Campfire Kindle

  I leapt and got a new Kindle Fire on the Amazon daily deal the other day. The boys and I were needing another browse-able watchable screen gizmo toy. It really is fun to have and I am glad I bought it. I'm addicted to games of mahjong (and bejewelled) and spent many hours Friday playing mahjong, watching free movies and netflix. I am reading the last book that came out in the game of thrones by George RR Martin, A Dance With Dragons, and now I can read on the kindle and return the overdue library book (over a 1,000 pages..) The best thing about the Kindle is it doesn't ring - like a phone. I have not done the angry birds yet or friends w/ words but I am sure the bandwagon will have me aboard in no time.
  The beach has been good lately with some nice weather. The agates are scarcer now due to the deeper layer of gravely sand. It all depends on how the tides have laid the sand/gravel layer with each passing tide or weather related event. No storms, lower tides = built up sandy gravel. The higher waves in the winter really scour the beach and expose the "agate beds". I have found so many fistfulls this past few months and jars of seaglass. Every day is different and you never know what you will find.
  I have found a good basketful of Japanese items recently - lighters, markers, bottles, bottlecaps, giant light bulbs, flotsam and jetsom. Walking the tide line and kicking around the smaller driftwood is usually where that stuff is. I almost always haul out a bag of debris consisting of plastic and bits of styrafoam and things. There have been lima bean sized balls of white wax (paraffin?) laying around that I can't figure out. I pick them up to dispose of also because I don't want the tide to carry them back out into the ocean and get eaten by the marine life. We have a year-round tribe of about 200 seals that live at "my" beach. They frolic and lord knows what else. They don't need to eat wax! Or plastic.
  I am looking for a RV. We are going to become a mobile unit. It will be a few months but I am tired of paying rent and having nothing to show for it. I also do not like to be at the mercy of neighbors and their loudness and smoking and door-banging and landlords and their blankeyblank. The last 3 of the last 4 houses I have rented we had to move because of landlords selling or some such. I guess I don't feel secure and worry we may have to move and have no where to go again. An RV or other mobile unit would solve that.
  My landlord lets people smoke right outside and it comes right up in our windows. It is supposed to non-smoking but there are big piles of cigarette butts and noisy people standing around smoking. It sucks, yes it does. And the neighbors right next to us moved and god please let quiet non-smokers move in. It is very tramatic to have no control over basic peace of mind and proximity to others. I spent the last summer till late fall as you readers know being home-less (un-homed) and mostly sleeping in my car. Well that sometimes doesn't seem so bad when there are 8+ people yucking it up and throwing butts around within 8 feet of your window.  The big problem will be to get something the boys and I can live in that will fit us for low money. I want to be able to move it at will. I just need some cash and a good deal! I can put the houeshold back into a storage unit. Unless I can find a house to rent reasonable. But then again I feel a distinct urge and compulsion to be mobile and very flexible. I know I will never be able to own a home at this rate and have a garden for keeps and be able to root properly. So I might as well be the best flexible gypsy-princess I can.   
  The boys are big and wonderful and we all get along so darn well. We have talked about it. They hope for the best outcome. There are several good options for mobilized unit living in our vacation destination coast town. And lots of beautiful places to ramble to daily if needed. If I had the means I would buy a very good Pacific Yurt and a bit o' land and we would live lightly and very happily. (I have lived in yurts, teepees and tents before.) But till then, we will try the wheels under our feet. What a grand vision I have of a real kind of freedom in shelter! It is a good thing. I am grateful for all my blessings every day. Maybe an angel will bring us an RV to call home. Please

Chagall, My Heart

I love this video of an exhibition in Madrid of Chagall. It makes such an impact when you see how large some of the canvases are and the colors so alive and brush work up close (virtually..) Literally made my eyes joyfull and my heart beat stronger. I must visit a city soon and go museum hopping. There are small galleries near me and I should visit them more often. Many are predominately seascapes. My eyes long for the drenched and bold and intense of saturation. I have grateful eyefulls of the oceanic everyday. So incredible but maybe it is the heat of color I long for. In this cooler climate the blues, greys, driftwood, agate, sand, shell, tree and seagull, moist and fogged are the norm. I will try to dip my Easter eggs deep with color this weekend and blaze some vibrant hues into my environment. Easter is my favorite holiday of all.  

Chagall



Sometimes

Sometimes wildness is the only thing that can help me feel better if I have a lump of anxiety in my heart chakra. I have a bird in there today that is fluttering and trying to fly. That is what it feels like anyway. I am going to walk to the beach through the wind and cold - I will find my center just fine on the shifting sands and by the changing tide. They are almost the only constant things on fluttering -heart-days like now. The trapping of civilization do not soothe me - only Mother Nature. Her wild chaos is the order I seek and the bigness of the horizon to give me room to breathe I need now. See ya'll later.

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.)