{my topography}

“She’d been so sure a crap liquor store would not stock French cigarettes just because you asked. The shock every time she went in, and there they were. She was used to taking the world as it was, she’d never have guessed you could get what you wanted by asking for it.”

~from Paint It Black by Janet Fitch

I was struck by these few sentences and the idea has stayed in my head since I finished this book (which I loved, by the way) And I’ve wondered: What do I want to ask for? What should I be asking for? It feels powerful and vulnerable at the very same time to think of this. To imagine asking, putting myself out there, saying this is what I need.

Today I would ask for:
An agent to represent my book.
Funding to be able to write and live. Financial abundance would be swell,but just enough would be okay too–to live and write, rinse and repeat.
A sponsor, or sponsors.
To not feel like I’m always the trailblazer. Some days I want so badly for someone else to say: here, let me show you how to do this so you won’t mess it all up.

(And also maybe for some sun. The humidity is getting on my nerves.)

What would you ask for? Really. If you could ask for anything–or many things, what would they be?

Day after day the rain comes in the evening, the windowsills wet. I eat an extra cookie, the chocolate melting bitter and sweet and sticky on my tongue, crumbs on the couch for sure, and put Sprout to sleep in his bouncy seat in the laundry room.

Yes. There with the fans, and the rhythmic satisfaction of clothes being turned and turned again in sudsy water (a task my great grandmother maybe did by hand with a washboard in a basin, and before her women at the creek bed, knees pressed into the silty mud, pounding with stones) there is a snugness that lulls him. The fan drones and the wash whirls back and forth, and beautifully, without a fight, he’s asleep.

So. I’ve been moody with this rain, the humidity making my hair curl and my skin stick. I have 10 tabs open in my internet browser and I’m on the verge of tears, right on the cusp of everything as usual. It’s so terrifying to contemplate doing more than whatever it is I’m doing right now. As in: sending more work out, figuring more things out, putting my heart out there in thin lines of Times New Roman double spaced and waiting for whatever.

It’s terrifying to sit here on our stained couch with sore boobs (Sprout nursed less than usual today, but he was just as chummy and darling as ever,) contemplating what else could be a reality soon, or never, or maybe. What if I make it?

Sometimes that question is almost as confounding and daunting as What if I don’t?

Here are the things I suck at: organizing, networking, time lines, deadlines, and synthesis. Here are the things I am good at: sentences, earnestness, heart, metaphors, and dreaming.

Between those to columns are the three words that Nike made so very famous: just do it. Sometimes that feels impossibly hard.

Sometimes I don’t even know what that looks like, doing it, going for it: where to begin?

Breath. I come back to that. And then I go back to my browser with it’s ten open tabs and try to make sense of my life.

You? What are you good at? What are you utterly miserable less good at?

And: Which is more terrifying: attempting success and failing, or failing to attempt success? Ha!

Today the sound of fans and wind
my heart breaking and gathering in the turning air;
a racehorse with an ankle turned, tendons like rope, continues even then
towards the line,
nostrils flared, hay soon
and cool, cool water.

The sky is spread with shreds of clouds,
the leaves are moving, fluttering, the air winnowing
around the tiny furze on the swallowtail’s wing
and I sit feeling everything:
damp hair falling on my shoulders
stems on the table of eaten strawberries
small circles of berry stain, pollen scattered from the bouquet
of daisies with their bending stems in the glass jar
and the way I am uncertain now.

Other things know nothing of this
the poplars and the meadow grasses
bend and bend and bend again
in the wind.

Wednesday. Watching the rain from the porch with Sprout. Newly mowed grass, in heaps. Tired. So tired, after a night awake with a restless babe. Fresh jam. Scattered thoughts. Trying to make sense with words with some people, including with my mother, and while my heart is there, and hers is, it doesn’t always come out right. You know? The words crisscross like a subway map, and you find you can’t always get off where you intend to.

A headache. Raw almonds on honey toast. The first zinnias blooming in the garden. And already the day is over and it’s time for bed. But before sleep, some things to share:

First: some small art. Little tiny pieces that I am putting in a little gallery for sale. I know. It’s been years, literally, since I sold art here, with the time away from teaching my creative well has been filling and I’m excited to start sharing little pieces with you. Please go look. It’s just a start. An inkling. We’ll see where it goes.

The pieces I’ll be putting up first are in a songbird series. I have this gorgeous old vintage book about songbirds and I’m giving its pages new life with little paintings of the birds that have been making me so happy this summer.

Also, I’ve been loving…this gorgeous little journal of random things.

These photos.

This little story.

And these fascinating little films.

What’s inspiring you?