Tuesday Notebook
Posted on | August 14, 2007 | 9 Comments
Kneel down, hold the ground in your hands
or reach up and hold meteors in your glance
as they plummet through the dark night.
Be thankful.
***
This morning the air felt scrubbed clean after last night’s rain. I went bleary eyed to my studio, pulling on one of DH’s t-shirt sand a pair of old sweatpants, with the intention of doing some art. I’ve been so bombarded with words lately that they’re starting to feel smaller than usual. More one dimensional. I sit down to write and always feel like the words I get on the page are somewhere at the surface of what I want to say, but no where near the heart. So I’ve decided to do some art every day this week. Little pieces. Messy, real. Maybe getting at some of the depth of emotion I’ve been feeling.
Simply: I spent the weekend house hunting with my inlaws and the experienced left me awed, drained, curious. People live their lives in so many different ways, and their homes carry the expression of their lives so deeply. The timbers gradually soak up the emotion of day to day interactions, the windows, the corner tables, the hues on the walls all start telling a version of the life story of the people who dwell there.
But mostly, I left grateful that we’ve found this place up on our hill. I stand at the window of my studio looking out and my heart fills. The ember red of the little barn/chicken coop we just renovated; the dusty ocher of the blowing meadow grasses; the first hint of red at the tips of the maples; the sweeping view. I feel at home here in a way I never have felt anywhere before, and it is a hungry feeling of wanting to sink in. Be more present here. Take more walks. Notice.
Two nights ago we sat in lawn chairs on the driveway looking up at the bowl of stars, partly obscured with stars. Meteors with glimmering tails streaked across the dark. It’s a place I could be for a while, I think. Among the maples and the beeches and the goldenrod that has grown chest high in the lower meadow, where the coyotes and the owls nightly call.
Do you have a place that makes you feel at home like this? A park, a city street, a vast swath of land that’s yours? Or are you thirsty with longing like I was for years before here?
And also, who wants to do some art with me every day this week?
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9 Responses to “Tuesday Notebook”
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I am Christina Rosalie
Hello. I'm so happy you've stopped by!
I am a multimedia storyteller, digital strategist, idea starter, stalker of wonder, finder of four leaf clovers, MFA graduate student, and mama of boys. My first book,
will be published by SKIRT! Books in September, 2012.
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August 14th, 2007 @ 8:54 am
[...] the Webmaster Link to Article un studio Tuesday Notebook » Posted at {my topography} on Tuesday, August 14, 2007 [...]
August 14th, 2007 @ 9:26 am
it’s heart-lifting to hear how at home you feel. i have moments where i feel my own version of this – although they are far and inbetween, and mostly never in LA. i think they are more apt to arrive when i’m feeling at home within, as corny as that might sound. i am in search of an external space to want to “sink into”. I’ll continue to hold that intention as I meander along my path. i would LOVE to do art with you this week. not sure what that entails, or if i have any supplies, but i’m game!
August 14th, 2007 @ 9:59 am
I am happy that you are feeling like that place is your home. Not only that, but a place you can stay for a while. I remember a few months ago when you still needed to run and see the world … it’s nice to feel settled, isn’t it?
I am still trying to make this southern heat and bug filled world my own. I miss tender plants that don’t need a carbon-4 structure to survive. I miss sweaters and maybe a first snow in October. And I really miss acres seperating myself and the next neighbor. Suburbia is not for me. But, this is a stepping stone, and we are making the best of it.
August 14th, 2007 @ 1:25 pm
I feel the same way about my home, my corner of the universe, my little village. *love* I love this post
August 14th, 2007 @ 4:48 pm
Lovely post and your deep appreciation of your home comes shining through. Yes, I have a wooded acre on an island surrounded with blue blue waters. When I get off the ferry and come up the driveway, I know my heart belongs here.
August 14th, 2007 @ 6:38 pm
I have become so deeply entrenched in my redwoods in Northern California, and now I am moving. Everything around me is so beautiful, I want to keep it forever, but I know that I eventually feel this way about everywhere I live, even if it takes awhile.
August 14th, 2007 @ 7:58 pm
I am thirsty with longing….all my life traveling meant moving. I want to find a place to put down roots, that I can go and love. A place to travel from and to return to. A place where a few important things that are mine stay when I go off. Where I can become part of a community that is full of a mix of comfortable relationships, both casual and close. I’ve got secret places I’ve connected to everywhere I’ve lived but now I crave a belonging a need for more permanence.
August 15th, 2007 @ 8:56 pm
Super painting, and you also paint pictures with your words. Home – yes, that used to be an elusive place as I left my sandy flat land in Australia to live in a humid, hilly tropical place for many years. We’ve moved many times because my husband is a clergyman. Now retired and living in a provincial city I have dug deep roots – near the sea, near mountains, but a city with art galleries, libraries, a university, and a rather ordinary home that is filled wtih stories. But there’s always the home in the mind of a Fijian village when our children were small.
August 17th, 2007 @ 8:37 am
I always feel at home, in the deepest sense of the word, when I am on our family farm – a farm that doesn’t grow anything but hay and pine trees at this point – but I love it so. The other day a huge longing to take my son “HOME” hit me – and so we are going this Sunday! I can’t wait. I have dreams of building a house, tucked away in a pasture – someday.
Also, I love this painting. I love the way you paint a night sky…