a puppies tale

.....is what I may need to rename this blog, ahem.







...that finger! I will adore showing her this when she is an adult :)


finding the comfy places (aka by my feet)

Ginny

Our new 8 week old black Labrador, Ginny!

Or 'Duchess Beauchamp Belle' is her alternate Kennel name.... But Ginny she is to us.

Obeying Esmé on a sit command (for a treat, of course)




Squishy cute face, getting plenty of love.



Felix wishing he could lift her (she's hefty - he is not!)



Wake up pup!



Please excuse this being a dog-blog for a while :) I don't think I shall be able to help it! Dogs are a huge subject I am finding out.... I have been cram reading puppy books and dog psychology books even, and books on feeding dogs a diet of raw meaty bones.... and still they don't cover it all... like she whined for her mama and siblings and what to do? I sat by her and stroked he until she fell asleep..... good, bad? No idea. It's a dog -what-to-do jungle. But a cute one, at least :)



Reminds me of early babyhood again where another's needs dictate yours, and when they sleep you try and do as much as possible, mad. But lovely.

she sings

...and there are never beginnings or endings to the songs, she stays on repeat until air runs out. Thanks to her LOVE of the Wiggles (are they for real?) she is currently gracing our ears with this. Over and over.....

and right now

:: that she knows how babies (and, um toddlers) are really meant to be fed pleases me



:: stream time, always stream time....



:: finding it touching that he gets anxious playing football... with his kind big brother



:: there's a constant row of water-shoes drying on the gate



:: always a whisk or two to lick



:: some meals are like this, it's all ok though when you are eating (alone) something yummy and writing something inspiring (mama made burgers, greens and poetry - a happy combination)



:: the mini monsoon weather here is freakish and fun, both



:: I am addicted to these peppermints

:: right now, yeah, it's all pretty random

a time when

There comes a time when
every woman must strike
a match
against the decaying ballast, the timber framed house
that was once a dream
a memory
a hope
but which has become
with time
a weighty burden
unyielding
static, pointless

There!
the fire licks
spreads, roars
engulfs every last shred
the blaze,
a captivating spiral smoke dream
fly ghost bird, fly
jubilant flames
the deep velvet of the new night
warm my hands,
sing me a lullaby as I wait!

Counterpanes of spreading hope
a space
now freed
in the vast sky of heart
for which
endless possibilities
can roam
take shape
and change
your world

yet again.

yellow love, love yellow

I never much felt anything one way or another for the colour yellow. But in knitting this I felt the warm glow making me feel the same. Happy!



Boo boo girl said, 'ohhh, it's soft!' It really is soft. The yarn is Mirasol Kacha - a merino, suri alpaca and silk blend. I had wanted to make this bigger than my last and so cast on accordingly, but mysteriously at the end it was smaller. Ah! Oh well, like everything I knit, it will surely find an owner eventually. This is the pattern, I adapted it slightly and will put my notes on ravelry. You can see where the supposedly identical dye lot balls were joined. I guess that is just what happens when the yarn is hand dyed and spun in the Peruvian highlands. I am not complaining, I like it. Who could not! It's yellow! And happy! (Ok, enough exclamation marks for one post, I am not insane, well I probably am, but not over the yarn).



I stayed in bed last night after nursing the girl to sleep and fortified myself reading Thich Nhat Hahn. It helped. It really helped. When I loose myslef too often in the coulds, and shoulds and oughts and in memories, or future wonderings it helps so much to bring myself back to the now. The present, the only place of true life and living. The only thing that ever exists. Finding joy in the everyday moments, is not only enough, it is all there is that really *is*. All else is imagination. The colour yellow, and taking great plasure in it felt like a good way to start the week. Om Mani Pad Mei Hum, the ancient healing chant is so beautiful. Another way to fortify and uplight is always to listen to something magical. As is this version which you can just leave on in the background pretty much forever :)

flights of fancy, a song

That old favourite song. That I speak of here. Oh, far too often. It brings out of me the very worst bits. The bit that, furiously working, feels that I utterly understand women who walk away. Walk away and just don't even look back. For all that I might see, visible, would be my own fury, whipping up a dust storm. Right behind me.

I look outside now and see a half naked girl-child painting a box bright red. She dragged everything out she needed and then set to work, so industriously, so intently, so happily. So happily. It half kills me, with sorrow and delight. Where did my own intentions go? Where did my one mindedness and the joy in just being go to? I often get to summon it back, it's true, and then it becomes my way of being. Until it goes again. It's good, I agree that I get to experience that joy, intermittently, it's mostly enough. Can a person get a mid life crisis at 31?

A person can be like a bird, not knowing know they have wings, then upon discovery find they are too afraid to use them (what are these things, why do I need them? hopping about is actually fine), or maybe built up a little pretty cage, right up high, crowding in with a floral print, so nice to look at. Can't fly any place.

In my dreams I am myself. The me with no anchors or commitments. No worldly good pinning to earth. I fly and fly. I have always been someone who runs, leaps and then flies the earth when I sleep. I visit people. Catch up. Kiss, hug, look, look, look.... understand all language spoken, to me and not. There are some amazing places I have been to, fast asleep and wide awake. Times I have struggled against the waking, trying to get back under, to where nothing matters but the place you want to go to and the person you are happy being.

There's a drum beat and a song so sweet, it rises up and joins my bird wings as I fly. Mostly it's dark. It's not so much longing as a distant ache, a feeling of being off kilter.

Sometimes when driving, as a passenger I get so astonished. Amazed. There are so many people in the world. They are everywhere. Who are they? What are their stories? I'll never get to meet them. Sometimes I'd like to. It's the picking up of a dandelion puff, can you see how many tiny miraculous shreds of perfection attached by nothing at all, some sort of friction? It's so amazing, this perfect creation, what for? These millions of flower seed heads everywhere you look, they are nothing, they are everything.

I see this wonderment as a the best part of me. I haven't lost the wonder. It's a pure joy, it has nothing to do with me, it's beyond. I treasure every one of these tiny moments I get like that, I'd wrap them in silk and tuck them into the draws of memory, maybe to look at later, if not, no matter, they're there all the same.

Sometimes I sit and listen and the sounds there to be heard, it's so good! How come I don't use my ears more and shut the hell up?

When I lie, for the last time on an earthly bed, will I be glad of my life and how I lived it? I think any regret will be not the holding back I did but the wishing that I didn't, that I had loved more. Forgiven more easily, spoken words I keep to myself - things that might have made others happier. They might be the regrets.

I can't live my life as easily as I blow dandelion seed in to the light, watching those tiny umbrellas of life float off. Starting anew every part of themselves. Again and again. But I'd like to try.

If only having to do all of the house work didn't piss me off so much. So utterly and absolutely. (My song of woe). I might be half way to enlightenment :)

when you need to make something

.... to quote that sporty line ~ just do it. I had a million things this morning that I should do, a headache and felt so blah looking around my messy bedroom. I needed to acomplish something, a thing I could focus all my attention on and ignore all else, so I sat and quickly sewed a skirt. My machine did not oblige, but I am getting used to the messy way it drills out stitches.



The pattern is the super easy Lazy Day Skirt. If you have never sewed a thing but have access to a machine, make this. It's easy. And looks good. The fabric is from here, a non toxic Swedish print. I love this particular fabric because it's extra wide - see you use a whole width of fabric to make this skirt, from a bolt, selvage to selvage (thus no hemming required) so the wider it is the more swishy the skirt is. In fact this one looks like she has a bustle on under there or something, but I like that too.





And now, if my day is done for, I at least did one thing. Plus she actaully liked it, so I am counting that as two things. It's certainly allowed, as far as shit days go :)

on crawling into small spaces

I notice a cyclic nature to my moods, thoughts, emotions and even the way my physical body looks (and of course feels). It circles the lunar month and the cycle pulled by tides within me. It's only in recent months that I have even paid attention to it, because in doing so I am finding I can more easily understand myself and in turn apply the moods, ups and downs to assist (rather than drag and fray at) my everyday normal life.



I am at the lyrical, melancholy (what a lovely word), slightly sad, wistful, hyper sensitive phase that is the week leading up to winding down and renewing of myself. Loud noises, knocks and bumps jarr me- something beautiful makes tears squeeze from the corners of my eyes. It's a time to be quiet for me, not to go out much, not even to *do* much. There is this distance between myself and reality. I have to surround myself with things that comfort; long baths, photographing outdoors, slowly picking dandelion leaves to make tea, preparing foods that I really like, and maybe eating only that all day long. Reading for very long stretches, old favourites, the familiar, while tying my hair back and wearing old trousers, ones that need to be tied. Having my hands in the ground, plucking delicate seedlings, turning earth, pulling weeds. Here I find myself again. Oh! There! And the satisfaction-joy is like a forgotten bar of chocolate in your bag that you find at just the right needy moment.



I often read Mary Oliver (New and Selected Poems volume two is my favourite of all of hers) for the sheer comfort and pleasure. This is one of my favourite little passages:

Just yesterday I watched an ant crossing a path, through the
tumbled pine needles she toiled.
And I thought: she will never live another life but this one.
And I thought: if she lives her life with all her strength
is she not wonderful and wise?
And I continued this up the miraculous pyramid of everything
until I came to myself.



And this may be my favourite of her poems, I love the images and the comfort-beauty:



I found a dead fox

I found a dead fox
beside the gravel road,
curled inside the big
iron wheel

of an old tractor
that had been standing,
for years,
in the vines at the edge

of the road.
I don't know
what happened to it-
when it came there

or why it lay down
for good, settling
it's narrow chin
on the rusted rim

of the iron wheel
to look out
over fields
and that way died-

but I do know
this: its posture-
of looking,
to the last possible moment

back into the world-
made me want
to sing something
joyous and tender

about foxes.
But what happened is this-
when I began,
when I crawled in

through the honeysuckle
and lay down,
curling my long spine
inside that cold wheel,

and touched the dead fox,
and looked out
into the wide fields,
the fox

vanished.
There was only myself
and the world
and it was I

who was leaving
And what could I sing
then?
Oh, beautiful world!

I just lay there
and looked at it.
And then it grew dark.
The day was done with.

And then the stars stepped forth
and held up their appointed fires-
those hot, hard
watchmen of the night.