sweet dreams

I want to be good. I want to be layered with subtext and make tiny choices with big consequences. I want to be inspirational to smaller girls and lucid old people with twinkling eyes. I want to do something extraordinary - really extreme. Like those crazy Olympians. Yet I want to do it in a small ordinary way.

I think of the filmmakers who made Once. Have you seen that movie? It was a small undertaking that turned into an extraordinary thing. It's magical, and the title track to the soundtrack makes me sob without fail.

Like a David Whyte poem. Like this poem.
I pasted it below too....

I don't need need fancy dresses, I dress like a teenage boy in real life, why pretend and wear other people's dresses? (I'm thinking of the Oscar's of course). I just want to be grace and love and magic personified. I want to drop all of my bad habits, negative thinking and random bullshit that y'all have surely noticed over the last 3/4 year but have granted me pardon because I'm funny at times or my kid is too cute to pass up. I'm guessing anyway. Is that it?

Can you tell I'm working in a 'dream board' this week? I'll have to scan it and share it like a big old geeky crafty scrapbooker when I'm done.

I've got to get some vision back into this picture as it's gotten a dangerously dark and gloomy around the edges. As it is, that big ol' life change I've been threatening to dish about has finally come to pass in an official way. Our tenure in Los Angeles is coming to a close, this little family is moving east to be near cute hubs family. So the thing in the box over there to the left? About leaving LA for free babysitters? It's happening.

We're moving to Utah. I hope the saints are nicer to outsider's in 2010 than they were in the 1840's.  Hub's family is delightful and not a part of that scene (for the most part), but that part of the equation is an x factor that makes me uncomfortable. I'm reading Under the Banner of Heaven, which it turns out, isn't a great idea. But it is a great book.

I love LA in an unreasonable way, mostly because of the people who I love here. And the sun I love here. And the way people dream big here.

For the record I'm going to keep dreaming big up there in the valley near Park City, I just have to do it in the snow. (shudder)

So for now I'll leave you with this poem that a dear friend of mine sent me in an email six years ago. She didn't stick around the planet for long after she sent it to me, I think this kind of living is hard to do. But I love this poem and her memory in the same fierce way.

Heavy hearted-ly yours,




Self Portrait

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.

-- David Whyte
      from Fire in the Earth 
      ©1992 Many Rivers Press

Rough New Prizes

Listen, I will be honest with you
I do not offer the old smooth prizes
But offer rough new prizes
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is called riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve.
However sweet the laid up stores,
However convenient the dwelling, you shall not remain there.
However sheltered the port, however calm the waters, you shall not anchor there.
However welcome the hospitality that welcomes you,
You are permitted to receive it but a little while Afoot and lighthearted, take to the open road
Healthy, free, the world before you the long brown path before you, leading wherever you choose.
Say only to one another:
Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money; I give you myself before preaching and law:
Will you give me yourself?
Will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

extract from Song of the Open Road - Walt Whitman

I got married to the cute husband in 2001. Fall 2001. September 2001 to zero in on it, and okay, shit here it is: September 29th, 2001. Hey evil doers - I don't use my anniversary in any passwords. Just fyi.
Annnyway. We had the above read at the ceremony as seen in above picture by above dear friend. 18 days after 9.11 we all needed another good cry as well as a reason to celebrate, and our wedding proved to be quite a lovely affair offering time for both. This poem (okay, excerpt) really sends me into my love of falling water from my face.

Wait, sorry - side note. Am I a big dork for linking to my own posts when I only have like five so far? Please let me know. K, we're back.

I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't realize at the time that this is an excerpt of the poem. It wasn't until I googled 'smooth old prizes' recently did I discover the whole she-bang. It's a long ass poem in comparison, and if you're missing your 12th grade AP English class check it out. However I hope you'll agree that this lil cheesy wedding version above does pack a good heart-tugging punch.
I'm finally going to get to the point, thanks for staying with me. I've been living in smooth old prizes land for quite some time now. Married and happy. Rockin' good friends. Work comes and goes, freelance is freaky at times but we've always been well taken care of. In fact I feel pretty damn lucky that I've shot stuff that made me giddiously happy and gotten paid really well for it. Despite my ability to create drama, it really was a pretty easy life swimming around in the calm waters.
Enter adorable, squishy, munchee face, big-headed baby who is now an inhabitant in my household and heart. As I've already shared here, not so smooth, not always so easy. World has officially gotten rocked.
In fact, I almost named this blog Rough New Prize, because that is what he is I think. I have remained too long in the sheltered port and now I see that I must Afoot and Lighthearted take to the open road.

Even when I feel trapped in my own house and domesticity.
Even when the PPD Fairy kicks my ass like today.
 Even when I can't figure out how to schedule a dentist appointment because it's an overwhelming task.
Even when my heart and tired brain ache for simplicity and ease.

I can see the long brown path before me and ohmygod I hope I do right by this fresh, new person. Ohmygod I do.