sister, who is presently challenging my abilities to keep my mouth shut and refrain from just telling her what to do in her life situation right now, as if she would listen even if I did.  But, I have a sister.  That is lucky.  I had a grandmother who was definitely the all-time best grandmother the world has ever known.  Okay, now that is LUCKY. I have a mother.  And she knows how to knit.  I had a father, and I know without a doubt that he loved me with all of his heart.  I had the coolest best friend a teenage girl could ever hope for, and we kind-of still keep in touch.  I now have the coolest best friends an adult woman could ever hope for, and we love each other.  We really care about each other.  I get to visit with horses every week.  I get to pet horses.  I had breakfast in bed 2 days in a row this week.  I have a spiritual teacher who guides me through situations I swear are impossible when they arise.  I have friends who are older and wiser and share their wisdom and heartfelt love with me freely, I can see it in their eyes and feel it in my own heart.  I can afford to buy organic food.  I am so so so lucky.  I am so so s o sos soosososo so so so oh so grateful for this abundance.  I am in a body, having a human experience.  I can feel people.  I can touch.  I can smell flowers, and I can watch my baby learn how to smell flowers.  I can see.  And I can choose where to look usually.  I can hear, and I can use earplugs too.  I got to have 2 VBACS.  I have paints, and things to paint.  I have instruments and a voice….i can download a new cd right when I decide I want to hear something new.  I have a 4 year old daughter who gave me a necklace she made me first thing this morning.  I have a son who is going to kindergarten this year, who doctors told me may never recover from a brain injury he had in utero.  I can read any book I want.  I can breastfeed anywhere I want.  I can swim.  I can cry.  I have a voice, and I can tell people if they are hurting me to stop.   I am strong, and strong-willed, and can choose to be steam-rolled or not.  I have awareness, and know that if I am being steamrolled, I am allowing it to happen.  I can have a glass of wine.  I can smoke the forbidden weed.  My great-great grandmother survived the trail of tears, her parents did not.  She was lucky enough to be adopted by the whites who forcibly stole her tribe’s land right out from under them.  She grew up and had a family, it doesn’t look like she was a happy woman from the picture I’ve seen of her, but she created life, and I am grateful for her life.  I am now a woman because she lived.  My sister is growing a baby now, whose name is juniper grace.  I can’t wait to meet her.  

 

Sometimes I know people feel jealous of me.  I have to work to stay aware of what I’m grateful for, of what I’m simply lucky to have.  Like, Today.  A july day.  A hot dry bright day.   I have to work to keep from thinking of all the ways I am not lucky.  That may sound so petty, coming from a girl who really has it all, but there’s always more.  The grass is always greener if you look at it like that.  And I have to work to see my grass as beautiful and the perfect shade of green just the way it is.  I do.  If you know me well, you know I work my butt off to stay out of depression and apathy.  We all have to work.  We are all related this way.

yes!!!!!

 

I got the last one.  The very last one.  I just barely made it in time, but I did, and I got one.  There were 3700 of them.  The first girl who got one was a millionare, and it was no surprise, that the next 2300 of the people that got one were millionaires too.  But a few of us poor ones in the 6 billion people who knew of these being up for grabs,  somehow  timed our selves exactly right, and showed up at the only moment possible for us to get through, when for some reason everyone else had to pee or something, and we just happened to dial in at that exact right time!  It was incredible, totally insane that we got through and got one, us!  Us!  Some poor ones!!!!  We got some for us!!!!!  some water.  that's all we wanted.  it's all we want.