Something Small

Sometimes I read the latest news reports and wonder how a person can engage with the darkness of this world and move with something other than despair? 

The news swells in my head like a colorless fog. And I'll walk around filled up with it, or sink into a swamp. 

But in the end I make a conscious, or somewhat conscious, decision I'll make to stand still and pay attention to something small. The sweet smell of soap, or eating sliced apples with my kid. 

And it connects to me, this small thing, whatever it is. The tie between us like the filament in a lightbulb. It offers a sort of comfort. Allows a kind of goodness to grow again in my brain. 

And after a while, sometimes a long while, the just darkness just doesn't feel so close.

Sky Watching

 Outside Lincoln, NE - December 13, 2012

Sunsets are oftentimes the most remarkable feature of the Midwestern landscape. This one followed me all way home yesterday.

Still Open - Just Moving

http://adrianlovesowls.blogspot.com/

Pepe's Vegetarian Bistro, home of the best tacos in town, is still open Havelock through December.

Owner Pepe Ferito hopes to throw open his doors in a new location (Indian Village at 13th and High streets) on January 4 but guessed it will be February before it happens.

Through December, though, the Havelock location is taking things down, moving things around, but they're still cookin'.

Stop by.
Eat tacos.
You'll be glad you did.

Winter Morning

Freezing cold. No snow. These winter mornings have a bright moon. A blue light that comes up from ground. Vapor that comes from breathing. A hard skin of ice on my windshield just from standing still.

Sunday

"Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life. All it needs from you is that you take care not to trample on it." 

– Marilynn Robinson, Gilead (2004)

Expansive Sky

It was unseasonably warm today so I went for a hike. This time of year the most striking feature of the Midwest is, without a doubt, its expansive sky. 

I like hiking. My mind works better when I'm moving. I like the way I'll fling ideas around, or just listen to the world outside of myself. This hike was a lovely moment, filled with open thinking, surrounded by greenness. 

As I've grown older I'll shut down certain thoughts as impossible or unthinkable. No. No. Can't. Can't. I'll clam up a good idea before it even gets the chance to fully form. 

So I like hiking. It gets me outside of the usual confines. That wide open sky helps me examine how big I can dream something. From that space no idea sounds too terribly silly or overly-remarkable.

Fog Drip

My Morning Run

Winter Swim

We ate dinner early. With daylight cut short and the winter night feeling especially long, we ate dinner early.
Hot lasagne, steaming from the oven.  It was good. 

Then the dishes all rinsed and set, tidily, in the sink. 

Homework done. 

We went swimming.
The pool was heated to perfection.
Practically had the place to ourselves so we splashed around and played more than we swam really.
Laughed and sang in loud voices.
Suddenly the dark night didn't feel so long.
The cold weather didn't feel like it was closing in. 

Tomorrow morning I'll wake up and my skin will still smell of chlorine.

America Recycles Day

75% of Nebraska's landfill waste could have been recycled.
Enough said.

Last Saturday's Hike

Fontenelle Forest - Fall Back

Person You Hide

Thanks, D.

G'night

I arrived home to a quiet house. Kicked off my girlie shoes and warmed up a slice of pie from the fridge.

My cheeks hurt from laughing and my heart hurt a little from an evening with David Sedaris and the lovely Ms. B.

Sigh.

Abundance

Marinara Sauce - In Its Elemental Form

I've developed a weekday infatuation with my slow cooker.  The relationship is especially nice when daylight is short, the workday is frustrating or long. My slow cooker offers some comfort at that first push through the front door.  Somebody has already thought about dinner. The house already smells delicious.

Autumn Weekend

Arbor Day Tree Adventure, Oct. 2012

If joy can be imperially measured I would express it in the layers of mud caked against my shoes at the end of a day.

6.3-miles Outside

Rock Island Trail, 33rd & Sheridan

I went for a run this morning. Laced up my laces. Pulled back my hair. Flicked on the coffee pot to brew while I was gone. Threw the door open and ran, ran, ran outside.  

______________

Currently Reading: State of Wonder by Ann Patchett 

Recent Goodness: N gave public speaking a whirl last weekend. In Mandarin. 

Anxious to Attend:  Pirate Weekend at the Renaissance Festival in K.C.

OMA-DEN-SFO

Big Basin Redwood State Park

My California findings:

• This book by Paolo Giordano.
• A quiet hotel in Silicon Valley that offered a delicious, hot breakfast each morning. Every comfy bed had a canopy. Every guest room had a plastic cactus shaped lamp.
• My kid can mass-transit with the best of 'em.
• The Golden Gate Bridge is seventy-five years old this year. 
• Before purchasing your slinky, little blue dress in San Francisco's Chinatown: take a moment to try it on. American dress sizes are not the global standard.
• Skunk patrol among forest rangers is part of the job but it isn't so much living the dream.
• A forest of tall trees is even more magnificent than you'd imagine.
• The only other conversations that tackle the same expanse of time as the redwoods involve rocks and tectonic plates.
• Stop at the mountain-town grocery store. The sign offers liquor, coffee and donuts. In that order. 

Wishful Thinking

Sigh. And yet, it was almost 100 degrees again today...

Night Noises

'Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?'    (Mary Oliver)

_________________________

My mother spends the next two weeks teaching in Cambodia.

I get a vicarious thrill from her sense adventure. Her sense of purpose. I'll catch myself, in the middle of the day, wondering about the view outside her window. The smell that hangs in the air, the chatter of places and people.  

An email from mom landed in my inbox on Sunday afternoon, the middle of the night in Phnom Penh. The night noises so loud she couldn't sleep.

Ever since my brain has been crowded with jungle noises and the sound of a rainstorm from the other side of the world.

Rainstorm

After months and months of drought. After acclimating to the scratch at my ankles of brown and dead grass blades. After the soil shrinks away from the sidewalk and the City has watering restrictions. 

It rained. Small, sharp droplets. A heavy, wet wind.  

I went outside. Sat down. Closed my eyes to have a more tactile sense of what was happening.

Summer

My skin beaded up with sweat as I stepped off the front porch this morning. 

No doubt about it: it’s summer. More specifically it’s that part of summer where you wake up with your mouth dry, your head pulsing. 

It’s that part of summer with brown patches of grass dotted along the quiet street. I noticed last night that I haven’t heard kids playing outside in more than a month. 

I imagine everyone inside their house. The a/c wheezing along, trying to keep up without relief. The blinds drawn, every light bulb off, the buzz of a box fan set on ‘high’. People resembling puddles from a dirty mop all over each living room couch. 

Oh, wait, maybe that’s just ~my~ house I’m imagining. In any case, if you’re looking for a couch to puddle up on or a spare popsicle for dinner feel free to stop by.

3-miles Outside

Jamaica North Trail (first legit trip with N)

15-miles Outside

MoPac East Bike Trail - My First Summer Ride

 

For The Picking

First Ripe Strawberry, 2012

With the mild weather the garden seems to have burst open with ripe fruit and vegetables. This was the first ripe strawberry the urban wildlife left behind for small human consumption. N was thrilled. Thrilled, I tell you. Thrilled.

When I lived in Colorado the soil was too sandy, my life too chaotic to grow things. I remember turning to M and supposing out loud that most good people have gardens. If you look at the people I know, fifteen years later, I'd say it's confirmed. Most good people have gardens, or wish they did.

We dropped the last of the seeds in the ground this weekend. Dill, cilantro, basil, carrots, cucumbers. The tomatoes get starts rather than seeds. We like tomatoes. We like tomatoes a lot.

Rolling Drop Off

Prescott Family Bike To School Day, 2012

Adaptation

I wake sometimes before my alarm and lay in bed. This time of year the mornings are cold and the day warms gently. We sleep with the windows open. I lay there with cold bedsheets on all sides and the pungent smell of wet grass hanging in the air. I stare at the ceiling and listen to the harsh, clattering noise from the birds outside. The squawks and calls drown out any street traffic. 

The noise is deliberate. A complicated language. One I don't speak. I like to lay in bed just to listen. Each conversation with its distinct tones. I'll venture a guess occasionally that they're cooing over babies, arguing over position, or just moaning with loneliness out there. 

My niece spoke bullfrog once. She was an infant, swaddled in her parent's arms, on the dock outside their cabin. The tall grass along the lake shore full of croaking bullfrogs. She heard the bullfrog conversation taking place and didn't hesitate before joining in. Her parents tuned their ears to the shoreline and followed suit. 

I woke up this morning before the alarm and I fell in love with this peculiar, and expansive world. The complicated way we reach out to each other, the ways express ourselves. Even the empty spaces, the quiet morning, filled with chatter of one sort or another. A noisy, sometimes harsh, conversation about our living.

Morning Pose

"The heart does not age, it is the flesh that wrinkles."    
- Carla Zarebska

Wait! Wait!

 Tonight's Lied Center Stage in Lincoln, Nebraska

I spent the evening, perched in a front row seat, among a crush of Nebraska Public Radio listeners in attendance for the Live Recording of Wait Wait...don't tell me! 


The evening started with a dark stage and a luminescent disco ball, and it only got better. My personal high point of the evening was Carl Kassell's off-air impersonation of Darth Vader. 

So listen for the Lincoln show this weekend. And if you hear a familiar guffaw from the front row it's because I was in the zone with Roy Blundt Jr. He referenced this soon-to-be released video game that I had been poking around for details about all week. 

City Limits

There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind. 

-Annie Dillard

Crocus Solitaire

First Garden Bloom

The Great Backyard Bird Count

I spent Friday afternoon with thirteen kids armed with birding books and binoculars. We took part in the Great Backyard Bird Count. 

The Great Backyard Bird Count is an annual four-day event that engages bird watchers of all ages in counting birds to create a real-time snapshot of where the birds are across the continent. Then you upload the data for Cornell University and the National Audubon Society to use. Anyone can participate, from beginning bird watchers to experts.

During a 15 minute outing we saw crows and a woodpecker. This is a set of photos I snapped while I wasn't looking up, but admiring my group of enthusiastic beginners.

Late February

K inspires me to revisit this poem this morning. Coffee. Wet hair from the shower. Poetry. What could be better?

Late February by Ted Kooser : The Poetry Foundation

Friday Blurbs

We did not come to remain whole.

We came to lose our leaves like the trees, 

The trees that are broken 

And start again, drawing up from the great roots

- Robert Bly

_______________

N participates in a world of the Mind-Paint Workshop. She writes poetry and comes home with a bubbling from under her skin. 

Thanks, C, for inspiring my kid to love writing and words!

_______________

All of the programmable electronics in my house - my coffeepot, my blackberry, my gas furnace... - wake up at the same time. I'm the straggler. I roll out of bed, at least, 20 minutes late. 

________________

I have developed a cooking-crush on the smittenkitchen website. 

________________ 

Citizen Science Alert: this weekend is the Great Backyard Bird Count. I have a group of 13 elementary school students fired up and ready to go this afternoon. Clip boards. Binoculars. Warm Coats. We're good to go! 

Polaroid

Happy Valentine's Day!

Cabin Fever

N attends the Before & After Program at Prescott. Every year we're tasked with saving wrapping paper, ribbons and bows from our winter holidays for the annual Indoor Snowball Fight.

No snow involved, just wrapping paper. The whole thing resembles family therapy, mixed thoroughly with cabin fever, and drenched in near mayhem!

Midwestern Buddhism

My friend, D, simplifies the teachings of the Dalai Lama for me:

a. Don't be a douche-bag. 

b. Being a douche-bag will get you nowhere. 

c. Be nice. 

d.Thank the douche-bags in your life for helping you to choose not to be like them.

Books & Blankets

It has been those nights where nobody has felt quite right. That groggy feeling left over at the end of long weekend, or the same sensation that comes with the beginning of a feverish cold. Within these four walls we were early to bed with books and blankets.

Long Ago & Far Away

Happy 40th, C.

My Soundtrack

Regina Spektor takes first prize in the all around competition.