Thinking about renovations. Not in the literal sense but more as a theme in my life right now. With the arrival of Astrid I feel a need to reconsider my priorities. A need to find new ways to use my time and a new approach to working on projects. What I thought was the end of everything as I knew it is now presenting itself as a wonderful freeing. It's true I don't "have time" as I did before. But it's still possible to use the scattered bits of it I get.

write more as a letter

Renovations

What helps is asking myself: "What can I learn from this?"

life in its biggest renovation stage

when renovations are going on we improvise. drink out of whatever cup is available

allow mess and clutter and chaos

how to do things in short time bits

we thunk about how things could be used/done set up diffenrently

we think about what's functional

reconsidereing priorities

wanting less rather than more,

a necessary simplifying

she's awake again

jansons katastrophe quote

What is being a mother like?

Astrid holds on tight to my finger while i walk around with her in the snugli, reading to her.

this little person sleeping on my lap right now has changed my life. disoriented, living in moment

she's asleep on my lap and seems like such a självklarhet: an obvious thing to exist. and yet, 4 months ago, she wasn't here. she was rolling and kicking in my belly. and 9 months before that...?

but now she BELONGS with me. with us. so much so that it seems she has been with us always.

it's the beginning of her first spring. i want to write her a postcard every day. for later. for me or for her?

time is different now. it is longer and shorter. longer- the days are long and her patience for just having me walk around holding her looking out windows, or being read to. the length of thhe constant activiies of our days. of the future days...

shorter-little slots of time in which to think, dream, create, or accomplish practical tasks.

voice- is differnt. function of voice to reach her from a distance to calm her when i cant reach to put a hand on her. voice as stretching to reach, reaching.

Shake

Sunlight is falling and slanting against the wall and across the floors. The time has changed and it stays light much later into the evenings now. This creates a restlessness and a need for renewal. I want to shake things off like a dog shakes off water. Shake off all my old tries and old ways, all my heavy obstacles and traps I have set up for myself. I feel a need to find ways around those old things. To outsmart myself. I'm sure I've been asking myself the wrong questions. I've feared the wrong things.

There was a snowfall last night. We woke to a white world. I went out to get wood first thing in the morning. It's satisfying to make footprints in deep snow but at the same time a shame to mar the pristine expanse of it.

The day before I was out walking with Astrid in her stroller and I was shedding my toque and mitts in the warm afternoon sun. I was pushing the stroller through mud and picking branches to put in a vase at home and tie feathers to. (decorative Easter branches called påsk-ris in Sweden)
So very March for the seasons to flip back and forth like this.

Anyway, I want to start this spring as if it's the start of the new year. Clean off surfaces, pare everything down to the essential. I crave a bare simplicity. An airiness in which I can breathe and let new ideas float by.

Picture a pine table, free of any objects but a bowl of rising bread dough. Picture a windowsill with a small jar of flowers on it. Picture the line where the water meets the sky. But don't call it the horizon. Name it something new.

Straw Into Gold

Went for a walk on the beach today. There was a very cold wind. The beach grass had been bleached out by all the winter weather. It was this crazy vibrant yellow colour like the straw spun into gold in Rumpelstiltskin. I had Astrid in the carrier with my coat around her. We went back on a path through the woods. We were breaking the ice propped up along the grass of the path as we went along, which was very satisfying.

Now it’s later, Astrid and I are at home. I stood with her in the carrier in front of the window for a long time, listening to music and watching the clouds turn from bright pink to dusty grey-violet. Watching the waves rolling in endlessly. It stays light outside quite late these days. It’s something I’m still not used to in February after all those years of Swedish winters. It’s wonderful but today it made me feel uneasy. It made me feel the time to hibernate is over and the time for action is here. It made me feel I can’t hide from things: what work I have to do, what I should be and become. Uneasiness that I feel the need for action but don’t yet know what that action is. That the time is here but I don’t know time for what.

Do I feel like change is coming? Isn’t change always coming? There’s no hiding from change, but sometimes I don’t want it. I want the stillness and safety of now. This pocket of time, with my baby close to me, and the red amaryllis blooming on the windowsill. It’s in full bloom; it doesn’t have a hint of decay yet. No sign of its time being past. Its time is simply now, and it is perfect now. I love this now: watching the wind in the trees outside, hearing the woodstove crackle, hearing Astrid cooing, watching the gentle lamplight falling against the wall.

Tucked In

It's snowing. It's snowing the kind of snow where it looks like there's a snow machine dropping fake snow from the sky. Pretty, fluffy, seperate flakes, falling quickly with no wind. Straight down.

Lots of time has gone by. There's been all that happens with each month and with each season. Swimming in the lake in August, arms moving through the water. Fireflies blinking on and off all over the hill behind the house. (Watching them knowing you're here in order to see them) Quick cold dunks in the ocean and the fresh start it always brought.

And when did summer turn to Fall? With its leaves flying the meaning of extravagance. With its crisp fresh breath. Was it when the darker evening wrapped itself closer?

Unexpected animals slipped into the stories of our days. The fox, the rabbits, the pheasants with their comic cowardly squacks and startled departures. Two days spent watching a new fawn learn to walk, its mother nervous and nearby. Its unsure legs and stubborn continuing.

November brought starkness and pared down the landscape to red berries clear and simple alongside cold walks. All the chilly elegance of frosts on windows.

December's bustle arrived made of wrapping paper, reds and greens, chocolate, ribbons, and a tall, surreal, red amaryllis. Snow sneaking back into the everyday until it belonged again on ledges and branches. Until we expected it for our footprints down the path from house to car.

Of course there's been something different amidst the rest this year. Nestled into the seasons and days was our baby growing: inside, snug, mysterious, shifting and kicking and listening.

Slowly I want to think over her arrival. Slowly I'll file away the details of her arrival.

It began like that though: tucked into seasons changing ever so slightly every day.

What dreary weather today. Ice pellets, wind, and grey.

Have been in all day with Astrid, who is now asleep on my chest in the carrier. Staying close to the woodstove and to the opposite of outside: warm yellow lamplight.

The last days of January always seem to pass in a blur of insignificance. Days less focused on than those of the busy cosy rush of December. Nowhere near spring yet, in fact, winter is just settling in.

What do I want this winter to be? This year?

Of course in a way it is laid out for me: love and care for my new little daughter. That is my most important plan for the coming months. It's an occupation I find thrilling and fascinating, and one that gives me immense joy. I want to spends lots of time writing about her, reading to her, playing with her, walking with her, talking to her. I want to be with her in the present of each day and enjoy her I want to fully experience and explore what it is to be a mother, and I want to redefine myself to include this new role without excluding myself and my creative development.

But even though she is just two months old, I feel the need to keep sight of myself by doing something else as well. Small things: writing a few words, making some little messy collages, keeping on with jotting down ideas and striving to work along on "making visible" my ideas.

What I hope for this year are the same things I've wanted for awhile:

-CLARITY in terms of what I most want to spend my time and energy doing (besides being a Mamma). I want to be able to visualize what I want to do. Is it writing? Making things and collage, silkscreening, sewing? How can I know what is most important to me in terms of what I want to accomplish and how I want to spend my days? What I feel my work should be?

-COURAGE to try my ideas for books and projects rather than talk about them. I am so sick of always talking about but never doing. Courage to allow myself to experiment and play creatively without thinking about financial appropriateness/payback.

-A better WORK ETHIC when it comes to my own projects, not just jobs for money.

-

Details:

-coffee getting cold

-cloudy and windy

-moody ocean in muted dark blues and greys

-messy house, dirty dishes stacked up

-baby moving in my belly

-

Half here

Deedee got back from India. She stopped by work to say hi. I like how when someone first gets home from somewhere far away they’re still half in that other place. They stand in front of you, their body wholly on the ground in front of you. But you know that inside they are still there.

She was so recently there, hearing the bells on pack yaks in Nepal, hearing the traffic in Calcutta, feeling the heat and the dust and the smog on the streets. There is still all around her the mist of another language, other food, and the imprints left on and inside of her: Mount Everest swept into fog and children acting silly and charming.

Half here

Deedee got back from India. She stopped by work to say hi. I like how when someone first gets home from somewhere far away they’re still half in that other place. They stand in front of you, their body wholly on the ground in front of you. But you know that inside they are still there.

She was so recently there, hearing the bells on pack yaks in Nepal, hearing the traffic in Calcutta, feeling the heat and the dust and the smog on the streets. There is still all around her the mist of another language, other food, and the imprints left on and inside of her: Mount Everest swept into fog and children acting silly and charming.

Half here

Deedee got back from India. She stopped by work to say hi. I like how when someone first gets home from somewhere far away they’re still half in that other place. They stand in front of you, their body wholly on the ground in front of you. But you know that inside they are still there.

She was so recently there, hearing the bells on pack yaks in Nepal, hearing the traffic in Calcutta, feeling the heat and the dust and the smog on the streets. There is still all around her the mist of another language, other food, and the imprints left on and inside of her: Mount Everest swept into fog and children acting silly and charming.

A frog and an elephant

Today I choked on a dried cranberry, argued, saw a snake, walked for an hour and a half carrying heavy bags because of a missed ride, got rocks in my shoes, and welcomed the breeze when a dump truck went by.

I also went swimming in a warm lake with silky bracken water, played with a cute baby with chubby legs, and ate a marvelous plum in the sunshine.

I wished, while walking down the driveway to work, that something magical would come out of the woods and cross my path. Something that would make misunderstandings and disagreements fade, embarrassed, into the background. A seal on its way back to the water, maybe. Or a sudden swarm of huge blue butterflies. Or a huge frog and an elephant, deep in conversation.

Wet tents

I went for a walk in the fog after work. I passed the beach and remembered about beach peas. The ocean smelled strong. The beach in the fog reminded me of what summer smelled like when I was a kid. It also smelled like cut grass, watermelon, wet rose petals (used as confetti, perfume, decoration on mud pies…) wild strawberries, and wet tents early in the morning after rain in the night.

Today: a field of irises and contours of islands in the fog. The repetition of work, the sort of petty satisfaction of accomplishing small tasks.

Small (the baby-to-be) quietly with me all the time. What can you hear, Small? What does it sound like to you when I unroll the packing tape? When I talk to you? There’s the whole world, Small. This whole entire world that you’re going to come to. That you’ll get to find out about, little by little. It’s so full, Small. Full of big things and little things. Sounds and colours and ants and words and dogs and trees. Happiness and confusion and quiet and noise and cherries and cheese and bumble bees and love and other people and houses and boats and the knocking on of doors and the turning on and off of lights, and breakfasts, and skies, and slanting sun on the floor, and islands looking mysterious in the fog and wood and metal and cloth and paint and cameras and paper.

Needing and wanting and having and getting and the wide open space beyond all of that, that space you can let back inside of you despite all the clutter and trouble and misunderstandings.

Who what when where why

What have the last months been? Where? Here’s a new place in time, let’s earmark this page by leaving a few traces. And let those months in a row turn into the moths of these summer nights. It’s okay to let time pass. It’s okay to let things shift under the surface and gradually feel out the new formation. Tectonic plates shift, and things shift for us too.

Is it a news update I want to give? Or is it something outside of the who what when where why?

Something secret and small. Something I can give to you like a secret. Do the time and the place always matter? What is there besides the time and the place? People’s postures, elbows resting on tables, clues in the movements of hands. I read that a clue originally meant a ball of twine, something you could unravel.

There was an old house and a new house, there was a warm lake, there were the lost and found wallet and car keys. Sauce around the mouth and bowl after bowl of strawberries. The carrying in and out of suitcases. Muddy sleep on planes. Boats passing with Swedish flags and red houses with white trim. Fairytale forests and soft fields. The lupines and irises which came and went. The flutterings of someone new in my belly, at unexpected times. A little one growing, becoming, developing a presence and a belonging to us.

It clouds over, the children who were running and yelling have gone inside. There are bees inside and out. We’re cranky, we’re laughing, we’re looking at books.

I read that whales dream. I read that plants, like people, run fevers when they’re sick. And the chamois, a goat like mountain antelope, can balance on a point of rock the size of a quarter.

Fountain in a mall

Spring always makes things possible like this. The old grass is yellow and the trees are muted dark green. Then there all the shades of brown and the moody grey blue of the ocean. The grey of bare branches. Everything muted to the same tone. But the possibilities are under all that, invisible. It's a time for using your imagination.

I want the clarity of spring, I want the strength of spring, I want the clear form of spring. But I should remember its muddiness and maybe want muddiness too. The haziness of grey days, the fog and blurred lines of rainy days. The clarity is often hiding; green points, which are quite hard and strong, waiting just below the surface.

I saw some men cleaning out the fountain at Park Lane mall a couple of weeks ago. They had drained all the water away and were picking up all of the coins people had thrown into it. All those wishes people had made, and their coins being collected. I thought of it today on my way to work.

How can I counter that? Can I insert something unexpected here? Can I change this into a letter? What was your day like? I ate chocolate, I worked, I drove the car, I observed the colours outside, I put lip balm on my lips. I received a seed catalogue in the mail. I washed my hands. I made notes. I remembered when Amy used to call me Jasil Berry Finn. I enjoyed writing with a pen on paper. I remembered that I have to pay the rent and do my taxes. I thought about stories and how to tell them. I felt words streaming behind my eyes and felt awake and...was it sad or hopeful?

"Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all "

Emily Dickinson

Give up speak up keep up stand up rise up

Maintaining a balance is so precarious sometimes. Trying to know when to stand up and defend myself, when to be humble and admit I'm wrong and see my faults. When and how to complain, when to be quiet, when to demand to speak, when to ask for help. How do you know when to point out a fault, leave out or hold a grudge, work out a new way? Keep or kick an old habit? Turn over a new leaf?

When to give up, let go, give in; when to stand up, speak up, hold on, hold out? When to change direction, or to remember an old direction. When to try to see things through someone elses eyes; when to work to make someone see through mine.

Also, when should I embrace and allow danger and risks, leaps with eyes closed, courage? And when should I hide quietly and patiently, breathing and thinking in the dark?

Pheasant

It's been snowing lightly all morning. I've been watching it periodically through different windows. I love days like this where I can slow down. A day at home like this, all to myself, with no agenda, is more of a place than a time frame. It's a place to slow down, observe little things, remember bits and pieces of who I've been and who I want to be.

I watched the pheasant that hangs out in our yard for awhile just now. He's always alone when he comes here. He wanders around, quite simply. Sometimes behind the house, sometimes in front. Today he was in front, walking under the two big spruce trees. Taking his time. But when he gets startled, if he hears a noise or sees a sudden movement, he comically squawks and part flies, part runs away. He loses his dignity in those moments; you can see his embarrassment afterward.

I've been in the past for the last few hours, looking at photos, reading old journals, remembering things about people I know and have known. It's such a mixed experience: regrets, happiness's, surprise at how much I change and stay the same, wonder at how things turn out unexpectedly.
In old things I wrote down I find so many forgotten things, and there's some kind of comfort in reading through how I found my way then. It makes me a little more confident that I can find my way now. In the present that is always so much messier and harder to navigate in than the neat, decided past.

Are the clues I find in my past less valuable than the snow and the pheasant of today? The past is funny, how it doesn't stay in it's place, how scraps of it drift to the surface randomly. How we carry it with us, lots if it usually closed, but still on file, still waiting to be brought out for review, for questioning. So many moments, words, actions to sort through- to love, to admire, to remember, to mine, to walk around in.

Make noise

I said the word delightful and then felt weird about it. But it was delightful.

There's a lovely contrast between the dark, almost black lines of the trees and the new pale skies lately when I'm driving home form work.

Things I turn off and hold back sometimes: tears, desire to dance, desire to make big messes, desire to make noise. Although that's hard to admit. You like to think you can be open and transparent but you are opaque sometimes and closed. What does it? Is it that all or nothing line that makes me hesitate? There's something about protecting myself.

Lots of good conversations lately, lots of good visits. The moments of realizing lost childhood innocences like believing toys were "real" or in Santa Claus. The moment I became aware of my hands, sitting on the bus on the way to school, suddenly not knowing what to do with them.

Driving out from town today wasn't pale like that. It was late afternoon, and there was colour in overflow, in abundance, in "an embarrassment of riches." The waves rolling in were having so much fun being purple-blue like that. The sky was sloshing around new cloud formations in technicolour blues and purples and pinks and the landscapes in-between were so happy to be flooded in orange, yellow warmth.

It was thrilling, it was delightful, it was delicious. Being thrilled and delighted and excited about things makes you vulnerable. Emotions are at so many of my cores but they are hard to trust. They're messy and they choose the wrong words and they don't know how to be cool or how to hold back or how to tone themselves down.

Arriving home at night

There is the sky! The one with stars and clarity and plenty. This clear sky full of stars is the one I'd almost forgotten about, the one I forgot to keep in my pockets. The one I forgot to breathe in and out, the one I forgot to wrap around myself. The one I forgot to pack between the layers of my days, the one I forgot to point to and point out, the one I forgot to be thrilled by (somehow, under the embarrassment of being thrilled).

There it is! Returning like a ship in the distance, returning with full sails and new stories to tell. Bringing all that which is glorious and thrilling and new and courageous.

Inside outside

I threw some old bread outside for the birds but i forgot to watch to see them find it. I can imagine them instead- swooping in, discovering the gold mine, calling their friends. I know it will all be gone when I check tomorrow.

Here's the house, here's the ocean, here's listening to the Pixies LOUD and here's February and here's Saturday and here's this time and this place.

The colour might be pale pale pink, almost white. There's been frost on the windows in the morning. There's been the putting on of three pairs of socks and then slippers. In this act things happen both inside rooms and outside the house. I stared at a black animal not knowing what it was. I went out to get wood and it was there on the hill behind the woodpile. We stared at each other for a long time. It had pointy black ears.

Inside, meanwhile, lights are on and casting themselves as far as they can. Wood stove is burning and making its pocket. Plants are living and growing their tiny fractions in a row. Hyacinths are blooming and sending out their scent which has a velvet texture and the words thick dense and massed.