do you remember walking
postholing
through the snow
deep, even though we were on the trail through the trees
my world black and green and white and blue, and so perfect in its simplicity

do you remember walking
(up, up up we go)
higher and higher
(all the way to the top,
     all the way to the top)
and we were burdened with our toys for wonderful locomotion down
and we were lifted with the goal of reaching the point of the
beginning
of the
descent

and I said

don't you see those little white moths? are there little white moths here? do you not see them?

and you smiled
and said
let's have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

and we sat down and had a snack.

the moths went away, sadly. but I remember them.

I remember them and the memory makes me smile easily.

Big spaces and open roads only confirm what I already know, regarding my inability to find comfort in this conventional lifestyle that has taken over. The tent is a solid home, in that big and little hearts all sleep as one, and that one heart tends to rise and set with the sun as a new and stronger animal. I have little desire to watch games from the sidelines, but enjoy seeing the black and blue knees of my cactus-poked children as we play games with rocks and jackrabbits.

No better school exists than the mythology in the stars, the direction of the winds, and the roll of the ocean. And no better playground exists than puddles and piles of rocks. 

Hide and seek games in Santa Elena Canyon, however, can result in the worry that something could have gone wrong.

Everyone is found.

Things we find:

tracks
wonder
little animal
oyster fossils
a running man, looking to make sure of the empty hands of two strangers
paths
more rocks, that we love
daughter, wild girl
an embrace as an answer, fierce and not one to forget
an apology
a river
sun and shade
heat and cold
something blocking the throat, making it hard to swallow, with eyes about to spill over
quiet hand holding
slow steps

Those swarms that hang over my head, in the corners... they are not hornets gathering to wage war. Instead, they are unattended things with promises of such certain and exhilarating happiness. Their darkness and hardness is from the staleness of neglect and makes them impossible to forget. The shadows they create on the soul's walls make a misery much like a nightmare.

It is time to begin sewing again.

When a curtain that is a door moves with the trade winds blowing through the windows, I think it is a small person hurrying from one place of hiding to the next. I live among ghosts. People come and go, paddles and hands in the water and out again. A shadow in the sun, here they were.

Oh, the things I consider. I make a list:

hell and high water, and I choose neither; unless the water is pretty
dogs
the strength of character and tough feet
big dipper
frangipani caterpillars
Einstein's Dreams, always, by Alan Lightman; especially the chapter about houses on stilts on mountains
that odd feeling after climbing up high and resting, and looking out, over, below; and wanting to jump because flight seems incredibly possible
likewise, the need to keep swimming once one has left shore
likewise, paddling into the wind into open sea, and never wanting to look back to land
self made cancer

I remember both of my children
(and I wonder if I did the same
when I was small)
trying to grasp the water that poured from the faucet in their bath,
their little hands closing
making fists
over and over.

They failed, and I am certain I did, too.

I bet you, also.

Life gets in the way sometimes, and so the charcoal pencils get left behind. Most recently, all the pencils are wrapped up in boxes labeled with the names of their stuff inside and sent away to some foreign room or left prisoner in the dark of a space that was trying to finally breathe again.

I must be doing some things correctly, I said to a hiding sun disappearing behind magic mountain islands.

Painting walls makes people smile, and so I find myself on St. John, USVI, making walls smile with swimmy things. I win today, as I am in a beautiful place and I am making things.

Sugar ants have found their way into the keys of my laptop. My children and I introduce sand to the sheets on the bed that we are sharing. We see fish through the water, and then we are fish in the water.

I lighten the load. Keeping nothing, as usual, I walk away from everything to gain more. My bags returning will be less heavy than when we started.

Painting walls for others is an incredibly different process than seeking a goal with charcoal, than finding an answer or finding the right explanation through oil paint. Painting walls is fast and silly, and in the end I find myself enjoying the hurried work of it. The puzzle of color and shape and form is always there, no matter the content.
 

Almost a week has passed since the return from Switzerland, and already the visit seems twenty years behind me. I have not yet unpacked the drawings from their airplane home; the box looks like it fell off a baggage cart and was run over on the tarmac by numerous vehicles. Perhaps tomorrow I will find the time to release them from their rolled up misery.

The drawings are not what is important regarding my residency in Trelex, but instead the practice of making them. The wishes that came home with me have a great deal to do with the maintenance of making, and the recovery of purpose.

If my work is about keeping, then it is also about the effort of keeping making.

Restlessness can be a tangible anger.
I would choose to throw myself down mountains, over many other options, to keep that animal quiet.