Two ways about it

I have asked myself lots of good questions about blogging lately and why and how I am here now finding myself routinely coming to the bright screen on armchair evenings, excitedly finding my flow in words and images. My ideas for blog posts are so many fold now I cant keep up, literally I simply cant. I love writing and I have thoroughly enjoyed the process of building this blog. I yearn for more time to spend at it, its often stolen late hours. So why am I here in another kind of network?

 I have found here a place for my words, and the further along I go, it becomes truer and closer to who I am. My voice is here and I care about who is reading and what I am saying, imagining I can have some kind of impact in my way offering something within me, that I know exists, and try to portray and express it in such a way that it becomes meaningful, and hopefully inspiring. I do this for me, to write and play, but I am also doing this for you. I am trusting that there is a part of me that reaches you, and that that is a good thing, and whatever happens I enjoy the part I play for now.

I imagine you and wish you so very well. I have always wanted to do a kind of  something: ) like this. Here I can be my own writer, writing my own story, decorating my story with images and great songs that I have chosen, filtered through with poets I love and periodically my own attempts of rhythm and pattern in both word and line. My art is coming soon, my drawings will come out of the studio and onto these pages and I will ask for your attention, just a little while to share with you this process. Why ever not? Would I be human if I did not want to share my experience. Humans have always had a story to tell, thats what we do, and we dance and sing and make art and cook and create things and once upon a time, we all lived together in a familiar community in an interdependence that was our survival, we all worked together, and we all understood that very well. 

And, as I strive forward, trying to raise my daughter, widowed and brimming with art I want to make, and deeply inspired to live a holistic way, I yearn for that community without having realized it at all. I have placed myself here like I did on facebook because thats what we do in some way or another, and without allowing ourselves to be consumed by all the extraneous stuff on here, online, there is community. I need to tell you my story and listen to yours, and know that we are all in this "beautiful and terrible place" all together, sharing the wonder of our experiences. Blogging and facebook is a proverbial fire we sit round. WAIT!!!!!!!If that concept disturbs you, Dont shy away aghast, it is a warm fire still, it is beautiful HERE, even if it is wired and separate it is bright and you are welcome. 

If much of our communities disintegrated from our natural mechanisms of communing through industry and technology, we have rediscovered them again, through technology ironically. What survivors we are, what spirits we are, finding heart and soul everywhere we go. Maybe greed brought us online, for more time, less energy, more energy, more convenience, more time, however you choose to look at it. Something good comes of everything eventually.

I am sitting alone in the night writing, I am here and you are there, we are together. This can be our evolved selfs, having caught up with this technology. We have our tribe, reaching further afield, across oceans to each other over common ground and new ground. 

For me this is a nocturnal space, by day, I see my local folks in school and village, in family.

There are two ways to look at everything, I believe this now to be an absolute truth. In such an unsure time, we can be sure of impermanence, we loose and we gain. Everything passes and we can watch, and see, look and know, and if we want to, and if we can, we can love everything about it. 

I can sit at my computer for hours if I like, writing my experience, and notions of things, my memories of how things were or could be and of this most perfect now in all its artistry, sharing it with you, if you like and it is a lively thing to do so. 

A big beautiful Thank you to all readers and bloggers inspiring me, encouraging me and teaching me. xxx 

"beauty anywhere"

People say walking on water is a miracle- but to me, walking peacefully on earth is the real miracle
Thich Nhat Hanh

I walked baby steps down to the end of the garden the other day, slowly slowly, breath by breath. An enforced walking meditation, so it seemed. I was in pain, wincing with each step but made my way down with kitchen peelings for the compost heap. I stopped to rest just about at the fig tree. There I found myself smiling at the earth under foot. "Hello down there" I said, "it is nice to feel connected again at this pace, its been a while".
The sun shone behind me, casting my shadow long across the late afternoon lawn. Here I finally gave in to accepting, yes, I have really hurt my back and I shall have to simply rest and do nothing. What a battle I had had previous to that, trying all my tricks of healing and remedies to determined wellness, but to no avail. Perhaps though they helped me along to the point of resting, a weary me I was.

I went to my Father's for a few days, Me and M packed a wee bag and made our way down. I wasn't sure what to bring but got my sketchbook in there and my crochet with hopeful thoughts. He cooked for us, and was all matter of fact as he is about organizing us, and seeing that I get well, his way of loving and supporting us.

I have had lots of rest and oodles of thinking time. Going between bed and than up to watch Madeleine play, or talk with Dad, sitting out the front of his house in the sunshine.
Sitting perfectly straight has been the only way I could manage it. As any self respecting and proper lady might: ) In fact I fantasized about a beautifully ribbed corset embroidered richly with the flowers all about and gold threads, simultaneously supported and styled seemed just about right.
I also wondered which came first, the incredibly erect and perfect posture or the corset. Did one bring about the other? I cant imagine I could sit like that always, but am trying. My posture is much improved from my younger days and perhaps there is more room for improvement, especially if it helps my spine to stay happy.

Madeleine and Dad get along beautifully, and they had their time together. He lives with his magical garden that he has shaped and worked with for almost twenty years to finding himself now the keeper of a haven for small birds and wildlife, filled with little paths, trees and old places and new ones he has created for Madeleine to explore. With surprises around corners and sweet fruits to eat and smell, things to wonder about, for a six year old girl, its an enchanted place.
She spent hours consumed in summer grasses, picking strawberries, making leafy houses and making barley wine, she informed me, and all manners of flowery feasts for fairies and the likes.

I took these photos of her on our last day. I think they are asking to be painted and drawn. Which reminds me I haven't been posting anything from my studio, and I wonder about that. Is is a secret what I am making? Don't I want to share with you sweet ones? Ach, I do indeed, but I have thought a lot about what it means to blog, and during my respite I had plenty of contemplation time and came up with a few interesting ideas. I think I would like to write about those first before the art comes, but come it will.
Baby Steps; )

Here is madeleine in the beginning of a crochet piece I am making. I call it a sun hug, its my own design. It will come down over the shoulders and will have a button up collar a bit like a poncho but shorter, more of a hug; ) The yarn I have used is a silk blend and handspun, I bought it locally from my friend Jenny at woollygathering.

I did take a little time to catch up on some of my favorite blogs I follow, I am such an avid blog reader now, and am completely hooked. You will find some of my favorites on the list on the right hand side.
A year ago I didn't get this at all, and here I am settling into my place in the blogosphere, a virtual wonderland of folks sharing so generously their lives and creations, And their readers and the conversations that come about.  I feel very inspired by The Girl who married a Bear these days and her hive of activity, thoughts and peacefulness in the forests of Northern California, in what must be a " bee loud glade".

I am home again, and listening to my beloved music in these old walls. I am well enough, walking freely seeming like a small miracle, and will get my strength back in no time, with great thanks to my chiropractor and plenty of EFT I will start stretching again in a few days.
My body says rest now though and its good to be listening.

The moon is rising and its time to dream with eyes closed. Its quiet now, step by step we go "into the mystic".

thank you dear reader xx

E

Visiting Motherhood

This is Mom! This is her passport photo from when we were tiny tots. We recently had a remembrance day for her. She passed ten years ago now and of course we miss her. We, me and my family, wanted to do something for her, to honor her beautiful, kind, generous, and most graceful spirit. 

We invited all her lovely friends and ours that had known her well, all together. We reminisced all day about her, sang together, played together whilst eating her favorite foods, listening to her favorite music and having tea with proper cups and saucers: ) as she would have thought to.

Me and my big Sis Joanna, couldn't let the day go and stayed up till all hours singing songs with the night owls. We miss the music so. She had been a singer and what a rich and resonant voice she had. I would hear her late at night when she thought we were all asleep, she would sing and play and lull us all to some perfect place. I would have joined her on the weekends. 

But to drift asleep with the sound of the piano and her efforts to sing softly would be heaven to me now. Like so often in life, it takes loosing something to know how much you love it. But hang on a minute; )Right now, Maddy sleeps softly upstairs, the Guinea pigs still scratch about kept awake by my typing and lamp light, the clock ticks and tocks. The stars shine above me, the earth moves below me, my feet are planted firmly tonight. I am here now, undisturbed in this now. 

I am mother as my mother was mother to me, listening to night breathing and anticipating my early bird by my side. First thing in the morning she will tweet to me about the coming of the day, and something always is. That now feeling, and You let go and you get something in return, an dfind you have lost nothing, Really? Yes, and it always just goes like that. Life following life. And Love coming into it with some feeling of grand spaciousness in your heart when you decide to accept things as they are.

I have moments locked in me of holding my Mother's hand as a child, roughened from Winter work and washing dishes, but warm and perfect to me as in summer with the smell of strawberries from picking in the garden. Perfectly formed memories too and staying always. Those warm sweaters, always in blues or browns, that wrapped me like a cocoon of absolute softness and her voice that always had care in it somewhere. 

I watch Madeleine's hands animated in play, talking to each other often, or clasping a beloved doll or even clasped in mine, so small, so big since I last looked, so perfect. Just right for now. 

In some true way we are all here, I know it. And, on her remembrance day I felt like I gave her something for the first time in ten years. I could give her a song, a cup of tea, a piece of shortbread, as I served her friends and myself, I was serving her, sharing and visiting with her, and her with me. Smiling with her.

 I wonder is there a better way to say this. Ach I don't wonder, I bet there is

 But its just such a kind of feeling thing. To fathom the idea of separation from death seems so much more difficult than to accept that we are all in this together now : ) And That she is sharing my Motherhood is a very nice thought indeed. When I think that thought, a whole lot of real heart seems to awaken. 

Rest in Mother

What else matters now?


you sleeping soundly from your long day of running through the greens of May, June, July


Its just another part you know?


This is my life, and this is another part


Whats this?


Joy?


Were you expecting this?


Whats this?


Love
with a capital L


And Hope, for more love and more joy and space for more, and anything and everything now.


What is this child in my arms?
let me lay down and listen to her breathe. Let me breathe with her.


Nothing else matters now.

                

xx E


Thank you dear reader