last of the last

I find great comfort in the few days before november gives way to december. gourds are still on the table, leftover cranberry sauce still in the fridge. the leaves are still turning here in georgia. I am considering december. that is all. just considering. 

tomorrow, I'll step into it. tonight, I am still considering.

better than drugs

I had an idea for a project tonight-- I stopped everything, wrote down everything, emptied my brain. it felt good, it felt right.

this is your reminder to stop everything when the idea comes. to ride the wave, give yourself over, let new blood rush in. my reminder is your reminder is my reminder. I still believe in projects and ideas.

april in new york

the way I saw myself tumbling down subway steps, every time. knees buckling, bag flying, limbs folding soundlessly beneath me. the reactions of people standing on the platform. the way I might fight to recover balance, pretend it did not happen.

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the way the smallest kindnesses undid me. the man on the train, traveling with his family into the city, lightly tapping me on the shoulder, offering me his seat. earlier, they'd quietly marveled as we passed the brooklyn bridge.  

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the way peter's handcrafted mug felt in my hands as I sat in jen's kitchen, coffee (hot) sweetened with brown sugar. window with a fire escape, whole of the day ahead of me. is there a more beautiful thing?

day eighteen

there will be hours, I think. hours and hours in the car to do things. seven hours to new orleans, plenty of time. I can read and write, mend jeans, maybe even edit. balance the computer on my lap and edit shoots while we fly down the highway. I have done this before, though with minimal success. still, I think. I could get so much work done. I stuff my black canvas bag with books and zines, sashiko thread. I pack a sketchbook, a small pouch of supplies, my computer, external drives. I am hopeful.

but once we hit the highway, I can only sit and stare. for hours, I sit like this. maybe sing along with the music a little. mostly, I let my mind run til it can't anymore. until the sky turns pink and the headlights of oncoming cars pop on and I am drowsy and drunk from the quiet. I can't even bring myself to read. we are in alabama before I realize maybe this is good for me. maybe this is exactly what I need.

it's 9:59

and I've done it again. I've waited until the end of the day to write and I have nothing left. not a thing. why, why do I do it. all I can think about now is the bed and the book and the tee-shirt and the way I will crawl into all three of them within the hour.

well, I asked

me, after dinner: "so, what should I write about tonight?"

ava: "slurpees."

ezra: "define slurpees."

ward: "love. you should write about love."

ward: "talk about trump. you love trump."

ezra: "you should also probably write about how I'm almost done folding all these paper cranes."

ava: "polygamy."

ward: "make one of your lists. you should make a list of um, movies."

ava: "toilets. public toilets."

ladies and gentlemen, this be my monday night. 

friday night

I had the sads last night and nothing helped. not the tater tots, not the hot shower, not the book in bed. not even claire de lune loud in my headphones. sometimes the sads are like that, though. you just have to sit in them for a little while, let yourself feel them.  

I thought about a midnight walk, I thought about cutting my hair. I thought about how good it might feel to take a pair of scissors and cut my braids right off, I thought about the sound the scissors against my hair might make, about the jolt I'd get from the sight of braids in the sink. that jolt appealed to me. 

I thought about writing, about how the push of a pen against paper feels. I thought about posting here. and then I fell into a deep, boneless sleep and now it's morning and there's sunlight and coffee and miraculously, banana bread in the oven. I made it to the other side, braids intact. 

good morning.

more is more

I like it here. I like the quiet, I like how every draft feels like a fresh piece of paper. I'd like to keep showing up here with words and photographs, I'd like to maintain the flow. I don't know if I'll be able to, but I'm going to try. I don't want to be known for my ebb. would rather be remembered for my flow.

I know I'll look back at these entries in five or ten (or even twenty) years and see myself through a terrifically specific lens and I'll be grateful for it. I think my children will too. 

thank you kindly for reading, friends. onward and upward! december, she waits. 

cabins, plural

well. I really fell off the nablopomo wagon. and I was doing so well there, folks. I WAS DOING SO WELL. lemme tell you what happened. 

first, I spent last weekend at a friend's cabin nestled in the woods, far, far away from internet connection. then I spent four more days in a different cabin, nestled in a different woods, also far, far away from any internet connection. and I knew this might happen but I think maybe I thought there might be super magical internet powers floating around out there in the woods.

as it turned out, there were no super magical internet powers floating around out there in the woods.

which, actually, was a good thing. a great thing, a terrifically magical thing. real time without internet or cel phone reception is the new american luxury, folks. I read books, wrote with a real pen on real paper, played board games, built fires, roasted things. and talked. a lot. to be clear, these are all things I do in real life, but it's an entirely different experience without the monstrous distractions we now all live with every day. we listened to the radio. not spotify, not itunes, the radio. THE RADIO. I did not realize this option still existed outside of the car. 

nablopomo streak blown (quite monumentally, I might add) but for nearly six days, I did not feel the pull to compulsively check things every ten minutes. as it turned out, I needed real internet-free time. I really needed it. like, bad. 

this is a picture I did not take

of ava in her dingy pajama bottoms and her pink star wars tee shirt, dancing to the cure in front of the fireplace of the old cabin in the woods where we stayed this past weekend, while sun poured in through paned windows and I made pancakes in accidentally odd shapes and celebrated every time I managed to successfully flip one over.  

and now tomorrow is today

and what I can tell you about my time last year in new orleans with friends is that, in the simplest of terms, it made me glad to be alive.

and not just because we took the train down and talked and talked (and talked) and stared out the window at all the tiny southern towns along the way. or because the place we stayed at felt like a hundred year-old three-storied dollhouse complete with a cherry red spiral staircase, a bed tucked up in the attic and a wall full of old mirrors.

and not just because when we ate beignets at cafe du monde, we realized that everything (and everyone) seemed to be covered in a fine dust of powdered sugar, including the boots our server was wearing. or because when we wandered into a downtown casino and I gambled for the very first time in life, I won exactly one cent. and have the payout receipt to prove it. or because we rode bikes down magazine street all the way to audubon park and felt like we were nine years-old all over again.

and not just because music was everywhere and everything tasted like love and for exactly 72 hours, we meandered up and down streets and through old cemeteries with no particular route or schedule in mind.

not just because of all these things, but because (and this is not news)-- real time with real friends is like nothing else in this world and the older I get the more I realize how profoundly important it is. cheaper than therapy and with more laughing and if you do it in new orleans, there will probably be breakfast sandwiches made with doughnuts. 

most nights

onions and garlic in butter on the stove in the heavy red pot, wooden spoon in hand. ava on the living room floor hunched over a mess of art supplies. ezra on the xbox with portland friends, long limbs slung over a mostly broken old bamboo chair. ward puttering around the house, with a coffee cup, headphones. cats lounging in the best chairs, the chairs that are not broken, the chairs we'd like to sit in. 

file under 'what most nights look like around here', under 'things I want to remember'. 

on this saturday night, I am:

dreaming of korean spas. and red enamel dutch ovens. plus that last piece of pecan pie in the fridge. and a washing machine and dryer that live and work in the same house that I do.

finishing the last of the cleaning of a post-thanksgiving kitchen, the washing of the last dish, the storing of the last of the leftovers, the last of the very last.

editing photographs, editing editing editing, all the live long day, desperately trying to catch up.

writing postcards to donald as part of an avalanche effort-- in hopes of keeping more racism and white supremacy out of the white house. wait, is that really a thing I just wrote? a real live thing? what year is this? WHAT YEAR IS THIS.

mourning the end of this here break. and the last of the ambrosia. and the mashed potatoes. and goodness, am I mourning the last weeks of the obama administration (am I ever, boy am I ever) but more than anything, I am mourning the fact that there even has to be something like an avalanche postcard effort to keep white supremacy out of the white house in the first place.

dishes

showing up here because I said I would, though it feels disingenuous to talk about anything other than how crazy america feels right now. about how lost and broken and divided we are.

but the days are days, what else can they be? the making of school lunches, the drinking of coffee, the folding of laundry, the editing of photographs, the hustling for work, the running of errands, the texting of messages, the paying of bills, the reading of books, the watching of netflix, the making of dinner, the washing of dishes, the planning of revolutions. 

meanwhile, the edges of america continue to unravel. to be clear, I am not without hope. I'm just standing at the kitchen sink, washing the dishes. talking to God, planning my next move. 

no matter what happens

here's what I will always have:

the memory of walking into a small suburban church on a buttery sunny tuesday afternoon. the memory of casting my vote against donald trump. friends, it felt so good. so good I wanted to do it twice. so good I wanted to cry. first time in weeks, maybe months, it felt like I had any power at all.

so, no matter what happens, I will always have this. the most hateful man to ever run for president will never, ever be able to take this away from me. no matter what.

this is the power of the vote, win or lose. 

p.s. for the record, I'm hoping we'll make history tonight. I'm hoping we'll elect our first female president. I'm hoping for a lot of things. 

R.I.P.

we lose that extra hour of light with the time change and friends, I mourn it like a death.

I want to hold a small, respectable ceremony for it, say a few kind words about it, about how much I loved it, how sorely it will be missed, how we must all be brave in the face of such great loss and find a way to get on with our lives without it.

kidding. sort of.

please, feel free to leave your condolences in the comment section below. in lieu of flowers, please send candles.

this was almost the year

I almost made it. 29 out of 30. 29 days out of 30, I posted. and it's not a cure for cancer, not an answer to the syrian refugee crisis, it's not even the most creative thing I'll do this year, but it felt good. to share words and photographs here everyday, to be pushed and pulled just a little bit, to show up even when I didn't feel like it. because that's when the good stuff happens, and I'm a fan of the good stuff, we all are.

next year, nablopomo. next year, you're mine.

that thing

that thing where you come back from vacation to a pile of bills and a pile of work and cat vomit on the floor and sour milk in the fridge and the kids have homework (which, let's face it, means you have homework too) and it's not that you thought vacation could or would (or even should) last forever but you sure wish you could rewind to last week when you were just pulling up to the ocean for the first time and you immediately turned off that part of your brain that does all the worrying about all the things, just for a little while, because you knew you could.

tuesday

when you find yourself unhunched and fully clothed (in mostly clean clothes, mind you) and no one needs ibuprofen (at least not today) and the good cereal is waiting for you in the pantry now and there are clementines and tiny pears too and it finally stopped raining and the sun came out and you were so happy to see it you almost cried and you didn't have to turn on one lamp today before 6:00 pm, not one, because the house was flooded with light and quite frankly, so were you.

monday

when you find yourself hunched over and shirtless, rifling through a mess of dirty laundry to find just one clean shirt, just one, and your daughter, who's sick in the next room, cries out so you grab whatever your hand lands on next and you're all out of the ibuprofen and you're all out of the good cereal and it's been raining for nine days straight (nine days straight, nine) and it's so dark in the house, it's like you're living in medieval times, so dark you're forced to turn on all the lamps in the house at nine in the morning and you totally overslept and really, all you want is coca cola for breakfast.