november the fifth

tonight, we walked down to the end of our street to find a southern sky on fire. and we wondered if we should run back to the house, get in the car and drive to where there weren't so many trees, where the sky was wide open. it'll be gone before we even figure out where to go, he said. better to stand still, watch it here, right now. 

right here is good, I said. right now is perfect.

328/365

things I remember about the day I made this polaroid:

sunlight hit the kitchen window around eleven am
and the bottles practically sang
and outside, leaves fell
and it was cold enough to wear a sweater
and it finally felt like october

(october 22, 2019)

(thursday's polaroid for fall polaroid week happening over on ye olde flickr)

308/365

things for doing this friday night:

read lists
practice french
watch leaves fall
work on zines
make popcorn
drink ginger ale
watch scary movies
pass out on couch

and lo, it shall be a wild, wild night.

297/365

things to do this fall:

open windows
hoard candy corns
hoard tiny pumpkins
read books underneath trees with fiery golden leaves
ride bikes down streets in unknown neighborhoods
stretch fake webs across windows and doorways
carve pumpkins til hands are sufficiently tired and happy
just, you know, always be roasting things over backyard bonfires
watch films
pick apples
shoot polaroids
share polaroids
pack car
get out of town
make soup
make soup 
I WILL MAKE SOUP

day seven

find a tree that screams color, with leaves so bright they could be on fire. sunlight overhead is a plus, though not necessarily required. position yourself directly underneath this tree. position yourself as close to the trunk as you can get. 

look up. 

(repeat as needed)

this time last year

november 2016's sixty second photograph and if I've learned anything at all in life, it's to keep the words 'thank you' on mindful repeat. thank you, thank you, thank you.

(music by my favorite, mr. moses sumney)

hashtag halloween

we are barely hanging onto things around here. and by things, I mean childhood holiday traditions and by we, I mean me. for her last official year as trick-or-treater, ava went old school slash classic halloween witch (though I believe in my heart of hearts she was really just channeling lydia).  alternately, ezra ditched trick-or-treating altogether. I pretended not to care. for the record, I am no good at pretending not to care.

I could not even get him to carve the small pumpkin he'd picked out at the farm weeks ago. though he did at least manage to scrape his pocket knife across the bottom of it and call it a mouth. since the thing already had two rotten spots on it that looked like eyes, it was promptly pronounced a carved jack 'o' lantern. okay. he will never admit it but he loved that rotten little pumpkin thing. the more it rotted, the more he loved it. and so did I. 

halloween 2017, I'll take it. melancholy and all. last year's halloween was an absolute disaster. this year, we lowered our expectations, kept to ourselves. and, it worked. this year, we celebrated what felt like the last of the last. who knows what next year holds? wait, don't answer that. 

(halloweens past: 2016//2015//2014//2013//2011//2010//2009//2005)

hello, nablopomo

the hardest part is the starting. the saying you're going to write something every day. the putting it out there, even though you're not sure people even read anymore. once you get past that part, it's gravy. 

well, gravy those first five or six days and then holy crap you're in it and you said you'd show up here every day, whaaaaat. every day. you know for a fact you are not a show up every day girl, you are more ebb than flow, you are squarely, solidly an ebb girl with just a little bit of flow. 

also, no one reads blogs anymore. or so they tell me.

but with november comes many things: banana bread. new tights. the wearing of the boots, the mourning of the loss of light. increased amounts of soup. changing leaves. and, nablopomo.

unbelievably, this is my twelfth year. 

so, here we go. 

tradition

this will always be one of my all-time favorite thanksgiving memories: my friend jon madison with that turkey, that tub of spice, that vinyl. the year we camped in yurts on the oregon coast and ate turkey at a campsite picnic table.

thanksgiving changed for us the year we moved to portland, oregon. one of many casualties of the big move across the country, a move that put us hundreds of miles from family. the first couple of thanksgivings, we tried. we really did. we worked hard to recreate what we'd had back home with family. and we did all right, I guess. the kids were young, we didn't really know what we were doing. the first couple with just the four of us were sweet but, undeniably, a little lonely. 

then, one year, we decided to throw out the regular plans, trade them in for shiny new ones. which led to a last minute road trip to astoria and our first thanksgiving meal at a fancy restaurant. the next year we hosted thanksgiving for friends at our house, a first for us. another year, we camped in yurts on the oregon coast with friends and prepared the whole thanksgiving meal mere steps from the pacific ocean, another first. and last year, we found ourselves in florida for thanksgiving, yet another first. 

so this is our tradition, I suppose. thanksgivings that move around. there will always be mashed potatoes and fresh cranberry sauce, I will always bring out my mom's little ceramic turkeys. they just might not always be set out on the same table.

after a couple of days in the mountains we'll head back home for our first legit thanksgiving since we moved back to atlanta. but who knows where we'll be next year? I'll tell you, that's just the way I like it.

seen

whilst on the road today:

1. two wild turkeys

2. a fancy park bench in a gas station restroom

3. a strawberry candy gummy snake, three feet long

4. leaves bright like neon

5. mountain air thick with smoke

6. a sign that read 'boiled p-nuts, straight ahead'

7. a sign that read 'please do not feed the bears'

(this is about all I can manage at the end of a really long but pretty great day)

five senses friday

borrowed from my friend shari, who had the brilliant idea of documenting a week in this particular way:

seen: early morning light shows on my walls, the st. john's bridge on the sides of my legs, my mother (in a dream)

heard: sufjan on vinyl, acapella bowie and mercury, the wind through the trees, ezra's ever-evolving laugh

smelled: the burning of leaves, nail polish remover, banana bread in the oven

tasted: my brother's homemade bread, the first clementines of the season, secret chocolates

felt: film photographs in my hands, an extra quilt on the bed, sore calves after dance class, my mother (in a dream)

file this under

file this under: photographs I wish could climb back inside, just for a little while. this time, this age, this street, this portland. this quiet, these colors. like butterscotch in my mouth, honey in my hand.

halloween

cousins and bonfires and pumpkin guts and hot cider and string lights. and aunts and uncles and charred marshmallows and ward's childhood monster record. and candy! and hippies and jawas.

and jawas!

full disclosure: I was hand-sewing that jawa business up until the very. last. minute.

double full disclosure: I consumed many, many bowls of count chocula.

this is the year

this is it, guys. this is the year. the year I will post something every single day during the month of november (aka nablopomo, aka national blog posting month). can you hear me laughing? because I am definitely laughing. every year, I say I will do this and every year, I fail. I wrote a little more about that last year, how I give no craps, zero craps, about the failings. that what I'm most interested in is the trying.

and nothing has changed, really. ten (ten!) years into the challenge and miraculously, I am not bored. I still come to the table fresh each year, believing I can do it, that I'm fully capable. that it's an exercise worth the time I will undeniably pour into it. and even though I seem to eat my own words every single year, I still write more, shoot more, post more than I ever would during any other month. this is the triumph, folks, for this very slow blogger here. this is the big fat v for victory.

and so here I go again. I do solemnly swear to show up here everyday-- or, as close I can manage-- with something, anything, some words, a picture, maybe both. inevitably, I'll struggle to carve out the time and, not even kidding, the struggle will be real. but there's value in the struggle, this I do believe. and there's real worth in the trying, there's gold to be found in it. and I'll be digging for it, everyday, everyday.

(internet fist bump to karen, xanthe and jeanine, who'll also be playing along with a little naphopomo this month as well)

(are you posting daily this month? if so, big fat internet fist bump to you too)

atlanta + amsterdam: flowers

atlanta, left:

when I see that patch of tall, yellow, spindly sunflowers start to bloom here in georgia, I know. fall is here. fall, season of butterscotch-colored leaves and indian summer afternoons. in-between weather so perfect you wish it would stay forever and ever, amen.

amsterdam, right:

there's not a lot of space in amsterdam. people are packed in there quite nicely, or so I've heard. and so they do what they can to plant colorful flowers in the space that they have. sometimes that means a patch of a little something growing alongside the pavement, where folks often live in what's known as souterrains. souterrains, a perfectly lovely french word meaning 'basement'. leave it to the french to make basement living sound lovely. and leave it to the dutch to make a patch of concrete a beautiful, beautiful thing.

(more from my co-collaborator joyce over at on a hazy morning//more about our twelve-week project here)

well, it's fall polaroid week

and I am excited.

I'll tell you, there are more than a few reasons to be excited about this week. but more about all that business later. in the meantime, hop on over to fall 'roidweek on ye olde flickr because, you guys. that's where the real polaroid party is.

sundays (36/52-39/52)

35/52

36/52

37/52

38/52

38/52

sunday, september the 1st: last barbecue of the summer.

sunday, september the 8th: comic book-making, b-ball handling.

sunday, september the 15th: details (port townsend, washington).

sunday, september the 22nd: the beginning of the rain.

sunday, september 29th: always an astronomy book in her lap, always.

(sundays sundays sundays)