White Wind Dance

 We had 55-70 mph wind (South Wind's tan cheeks all huffed and puffed up and busy) all day then at 6pm it started snowing (North Wind calmly tossing cold our way in a very slow and silent manner while gently spinning around) and snowed all night. (Sometimes when these winds meet they thunder and rumble but yesterday they danced). The S. wind was so strong yesterday I thought my car would flip. The boys walked slanted into the wind to prevent blow-over. As soon as the wind abated the snow began to fall in thick big flakes. It is so pretty and of course shut down entire coast. The weather is always present in this town. Like another person in the room and a voice with opinions about what you will or won't do today, thank you.
 The crest of the waves made huge 50ft. plumes of white and froth off the tops. The beach was reduced to momentary glimpses of sand between the high crashing onshore surges. Then comes the snow which is always a rare and special treat on the beach. (Sunday was full of bluster and snail which is rain and hail - we laughed at it while running to beach to scamper in the chill winds, looking for beaver chewed sticks in the driftwood to make into magic wands - the seagulls lowered their faces into squinty little wedges to let the wind blow around them like a torpedo).
 All this makes me remember how it snowed during and after the Tohoku tsunami last year. But across the street the daffodils have bloomed and are waving hello as I look out.
 I have been especially busy this week using my brain cells at a rapid rate with no end in site till late March. I would like to just curl up on the couch with cocoa and my book (the 4th in the Game of Thrones series by George R.R. Martin - A Feast of Crows) after a beach walk but that will have to wait.
 I hope everyone is safe and life is fine for all of you today. This world is a magical wonderland and sometimes it just makes me wonder...

I told the boys that if the wind had been blowing so hard while it snowed, that would be a blizzard. That is what I experienced as a child in Colorado but they have never expereinced on the Oregon coast in their lifetimes.

Tsunami Sunday

All I can think about is the event of the tsunami one year ago...
Life changed forever that day - for myself and countless others. On the other side of the Pacific ring of fire, the Oregon coast is no different in our risk for such natural occurrence. I lived in and love Japan and its people fiercely and my heart breaks still at video and story. Strangely enough, late in 2011 we moved to a very at risk tsunami zone in our town. Where before we were uphill a bit, we now are at water level, next to a tidal creek that will be a natural conduit of flooding inland. Every time I walk the beach I observe escape routes and run-lines to possible safety. How long would it take to run across the sand over driftwood and dunes to hill? Will the hill/cliffs even withstand earthquake? Will the kids all be safe and get to higher ground? What would I grab if I had to evacuate? Last year when the sirens went off I just took the boys and my cell phone, not even grabbing my handbag. Am I truly not attached to the material objects around me? If not, then why is so much of my time invested in care and attention to them?
Later this year and next year we will be expecting the debris to begin washing up to Oregon beaches from Japan. It takes awhile to cross the ocean via the currents. I hope to be able to document some of this.
Today I will pray and send love and express gratitude. These thoughts are never far back in my mind. I watch and listen.

Daughter of Nature

In the center of a lonely wood
Upon the moss a young woman stood
She wore a dress of Summer green
Her face was soft and tanned and lean
Her eyes were pools of clearest blue
 Jane Stuart

picture of Lily Donaldson by Greg Kadel

Mechanical Unicorn

I think the internet is like a mechanical unicorn that you can ride to faraway places. Mechanical. Gears and levers and wires. Unicorn. Imbued with magical essence that virtually escapes description. It is it's own reality. But, man made. Yes, what an inspired creation. Can be very troublesome at times.

Run

Valentine Menu



cherry

ginger

thyme

Like A Child

LIKE A CHILD

Like a child I just sat in the sunlight

and played with the minutes as they went running by.

Like a child who had never known sorrow

I didn't hurry I just looked at the sky.

While the clouds went on endlessly passing.

All the clouds on their long voyage home

seemed to say that youth is everlasting

but a rose cannot grow alone.

Like a child I would listen in silence

to the soft sound of evening as it caught up the day,

till you were there in the gathering darkness

and we found that our green years had all gone away.

Now the clouds are going forever

here awhile then gone evermore

and a child on the far side of never

has to run when time closes the door.

Then take my hand and as children we'll go now

all alone through the thundering crowds.

Take my hand and together we'll look now

like a child for the little lost clouds.

ROD McKUEN

from "Listen to the Warm" ©1967

Hold Out For the Real Thing



the girl who knew better

 "always I will dance for you in the circle of my heart" Cerridwen Fallingstar 



Peace

♦ hedgerow arts wishes you all a happy new year ♦

White Horses

Count the white horses you meet on the way,
Count the white horses child, day after day,
Keep a wish ready for wishing - if you
Wish on the ninth horses, your wish will come true.

I saw a white horse at the end of the lane,
I saw a white horse canter down by the shore,
I saw a white horse that was drawing a wain,
And one drinking out of a trough: that made four.

I saw a white horse gallop over the down,
I saw a white horse looking over a gate,
I saw a white horse on the way into town,
And one on the way coming back: that made eight

But oh for the ninth one: where he tossed his mane,
And cantered and galloped and whinied and swished
His silky tail, I went looking in vain,
And the wish I had ready could never be wished.

Count the white horses you meet on the way,
Count the white horses child, day after day.
Keep a wish ready for wishing - if you
Wish on the ninth horse, your wish will come true.
                                                                            Eleanor Farjeon

Traveling into the Future

"In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments in the past, which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments in the future."
André Gide

Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day

Vanestov

  

And I have felt...a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused, 

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things.

 WORDSWORTH

Ivan Kramskoi

 flowers for me today!

Foreshadowing

Paolo Roversi photo of Tasha Tilberg

by David Wagoner

The ledge of light, flat over the pier, Tilts into darkness as the sun fails; And all those glinting shreds on the water pour Downward under waves gone slack like sails.
Now, in the shade, swells trundle the flotsam in And strand it, hulking, where the stones waver Like mice in the grey shallows.
What greens remain Are deeper than olive-kelp.
All fish roll over.
O the rain comes slowly from its anchorage Near the furthest spars, and, falling aslant, Nudges the air inward like a wedge To the cove's rim, drenches it dead and faint, And grounds it with the flotsam, lolling there More like uprooted sea wrack than air. 
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(again - a poem from Dry Sun, Dry Wind and again I messed with his poem by putting the sentences together instead of the spacing of the original in the book...I don't usually do this to poems but I found the imagery so beautiful and compelling, so non-fictional and Pacific Northwest-ish that it just reads that way to me. Apologies to Mr. Wagoner.)

Late October

junior witches gather in the streets
last year's pumpkinhead says hello as he passes by with a mouth full of sweets
children have swarmed all the gates and ring doorbells and knock on wood
tonight is dark and full of shining smiles and secrets

(this post is partially  paraphrased/white stolen (like a white lie/white magic?) and idea-ed/inspired from David Wagoner's poem Late October from his 1953 book Dry Sun, Dry Wind)

Can You See the Earth Turn?

I really like warm sunny days in October. They are bittersweet, but mostly sweet. The moon is always tangled up with wildly textured clouds in the October night sky and the sunsets have begun to have a certain lingering tension, a hold-on-tight-I'm gonna make-this-one-count exuberance. I know the wind will pick up with a chill and blow away the fuchsia tatters of puff in the evening sky, but I am going to relish every minute of it. The folks around here have been told it will be a wet winter (no kidding...?...we are on the Oregon Coast for heaven's sake..) and I for one would like to give thanks for the beautiful warm dry summer we have had. It was one of the loveliest in awhile. So very lovely. I am smiling. Wildly.

Eastman Johnson

Hedgerow Arts is 3

Woaza, I almost forgot to wish myself Happy 3rd Blog Birthday on October 3rd. It was in 2009 I started the blog and now I would like to send vanilla cupcakes and sparkling cider and buttermilk crullers and Starbucks hot chocolate ice cream and raspberries and chocolate-covered cherries to Hedgerow Arts. My ace in-the-hole, my shiny friend always, my amanuensis of random ramblings, my verbal sparing partner dueling ever so gallantly, my patient and oft' neglected left field - thank you ever so much for being so much more than I had hoped. I love you little blog-a-ling : )
Hope to get a place in a few weeks. Waiting for someone to move out then will be able to get into this fairly nice little place. Least that is the plan. I am in tatters. Like an antique raveled latch-hook rug, with tasseled edges shredding into fray - soft, worn.  I am the backseat of a car, the distant hoot of the train whistle in the night, the shadow slipping by in the early morning mist. I am the one unseen in a crowd, the one people aren't sure if it is safe to look at. I am pacing the confines of a wide open space with no walls or doors or windows. I am the girl pining for a table to sit at, a bed to lay in and a bathroom to steam up with hot showers. I am the mother with no nest no rest no downy comfort for her children. I will be the one you see in the rear-view mirror, the one you see in the corner of your vision, the one you see if you open your eyes. I am a face of the home-less/non-homed/un-sheltered. But not forever. I am. For ever.