it’s never been easy for me to lie, and so i tell you, dear reader, that these last two years have been excruciating. being an elder in training i remember that george harrison image on the all things must pass album when those words come home to visit the first time. and I can also say that passing is what is happening.

despite various instructions found in old books

i’ve looked at stupid social media too much seeking some sort of truth and find myself enraged at the bitter silliness of amateurs pawning themselves as experts, or styled photos that seem too good to be true. there are no warts, no cankers, no love canal, no oil spills or letting the bones speak for themselves; when this happens LOOK OUT. feeling like a failure is part of it. to be an imposter, a know-it-all is decidedly not true. on the other hand, my ian, who is celebrating a birthday today, reminded me last night: winging it has merit. more than that, it’s how you move past the ground knowledge. it’s where the new things blossom.

for the fiddlehead prints becoming a book

my beautiful and wildly helpful daughter brought her partner for a long weekend, and we painted two rooms, changed 39 drawer pulls for appropriate to this house ones, built ikea bookshelves (four more billys) changed the god awful five legged tarantulas (giant ceiling fans) that were devouring four rooms (yes, the crazy former owner put two in one small room) and I have only to replace books and set up my studio. only!!!

a little vase from mjolk holds a coreopsis appropriately named called jethro yull

collecting dried coreopsis and calendula

i’m struggling with the text for this pale book, should it be about pigments (i’m a bit enthused about pigments after the big online event last week) or paleness, or something else entirely, or maybe just white fish? or something only loosely tied or even “untied” to this simple magic of making pages and cover in a different way? so this is what i’m saying here, sometimes your children help you realize things, and help you remember your obligations: to making, to loving, to community, the greater community, in the way you are best suited to do it. thank you dear ian, hannah, and ty, the chosen not birthed child. you three have much to teach me. if anyone has made it this far with me today, i’m grateful and feel your community as well. we need one another.

for two years and more my life has been a county fair midway of wild rides, baby amusements, carnies enticing, stomach wrenching, confusing existence and what i’ve just learned is called ‘brain fog’. covid had nothing on my personal life, and personally covid barely affected me, for which i am very thankful. but oh. i woke up two mondays ago feeling like i knew who i was, whose body i was inhabiting, and also, what joy was, or rather, the possibility of joy. and like the fern unfurling a kind of hope in the spiraling of little daily moments.

when the plan you build for your life, your roadmap, your text, becomes unknowable, written in a palimpsest of other ideas, meaning spirals out of control into unknowing, and if you are me (as i am) you push back in strength because to not do so means to whirlpool into one small dot. somehow the spiral motion caught me up, and like all these fiddleheads around me, the woods i live in, the birds, bugs, leaves, and down the hill the little river all said let go. be here. now. one night I heard a pair of coyotes vocalizing in a way i never heard before: a poem.

beginnings of kami-ito came along as fern shadows, and beetle paths

something pulled at me and stepped aside leaving a trail, you can make some thread, you can wax it or weave it or spin up all the meanings of the marks you’ve made into hidden away message, a palimpsest of how a day is for you, says the paper to me. i made prints mapping the comings of spring, and hid them away, remembering that it’s now ok to remember it all, to learn what it means, to visit the pain of being human.

crow hanging by the workshop door reminds me.

lessons during this personal hell need to be remembered for what they are, survival for now, and flourish eventually. fiddleheads flourish.

so this little handful of days are passing now, days grown long, and warmer, thunder rumbles and birds are singing in loud midday seriousness.

so i can move into summer, feeling like the real is a good thing to be part of. that I can build my heart back into its old grown up self. don’t know yet what that will grow into, unfurling and changing, but i’m working on stuff—books, texts, poems are coming again, trusting the making and i’m trying to remember to leave space for them to grow. i wish you, gentle reader, good making and good reading, enjoying, laughing, loving. be fierce and fair and free. all of that, but if you can be kind. well, that’s a thing, too. a huge thing. friends during this whole thing have meant my world had ground to build on, i’m thanking them here and now.

my hands thank you and hold yours in caring.