“Nothing beats being really honest about who you are and what you need. All the rest just works itself out.”

More cold. the february drag ensues, but monday we get to burn the christmas tree and after that mail away the seed order and get the trucks fixed and figure out what is wrong with the stove. i have little to say but am painting more, reading more, remembering that a seed needs an embryo, armor and a yolk of nourishment. he rattles me after all that and the recent show of light quickly drawn over with tarp and cinderblock. februarys sense of waiting. and a sense that there are omens and angels everywhere, dropping hints onto my path, a breeze past my hand that chooses one over another.




"...Fences were nothing compared to that./People were nothing. They slept standing,/their throats curved against the other's rump./They breathed against each other,/whinnied and stomped./There are things they did that I do not know./The privacy of them had a river in it./Had our universe in it. And the way/its border looks back at us with its light./This was finally their freedom./The freedom an oak tree knows./That is built at night by stars."

20 of 365:

1. prairie home companion.
2. getting the blankets done (on time).
3. my hot water bottle.
4. books, and my ability to read them.
5. finding the flint stone.
6. seed catalogs.
7. winter oranges.
8. paint.
9. hot and cold running water.

"Leave space around your certainties for all those unknown x factors potently operating outside the box of what you presently comprehend. And remember that as you expand the sphere of your awareness you will also expand the circumference of unknown that surrounds you."

"...And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters."

-J.K. Rowling

heres a video from my lovely new friend, erin.

"No human being who devotes his life and energy to the manufacture of fantasies can be anything but fundamentally inadequate."



inadequate is as subjective as art. and is art not the manufacture of fantasies, at least in its broadest sense. and is not life art? not much clarity but i dont presume to offer. early early morning, clear sky with million stars, million million, a song to the stars the teeth and tongue of my mammalian vertebrate self inadequate to sing the song of the stars but my song is art, doomed from the start, forever and ever amen. the sky this winter has been so clear and vicious cold, liquid cold, a cold you need not fall through the ice to feel. ive been letting myself get more sleep, the sleep my monkey brain craves in the rime-laced cave of january. but i can tell were on the upside, riding out from the trough, still staring at a wall of snow but soon soon well feel the sun full on our face rolling in the grass and smelling of pollen and mud.




"Desire change. Be enthusiastic for that flame in which a thing escapes your grasp
while it makes a glorious display of transformation. That designing Spirit, the master mind of all things on earth loves nothing so much in the sweeping movement of the dance as the turning point."



brought a lot of wood in, baked brownies and painted a bit with #4 when he came home. getting the paperwork in, no paper here, nothing new, we make do. thinking about my friend suzie, thinking about the wonder of the world, seasons, trees, dogs, pregnant women, everything dancing atoms and theres more space than anything else. breathing. believing. pink geraniums. we blow through straws to spread the ink, let it bleed and grow into other colors, let it run, fingers of ink gripping the day of the page like light. i am the paint, the day and the light. be well, suzie, and ill see you soon under the sky.

(sigh) well, lets try it again...

from stephany who got it from tabitha

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me. I will try to make these be about or tailored to those five lucky people. This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
- What I create will be just for you.
- It’ll be done this year
- You have no clue what it’s going to be.



The catch? Oh, the catch is that you have to put this in your journal as well, if you expect me to do something for you! And please link to your blog so that I can visit and read in case we are new friends.

***(im going to add here, just for me, that you dont need a blog to participate. if you ever just come by, put a comment up and well go from there).***

"To give and not expect anything in return, that is what lies at the heart of love."

speaks for itself (!)

"All respectability, all honor is meaningless if it drives you against your nature. What can you do if you are not a lotus flower, but just a marigold? Enjoy being a marigold."



they begged the boss to let me on the bus and i hung with the crusty mucus-slurping firsters and took a minute to dip into beedle tales and smiled the rest of the day. theyre all pregnant or toting breast pumps or trying. theres a ghost that rattles around inside me, clanging her silver cup against my ribs, dancing with rosy ghost toes on my abandoned uterus. but i come home and throw frisbee with the dog and have some chocolate and hope one day i come to the sudden realization that i havent thought about it in years.

"I swear, without a word of a lie, that the very next time someone tells me that they “wish they had all that free time to knit” I am going to look them dead in the eye and ask them what they watched on TV last night."



Thanks, SB, for taking us on this little jaunt down memory lane, in case we thought Obamas innaug. was too bland:



1. love.
2. we overcame, that much more.
3. gwb is no longer president of the united states.
4. the health i enjoy.
5. brown rice and salsa.
6. making av laugh like that.
7. my bento box
8. playing disc with z. after work.
9. stretching, feeling the stretch.

(exhale)



The Big Day. romantic snow falling im knitting across the transfer of power the little birthday blanket for the little limb. painted an amanita muscaria and traced my hand. everybody comes home, #4 finds chocolate i stashed and forgot about. ate a great quantity of purple cabbage for dinner. happy. walked out into the world. talked with my neighbors. smiled at the trees. the quality of light is changing, there was a bright smudge of yellow in it this afternoon. the two of us are cuddly and a wee bit more at ease. #2 calls to wish me a happy inauguration. its official, its real. theyre so beautiful and easy together. only the best. may he be our Good Captain. there is a quiet in my heart, a night in winter, something stirring deep beneath, waiting for the solid snow to sing water into the earth.



18 of 365:

1. it went off lovely, and i was alive to see it.
2. walking out into the snow with my dog.
3. firewood.
4. friendly neighbors.
5. art supplies.
6. his gentleness and kindness.
7. the organic loveliness of purple cabbage.
8. surprise chocolate.
9. uncovering a stash of paperbacks that saves his near reading future.

O GREAT ORACULAR iTUNES!!!
(cd available upon request)

1. What does the Winter hold in store for me?
So What, Derek Trucks Band

2. What does the Spring hold in store for me?
Yellow Submarine, The Beatles

3. What does the Summer hold in store for me?
Fire Door, Ani DiFranco

4. Will our journey to Sherman be successful this summer?
Pony Boy, The Allman Brothers Band

5. Who Am I?
Paradise, John Prine

6. What is my Theme Song for this Year?
Open, Peter Gabriel (LToC Soundtrack)

7. What should i understand about my Emotional Life?
Teknochek Collision, Slavic Soul Party

8. What should i understand about my Physical Life?
Hypnotized, Ani DiFranco

9. What should i understand about my Spiritual Life?
My Manic and I, Laura Marling

10. What song played over my Soul as i was born?
Oh Susanna, The Be Good Tanyas

11. What song shall usher me Out as i die?
Campaigner, Neil Young

12. What song holds a secret key to my deeper happiness?
It's All Over Now Baby Blue, Bob Dylan

13. What is the Theme Song of my Very Life?
Back to Memphis, The Band

14. What Goal Should i Work Toward this Year?
Friend of the Devil, The Grateful Dead

15. Will it Be Alright?
Daylight Fading, Counting Crows

16. The Song of my 36th Year?
Ice Cream, Sarah McLachlan

17. The Song of my 37th Year?
We're All in this Together, Old Crow Medicine Show

18. What do i Need to Understand about N?
Good King Wenceslas, John Fahey

19. What do i Need to Understand about #2?
A Long December, Counting Crows

20. What do i Need to Understand about #3?
It Takes A Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry, Bob Dylan

21. What do i Need to Understand about #4?
You Had Time, Ani DiFranco

22. What do i Need to Understand Me?
Alive and Well and Living In, Jethro Tull

23. What is the Meaning of Life?
Baby Let Me Lay it On You, Etta Baker

Excellent synopsis of conscious interaction and killing with kindness,

and this gem that gets me thinking about how i would define the indefinable:

something pulled directly but backwards and with altered punctuation from a gentlemans blog.

How strange to be gone in a minute.
Spare hanger in a bone closet
Accidents are not itineraries,
The emperor's old clothes.
I've stopped being Theirs--
Is there sex in this class?
Let me recite you a ballad,
Admiral and existentialist.
Not waving but drowning--
What price salience?
Daring as never before,
Nearing the non-ending,
Shyness unrequited
I do not think it will signify to me.
Unsettled by the name Oil Can Boyd,
There's no such thing as post-publication
(Stiff shirt in a sad closet).
I think I'll write a dictionary;
Rebel angels, measured heaven,
The well-hung muse.
A little more uncertainty, please.
Big man, small town
(My typewriter is bigger than your typewriter,
And if not, not).
Does a bear shit in the woods?
Badda bing, badda boom.

"The future is not some place we're going, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found but made. And the activity of making them changes both the maker and their destination."



"Each time we act in service of our sacred intentions, each time we align our energies and our actions with what we most truly love, we gain in personal power and ability, the path before us becomes clearer, and the help and allies we need come to us."



"...because there is/joy in what the earth gives, allowing/our bodies to mingle with it, our voices/small on the field, our work assuring the goats/can give milk, the sheep can grow wool,/and we will have in our bones the taste/of something so old it travels in light."

#4 and i celebrate MLKjr listening to his speeches on npr and the voices of those who were there. mavis staples and odetta. we craft. he paints a picture of, "a tree that is struck by a sunbeam and by lightning and the tree is dancing and screaming." he says his life is complicated. the sisterpack leaves, ready to renew their love of luxury. made monkey bread, biscuits and gravy on request. the sun shines. mercury in retrograde. in a quiet headspace, riding the groovy wave of hope these days have in me inspired. the days are longer but terrible cold. coffee and monkey bread and tomorrow is january 20th, 02009. im learning the power of prayer in a lot of beautiful ways. thank you.



17 of 365:

1. NPR.
2. Monkey Bread, all 72 Pieces of It.
3. Mavis Staples.
4. Cinnamon and Flaxseeds.
5. Watching Ferris Buellers Day Off with #4.
6. #4 Beat-Boxing.
7. He Apologized for "Everything."
8. The Crushing Psychic Burden It Suddenly and Subsequently Liberates me From.
9. Whales.