in motion

we took a drive
on a one lane road
in the country.

+++

at slow speeds,
little hands reach out the window to pull on leaves
that between their fingers
made the smells come alive.

in the woods

 

 

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Thoreau.

I remember clearly my first introduction to Thoreau and that one line, that in someways, changed the path of my inner life. It was middle school, Mrs. Sobel. I am the kind of person that ties songs and thoughts to specific roads I am driving on while thinking or listening. The freeway underpass at E street. It will always be that place when I hear that line. I must have been repeating it to myself as I drove a few years later in my 65 mustang. I was studying the transcendentalists. That line, those years earlier, clicked at that moment; burned in. 

+++

A strong longing had been pulling at me to get into nature

to clear my head, 

to breathe. 

There is nothing else that so quickly can nourish my soul, focus my attention, shake out the fog of indecision or restlessness, as being in the quiet and solitude of nature. I ran the idea by D, booked the place, packed the bags and we were off the next morning. 

The girls love being in the mountains. They come alive in a different way. 

So do I. 

It feels essential. 

porn you'll love

Cabin in Tenmile, Oregon.

I seriously could spend hours looking through this site.

summer, summed up

the girls and i alone on a huge beach immersed in sand drawings. this is summer, summed up. 

melody

friday afternoon
in the studio.
angled sunlight,
mid-painting
hiatus.
nick drake wafts through the house.
the sound of stacked checkers and giggles,
someone is king.

a look back, to see now

bathing elephants, thailand.

i was that girl.
the one who wandered the world.
the one who woke to days that had no end.
i had no constraints, no timeframe.
i was free to move through life at my own pace.

+++

now i am that woman.
the one who looks back at the life
i used to have.
but also forward to the world i want to show my girls as they grow.
the places, the tales i already have begun to tell.

just yesterday...
while reading, may i bring a friend, "mommy rode on the back of an elephant in the jungle and bathed her in a big muddy river."
while eating samosas for dinner, "yes, i used to eat these in india and yes, i love to try food from all over the world."

i sometimes miss the vastness, the newness, the unexpected...
but with the right eyes
and through their eyes
the everyday is vast,
it is new,
and with all their many questions,
you know,
everything is unexpected.


*inspired by this, which lead me to this, which inspired this post.

the color of fall

via Montmarte

via A Little More Like This

via Ermie

burnt orange. 

xx

the color of fall. 

what can you do with orange today?