Sunny, instead!

Moll and I had a fabulous time at the sculpture garden afterall!

Here's the Neucom Vivarium, by Mark Dion - it's a "nurse log", a fallen tree that acts as an incubator of sorts for a variety of plant life. I've not yet been inside, but took this pic today:


Loved catching up with Moll, we spent the hours chatting happily. When I got home, J had just arrived from a long bike ride that ended on the Burke-Gilman trail. He was wiped out, but has been keeping himself busy listening to music tonight. I've been idling on the computer too. I'm hoping to shift gears in April, but don't regret the time I've spent tonight. Got to catch up with Eero, her orchid blossoms are not to be trifled with & I forwarded along her artist recommendation to a pal in Chicago. I was also able to confirm that the bakery Nerd's Eye View was referring to is indeed the one with the tasty baguette I enjoyed over at the Gulassa's a few months ago. So, time well spent afterall...

When life is full...

Spring in Seattle is a rainy affair. I'm heading out with my pal, Moll, to a museum tomorrow after realizing our afternoon at the sculpture garden will be a bit much, considering the weather. Moll and I schedule monthly dates throughout the year & recently were able to reconnect after a year or two of missing each other.

This evening, I'm testing a database mailing system I'm managing on a volunteer basis. After a few false starts, I've sent out the first email test for a big email blast early next month. This is a kick off, of sorts. I'm pushing to move to a new system & so am very interested in the results.

Today, J & I spent time getting the house back together after returning from our trip back east last week. We had the best time in North Carolina, celebrating his mom's birthday. Every day back east was a treat - the birthday stretched from one day to a "birthday season", we got to visit with the imediate family, grandparents, J's uncle and took many walks through Cape Fear's amazing wetlands.

While we were gone, J focused on getting our spring planting plan set up. He'd already cut back the grape vines, weeded the asparagus bed and the artichokes thus far - while I focused on pruning and ornamental plantings. We're hoping to increase our harvest this year; more carrots, potatoes, greens and the like. It would be nice to have more to share.

Before I left, I got a call saying my surgery was canceled for now. The doctor I'm working with sees potential she can't dismiss & although it points to a long slog down the line, it's very good news for me.

Finally, I looked online for & received news about the boyfriend I referred to two posts below - unfortunately, the news was that he passed away 17 years ago. His niece wrote me with the details - how he was to her as an uncle and how as an organ doner he saved the lives of more than one person when he died. The fact that he is gone came as a shock to me - but as I rifled through old letters from friends & family and photos from the past - in search of something meaningful to send back her way - I was overwhelmed by an undeniable sense of forgiveness, along with the realization that he had a full life & is loved very deeply by his people. I'm not sure what more folks can ask for. I'm grateful to her for sharing so generously. As I wrote to her, I'm glad I knew him.

ebb & flow

Still in ebb mode, me.

Yesterday, I visited a local public garden which is tucked in a high-end, gated community on the coast. Spring has been a bit chilly, so there were no great shows of plants. An old friend runs the garden & so I got to indulge in my love of horticulture when he ran through the garden's collection of hypatica. They have the world's largest collection & are breeding these lovely, small flowering plants for use in gardens here.

We're getting ready for a trip back to NC to celebrate a family birthday - and are both very much looking forward to it. I'm heading out shortly to look for little treats to bring back. Later today, I'm joining a friend at the largest rummage sale in Seattle. That should be a gas - it's in an airplane hangar & the space they've set up is "as big as two football fields".

No word on surgery dates as of yet. Even so, the odd comfort of fate has set in. I'm getting my house in order, so to speak. As each piece falls into place, so expands a sense of calm.

Here are a few pics from the garden visit:

tales from beyond my means

J & I made some heavy decisions this week. There is a lot of happy goodness that can come from them, but first tough decisions & their inevitable repercussions. I'm basically a happy, grateful person, but in the last few years - it's been easy to be sad, to feel that soft out of focus sorrow that comes with life during troubles.

I called my sister today, to put in a word for getting help before I go in for surgery. I don't have a date picked out, am working on that with a good friend and astrologer. For many people, getting an event date confirmed by an astrologer isn't on the list of to do's, but it's important to me, so here I am.

I'm still painting, in fact, that's a big part of why I want my sister to come help me get things in order. I've got an image of Frida Khalo in her canopied bed, painting away at an easel her family put together for her. If there is some way to duplicate that, I'm interested in making that happen for me.

I spoke with a friend today about how this period of time keeps reminding me of how sad I was when I was 15 years old. I had broken up with my first long-term boyfriend and was a complete mess around it. I had no idea how pleasant and kind relationships could be and it was obvious in how unnecessarily nasty our breakup was. Oddly, he had brought up on more than one occasion that my behavior was similar to stuff he had read about in Eric Berne's book on transactional analysis, Games People Play. I was way defensive about it at 15, but have been been reaching for a more rational, forgiving way to be in relationship since then.

Anyway, at 15 I spent most of my time alone and shut down. Since I'm feeling mighty overwhelmed these days, it gives me pause - I wonder what could've lifted my spirits then, or what could've kept me engaged. I am a very different person now & try hard to deliver on what I say - take my responsibilities seriously, etc. I cannot think of a better group of people than what I have around me now. These things help, but I'm getting to the place where time is the arbiter. I can't make time go faster & can't blank out the time I'm living through now.

This weekend, J & I went to take photos in Edmonds, a coastal town between Seattle & Everett. Moments like that help, knowing we're on the same team helps. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm going to keep trying to do things that stimulate my creativity... things that I get inspiration from. Apart from that, I'll allow myself to follow the waves of emotion, hopefully without unnecessarily stirring up emotions that just want to come along for the ride. There's plenty to handle without that.

Heading out to paint

It's late & J is in the kitchen messing with carrots, sweet potatoes and listening to Platinum Pied Pipers, while mocking me for asking. Jema is tucked in a cat bed by the heater after I moved her away from the kitchen.

Last night, I started a few pieces. All on paper, so the going is slow. I've got more supplies than I know where to put them & had started out moving things from this place to that, until I ran into a couple of outsized boxed that I couldn't have moved if I wanted to.

Today there was a lunar eclipse - astrologically a sign of disruption and time distortion. Today has been fairly uneventful, as is typical for me in days before I plan a big surgery. I'm hoping that by occupying myself with creativity, I'll sidestep the worry and unhelpful anticipation of times to come.

The Living - Annie Dillard

Epic stories expose the arc of life, with all the tucked sorrows and stretched out joys. The Living is no exception.

We've been on a bit of an Annie Dillard kick lately. J's Uncle highly recommends her, "...a fine writer", he'll say, "she lived, for a time, in North Carolina", he'll finish. He's right, she is good. For those of you familiar only with the book most used in college writing classes, Teaching a Stone to Talk, you should know you haven't seen anywhere near her best book. I remember gasping at the opening pages of Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek, over a description of an encounter between a bug and a frog. I won't spoil it for you, I will say it's typical of the immediacy she's able to conjure up and the bracing awareness she instills in her characters. J brought home Holy the Firm last year and has been recommending it to other folks who live, as we do, in Western Washington. J's Uncle sent this book to us, along with quilts J's Aunt made and sent that I'm looking to shift out here. It's the first book I've read through in a few years. I finished it tonight & am satisfied.

The story circles around the lives of several pioneers during the mid to late 1800's in Bellingham, Washington. The overwhelming forests and thickly clouded skies that the characters wrestle against still play a roll in daily life here in the Pacific Northwest and so are startlingly familiar. Anyone who has visited the Northwest has likely at least run into images of the huge Doug Firs that grew to improbable heights and were as big as small buildings at their base, the opening chapters catalog the impact of living among such monumental, living things.

In the earliest part of the book, Dillard describes their landing in Whatcom, like this, "It was the rough edge of the world, where the trees came smack down to the stones. The shore looked... as if the corner of the continent had got torn off right here, sometime near yesterday, and the dark trees kept on growing like nothing happened. The ocean just filled in the tear and settled down."

There is a type of loneliness that springs purely from being in a land that is dark for some portion of the year. The Living parallels that somber quality, in its beginnings by describing the solitary folks who are the first of what will be many settlers. There are so few folks around at the beginning of the tale that one of the main characters wins the position of midwife by being the only inhabitant with "string and a pair of scissors".

There is a bi-coastal feel to the West Coast now that I did not expect to see mirrored in a story that begins with the difficulties of cross country travel before railroads. Several of the characters make their way back and forth between the East Coast and Washington; to visit family, to become educated and then make their way back to live where they have found themselves. I remember thinking, when I first got here, that people out here needed to see how crowded the East is, to see beyond the dramatic natural landscape that made up their world. It took a while to see how many people are from the East Coast and how often those who were from here were sent back East during their college years.

I had never met indigenous Americans until I moved to San Francisco in the late 80's. In Seattle, I've felt the tearing away of this land from the folks who lived here when the U.S. was forming. It's not hard to meet good people who have come from reservations here, even today. Dillard describes the various relationships that pioneers had with the local tribes and her stories of armed-by-Russian Canadian tribes attacking armed-by-settler Washington tribes have parallel even the most modern warfare.

The West has been populated with a diverse mix of folks. In good times everyone was welcome, when times got tough, not so much. This truth is reflected in a plot thread that involves the changing opinions of white pioneers towards non-white emigrants.

Beyond the breadth of the land, the stories that Dillard chose to tell in this book are appealing to me - productive, against the odds folks and erratic intellectuals. There are enough pages to fit a good amount of time for character development and enough characters to make reading it enjoyable. The similarities to modern day Western Washington, where they exist, definitely added to the story & if you plan on coming out west, even if you've been here before, it'd be worth your time to check this book out.