8:33pm

how to disappear completely

two nights ago the whole world was washed orange as the sun that had been beating down on us seattle-ites like a two year old on a floor covered with pots and pans finally slipped away into silence. since my self-imposed radiohead fast ended while i was on the farm, how to disappear completely was appropriately playing on jasper's stereo as i pulled up to home, jumped out, raced across the street and snapped these photos.


and on the topic of radiohead, i dipped my toe in to start experimenting with the quadcam animator program for today's 10:15am posting.

shoots, and since it doesn't look like it's going to let me post the animated .gif here, you'll have to click here to see it.



currently listening to: the blue angels fly overhead along with thom yorke's cover for all for the best.

not just a little brown basket

i learned today that the sewing basket i've been handling a little casually is actually my great grandmother's old sewing basket. suddenly i will no longer dare squish it closed on top of too many spools of thread nor will i be ignoring the telltale crunch of the weaving protesting its mistreatment. and while it always made me happy to have the sewing box i remembered as a child, complete with the plastic tub i had carefully adorned with mom's buttons in black marker {visible here on the top}, now it has exponentially gained value by knowing how many other memories it carries.

i have already started accumulating my own stories, independent of my mother's stewardship of the box, including the scrap of maroon ribbon {laying next to the tub o' buttons} sent to me by my cousin, katie, who had purchased it during my stay in new york city in the summer of 2000. it was promptly attached to her suitcase for easy identification purposes during her trip to ghana and i distinctly remember admiring her creativity and taste at the time. later, a care package arrived for me with this six inch scrap salvaged from the remains of her project.

so here's to another generation of sewing projects, starting with this one i've had rumbling around in my head for the past few weeks. it was started yesterday, finished this morning and packaged up for travel very satisfyingly this afternoon. i'll post more complete images of the project after it is seen in full by its recipient. {mischevious smile.}




currently listening to: chicago - sufjan stevens {off an upbeat mix i made for my older sister's 30th birthday}

scrabble a la mommers

with a little bit of strategic help, she's holding her own.

mom, you really don't want to use an "s" unless you can add it on to a word making two words at once
or
if it allows you to create a significantly higher scoring word (like hasty).
or
if you go here, you can make three words at once.

ect, etc.

i love this game.






the weird glow on my forehead is from the
computer with the scrabble dictionary open
which is another bit of scrabble strategy.

10:15am with mommers

here was today's series of images taken at 10:15am:

pt 1. ten15am, meet my mom. mom, meet ten15am.

pt 2. showing my mom how to use the iphone camera

taken by my mom: tania and granpa's postcards
{a not so flattering image, but i'll live}

baby jessie

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this is the resident farmgirl-in-training and i've spent a good bit of time this past week {and a bit} with her asleep in a sling attached to my body. it's a little like cuddling a 14lb hot waterbottle while it's 96 degrees outside, but she's amazing, cubby {to the max}, mellow, and absolutely adorable. even though i don't want kids at this exact moment {or any subsequent moment for the next few years at least} i've had a lot of fun borrowing her from her parents.

i brought the digital slr specifically in the hopes of getting some good photos of her, and today, the overcast light coming through the windows {shortly before the thunder and lightning} was perfect.

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p.s. this chair is evidently the thing at the moment and she's a little on the small side to be in it but her parents put her in anyway. they call it the torture chair because she's always got this "i'm not quite sure about this" face when she's in it and she gets tired of it quickly. she's not quite 3 months and her chubby legs almost don't fit in it.

a real farmgirl

a few things happened today that have finally pushed me over into the realm of bona fide farmgirl.

1. i got up at 5:00am.
2. i had a breakfast of {chicken} sausage and eggs.
3. i walked up the "hill" to the cherry orchard in about 20 minutes {about a 600ft altitude gain}
4. i watched the sun rise from the top of the farm while i tried to catch my breath and convince my heart to stop fighting its way out of my ribcage.
5. then i was told i had to go back to the veggie patch for the morning since some of the cherry pickers hadn't shown up {3rd time in a row}, which meant....
6. i got to ride the tractor back down the hill. this involved a short lesson on where the clutch, breaks, gas pedal and "forward" lever are and a scary descent down said "hill" with tractor tires skidding on gravel as i dug my foot into the breaks. a little scary. i tried to take a detour through the apple orchard but only found a steeper hill that scared the bejeeeezus out of me, so i called the manager of the veggie fields {who at this time was just on the other side of a fallow field from me and could see me sitting astride the tractor at the crest of this hill}. unfortunately she hasn't had any experience with the tractor yet {didn't even know how to start it since i had stalled it when i stopped}, so i put on my big girl underpants, threw the big rig into reverse and backed out of the orchard with a bold plan to continue on down the first hill. at some point during the extended reverse out of the apple orchard, the obvious solution to the traction problem dawned on me.
a. keep the tractor in first gear.
b. if it still decides to run away from me, just steer it onto the field next to
the road where there is considerably more friction.


needless to say, i eventually made it.

you'll notice that i'm already using my phone and driving the thing.

i can't construct a sentence

not even a simple, grammatically correct sentence.
it's been happening out on the field a lot, as my "one week" stay stretches out to ten days.
at some point my mind loses track of what i'm saying and things degenerate quickly into a mosh of onomatoepia parading around as malformed words

i'm also getting good at spitting out laughably incorrect words.
i called a mouse a "primate" (shortly after it's sudden demise via boot stomping)
then i corrected myself and called it a mammal
then finally got it right and said "rodent! geeze!!!"

i'm blaming it on the fact that i've been out using my hands for most of each day
that i've been waking up too early too much
(though 5:15-5:40 doesn't seem late when it's scorching by 11am)
and/or i've been out in the sun too much.

that last one is definitely true.

anyway, it's been a good week so far. lots of babysitting, lots of weeding, a fair bit of swimming in the lake, and plenty of eating fruit right off the tree or vine or heck, even the ground sometimes. i definitely have a different relationship to dirt these days.

but.

the unexpected delight of the week so far was an intense conversation about aesthetics, art, divinity, the pursuit of enlightenment, and their points of intersection. it started with a brief history of one of the farm hand's collegiate history (including way too much familial pressure to go in this direction or that direction) during a side-by-side carrot harvest, then unfurled itself properly throughout strawberry harvest. that connection right there made my week and i'm hoping to follow up the conversation with a drive about and an intro to radiohead {yippee! can't pass up that change}. meanwhile, i eve have a reading assignment: john dewey's art as experience, and i gave my own: james hillman's the practice of beauty.

life is good,
but i'm also looking forward to being home come saturday afternoon.

sunrise this morning

while eating breakfast outside the winery at 6:00am:


while walking up to the veggie fields at 6:20am:

day two on the farm

and this was my view of the sun at 6:22 in the morning as i walked out to the veggie fields for harvesting.

housekeeping as a tall girl

i wanted to give this tiny part of housekeeping its own space
to acknowledge the surprise and recognition that coursed through me when i first read, and then promptly underlined, these two lines around one theme.

i have yet to find anyone who could articulate so precisely what i have felt growing up as a tall girl. robinson's understanding of the tall girl predicament was packaged up in just two little sentences almost hidden amongst the sweeping imagery that made up her story.

my posture was intended not so much to conceal as to acknowledge and apologize for my increasingly excessive height.

even though most, though not all of my tall girl slouch has straightened itself out, i still have enough conveniently bad posture to reduce my height, looks, and grace by about two notches. and even as i become mindful of my posture and try to stand tall {as so many lovely people in my life encourage me to do}, i constantly get in the way of myself and quickly reduce it down again.

'my, you both look nice!' sylvie said as we passed, but, as i always did when attention was drawn to my appearance, i felt very tall.

yes, the pity compliment, i tell myself, because how could my life's equivalent to this compliment be true in the face of my height and breadth? because, insult to injury: not only am i six foot, but i am not the slim-boned six foot that would be at home on a runway, or described as willowy. my medium-boned structure gives me some optimism {as i could be the dreaded 'big boned'}, but only on good days.

and the final crux, that has been nagging at me for the past six and a half months is:

i really notice {and worse: judge} my height around my lover. i feel the distance my eyes and shoulders stand above his as feet, even though they are {only!} inches. and while comparative sizes are easier to ignore lying down, the noise my mind makes when we're standing next to each other, or my thigh runs parallel to his is starting to quiet down, but only because i'm getting used to the shock of her words and not because she's run out of mean things to say.

in turn, i have found i hate the hate i have for my height and move towards self-reconciliation at what too often feels like a glacial pace.

housekeeping

i recently finished the book housekeeping by marilynne robinson, and wanted to make a little space here to display some of the passages that made me melt into raptures only finely wrought prose can generate.

a few notes on people and setting to put the below in context (no spoilers, really, so read away with no fear). the book is narrated by ruth, who's mother dies early in the book so she and her sister are raised in their grandmother's house by their aunt, sylvie. the story takes place in the town of fingerbone, idaho, and in this first passage the town has been flooded.

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every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable, and finally has come to look and not to buy. so shoes are worn and hassocks are sat upon and finally everything is left where it was and the spirit passes on, just as the wind in the orchard picks up the leaves from the ground as if there were no other pleasure in the world but brown leaves, as if it would deck, clothe, flesh itself in flourishes of dusty brown apple leaves, and then drops them all in a heap at the side of the house and goes on. so, fingerbone, or such relics of it as showed above the mirroring waters, seemed fragments of the quotidian held up to our wondering attention, offered somehow as proof of their own significance. but then suddenly the lake and the river broke open and the water slid away from the land, and fingerbone was left stripped and blackened and warped and awash in mud.

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for need can blossom into all the compensation it requires. to crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. for when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? and here again is a foreshadowing--the world will be made whole. for to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. so whatever we may lose, every craving gives it back to us again. though we may dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel, fosters us, smooths our hair, and brings us wild strawberries.

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i knew why sylie felt there were children in the woods. i felt so, too, though i did not think so. i sat on the log pelting my shoe, because i knew that if i turned however quickly to look behind me the consciousness behind me would not still be there, and would only come closer when i turned away again. even if it spoke just at my ear, as it seemed often at the point of doing, when i turned there would be nothing there. in that way it was persistent and teasing and ungentle, the way half-wild, lonely children are. this was something lucille and i together would ignore, and i had been avoiding the shore all that fall, because when i was by myself and obviously lonely, too, the teasing would be much more difficult to disregard. having a sister or a friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house. those outside can watch you if they want, but you need not see them. you simply say, "here are the perimeters of our attention. if you prowl around under the windows till the crickets go silent, we will pull the shades. if you wish us to suffer your envious curiosity, you must permit us not to notice it." anyone with one solid human bond is that smug, and it is the smugness as much as the comfort and safety that lonely people covet and admire. i had been, so to speak, turned out of house now long enough to have observed this in myself. now there was neither threshold nor sill between me and these cold, solitary children who almost breathed against my cheek and almost touched my hair.

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if i could see my mother, it would not have to be her eyes, her hair. i would not need to touch her sleeve. there was no more the stoop of her high shoulders. the lake had taken that, i knew. it was so very long since the dark had swum her hair, and there was nothing more to dream of, but often she almost slipped through any door i saw from the side of my eye, and it was she, and not changed, and not perished. she was a music i no longer heard, that rang in my mind, itself and nothing else, lost to all sense, but not perished, not perished.

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bestow

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bestow \bih-STOH\, transitive verb:

1. to present as a gift or an honor; confer.
2. to apply; use

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the dictionary.com word of the day today is bestow.
i found the word first thing this morning
huddling in my email inbox
sheltered beneath an email i stopped waiting for a long time ago.

a letter from my ex. the ex.

enter a state of temporary chaos lasting for about five minutes until my brain and body were fully awake and in sync. external chaos became internal agitation.

agitate. agitate. agitate.

keep in mind, i hadn't even read the letter yet.

the {current} boy had to be dropped off at his home
next, breakfast as the laundry finished drying
before sending him off to work

i returned home and an hour after finding the letter i finally had the space and coherence to read.

the letter: non eventful in words, and not surprising in content.

and the day progressed along a trail of responses, settling very quickly to a place of such grounded clarity that i could only acknowledge the simple truth: the last pieces of this relationship i thought i was holding on to are free to go, have, in fact, been free to go for ages now, but were tucked away, covered up and waiting for a day like today to surface and strut about, making a bit of noise for their final swansong then go away forever.
because the parade is over. long over.
and even the automatic response {of a compulsive over-analyser} to reconcile, devalue or defend myself against his explanations for this or that faded away to the realization that he is using physics to explain a simple arithmetic problem:
1+1≠2 for us.
that's that.

and i feel completely free of him and the ugliness of the relationship's demise for the first time ever. not a scrap lingering, even buried out of sight.

so now i go back to the word of the day,

bestow

and leave the connection up to you.

disconcerting is...

picking up a shriveled "leaf" from the floor of my car, finding it a little rubbery and then flinging it away from me as fast as i could after it was properly identified as a dead slug.

i turned around to take a better look at the area where i found it, hoping for some explanation for such a vile discovery, and found a sorry looking trail of slime circling the confines of the passenger side foot well. the brittle, shiny flakes spelled out the dying efforts of this doomed mollusk while it slowly baked in the heat of my car.

i paused for a moment to worry about how annoying it would be to clean it up, then took a stray bobby-pin and poked at the slime tentatively. all traces disappeared instantly, already dried out to the point of fragility despite the illusion of dampness given from their shine.

the state of the at-one-point-this-was-slime spoke volumes for the temperature of the inside of my car.

poor little bugger.

still kind of grosses me out though.

staining flesh

i'm tired. bed is overdue. but today was a full day. full like a bag of ripe cherries splitting the seams of a plastic bag.
crushed cherries at the bottom seeped through cracks and stained flesh.
promises made and promises kept.
a good day
i'm trying to tell myself.
it's true, i say back,
good, but full.


but now i'm not sure how i'll get to sleep.

living in an igloo

last night it was a dream about your daughter.
she was a little yellow rabbit,
minuscule and soft just quietly nestled in the cup of my left hand.

i was earnestly telling her that i could in fact live in an igloo
but only if i had adequate clothing,
{i envisioned many layers of sweaters, jackets, gloves, scarves}
a warm campfire with endless amounts of {homemade} marshmallows
and a vat of hot chocolate.

that's all the dream had for me,
but i can still see her in the palm of my hand
hoovering.
perhaps a little timid, but bright and vivid
with buttery-colored fur and restless whiskers.

and i sense in my response a desire to give her the answer she wants to hear:
that i am adventuresome and willing to live in an igloo.
that i am interesting and willing to live in an igloo.
that i am whatever it is {i am not quite sure} she's looking for.

and then i silence my criticism and realize that i'm just willing to play.
to enter into her world of fantasy where life in an igloo is a feasibility.
in which case, what would i really need to survive?
my creature comforts because i know i can't stand too much cold
and a few frivolities to make it exciting and something i would have daydreamed as a child.

so there you have it, my dears,
{all three of you}
yes,
i would live in an igloo.

elliot bay book company

my mosey through the bookstore in pioneer squared found me eventually in the back room where they keep the used books. while not a fraction of the size of the rest of the store, i happened across a few gems that i have either been keeping my eye out for a while, or that i didn't know i absolutely needed until my eyes landed on the cover.

the feminine mystique - betty friedan {only fitting since i saw gloria steinem speak tonight}
little pear and his friends - eleanor frances lattimore {a book i remembered with a red cover that my mother read to us}
the alchemist - paulo coelho {one highly recommended by my meisner teacher, robin lynn smith}
einstein's dreams - alan lightman {a book of short stories and parables one of my fellow art mentor students introduced me to in december and i've had swirling about in my head for the past week or so}

and that's it for now. i put back a lovely cover...ha, a lovely book i picked out for it's cover. mrs dalloway but put back in favor of the feminine mystique.

and that's all.
for now.

i had a dream about you last night

actually, it came this morning as i was waking up. it was the viscous sort of dream that clung to me as i moved in and out of consciousness, finding me each time i slipped back into sleep after a brief surfacing.

you were sent to seattle for a conference and hung out with me the first night you were here. i wasn't surprised--that's too strong of a word--but i noticed right away how young you were. early twenties. clean-shaven. short-ish hair that kind of stood up on your head but was long enough to bounce around as you moved. while you felt youthful and naive and green, you were also tired and broken and we didn't talk but i just held you for a long time. and i can't remember the words you used, but they were simple and small. communicating a weariness and gratitude and warmth.

then the dream broke into chaos. another dream intertwined itself with ugly colors and violence. some people were figuring out how to create the electric charges/weapon that the emperor from star wars used. it sounds silly in writing, but was rather terrifying in the dream. i somehow knew this older woman who seemed to be in the forefront of the experimentation would age quickly and become the emperor and that while we thought it was a man all this time, in truth it was this evil woman. our friend wanted me to help fight them. they had killed one of our own. he had guns and strong words of encouragement but i found some wrapped up 100 bills that were also drugs and i was wary and distrustful, and realized, too, that if i helped him i wouldn't be able to meet you one last timeas we had planned. i think somewhere in this chapter, too, was the attempt for my scene partner and i to recreate our final scene from class. but we didn't have the props and the teacher was being hard on us adding one more layer of the chaos.

but i escaped. and had to go see you. i wasn't sure when your conference was ending but i hadn't seen you in days.

i went to the hotel. was wandering around the ground floor, walked through the restaurant and passed you without noticing. i heard you call me. you were seated at a table of co-workers. all men. the guy to your left was this curly and dark-haired man with a full beard and sparkly eyes. he jumped right in with jokes and such and i realized you two were good chums. i joked he was your partner in crime.

then you said you were leaving the next day and didn't have time to hang out. that didn't feel right somehow. you knew i was catching on to you so you said goodbye, gave me a hug and then got up from the table and went into the men's room. i felt your evasion, a need to be anonymous and hide and refuse care when it was right in front of you, quietly waiting. somehow xxxx xxxxxxxxx were also an excuse, you needed to go home and care for them, but we both knew that was just that: another excuse. so i tried to follow you but you stood in the door way half in, half out. hedging. distant. longing. i was helpless in my desire to be there for you when you had all these ways of evading me despite what you yourself wanted and needed. you knew what was offered in my time and friendship, and you couldn't go there. you didn't want to risk.

and that's when the dream ended. or thereabouts. inconclusive and frustrating.

i'm not sure why i write all this except that i've been internally pushed since i woke up to tell you about it. i've tried a few times to distract myself {even bummed around facebook, caught up on the internet after being away for a weekend, etc), but any time i started to get too far away from myself or this dream, i would resolutely draw myself back in and continue writing. this had to be told. you have to know.

for cam: here is some sunshine....

a good friend has been having a tough time.
this is one of the loyal 10:15am-ers.
so on the 3rd of july we all agreed to photograph a bit of sun for him during our normal 10:15am time and submit it with some words of encouragement.

i chose a little song. one i found out later has had a special significance for him for quite a while.
but it's funny. my intuition has always had a special "cameron channel" and i'm glad it proved right on the money once again.

anyway, here is my video {no vocal warm-up so no, i'm not fully in key} as well as a few silly outtakes:




outtake #1:



outtake #2:



and here are links to all three: song, outtake #1, outtake #2.

the easy things

i have a lot on my plate right now to write about: meisner ending (the final show, the exit interview, & my acting life post meisner}, a massive slew of sun/sky posts, a blurb about the latest tom tykwer film i watched last night and the radiohead piece that's been cooking for almost a year now.

but those all take more energy than i currently have and rather than another long silence here, i thought i would tackle what i could today and aim to get the others written soon. very soon.

this is mostly a photographic show and tell from the fourth of july weekend i spent out in chelan on an organic farm. it was amazing for so many reasons.
cold lake water.
new bikini swim suit.
fresh organic food every day.
lovely lovely lovely lovely hosts: rachel & guy evans.
and their equally lovely infant of two months: jessie marie evans.
more cherry picking. industrial cherry picking. greedy guts cherry picking. {just one more branch....oh, just five more minutes....one more handful...until i'm schlepping at least twenty pounds of cherries down the hill.}
sleeping in late.
walking the farm in my chacos as the dust rose from the ground and danced around our feet in mercurial swirls.
having a sleeping baby on my chest and the accompanying lethargy.
and the list goes on.

so here are some photos: