February, 2012.

Hi again. I missed you, and I even kind of missed writing. But the break was so good for me. It was a relief to think about other things, even the ones that were winter-grumbly and sad and annoying. Mostly, though, it was a lot of reflection, a lot of optimism, a lot of looking ahead. A lot of why and attendant answers to why. Maybe not very good answers, but enough to keep things moving.

I saved about 80% of my posts from The Deep Old Desk, not including photo Fridays (which you can now find here, and which Heather and I are both still updating). When I moved them all here, they lost their tags and categories. While I read back through the posts to re-tag them (and that’s really still a work in progress), I could see the evolution in what and how I wrote here. In the beginning, the posts are very careful and rarely go below the surface; as time went on I started to go deeper in a way I hadn’t since Ye Olde Pseudonym Days. I know even this depth is nothing compared to what a lot of people manage to put down before pressing publish, but it is as close as you get to Me in a public forum.

Which brings me to now, and more wondering. It’s possible that I don’t have much more to share, because my life is neither fraught with tragedy nor filled with soul-deep meaning. I have no advice for you about anything. It’s possible that three months from now I will think the layout and the re-tagging and back-and-forth were pointless. I don’t know what belongs in this new blog. And I don’t want your pshaw about that, although I love it if your first instinct is to pshaw me. (I do. I’d probably pshaw you.)

But sometimes you buy a thing and you bring it home and wonder what the hell am I going to do with that thing? Where will I put it, where will I hang it, what goes inside?

UncleTypewriter did not know that I love hex signs when she sent me this box. (It’s not the kind of thing that comes up in conversation.) It landed in the right place. Someday I’m going to figure out exactly what belongs in it. In the meantime, it’s a joy on a little table in my bedroom, it’s happy color on gray days of ice storm after ice storm, and it’s there, just in case. Maybe that’s what this site is, too.

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If you find anything weird in the next few days—comments that won’t save/show a captcha, broken links, anything that doesn’t look right on your computer, let me know on twitter or by using the contact form, okay? I refuse to believe that this whole effort went perfectly. (Maybe I should add a ‘pessimism’ tag too.)

and then...

And then winter didn’t walk away, but the blues did, with the kind of fond backward glances that blues like to give you because they’re drama queens. And then you picked up their ashtray and their lipstick-smudged coffee cup and broke out the Febreze and flung open the windows. And it wasn’t snowy but it was still cold and you realized that flinging open windows for effect is not smart right now, but damn, it felt good to do that on December fourteenth with its pearl gray sky and its green but faded grass.

And you said it’s time to get some frames for those other two pictures. Flowers mean spring and every day brings it closer.

and you said ACK I forgot to add that image when I published the post the first time!

And you said my God, thank you for this.

And you realized what your hair looked like when you woke up, and even your curls were happy to see today and happy to live on top of a brain rinsed clean with relief. And they bounced and danced and would not be tamed, and there was a giggle and you weren’t sure if it came from you or the curls.

And then you tracked a package online and said oh darling to the Internet for its package-tracking skills and its people-meeting skills and its email (overfull with love and just-checking-in and plans for the future and snug babies growing in happy mothers) and its camera lenses from the US that cost 75 bucks less than they do here. (I went with the 35mm instead of the 50 because I rarely shoot portraits, in case you’re interested. And even if you aren’t, voila! You’ve read the sentence anyway.)

And it was a Wednesday like many others and while you kept typing it was ticking away, so you saved your post and got ready to live it instead.

the weight of silence

Lately I feel the loss of my mother, as her birthday approaches and my heart thumps in the echo chamber of her absence. It is the sound of her birthday song, which I cannot sing to anyone else, the way I cannot sing either of the cats’ songs anymore.

A wiser person would tell me Sing your own song. And it is half magic to hear the wisdom I need, just when I need it, without an actual wise person at my side sipping from a china cup. The other half is held breath. I don’t know how to do that; I’ve never had a song of my own. I guess I’ll learn by making mistakes, the way I learn everything else.

But there is a drumbeat. The creak of strings being tested and tuned. There is someone out there—no one from this house—who sets things to rights, who sees a bicycle on its side and stands it up against a tree, even though no one has claimed it for more than a month. There is another one of those crazy 2011 sunsets, Pinon pink and Black Mesa blue, singing together for a heartbeat before vanishing into the dark. There is a mad hunt for my shoe as I race to catch the last of the light, the bicycle, another weekend in the history books. There is a long exhale, and so much fear, but fear is more honest than happiness right now. Except for the love that others feel for me, everything else I have that matters has come through fear and made it. So will I. And on the way, I’ll make some noise.

#pReverb: November 29

Last night I started to write here to start flexing my Reverb muscles, noting what aspects I was looking forward to, which ones I dreaded confronting. I deleted the post and told myself I would wait.

And then came tonight, when all hell broke loose.

I’m optimistic, but still disappointed. Though I admire the people who stepped up and corralled lists of prompts and created websites and mailing lists in the blink of an eye, the whole point of Reverb last year was the several thousand people who were all writing about the same thing, or trying to. The fragmentation this year is going to lead to duplication and wasted effort (and, I’m afraid, more than a little noise).

And at the same time, I cannot wait. I am taking a flying leap and delving into all the lists of prompts I encounter; I will take what I want from them and leave the rest, and December will be the craziest of crazy-quilt months of blogging ever. I do not care about the end results. I care about the process. And I am nothing if not flexible when it comes to process. The new groups will mean that I will have to do more work in order to meet new people, which is what I was hoping for most. But you cannot tell me that this work isn’t worth what I put in. I know it is, from last year. And I believe in this year, and myself, and other people.

April showers

Well, good morning to you, too. 

It rarely rains here with any kind of vehemence. We might get one or two good loud summer storms a year, but they’re almost always over with quickly. Today the rain came with just enough wet, sloppy snow to make me groan a little. 

If this is what it takes to bring on the spring flowers, so be it. Every year when the last gray islands of snow are all that remains of the winter landscape, I ask myself why I didn’t plant bulbs in the fall, anything that would cast yellow and purple light into the utter brown of spring. This year I’m going to have to change that. You can hold me to it, if you want to. 

detail of the April calendar page from Kimberly Poloson, and yes, I agree with you about the postmark reading “juin” instead of “avril”Because really, I can go out walking in this neighborhood on wet or dry days and keep my eyes peeled for color and signs of life, but I think I can handle taking a little responsibility for some color of my own. I know there are bulbs out there that will survive even these winters. So this year when I break out my enormous yellow umbrella and walk through these streets, I’ll be looking… and appreciating… and planning for next year. Spring always comes back around. 

And so do spring visitors. I came home from the store Friday, and the first chipmunk of the year was waiting on my porch. He was spring-skinny and holding something round and brown while he nibbled on it. I dropped my bags to the sidewalk and gave him a talking-to. “Just because the baby isn’t here to give you the evil eye doesn’t mean you’re welcome here. This is a no-rodent zone.” He turned around and looked at my front door, looked back at me, and scampered under my front porch, dropping his snack while he went. Everything goes on. Tulips are proof.