Some nights I wait with an empty cup

Some nights I wait with an empty cup for the water to boil in the blue metal pot.
Some nights there is too much to define: the places where I begin and end, where my heart leaves off loving and begins needing unsayable things that make me flutter like winnowed chaff in the wind.
I […]

13 months and running

Dear Bean,
Today was one of those days I’d prefer, mostly, to forget. You started screaming practically the minute you woke up this morning—after sitting bolt upright and immediately pointing to, and fiercely wanting, every off-limit item on my night stand (a glass of water, a pen, nail clippers). You wailed your way through getting dressed, […]

Dislocation

I just finished this painting, and am fascinated by how it turned out. The process of painting is so organic for me: far more wildly right brained than writing is. I start with a canvass, and just push paint around. I let the background sit for a couple of days, there on my easel in […]

Self Portrait Tuesday: Time #2

Me as an 8 year old: Lanky as a bean pole with scratched knees, and sun blonde hair. Riding a red wagon down a washed out gully, full tilt. Climbing loquat and eucalyptus trees up to their highest branches, never falling. Rolling down the long stretch of grassy hill again and again and again. Keeping […]

Pictures from my kitchen tonight

Dinner with friends. Two one-year-olds running around the livingroom waving kitchen utensils. Adult conversation & good wine. Pizza deliverd, and ripe avocados. Fresh raspberries for desert with vanilla ice cream and brownies DH made while I was out on a early evening run. (It was warm enough outside to run in shorts!) Cappucinos. Laughter. Then […]

It’s starting to feel like home

I spend the day pulling nails, removing plank after plank from the barn board on the walls in the living room and foyer. I wear leather work gloves, old pink corduroys, and a dust mask. Particles float in the air like plankton. Each piece of wood is old and feels light and brittle. Some splinter […]

Wednesday Mosaic

We eat sweet ataulfo mango scored into cubes and eaten right from the peel with our fingers, the sticky juice getting everywhere. Bean runs round and round the coffee table coming back each time for more, his cheeks flecked with the yellow fruit. We’re both grinning. The sun hits the back of my neck and […]

Self Portrait Tuesday: Time #1

I ran 11 miles today. It felt like an eternity and I wanted to give up many more than eleven times, but I didn’t. I chose to run indoors after my last long run left me chilled to the bone, but regretted my decision. It was sunny outside even though it was cold, and the […]

Snow & sky: pictures from our land

Waxing moon

Fence post at the tree line

Tracks in the woods.

Our uplowed snowy driveway.

Field weeds.

Winding road.

Mt. Mansfield at sunset.

Snowy day

We woke up to snow—powdery inch upon inch making everything sparkling and white. When the sidewalks were plowed, the snow came up to my knees on either side, and all day fat dreamy flakes drifted down.
Sometime in the past month Bean has connected the word “snow” with snow, and today when I said […]