a little something

 

I have no idea what this is or where it came from. I found it in my backyard, and I'm prepared to accept it as a gift.

winter triptych

where the earth shows its bones

There's God in the trees, I'm weak in the knees
And the sky is a painful blue
I'd like to look around, but honey, all I see is you.



This is where I come from.
This is how I know what love is.
Happy anniversary Mom & Dad.
(lyrics from Stan Rogers, "45 Years")

sugar and spice and everything nice

A few years ago for Christmas, my dad handed me a wrapped-up present with a tiny version of this poster attached as a gift-tag. It was the first time I'd seen it.
It's pretty much the perfect picture. Joan, my life-long hero. Her gorgeous sisters. String instruments. A regal sofa. Draft dodging.

Those hats.
Floppy brim felt hats are the physical manifestation of "young and in love."

This summer I finally found that hat. So obviously I took my little sister by the arm, sat on a grassy hill and listened to folk music.

(Joanie, you're welcome to join us next year)

For more Joanie, she did a really wonderful performance at Newport's 50th this year. Listen to the NPR recording here. Especially that one part where she mocks Dylan. Revenge eaten cold. 

And finally this, because we must.

les poux sont retour

Just back from Europe, a whirlwind trip that will be processed through countless conversations, while trying new recipes and maybe a few blog posts. After taking so much in, I'm ready to put out. 

A Saturday afternoon at Marche aux Puce, the Paris flea market. There were some really great Eames rockers sitting in the rain, suspicious cartons of cigarettes for sale under the bridge, and countless thousands of vintage postcards. 

Most of all, though, there was this: 

Baby heads and googly eyes and tiny beakers, too!

Edit: Since arriving home, I've been reading Handmade in Paris, a lovely book by Pia Jane Bijkerk about all things fait main. I foolishly forgot to bring to Paris with me. It's worked out well though, because I discovered and fell in love with many of the featured galleries and store-fronts all by myself, and I'm finding out all sorts of background and histories of the places through the book. 

Including this flea market stall, which is connected with a store in Montmartre: Tombees du Camion. Which means "fell off a truck" in English. 

places i can be found

There are some secrets that can only be heard in unlikely voices, that only show themselves on the darkest nights, that can be found only in places you had no business being in the first place.

I found the following pasted on the sides of a Kleenex box.

The Dance
by Oriah

I have sent you my invitation,
the note inscribed on the palm of my hand by the fire of living.
Don't jump up and shout, "Yes, this is what I want! Let's do it!"
Just stand up quietly and dance with me.

Show me how you follow your deepest desires,
spiralling down into the ache within the ache.
And I will show you how I reach inward and open outward
to feel the kiss of the Mystery, sweet lips on my own, everyday.

Don't tell me you want to hold the whole world in your heart.
Show me how you turn away from making another wrong without abandoning yourself when you are hurt and afraid of being unloved.

Tell me a story of who you are,
And see who I am in the stories I am living.
And together we will remember that each of us always has a choice.

Don't tell me how wonderful things will be . . . some day.
Show me you can risk being completely at peace,
truly OK with the way things are right now in this moment,
and again in the next and the next and the next. . .

I have heard enough warrior stories of heroic daring.
Tell me how you crumble when you hit the wall,
the place you cannot go beyond by the strength of your own will.
What carries you to the other side of that wall,
to the fragile beauty of your own humanness?

And after we have shown each other how we have set and kept the clear, healthy boundaries that help us live side by side with each other, let us risk remembering that we never stop silently loving those we once loved out loud.

Take me to the places on the earth that teach you how to dance, the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart.
And I will take you to the places where the earth beneath my feet and the stars overhead make my heart whole again and again.

Show me how you take care of business
without letting business determine who you are.
When the children are fed but still the voices within and around us shout that soul's desires have too high a price,
let us remind each other that it is never about the money.

Show me how you offer to your people and the world
the stories and the songs you want our children's children to remember, and I will show you how I struggle
not to change the world, but to love it.

Sit beside me in long moments of shared solitude,
knowing both our absolute aloneness and our undeniable belonging. Dance with me in the silence and in the sound of small daily words, holding neither against me at the end of the day.

And when the sound of all the declarations of our sincerest
intentions has died away on the wind, dance with me in the infinite pause before the next great inhale of the breath that is breathing us all into being, not filling the emptiness from the outside or from within.

Don't say, "Yes!"
Just take my hand and dance with me.

and i thought only boring people got bored

Living every week like it's Shark Week over here.