tiny moments (and everything in between)
Just before class, I step outside to gather bits of nature, a last-minute inspiration. Red and orange zinnias, a few yellow birch leaves, wispy sprigs of cosmos. I spritz the clippings, place them in a bag, and to the bag I add a jar of acorn tops, candles, a collection of smooth rose quartz stones. It’s the Autumnal … Continue reading equinox
I am in the middle of making a list, a list of right now, a list which unfailingly centers me, slows my brain. Except in this fraction of a second, my brain is picking up speed, is attempting to pull me in another direction. Just quick, I think, the urge to do something just quick very real. I note the … Continue reading just quick
We have visitors. My sister, my brother-in-law, my nephew, which sounds very my-ish, though how else to say? They do not belong to me, are not mine-mine, though they are mine in heart speak, if there is such a thing, and I think that there is. It’s a quick visit, one dinner, one sleep, one breakfast. It’s good to see … Continue reading lingering
The first cherry tomatoes are ready for plucking, eating, admiring and so I pluck, I eat, I admire. There is one tomato that remains in the admiring phase, rests on the kitchen windowsill. I look at it multiple times a day while standing at the sink to wash dishes or hands. I don’t know what it is about … Continue reading museum
I wake to steady rain and think—no feel, deep inside—ohyes and thank you and please rain all day. The light is dim, soft, quiet, my husband gone to work, the kids still sleeping. It feels a coffee kind of morning and I take the French press from the cupboard, boil water in the kettle, measure grounds, pour, … Continue reading skipper
I get a new half pan for my watercolor set, quinacridone magenta. The older I get, the more I like pink. When younger, I thought it conventional to like pink, stereotypical, liking a color society assumes I like because I am female. So I showed them (them in quotation marks), cultivated instead a love for yellow which remains … Continue reading glorious
The first of the cosmos have come up, self-seeding from last year, and the year before, and…. Along with the zinnias, this summer’s haphazard garden is shaping up. I walk to the shed to get the lawn mower, notice a tomato plant. Another dear plant has self-seeded and, for a moment, my heart skips a beat, reverence rooting … Continue reading reverence
I see my friend after several weeks’ time. She makes coffee, I bring olive oil cake swirled with blueberry jam, we sit on her porch. It’s a perfect summer morning, a perfect way to begin the week. The rest of the week is good too, though busy. My writing project is challenging my brain in new ways and … Continue reading a string of good
The words in my journal, of late, are of softness and breath, of dreams and process, artist and voice, life and wonder. Repeatedly they surface, on this page and that page, on the page that’s written two days later, as if something in my subconscious is coming up for air. I breathe, I dream, I iterate. I … Continue reading works of art
It is quite the week, again. Full in so many ways, none of them bad, but all together, a lot. I am close to overwhelm and, if it’s possible to be a tiny bit overwhelmed—though this seems a word, a condition that is either/or, very big or not at all—I am, a tiny bit. But (a tiny bit) … Continue reading excessively gentle
Michelle GD 