The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen all at once.
–Albert Einsten
Contents
-
Categories
-
Archives
Blogroll
-
RSS Feeds
-
Meta
Einstein Fruit
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Mandala-Making
Thursday, December 25, 2008
This is a mandala I created during the first snowstorm of the season, which happened to fall on the Winter Solstice. It was warm and toasty at the kitchen table and yummy food was being cooked while I painted. I made a wish for all my dear ones while I sat there dipping my tiny brush into richly colored dabs of guache. This is the second mandala I’ve made in the past month. I have to say I relish making them. I love the mystery of not really knowing what it will look like until I’m done. It requires sitting still, sticking with the process. This mandala took me about 4 hours to complete. There were times during the process when I thought — this thing is ugly! But I knew in my heart that it would become a thing of beauty in the end, so I just kept going, as I am want to do — I just keep going.
Here’s the first one I made:
As it happens, I made it on my oldest son’s 14th birthday. This one took about 3 hours. It was another snowy day (hmmmm there’s a pattern here) and we were hunkered down in the warm house with movies and various baked goods. Every once in a while my son would peek in to my studio to see how it was progressing. At first, he wasn’t very impressed, but by the time it was finished, he thought it was totally cool. Wishes for my son are inside this one: wishes for passion and zeal and love and health and humility.
Happy Birthday, Sylvia Plath
Monday, October 27, 2008
It’s Sylvia Plath’s birthday. Had she not taken her own life on a cold february morning in 1963, Plath would’ve been 78 today. Here’s one of my favorite Plath poems:
The Moon and the Yew Tree
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky –
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.
The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness -
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.
I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars
Inside the church, the saints will all be blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness – blackness and silence.
Alaskan Women Rock!
Thursday, September 18, 2008
I found this link in my mailbox this morning and it gave me hope.
Cary Tennis
Friday, September 5, 2008
Could that possibly be his real name? Maybe. But it doesn’t much matter to me. I just really dig reading his advice column “Since You Asked” in Salon. He advises the lovelorn, the marriage-weary, the hurtin’ puppy, and the dazed and confused with humor, compassion, and higher-than-average intelligence.
Berkano
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Before I woke my astoundingly tall sons — how did this happen? — for their first day of school (5th & 8th grade) this morning, I performed my new moon ritual of lighting a candle and drawing a rune. The new moon was actually on Saturday, August 30th: O well, I think it’s ok to be imprecise when it comes to the moon…
When I draw a rune, I take it with me mentally and meditate on it throughout the day Sometimes, I use it as a weapon against despair or a psycho boss. In this case, Berkano speaks to me of continuous growth and fertility; it says propagate, propagate, propagate! It tells me to create and be in a perpetual state of birth-ing. No more biological children for me, so I take it to mean poems, stews, paintings, songs, friendships. I take it to mean: keep on keepin’ on.
Anna A.
Monday, June 16, 2008
So…one of the good things in my life at the moment is the fact that my cubicle is next door to Anna A.’s cubicle on a sort of cul-de-sac at our office. That means we can have lots of over-the-clothesline conversations and Anna can roll her chair on over to mine and say “I hate her” in that deadpan scary way she has when our boss is being particularly narcissistic. I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of Anna, and luckily I’m not. Here’s an example of how nice Anna A. can be: One day I was having a horrendously bad day and Anna rolled over and let me pick out a My Little Pony sticker to cheer me up. I stuck it to the front of my CPU. The ridiculously festive mane and the optimism in its jaunty little pose do cheer me up. Every day. She also got me hooked on lol cats — another cheerer upper when the pressure’s on.
The other day Anna A. told me she only reads blogs that have entries about her. So here it is, Anna, a post about you.
Daily Bread
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Before I hurry off to my cool new job as Content Maven for a health organization, I am happy to see (and say) that Poetry Daily, a poetry anthology site, is still alive and thriving. The Editors, Don Selby & Diane Boller, are dedicated to searching out good contemporary poems and serving them to those of us who require poetic nourishment on a regular basis. They’ve also just announced their new RSS feed — for those who truly want to be served.
Back to Work
Monday, August 6, 2007
Today will mark my first day back to full time 9-5 work after a considerable period of unemployment (8 months). As a single mother and provider for two school-aged children, I’m grateful for the paycheck I’ll be bringing in again and for the opportunity to enjoy some professional success. But, I have to admit that the thought of going back to work full time fills me with some trepidation: how will I manage to do it all? Over the past eight months, I have truly come to appreciate how much unpaid work I perform outside my 9-5 wage-earning job. While being unemployed, the work of running a household and tending to the various needs of my children, occupied a huge chunk of my time. I’m acknowledging to myself that working full time while also managing a household singlehandedly puts me at risk for not being able to perform either job at maximum efficiency! In my last job, my supervisor couldn’t tolerate and punished me for unpredictable fluctuations in my schedule and my sometimes divided attention. That she was insane and scary and evil is another story.
I’m grateful that my new boss raised a child on her own and understands what I’m up against — and what all of us are up against — as we try to make a living and live a life. I’m bracing myself for the grind of the days of a 9-5 wage slave and her hurried (but well-loved) children. I also have every intention to breathe and smile in both the relentless rhythms and the ceasuras of the modern routine.
Wish me luck, everyone, as I enter the workaday world once again!