strawberry blue

I spent a few hours today shopping for a crib and stroller with my stunning daughter, a month away from the arrival of her own beautiful daughter.We are getting pretty excited.

Here's the last strawberry from the pint I bought last Sunday at my local farmer's market. I meant to get more today, but we were busy driving from Ikea to Babies-R-Us. This little berry needed its picture taken and I'm happy to report it was delicious!

small ambitions

I'm restless. This blog isn't what I want it to be and I keep thinking I'm going to make changes but can't quite figure out how to implement them here on Blogger, or maybe it's the limitations of my little netbook that are preventing me from progressing. Whatever. I need to make changes, and just altering the background image or layout here doesn't exactly satisfy, you know?

Organizationally, I'd like to be able to separate out photography from my creative writing, with categories for family and maybe other creative projects. Ideally, I'd like to establish a little sideline as a freelance photographer, so developing a website dedicated exclusively to that goal is the better idea. I can see the value of maintaining a blog for family so far away, so I'll continue to post shots of our activities and growth here, but I'm determined to finally get myself some cred as a photographer this summer. So watch this space for updates and news.

I shot these gorgeous 'chokes this morning at our modest little farmer's market here in Irvington. I do still wander with my one-eyed boyfriend when the weather cooperates, and love to shoot up the landscape wherever I am, but would be so cool to occasionally get paid for it! 

Cleaning Thyme

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that the bunches of organic fresh herbs I’d recently bought were beginning to darken in the refrigerator. So I thought I’d try to dry them and see if they could still be used instead of tossing them out, since they weren't too far gone yet. I tied the little stems with kitchen string and hung them on push pins I’d stabbed into my old wooden kitchen cart and waited expectantly for the first couple of hours and then completely forgot about them.

This, it turns out, was a good thing. Usually my impatience tends to cause me to ruin things. Name a thing. My impulsive rush to see how it all turns out has spoiled the endings of perfectly wonderful books, meals, house plants (over-watered), ceramic projects pulled out of the kiln too soon, photographs—hell, even relationships have crashed due to my insistence on knowing what’s coming.

So for some reason, this morning I noticed the little bundles hanging from the cart’s wooden handle and thought, “aha!!” And found a dry spot on the counter and began to roll the bundles between my hands, as the perfectly dried little leaves dropped into a scattered nest of fine twigs and tiny bits. It took quite awhile to sort out the leaves from the twigs and stems, but when I was finished, I’d filled a few little bottles I’d been saving for years—who knows why—with lovely dried herbs to crush into my eggs or marinara sauces. The only thing that could be better would be having grown them myself—which is not really possible since my little balcony gets no direct sunlight.

Anyway, it’s a ridiculously small accomplishment, I’ll admit. Almost embarrassing, really, to write a whole blog post about it. But the pleasure I experienced as I sorted the leaves from the chaff, doing something so peacefully productive and calming was a revelation. So little of my time lately has been spent this way. And that’s what this post is about. I need more peacefully productive and calming activity in my life.

For a long time this blog has been kind of a metaphor for my life, and my infrequent posts reveal just how little interest I have in maintenance anymore. It’s become one more thing that signifies a personal disappointment to me. The truth is, I’m completely uninterested in taking this blog further.

As well, for the past several years I’ve gradually sunk into depressions and a pervasive sense of futility that has crippled me physically and creatively. The diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis has been pretty devastating to me and requires expensive medications with fairly significant side effects that have also led to my increasing isolation and sense of loss. I’m just not the woman I was a few years ago, and I’m not exactly adjusting. A friend once remarked of a mutual acquaintance that she was not “aging well,” and now I’m finding my own circumstances and appearance make that observation particularly piquant.

Okay. It’s true that I’m not aging well. Standing in my kitchen with the morning light streaming in, occupied with a small, homely task came as a powerful reminder that this is what life is made of: small moments of insignificant pleasure taken where we can find them. And when we are lucky enough or determined enough to pursue those moments with clear intention, the reward over time is a fulfilling life.

So I'm ready to pursue fulfillment with clarity and intention, and I don’t know what’s coming, but I'm loving this growing sense of purpose. And it's funny: for once, I’m not hurrying to see how it ends.

NaPoWriMo

Hello. It's been awhile. I've been okay, how about you? April is National Poetry Writing Month, and I'm going to participate in the NaPoWriMo (http://www.napowrimo.net/) event by attempting to write a poem a day for the entire month, starting Sunday. Whoohoo! I'm back.

bird by bird, flower by flower, shot by shot, day by day

"Bird by bird" is a reference to Annie Lamott's book. But you already knew that. I'm slowly adding extra pages of various photo themes to this blog. I'm still trying to find a different path or walk some new ground in the creative side of my mind. It's so easy to get stuck in a single track or preoccupation, self-absorption, fear and worry, or just simple habit. Someday this blog will be a part of an actual website. Not motivated to make that change just yet, but it's coming, along with other changes as well.

I'm sure I posted this shot of an old porch in late afternoon several years ago, but I just stumbled across it again this morning in an old file and still think it's a good one. The heat this weekend has been pretty intense and somehow to my mind at least, this shot seems to capture an essence of that. I know it was a hot afternoon when I shot it, so maybe I'm just projecting that memory into my perceptions. So typically human...

Everywhere I go to check news updates today references the 10th anniversary and memorial observations of the crushing loss of life in New York City on this date. I don't have anything to add. I wish that it had never happened. I wish that our foreign policies were more constructive rather than destructive so it might never have happened. I wish our voices in protest and opposition to the subsequent war-mongering of political and financial interests had been heard and heeded. And I wish now we would stop the killing and the violent rhetoric, stop destroying ourselves and our once noble aspiration to honor the lives of our citizens and global neighbors. I have always thought we could do so much better. You, too? Maybe my memory is just clouding my perceptions, but it seems as though we all thought so once.

Latest Griffin update

He's moving with his mommy to a new apartment closer to Nana's house. Whoohoo! And here's the latest cuteness, making a point about some obsure literary reference to Doc:

Something about contemporary postmodern interpretations' insulting irrelevance to the work of Agee and Wolfe...

birthday and not

Just realized that today would have been my father's 87th birthday, gone these fifteen years now.

I had an abortion on this day in 1978, about a year after Joe and I'd separated, the pregnancy a consequence of a brief, stupid, mutual indulgence. That child would have been about 32 years old today, I guess, but I have never regretted that choice. Not once. Even when I was in agonizing pain from the unanesthetized, state-funded procedure. Not even then. I owed my best effort to my already-here children; another unplanned would have been our undoing, since we all depended exclusively on my earned income.

Having the procedure on my dad's birthday was incidental, and a bit weird and inconvenient, and became a secret I never revealed to him, but it has also served as a reminder every May 23rd that sometimes making a hard choice, doing something eternally painful and sad is still worth it all this time afterward.

How many women write that story? Usually the story you hear from the media is the trumpeting of religious zealots and their pimped remorse; almost never do you hear from the women who chose to end a pregnancy and continue to feel it was the right decision. Well, here is one.

Goodbye March 2011! Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out...

And don't come back.

how to turn something ugly into eye candy?

Oh, I don't know. Sometimes the magic just shows up.

it's one of the things that makes me interesting

I love to shoot portraits and nudes. Not necessarily at the same time.

our little berserker

Just want to post this for posterity: Oscar is in town! Oh, and his parents came along too... More later.

Andrew MacArthur, 1955-2010

What I wanted to say is that Andrew died. His suffering ended and now the poetry will change without him.

I have been reading about his illness and its impact on his friend, noko, in her online diary. Andrew cared for her, called her his best friend, appreciated her constant attention to his needs, her consistent accommodation to his requirements. Noko wrote of her experience of Andrew's illness, her suffering over his long exit, knowing it would be spring, and so it is, and now she is very alone with few friends and no children; so much of her life tied up with his.

Andrew didn't want to write about his illness, instead he focused entirely on his poetry and email correspondence with a suddenly ardent old flame, trusting noko to get the narrative right. And over the months of reading her online diary I've come to feel a kinship with her for loving someone so complicated; her years of devotion, her romantic love unrequited, but always valued and trusted by Andrew anyway. And I can relate. Finding myself identifying with her grief, I can't help anticipating inevitable losses of my own, a memento mori in kind.

When I started reading poems in Portland's open mic scene, Andrew was an encouraging presence who was steadfast in his generosity to less experienced poets. Though he largely quit attending the open mics a few years ago, he continued to write, of course, and maintained connections and friendships with several others who were still active in the scene.

I've looked through my endless files of photos of Portland poets and haven't come on a single shot of Andrew. I have portrait after portrait of poets whose tenure on the scene was so brief that I can barely recall their names, but not a single photo of the tall, soft-spoken gentleman in dark colors, smoking in the back.

renaissance muse

I think I spelled that right--I've misspelled renaissance since I first encounted the word.

Isn't life rich with opportunities to alter your perceptions? When I first met Starlite Motel I dismissed her quickly as a flashy lightweight--which was an appalling mistake! As I have gotten to know her better over the past couple of years, she consistently impresses me with her acute intuition and generous wisdom. She is a bit flashy, with an enviable sense of rockin' personal style! But her substantial authenticity and depth reminds me of amythyst or even aquamarine: faceted and brilliant and beautiful. I'm loving this shot of her and her almost-here daughter.

another Sunday

Grayson spent a few hours with me on Easter. We watched "Ponyo" together--a film we'd both wanted to see for quite awhile. And we snarfed Easter treats and had dinner together until his dad came to pick him up. He's such a good boy and I'm so lucky to have a fine relationship with him. We hid and found eggs around my apartment (Oregon. Rain. Typical.), took pictures of each other indoors and told terrible jokes. Equilibrium.

just sayin'

I live alone. I wake up alone with my dreams and unfinished conversations, and all the rest of the consequences of accumulating years. Every morning I pad out to the kitchen to brew coffee and then sit quietly in the dark window, watching the sky grow lighter, listening to the radio. This morning the routine shifted subtly as I listened instead to a haunting and graceful CD by cellist Zoe Keating. Since it's a workday, after an hour I had to shower and get ready, but music drifted softly through the rooms as I dressed and made my lunch, a tuna sandwich and an apple, and poured the rest of the coffee into a thermos. Locking the front door on my way to the bus, I often have a sense of disappointment that I'm not staying home, lengthening out the peace inside.

I envy women who have the ease of a satisfying marriage, the reliable company and interest of someone who matters, and most enviable of all, the added income from a second earner in the house! It's natural to get lonely when solitude is so reinforced. Silence is silence. Nothing filling the air but one-sided community from the television, internet or radio, but sometimes even that false offering is a relief. I have the frequent balm of friendships and meaningful work, my life is not bleak in the least! But solitude can become isolation quickly when you allow others' expectations of your self-sufficiency to rule your own priorities and beliefs, and don't give yourself permission to go slower, be kinder to yourself. I am learning this lesson daily.

What's really hard is filling all that quiet solitude with purpose, instead of collapsing at the end of a 10-hour workday (actually 12 hours, portal-to-portal) and letting the television dictate my attention until I'm barely awake enough to send myself to bed.

What's really hard is returning to my own thoughts and ideas--allowing them to recirculate to the surface of my conscious mind, and out through the ends of my fingers onto the page--when I'm exhausted and my hands are stiff.

What's really hard is doing it anyway. And you know what? I did it. My book is finished and now with the publishers. And I have another idea for a book, so my mornings will still be softly, personally my own private conversation with memory and music and ideas, dreaming images for my camera. And my evenings will be whatever I can make them. And sometimes that's really hard.

grandsons

Double holiday happiness: Oscar & Grayson at Nana's house.

A Continuing List of My Best Stuff

Creosote, sawdust, and charcoal,
campfire coffee,
morning light slanting in smoke
through evergreens;
the view from Lone Pine into the sudden hot
basin of the Southwestern Desert;
ice-plant spikes whipped against bare thigh,
the sunburn blaze of Mission Bay,
the furious wriggle of small stingrays underfoot;
losing my mother’s tourmaline ring
in the clipped grass of a neighbor’s endless lawn;
river pilots hopping freighters downstream
from the Astoria-Megler Bridge, storm or dry,
the same view in the fog, Washington disappearing
and reappearing, a ship run aground on the Columbia Bar;
Christmas shopping in the snow;
swimming naked at midnight in the neighbor’s pool
when they were away;
the sweet knock of intoxication with musicians;
sex on the beach near Yachats, or was it Reedsport
in the middle of the day, in sight of the road;
laddering sixteen feet into an apple tree
at five-thirty in the morning, picking fast;
standing-room only at my mother’s memorial;
silver rings with polished stones;
the nest of my children, and then theirs, burrowed in.