At autumn's beginning
There is a short, but wondrous time
When days seem made of crystal
And evenings are radiant…
Fyodor Tyutchev
September 27, 2011
September 23, 2011
depilated
What do you get when you take one harried Mama,
add the fact that she is running late,
combined with one new round brush for one's long hair -
applied directly to the roots up front for some last minute added lift?
What do you get?
A full-blown hair disaster.
Stuck!!
Nightmare brush stuck in the hair.
I am home alone.
Nobody to help me (or laugh at me).
One hour later, the brush is still stuck.
Actually more twisted and stuck than before
due to the desperate, frustrated pulling,
tugging
and
crying.
I was having my very own Ramona moment -
except I am not 10-years old.
I tried everything -
pulling small strands at a time, conditioner, olive oil.
Nothing worked.
An hour in,
I grabbed the scissors desperate to be free
from the tangled monster on my head.
I pulled so hard,
I now have a bald spot.
And bangs.
Only the bangs are on one side of my head,
and not exactly up front where they belong.
What to do now?
So far, my ideas are;
staying in,
hats,
headbands,
getting a wig
and
going a'la Britney.
Any suggestions?
from this,
to this…
to this.
September 6, 2011
well-meant
1. Whether people are fully conscious of this or not,
they actually derive countenance
and sustenance from the 'atmosphere' of the things they live in or with.
They are rooted in them just as a plant is in the soil in which it is planted.
A.A.Bühlmann
2. ...Time does not heal,
It makes a half-stitched scar
That can be broken and again you feel
Grief as total as in its first hour.
-Elizabeth Jennings
3. I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been mildly manic. When I am my present "normal" self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In sort, for myself, I am a hard act to follow.
Kay Redfield Jamison
4. Yes.
I wish I didn't know what that means.
September 3, 2011
madness method
randomosity
or
snapshots of a life...
something along those lines as life is bits and pieces of so many things.
Moments of insight, conversations, feelings and experience.
All held together by one body, a mind, a spirit -
held further by a place, by others, by circumstance.
Much of it is forgettable but a few things linger.
Thoughts that rise above the clutter of daily life.
These are the things I will preserve.
Things that mean something to me, but may be nothing to someone else.
If I had let myself post my randomosities these last few years, I would have been quite the steadfast blogger.
A day isn't complete for me without a few passages from a book, a quote, a funny word or phrase that stood out - a photo that caught my eye or inspired me.
So many overflowing spiral notebooks that I leave all over the house.
Full of random thoughts and ideas - left for my poor posterity to decipher.
From here on out, that job will be yours.
image; drawer knob by anthropologie
August 25, 2011
not the type
The Distant Hours by Kate Morton
image: tumblr
August 24, 2011
carolina on my mind
a few years ago, this very week, we spent enjoying the outer banks of north carolina.
we loved the beach, our beach house, friends, family and time together like no other. sunsets, lighthouses and long walks.
i'm hoping tonight that the outer banks will survive another hurricane.
image: tumblr
August 22, 2011
summer nights
“On summer nights the world
moves within earshot
on the interstate with its swish
and growl, an occasional siren
that sends chills through us.
Sometimes, on clear, still nights,
voices float into our bedroom,
lunar and fragmented,
as if the sky had let them go
long before our birth.
In winter we close the windows
and read Chekhov,
nearly weeping for his world.
What luxury, to be so happy
that we can grieve
over imaginary lives.”
Lisel Mueller “Late Hours"
image: tumblr
image: tumblr
August 14, 2011
August 5, 2011
July 23, 2011
June 7, 2011
the best things of summer
thunderstorms
planning family vacations
snow cones
crickets
patio furniture
star filled night skies
fireworks in the distance
sandals and flip-flops
saturday morning yard sales
corn fields
street festivals
swimming lessons
going out for ice cream
stopping at lemonade stands
the hum of fans
swim suits and towels drying on the patio furniture
painted toes
carnival food
impromptu picnics
diving boards
water balloon fights
slushees from 7-11
mountain dew slushees from 7-11
sleeping with the windows open
barbecues
lotioning tan summer skin
squirt guns
wearing skirts
homemade slip-n-slides
roadside fruit stands
the ice cream truck
new books and time to read them
afternoons in the park
the smell of new tennis balls
climbing trees
eating cheetos after swimming
corn on the cob
blowing bubbles in the backyard
sunglasses
dandelion bouquets from a toddler
frozen lemonade
leaving the sun-roof open
braided hair and messy buns
late nights
chatting with neighbors on the front lawn
bike rides
strawberries
keeping cool with the hose on a hot day
tiki torches
fresh cut grass
cotton candy
bright-colored beach towels
popsicles
summer songs
the scent of suntan lotion
hot sidewalks
straw totes
summer camps
watermelon
sleepovers
beach umbrellas
sparklers
miniature golf
sun bleached hair
hometown parades
running through the sprinklers
bare feet
happy summer!
image: tumblr
image: tumblr
April 17, 2011
Sometimes I dream about him - and then, of course, the next day I see him. See him after not seeing him for months and months. Like some place inside me knows exactly what is going to happen and is preparing me for the inevitable. Preparing me so not to let surprise show on my face when he looks at me. Covering for me so he'll know I could care less that I'm seeing him again. Sometimes it is him in my dream and sometimes it looks like H.L. and yet I know it is him. Even in my dream I hide from him. Last night, I stood so still next to the window - not even daring to breath for fear he would hear me, or see me - and then proceed to ruin my life all over again.
April 8, 2011
the words that remained
You and me: a complicated series of interactions.
All I wish is for beautiful words.
________________
Of course it’s happening inside your head, Harry. But why on Earth should that mean that it is not real?”
Albus Dumbledore
And then suffering, bodily suffering such as I’ve known for three years. It has changed forever everything—even the appearance of the world is not the same—there is something added. Everything has its shadow. Is it right to resist such suffering? Do you know I feel it has been an immense privilege?”
Katherine Mansfield
"I can’t believe I said it out loud. The truth doesn’t set you free, you know. It makes you feel awkward and embarrassed and defenseless and red in the face and horrified and petrified and vulnerable. But free? I don’t feel free. I feel like *&%^."
Melina Marchetta
“ I feel as if I’m always on the verge of waking up.”
"Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that’s where I imagine it - there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live forever in your own private library."
Haruki Murakami
And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about."
Haruki Murakami
Writing is a private thing. It's boring to watch, and its pleasures tend to be most intense for the person who's actually doing the writing.
Audrey Niffenegger
Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
Henry Miller
“ At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon.
Gustave Flaubert
“Important lessons: look carefully; record what you see. Find a way to make beauty necessary; find a way to make necessity beautiful. ”
from Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
"Usually we walk around constantly believing ourselves. “I’m okay”, we say. “I’m alright”. But sometimes the truth arrives on you and you can’t get it off. That’s when you realize that sometimes it isn’t even an answer – it’s a question. Even now, I wonder how much of my life is convinced."
Markus Zusak
We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they're called memories. Some take us forward, they're called dreams.
Jeremy Irons
I want adventure, thus I read.
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18
People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.
Lemony Snicket
Writing down your thoughts is both necessary and harmful. It leads to eccentricity, narcissism, preserves what should be let go. On the other hand, these notes intensify the inner life, which, left unexpressed, slips through your fingers.
Anna Kamienska
“Then one sunny day, they walk out in all innocence and they walk right into the grief that you’d give your life to spare them.”
Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.”
Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone.
Mitch Albom
She fit her head under his chin, and he could feel her weight settle into him. He held her tight and words spilled out of him without prior composition. And this time he made no effort to clamp them off. He told her about the first time he had looked on the back of her neck as she sat in the church pew. Of the feeling that had never let go of him since. He talked to her of the great waste of years between then and now. A long time gone. And it was pointless, he said, to think how those years could have been put to better use, for he could hardly have put them to worse. There was no recovering them now. You could grieve endlessly for the loss of time and the damage done therein. For the dead, and for your own lost self. But what the wisdom of the ages says is that we do well not to grieve on and on. And those old ones knew a thing or two and had some truth to tell, Inman said, for you can grieve your heart out and in the end you are still where you are. All your grief hasn’t changed a thing. What you have lost will not be returned to you. It will always be lost. You’re left with only your scars to mark the void. All you can choose to do is go on or not. But if you go on, it’s knowing you carry your scars with you. Nevertheless, over all those wasted years, he had held in his mind the wish to kiss her on the back of her neck, and now he had done it. There was a redemption of some kind, he believed, in such complete fulfillment of a desire so long deferred.
Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain
Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil—-the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the radiation of what man really is, not what he pretends to be.
William George Jordan
The sky was different, without color, taut and unforgiving. But the water was the most unforgiving thing, nearly black at times, cold enough, I knew, to kill me, violent enough to break me apart. The waves were immense, battering rocky beaches without sand. The farther I went, the more desolate it became, more than any place I’d been, but for this very reason the landscape drew me, claimed me as nothing had in a long time.
Jhumpa Lahiri, Unaccustomed Earth
In spite of everything I loved you, and will go on loving you—on my knees, with my shoulders drawn back, showing my heels to the headsman and straining my goose neck—even then. And afterwards—perhaps most of all afterwards—I shall love you, and one day we shall have a real, all-embracing explanation, and then perhaps we shall somehow fit together, you and I, and turn ourselves in such a way that we form one pattern, and solve the puzzle: draw a line from point A to point B…without looking, or, without lifting the pencil…or in some other way…we shall connect the points, draw the line, and you and I shall form that unique design for which I yearn. If they do this kind of thing to me every morning, they will get me trained and I shall become quite wooden.
Vladimir Nabokov
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it.
W C Fields
The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer. They think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.
Ken Kesey
People always think that happiness is a faraway thing, something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains -a cup of strong hot coffee when you’re blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you’re alone - just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.
Betty Smith, A Tree Grows In Brrooklyn
Even if I seemed to remember, I could not know. For just to remember something is not to know if it really happened. That is a primary fact of the inner life, the most difficult fact with which we must live.
Joyce Carol Oates
It was not in my nature to be an assertive person. I was used to looking to others for guidance, for influence, sometimes for the most basic cues of life. And yet writing stories is one of the most assertive things a person can do. Fiction is an act of willfulness, a deliberate effort to reconceive, to rearrange, to reconstitute nothing short of reality itself. Even among the most reluctant and doubtful of writers, this willfulness must emerge. Being a writer means taking the leap from listening to saying, “Listen to me."
Jhumpa Lahiri, Notes from a Literary Apprenticeship: The New Yorker
I haven't been blogging. But I've been reading. And writing. A lot.
I haven't been blogging. But I've been reading. And writing. A lot.
March 17, 2011
March 15, 2011
March 1, 2011
hiatus
"It has taken awhile, but I certainly do know it now- the most wonderful gift I have, the gift I finally learned to cherish above all else, was the gift of a perfectly ordinary day." Katrina Kenison
hot serotonin bath
James Stephens "Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself".
Fear emerges as an antagonist: fear of another grey day; fear of being bitten; and fear of having to explain that the black dog is in fact a black dog. And for all the darkness, she injects plenty of light:
1 big problem with 1 laptop + next to 0 internet connection + incapacitating influenza x6 + 1 dose of melancholy = 1 month of no blogging x6 =
6 months of no blogging
February 21, 2011
February 18, 2011
imposter
oh my,
who is that?
living inside my body.
inside my head.
acting as if she is me.
like she knows what she's doing.
she is a stranger.
living this strange life.
like she belongs here.
acting as if it is her own.
acting as if she isn't disappointed.
that it didn't turn out the way she thought
and hoped.
living here.
like this.
with them.
it isn't quite what she pictured.
she doesn't act the way she thought she would.
she doesn't think the way they hoped she might.
the way they taught to think without teaching.
she is a stranger.
an imposter
with a familiar face.
though the face is different too.
new lines.
new nose.
worried brow.
the lines
signs of laughter,
of smiles given.
footprints of pain,
of motherhood.
a trail of wisdom.
that leads to the heart.
new, brighter eyes.
lighter than before.
so easily full of tears.
she is interesting to look at.
it is apparent she knows things.
has felt things.
things she may not say.
she has learned much,
and tries hard.
to be.
to do.
to please.
to live
and love
genuinely
with a new honesty towards God.
and herself.
others may not understand her ways.
but she knows.
and God knows.
this is enough.
and
bit by bit,
she reveals herself to me.
and i can see
she is my friend.
she is still there when others leave.
i think i might love her
more than i ever tell her.
i am glad she is me.
written by gina harris.
reposted from march 2009.
feeling it again.
photo by max shutter photography
February 17, 2011
childhood
I'm loving these delightful photographs of children by Stephanie Rausser.
They make me miss the carefree days of my own childhood.
Making forts in the scrub oaks. Playing Barbies with Heidi, and Fisher Price with Cannon. Five-hour Monopoly games sitting on the warm sidewalk with Suzanne, Heidi and Amanda. Going tubing in the gully. Playing tennis at 10:00 p.m. on summer nights. Sitting on the back lawn husking corn or cutting the ends off beans. Sitting in the cherry tree eating until I was stuffed. Paying for it later with a doozy of a stomach ache. Roller skating in our unfinished basement. Walking to swimming lessons at Collier's house with Heidi. Learning how to cook at 4-H. Spending all my piggy bank money on snow cones & treats from the candy shack during baseball games. Night games. PTA summer movies at the Queen Theater.
Ah,
childhood.
I miss it.
February 10, 2011
love bites
making me hungry. making me want to bake. making me love pink. making me like valentine's day again.
1. XO's 2. cupid cupcake 3. sprinkles macarons 4. cupcakes 5. rice krispy hearts 6. layer cake 7. red velvet cake 8. cookies 9. cupcakes 10. mini cakes 11. cupcakes 12. heartcakes
February 3, 2011
have a heart
'Tis the season for love!!
I don't have much use for Valentine's Day except to make fun things to give to the ones I love.
I need to get my hands on enough time to do some of these projects that I heart.
1. simple, pretty boxes for treats {uponafold} 2. heart shaped brownies {twig&thistle}
3. stitched heart treat bags {stephanielynn} 4. framed fabric {a delightful design}
5. heart garland {mylittlebox2} 6. garland {bekah jennings}
7. ceramic heart bowl {paper peacock} 8. illustrated gift wrap {sweeteeth}
9. wrapped soap {cox&cox} 10. hint hint i want this{strandbooks}
11. paint swatches {country living} 12. felt fortune cookies {felting.craftgossip.com}
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