The indispensable in-between

The space between actions,

and space between thoughts,

seemingly useless, 

infinitely not.

***

A flow of

active flashes fills

my nights of 

sleeping.

Patchworks of memory

tied by rapid 

bursts of feeling. 

Timelessness,

a hollow,

rules the 

gentle drifts

of dreaming.

I am the rider,

the glider, 

the promising pathfinder,

the surfer swiftly turning

in between the 

crushing walls of wake,

before the last swallow,

until the final take.

Scattered scraps I follow,
an invisible line that leads,
whispers of buried secrets
consume the in-between.
"Go huntress" she speaks,
"seek and Godspeed.
There are no bindings or
boundaries here,
no limits to heed.
Just you, the clouds,
and your indispensable
dreams."

"Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top."
 ~Virginia Woolf

And what do your dreams say to you, awake or not?

xoxoxo

The Winners of the Meet the Marks giveaway:

#6 Kim

and

#23 mb

Congratulations and please email me your addy! And thanks everyone for entering and commenting :).

xoxo

ps. Joining Bella for 52 Photos Project {distance}

Recently...

Recently...

We were in the makeup section of the store looking for face paint.

"Mom, I want you to paint a bird on my cheek."

"Well it won't be as good as that dragon the lady did last week."

"I don't care!! You'll do great Mom, it doesn't have to be perfect.  By the way, these ladies are liars."

She was pointing to an ad of two cover models placed strategically next to a line of lipsticks. Their faces smooth, beautiful and clear, their lips luscious, full and shiny with pretty pink gloss on them.

"What do you mean they are liars?"

"Well, I looked at my skin and it does NOT look like that. They are liars for making people think their skin does."

Wow. There are so many layers of truth to this I didn't know where to begin.

"I know what you mean, but they look like that on purpose to try to get us to buy the makeup. They are implying that if we buy what they are wearing, we might be able to look like that."

"It's still lying."

"Yeah , I think you are right..."

Oh how I still underestimate my kids sometimes.

Recently...

The yogurt shop with the girl. Who am I kidding. It's not yogurt. It's ice cream masking as a health conscious alternative (even without all the lovely toppings). Lies, more lies!! I'm not fooled, I eat it, but I am not fooled.

Recently...
Painting, glueing, collaging, more to show soon :)...

A banjo. A borrowed banjo. A borrowed banjo recently tuned with new strings. I hear it, and I smile... A long-time dream is knocking at my door at last.

Wishing you a healthy weekend friends...

xoxo

 ps. Thanks for all the well wishes for my family. Boy and hubs are on the upswing!!

Smiling and smitten

Everyday I find new reasons to love where I live. I make mental notes to remind myself of what they are so that I can tell you, but of course when I sit down to write them, my mental notes are useless.  The tiny details have spun into a flurry with all the other daily happenings that occupy my brain.

Luckily though, the things that I love recur on a daily basis, dancing, flaunting and flitting all around me, causing me to pinch myself so that I remember I am not visiting, this is really my home.

Friendship, kindness and an open door....

From the very first day we began unloading our things into this house that sits on a dead end street, that backs up to the community garden, that has a bike path that crosses our front door, we were welcomed with hellos from a family that lives across the street. Soon, within days actually, we met every single neighbor that I could see from my kitchen window.  This may seem uneventful/normal for some, but for us, it never happened before. People here want to know you. They invite you to BBQs, bring you champagne, and begin to write down on pieces of paper all the things we must do in our new hometown.

See the biker?

Outside, outside, outside....

Everyone is outside all. the. time. In the morning, afternoon and evening they are running, biking, walking their dogs, tending their gardens, talking to neighbors, going and coming back to work on their bikes. And before I know it, I am riding my bike to the post office, to the market, and planning hiking dates with new friends.

Kids everywhere...

Yesterday, as I sat on my front stoop, I watched my son play soccer, try to juggle and ride his bike with 3 other boys in the neighborhood. My daughter was upstairs in the house with another neighbor her age playing imaginary games with all the animals in her room.  If there ever was a playmate that was a soulmate for M., it is this darling girl named Ada. These neighborhood children are either at my house or in the front street playing with my children every day.  I have dreamed of this for my children. Only a few short months ago we were struggling, seeking, wishing for more consistent friendships. Dreams do come true, they do.

Dreaming big, dreaming loud...

Finally, space for creativity has begun to unseal and breathe after being boxed in by busyness for so many weeks. The desire to write, to draw, to photograph, and to dream even bigger has trickled back into the fluttering moments of my days. My knitting has remained silent and cold for now, but I expect that to change soon. And as if serendipity was watching my back again, I stumbled across a brochure a couple weeks ago, a brochure that in no way I could ignore.

What this means, I couldn't tell you. I just know that it has ignited some things including the wanderings of a hopeful mind that speaks "what if", "why" and "why not". It has also ignited the naysaying negative side of ego that says "you couldn't", "you're not good enough", and "in your dreams". And I think, exactly--in my dreams is where it should be--because that is where it has always begun. Everything here, began with a dream :).

And a beautiful Wednesday to you...
xoxo

Oh deer!! And the "why"

Okay okay, this Florida girl is enamored. Other than when we stayed in Virginia for a time, having deer in the backyard is certainly a new event for us. But I must ask the seasoned deer watchers, is it normal for deer to lounge in the backyard, among houses and neighboring children on their swingsets, all... day... long?  I found it so strange!!

We were actually able to go outside and just stand within 30 feet of them. They seemed perfectly comfortable--not necessarily tame, just comfortable. This can't be a good thing can it? They did finally leave around dusk, and now I find myself looking out every morning for our wandering neighbors to visit again :).

The Why
Lately, no--actually since we put the house on the market over a year ago, and now since we've arrived in Boulder, the "why" of moving has become a regular question, from friends, family, and new people we have met here. Why did we leave Florida, why did we choose Colorado (originally Virginia), why this big transition and risk, especially when our entire family and all that my children have known is still in FL? I did find two posts about this dated in November 2010 and January 2011, shortly after I started the blog, when my readership was 2.

"The grass is greener where you water it..."

"If we don't change we don't grow, if we don't grow, we are not really living~ Gail Sheehy"

Something happens when two people with the same dreams get together. I will never forget that date in the tiny sushi restaurant.  F. and I sat face to face interrogating each other on our hopes and ideas for the future. We both were moved by nature---specifically mountains, forests, hiking, and an outdoor lifestyle. We both had experiences growing up that anchored our spirituality in these places. Our feelings were indescribable, yet completely identifiable...we were on common ground. Coming from different parts of the world, and having moved frequently as children, we both knew that Florida was not the end place for us.

After that the rest seemed to flow naturally--love, marriage, children, then a nice big house with a pool. We had everything we wanted, except that one big dream that we shared together in that sushi restaurant. We almost let it go. We reasoned that we had a wonderful life, why change anything? Yes, maybe we felt that something was missing, that somewhere we weren't completely satisfied. But wasn't what we had enough to pacify us, to say, it's okay, life IS good just the way it is?

When the economy tanked, that was when the idea that we would really stay in Florida hit me. It was a tough blow. I realized that I had hung onto that dream, even if only by a thread, knowing that I really felt that I--that WE--belonged elsewhere. That was four years ago. I wish I could say that there was some spectacular event that made us kick caution and comfort to the curb, when we purposefully stepped off the beaten path and onto the one less traveled. Reflecting on it now, I will say this:

Unschooling, peaceful parenting, and transforming our thinking from one of robotic existence to one of following our joy changed our lives completely.

We had a major shift within our understanding, that the only thing that stands in the way of positive change is our own belief, that for whatever reason, we just can't do it. The economy, a mortgage, a job, family, money, there will always be really good reasons not to follow our dreams. We finally came to understand that our reasons to actually follow our hearts, were better. Even if we fail, even if/when we make mistakes, lose, cry, falter, at least we know we tried. We gave it a shot. We had to try, following our joy left us with no other option. Isn't this what it's all about?

I fear I have rambled on a bit, but now you know. We are in a place that we have always dreamed about, a place that we can walk out the front door and mountains (though they call them hills here :) are there to greet us every morning. Here is a place that we can commune with nature, and be fulfilled spiritually. We are in a place where our children can understand the importance of their environment, their planet, their beginnings, and perhaps begin to grasp what spirituality really is.

I am so happy to be able to share this with you, maybe even inspire you in some way, to remember some lost dream that perhaps still hangs by a thread. Anything is possible. Anything.

xoxo

ps. I meant to join in Cory's Thrifty Thursday today, but obviously got sidetracked. Please go and visit her link up for thrifting prowess-ness!