r e d

last week's reds: christmas ukulele, rothko meets rauschenberg, scene from a moving train, bloodiest oranges, cutest couple, tunnock's on a tuesday, red bikes forever and a little georgia avenue red. 

(more color//colour lovers with xanthe here, follow along/play along over on instagram if you like)

(next up: yellow)

for what ails you

choose the blood oranges over the regular ones. the building with the bright red door, the socks with the lime green stripes. drive down the street with the pink house, you know the one. wear the mustard yellow tights, the cherry red boots, the little pin with the turquoise stone. eat all the skittles, all of them. paint the toes neon pink. buy the lemon yellow notebook instead of the black one, the brand new box of crayons, if only to marvel at their perfection. pick up a book for the color of the spine alone, care not about the contents. bring home the greenest succulents, the orangiest tulips. cruise the paint chip aisle at the hardware store like a swinger on a saturday night.

rainbow sprinkles. rainbow sprinkles on everything. and straws. the colored ones, the striped ones. slice up your lemons, slice up your limes. now is the time for little paper umbrellas, now is time for maraschino cherries in tiny glass jars. seek out the bright things that live in dark thrift store corners and bring them home, one by one. that plastic chartreuse planter, that royal blue band uniform, that ridiculous magenta hat. bring them home, if only for a little while.

because, january. february. and sometimes the other months too. another round of color//colour lovers with sweet xanthe because she asked, would I fancy another round? yes, I said. yes. and you are hereby cordially invited to play along. because, well, january.

week one// monday, january 19th// RED
week two// monday, january 26th// YELLOW
week three// monday, february 2nd// PINK
week four// monday, february 9th// GREEN
week five// monday, february 16th// ORANGE
week six// monday, february 23rd// BLUE

find us here, there, everywhere, over on the instagrams, the tumblrs. and just for kicks, color inspiration over on you know where.

today, tomorrow, always

'in the end, we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.'

-martin luther king, jr

(mural by borondo for living walls, downtown at the corner of auburn avenue and jesse hill drive, just a few blocks from where dr. king grew up)

this one

we were so tired that night. so tired. we'd been on the road for a week, spent the larger part of the day driving the streets of palm springs. the children were through with the architecture, done with adult conversations about easter egg color and mid-century everything. we made our way back to the motel 6, back to the swimming pool and the serious, serious business of cheap pizza and cable television. but the light turned gold, real actual liquid gold and just five short blocks from the motel, we remembered: the windmills. miraculously, the children did not put up much of a fight. large slushees had been consumed, extreme heat experienced, no one had much fight left. the day was still a fairly malleable thing. windmills, we said. yes, we said. let's go.

ten minutes later, we found ourselves out on the edge of town, parked as close to the windmills as we could manage. and we stood, in what can only be defined as a sort of desert wasteland. sandwiched between a stretch of highway and a chunk of train track, we stood. canyons to the right of us, windmills to the left, a sea of windmills, an endless, impossible chorus. below us, a desert floor so littered with trash we could not help but look down. palm tree pieces, glittery glassy bits, flattened cans from decades past. a toilet, a few tires, a flannel shirt, an old brocade couch. the deeper we wandered, the stranger the items. the stranger the items, the more excited we became. listen, the children were excited about the trash. you know what? so were the adults. collections were started, possibilities discussed. could we fit the ginormous tree branch aka wizard staff in the car? surely that palm tree chunk would make an excellent planter. hey, were those ray ban glasses? because we should not leave without those ray ban glasses. I don't know how long we went on like this. hours, it seemed.

the wind picked up, the last of the honeyed light fell over ava and I shot what would be my most treasured photograph of the year. as if on cue, a train rumbled past and the wind from it snatched that polaroid right out of my hands. we ran for it, all four of us, scrambled like animals to catch it before it completely disappeared. the same wind whipped hair into my eyes, sand into my mouth, picked up the edges of my skirt, flipped it over my head again and again. I should have been miserable, I should have been frantic. instead, I found myself laughing, half-running, half-stumbling in the direction of the polaroid. what i felt was joy. wild, delirious, unexpected joy. what was this strange, beautiful place we were lost in anyway? how did we end up here? how had it managed to completely charm us?

this. my most treasured moment of twenty fourteen, my most treasured photograph. 2014 holds a thousand different stories, a thousand different images but, this. the best of the best because I look at it and I remember and I think, yes. we said yes. in twenty fourteen, we said yes. when it was difficult to say yes, when we weren't sure about yes, when we were tired and didn't think we'd make it, we said yes. and certainly, it has been no walk in the park but the good stuff, the best stuff, happened because we said yes.

I don't know about twenty fifteen, I don't know how I feel about it yet. though there's bound to be some yes in there somewhere. I don't know about you but I'm rooting for the yes, for the running and the stumbling and the laughing in the general direction of yes, for unexpected desert wastelands and unexpected happiness and more honeyed light than I know what do with.

decembering

steeped in december over here. which really just means I'm busy pinching sap off the ends of christmas tree branches to rub into the palms of my hands. you know, so I can breathe it in, every chance I get. recently, I showed up for a counseling session with a few stray pine needles stuck to the side of my cheek and, I don't know. I think this means I might be doing it right.

am trying to find places for all the christmas things in this new house. am playing all the records, singing all the songs, baking all the things. in other words, decembering. because december is something you do but also, something you feel. december is the celebration of a birth, the birth is hope and without this hope, we are nothing.

p.s. I'm also over at habit this month, contributing when I can. that is, when I've not got my face buried deep in the branches of a christmas tree.

truth is

there are lovely things to be shared here, friends. but I can't pretend. that ferguson isn't happening. that dr. huxtable didn't break my heart. that black friday isn't an ugly, ugly thing. that a personal family crisis hasn't turned my own life upside down since saturday afternoon. I'm at a loss. I'm losing, we're losing, we're all losing.

I don't believe there isn't still room for the lovely things, that the sharing isn't still important. undeniably, it is (now more than ever) but to pretend the hard things don't exist, the things that break us, render us speechless, hopeless, to go on as if nothing has happened, is happening, will happen, well, I just can't do it.

tomorrow, I'll lose myself in the rituals of the day. I'll peel the potatoes, cook the cranberries til they quietly pop. toss the green salad and brown the rolls. I'll set the thanksgiving table for the first time in this new house and I will not forget to be thankful. but I will also remember. just how much work is left to do.

list forty-eight: some things I miss about portland

or, the beginnings of a love letter.

1. the light on yamhill and 10th around magic hour
2. the smell of franz bread baking near NE 11th
3. the used car lot balloons that line 82nd
4. the long, tall aisles of powell's books
5. annie's happy, happy windows
6. and those sunshine yellow booths
7. lippman's bins full of bouncy balls
8. smut's bins full of instant relatives
9. grilled cheese sandwiches eaten on double decker buses
10. cherry snow cones eaten in rose gardens
11. the sound of passing streetcars
12. the smell of coffee everywhere
13. the big, beautiful downtown library
14. the view from my favorite parking deck
15. the occasional awkwardly awkward tall bike
16. the green, green moss that covers everything
17. bipartisan's sour cherry pie
18. little big burger's truffle fries
19. old cameras stacked ramshackle in citizen's windows
20. jumbles of color hung on rerun's racks
21. those five words in neon orange
22. that big loser in the sky
23. the light in the lobby of the ace
24. the secret drawers filled with secret papers
25. the cardboard city on the ceiling of tender loving empire
26. the organ music at the old oaks park roller rink
27. the red and yellow spiral slide at glenhaven park
28. the rainbow of flags that hang above SE third
29. the hidden gem that is the cameo
30. the hidden treasure that is ed's house of gems
31. a thousand different food carts
32. a window full of light bulbs
33. cargo's big red wooden doors
34. lloyd center's tiny spinning ice skaters
35. dance class up on the fourth floor
36. bus number twelve down sandy boulevard
37. chin's perfect neon
38. le happy's perfect yellow
39. saturday morning at the hollywood farmer's market
40. saturday night at the hollywood theatre
41. pambiche's empanadas and sugar cane lemonade
42. mcmenamin's magic saltwater soaking pools
43. my favorite building (the color block building)
44. my favorite thrift store (the secret one)
45. the feel of the downtown train station
46. the daily view from the sacramento ridge
47. every portland bridge, every single one
48. every portland thing, every last one

the jar of magical thinking

this is the jar of magical thinking. aka, the jar that sits on the blue wooden table and holds scraps of paper with ava's and ezra's words scrawled on them. aka, words I want to remember.

I first read about the jar of magical thinking back in 2008 and besides the fact that it was originally inspired by joan didion, here's what I love about it: it's an old spaghetti sauce jar, that's it. and the papers used are whatever is available, whatever is currently within reach-- backs of envelopes, leftover notebook paper, index cards, bits of paper bags, old receipts, anything.

this means I never hesitate to scribble words down, never. I never wonder if the paper is pretty enough or my handwriting is pretty enough. this means the whole thing is so simple it's nearly impossible to screw up. and you know what? six years later and I'm still doing it. I'm still stuffing that little jar full of magic bits. I'll stuff it till I can't stuff it anymore, till there are so many scraps of paper in that old jar it practically hums and hovers from all the magical thinking.

I never finished the baby books, probably never will. and I'm a thousand years behind with all the photo albums, but this. this I can do. and will continue to do until I can't anymore. or until they run out of magical thinkings, which I hope is never.

quantity over quantity

priorities

in which I drop the seventeen things I am currently doing to go through seven months of photographs to find the few I'd like to climb inside and live in for a little while.

ava, saturday morning, april 2014.

photobooth friday

behold: the last photobooth strips taken in that late, great city of ours. on our last day, our very last hour in portland, oregon. when I saw that the booth at the ace was working that day, I almost fell to my knees with gratitude.

but here's the thing. I've lost them. somewhere along the way, they vanished. in the midst of all the traveling, the packing and unpacking, the getting in and out of the car (and in and out and then in and out again), and then in and out of motel room after motel room and then all the unpacking of the suitcases once we arrived here in atlanta, and the unpacking of all the boxes, and the shifting around of a hundred million things, is it really any wonder?

still, I'm heartbroken. I never lose things like this. I've turned the house upside down but, nothing. nothing but this measly little iphone image. I can't help but wonder, will someone eventually find them? somewhere down the road? and wonder who we are? wonder what our story is? will we turn up at the fleamarket fifty years from now? will we be someone's fleamarket find? one can only hope. you know, a girl can dream.

down the 101 we went

on day two and three (of the big cross country road trip), we hit the 101. highway of all coastal highways, charmer of road trip takers everywhere. there were trees, lots of trees, some of them, fallen. nothing to do but climb up inside and peek out. we wondered, is there anything better than a magnificent, monolithic root system? it was decided, there is not. somewhere outside crescent city, we said our goodbyes to the pacific ocean. breathed in that dense, salty pacific air one last time, promised to return. elk meadows were stumbled onto and the spectacular avenue of the giants traversed, both experiences that only confirmed my sincere belief in the existence of a brilliant, loving God. experiences that left me feeling infinitely humble, endlessly small. and well, wholly alive.

other things: a few large trees were driven through and the boots of paul bunyan climbed up on. he talks to people, you know. there's proof, should you need it. initials were carved into gargantuan tree trunks (thus, souvenir pocket knife collections put to good use). houses made from one log were visited, as were places claiming to defy gravity, as were eternal treehouses, as were many, many gift shops. urges to buy large wooden clocks were miraculously resisted. children were made to pose in abnormally large wooden shoes. a night was spent at the endlessly charming madrona motor court. well, charming til around midnight, when the toilet overflowed and we found ourselves wading through the kind of water you never want to find yourself wading through. lesson learned: pretty much everything about a 1940s roadside motor inn is charming except for the plumbing. still, I loved that little place, loved it to pieces, midnight raw sewage and all. I wouldn't trade our night there for anything.

by the time we drove through our third (and final) tree, we were all off schedule. this will not come as a surprise to those who know us well and would be a running theme throughout the trip. but early on, we decided we didn't care. and as we drove out of the last of the redwoods and down that last stretch of the 101, further away from our beloved portland, oregon, I loosened my grip on the schedule. I felt my resolve soften. about an hour outside of san francisco, the sky turned a fiery, incandescent pink. as it turned out, we were right on time.