Category
Listening
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02.22.0830 days in the treehouse, day 7, cheating
30 Days in the Treehouse, Listening (4)
30 days in the treehouse, day 7, cheating, originally uploaded by young@art.
I’m cheating.
There was no treehouse time today.
When I took this picture, the kids were laughing at the tv, behind me, while I was watching the sunshine through bedroom window, through the rain, looking at sparkling drops hanging from the apple tree.
But now I know they both have walking pneumonia, and I’m a little more sober.
It sucks when the little ones are sick.When I was putting them into the car, on the way to the doctor’s office, , I looked into the trees to follow the “tweeeeeee.” “Tweeeeeeeeee” sounds. The Cedar Waxwings! They’re back again! But they seem so sad now that they holly berries are all gone. The were almost crying in the high boughs of the black walnut, beside the driveway, above the car. I’d have loved to watch them cavort and chat in the holly bush again, like I did a few weeks ago. Sipping tea in the treehouse and oggling the waxwings. How decadent! Another time. Maybe next year. I promise not to use any cuttings next Christmas from that tree.
Gorgeous little bandit-birds.
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02.18.0830 days in the treehouse, day 5
30 Days in the Treehouse, Listening, Photos, Seeing (1)
30 days in the treehouse, day 5, originally uploaded by young@art.
After looking at this for a while, it makes perfect sense why I made this image the say I did: we’ve been feeling totally WOOZY today. All of us ate something *bad* yesterday in Davenport and have been taking turns in the bathroom at all hours every since. This picture really nails how I’ve been feeling.
Plus, the February light is pretty intense, even in the treehouse.
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02.13.0830 days in the treehouse, day 1
30 Days in the Treehouse, Chas, Daily, Listening, Nature, Seeing (2)
30 days in the treehouse, day 1, originally uploaded by young@art.
The 30 Day Sit Spot Challenge begins on Friday. Chas and I will be spending our normal quiet time every day out in the treehouse next month. It will be our time to sit quietly and watch spring unfold.
We swept off the brown olive leaves that covered the floor and sat down for peanut butter sandwiches. Within a couple of minutes we were surrounded by a group of chatty titmice and towhees, who dangled from thin, bobbing branches of the acacia tree beside the structure. Not surprisingly, the hummingbirds were fighting somewhere in the orchard, never in one place for very long.
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01.22.08over under and into
Daily, Listening, Painting (1)
I think I may be over another brief periodic creative slump. As annoying as they are, they tend to be short, and this one lasted less than a week. It hit me that the inspiration I need is at the beach, low tide, and I haven’t been to the tidepools in about a month. We were set to go this afternoon, Damon was actually going to get back in the water while I watched the kids, hunting for sea stars and stuff, but the cold rain started falling. Even though we didn’t make it to the coast, something within me stirred. After three days of fruitless painting, doggedly dabbling blind beyond enjoyment in a frigid studio, I’m finally feeling my own pulse again. Some mexican beer, lime and salt, red meat and Blonde Redhead seem to have helped.We saw Blonde Redhead in Austin a few months ago at ACLfest, where they gave a sweaty, ethereal performance in the midday languor, linen sticking on skin. Tonight I feel the music breathe like some sort of cosmic summer breeze through the house, and I begin to daydream about the long hot 3-day marathon date with my husband and of the stark newness, then, of Kuzu’s breathy falsetto voice, and of trying to sing, myself.Sometimes the surest way to clear a mental roadblock, or a loss of mojo, is to do something completely scary and new for a change, this I know. And Damon has challenged me to sing to his music. Playing bass along with him is enough pressure and I already met that challenge. He also challenged me to face my fear of surfing by putting me on a board before a wave in the Pacific. If for only ourselves, my heart still stops at the though of exposing this abstraction of my voice. I don’t consider myself a singer. But he believes in me. Within these walls I might venture beyond my securities. You won’t hear me, so I will try. But you can send me quiet thumbs-up, because I’m scared to sing. Me? Sing. If ever so imperfectly, I’ll try.
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10.16.06“Mom? Did You Like My Song?”
Daily, Ford, Listening (1)It took me a half hour to post my last entry because Ford was singing really loud downstairs in the garage with Damon and I kept turning an ear down the hallway and laughing. I wish I were this uninhibited:
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03.25.06The Butt of My Brain
Chas, Daily, Ford, Listening, Photos, Thinking (5)
We meet our friends every afternoon to play at a playground. It’s a standing date: around 4pm every day. By that time, at least one of the toddlers has taken a nap, and the big boys have built up considerable steam. They scamper, laugh, and shout potty talk like nobody’s business. Polly and I stand, exasperated, torn between roles of shadowing the little ones as they teeter on the edge of tall perches and jumping into the storm to interrupt the trashy talk. We wonder why they can’t just use other words, when quiet time at home consists of lengthy discourse on subatomic particles and static electricity. Why Ford can’t make any word substitutions when he’s so clever to point out that “I don’t like to snuggle in the bed like a pack of batteries.” Instead, we hear endless “BUTT-HEAD!” and “BOOTY BUTT-HEAD!” and “PENIS HEAD!” in the drone of play combat that orbits around the playscape following a stampede of little feet.
To make matters worse, Chas loves to follow them around the playground, bouncing and roaring, tumbling every now and then as he tries to keep up, but occasionally shouting, “BUTT!!!!” He bends forth with a red face to proclaim the profanity as loudly as possible. It’s hard enough trying to get him to say normal words, like “sock” and “help” and “horse,” but I get so irate when I catch Ford leaning into Chas’ face, to teach him to properly pronounce “BUTT.” At the playground, when people hear “BUTT-HEAD” coming from Chas, they turn to me, surprised and amused. At these times, my eyes try rolling back into the nether region of my skull, to a place where fading dreams linger: where my house would always be tidy, where I’d ride horses while the kids napped, and where my boys would grow up perfect.
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02.03.06Insomnia
Listening (1)Somewhere between the dishwasher’s rinse cycle downstairs and the moment I usually fall asleep is a quiet time of night where I listen to nothing after a day’s fabric of noise. In the middle of this spell, the silence is usually broken by a pair of great horned owls. One has a perch near the deck, the other a block or so down, and they rally back and forth for several minutes over this and that. It always makes me smile. I enjoy this time. Sleep follows soon thereafter.
A few months ago, a little toy truck of Ford’s awoke me in the middle of the night (in my BEDROOM!) with a shorted battery going BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP chuggachuggachugga and, without opening an eye, I lurched for the toy and chucked it out the window. I didn’t care that Ford loved this truck so much that he took it into the bathtub with him (explaining the short). I didn’t ponder how he’d feel about it’s sudden disappearance.
Well, he didn’t ask for it after the toy disappeared. But I felt the bad karma might return to me. And it has, with the BEEP BEEP BEEP sound of a reversing toy truck rattling from the forest floor below my window. It’s a little elfin hardhat area hammering away at my nerves.
See? This is why I am getting rid of all the plastic, battery-op crap. What’s a Waldorf doll going to do to me? STARE me to death with two beady little embroidered eyeballs?
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