A cup of sunshine

Last week was bad, so bad it does not bear mentioning the details. Suffice to say that it was exactly the kind of week designed to drive me mad and force me to retreat into a dark hidey-hole of gloom. The heavy cast iron skillet of Life smacked me upside the head with one thing after another until I was quite battered and ready for permanent surrender. The worst blow came on Friday evening, but so too did a package of tangible love goodies from a dear friend.  The next morning, I went out into the oh-so-bright day wearing my favorite sunshine-yellow shirt and the world’s most fabulous, vibrant scarf, which had arrived on my doorstep exactly when I needed it. And life was good again, and has been ever since. I did not vanish into my hidey-hole for months on end like I usually do; I greeted the world with the sun.

Hello, world. I say hello to you every time I resurface from solitude, but although I wander through you in my better days, I rarely greet you this way. I don’t think I have ever properly introduced myself to you, so let me do so now. Hi, I’m Amy. I’m not all that easy to get to know: I am awkward, self-conscious, and shy. But you can see me in the smallest things: the wedding ring absently twisted so that the diamond nestles against my pinkie finger; the overly long sleeves that curl over my knuckles; the bright colors of my heart threaded into the scarf I wear; the cup of sunshine in my hand. Because I may be short and overweight and battlescarred and tired, but I am also a poet, an artist, a weaver of fairy tales and dreams. And I shine out of the storm clouds and dismal days. Oh, how I shine.

All Souls’ Day

a sea of candlelight

virginal guardians

spirits transmuted into flame

the reverent silence and the soul-deep chill of night

red shadows, solemn hearts

Change

Welcome, changing seasons. Welcome, cold days and gloomy wet weather. I welcome you for the skies brushed in feather gray, for the last rays of light streaking orange through dying leaves, for the vivid colors of the harvest and the blankness of fog.

I greet you with a smile despite impending snow, cabin fever, and months on end of never being warm, because you bring droplets of water clinging to vine and berry, the haunting beauty of decay, afternoons scented with pumpkin and apple, morning air so crisp and sharp I can almost touch it.

You are the harsh, untamed wasteland of the Pack River as its waters recede, the eagles nesting in Wolf Lodge Bay, the anticipatory taste of snow biting my lips.

For this I will love you as winter closes in, far from the warm green place that gave birth to me.  All this, and your cold mirrors of sky.

Open me and find me

My first-ever successful image transfer with gel medium. These days I am learning so much about art, about myself, about life. There is something indescribably wonderful about this process, taking something you aren’t satisfied with and trying new things with it, undoing some and keeping others, leaving it and coming back to it until it feels right. This is growth at a calm, steady pace, a gentle unfolding. Even the occasional frustration can’t mar the joy of it all. “Open me and find me” is a phrase that’s been bumping around in my head since my senior year of high school. I’ve used it here and there, but never has it felt so full, so profound. I am opening, being opened, and found.

Kindness

On the way to Leavenworth last week, we stopped at a rest stop between Moses Lake and George, and there next to the sink in the Women’s Restroom was this small message that had been left by an unknown stranger. My mother didn’t see it; the two other women in the bathroom didn’t spot it–who knows how long it has been there, and how many other people have passed by without noticing it. Maybe it was left there just to be a curiosity or something silly, but I like to think that instead it was someone fighting all the nasty things that usually get scrawled on bathroom stalls by leaving a message of kindness on a Post-It note for anyone with eyes to see. I will never meet that person, never know who it is, but I am deeply grateful to them just the same.

Also, a more personal act of kindness: someone I barely know signed me up for Carmen Torbus’s Spill It! workshop, something which although I am fairly certain I never told anyone this, I could not afford to do myself despite wanting to so very, very much. So thank you, Janet, from the bottom of my heart. I am only three days into the workshop, and I am loving it. It feels indescribably good to resurface from the basement covered in paint, to try new things, to watch as mistake after mistake transforms into something truly magical if I just remain calm, keep going, and trust myself. Even better to see a life lesson in that, one that I really need. And all of this makes me think of a quote by Emerson that I encountered on Chrysti’s blog this morning: “Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.” I believe that is also true of kindness.

Also, thank you to everyone who has dropped by and left me a comment recently to let me know that you are there and thinking of me. It means a great deal to me, and I appreciate it so much. Huge hugs to all of you today.

Wait for me

For once, there are too many things to be said instead of too few. Things happening inside me, things I want, things I need, things I hate. The flowers that I picked at Green Bluff, which were so beautiful and full of life last night, are drooping sadly this morning; but in their death, they smell sweeter than ever, and I am adrift. My mother will be coming to town soon, a small package I owe to someone I don’t even know but who has blessed my life, and this week there is the beginning of another round of physical therapy and a trip to the anesthesiologist to see if there is anything, anything at all, that medical science can do to return me to a normal life, and I am afraid that it will fail. And I am keenly aware that there is, at most, perhaps 5 people out there who will even read this, but still… Wait for me.

Dreaming of art

Ever since the move-that-did-not-happen, there has been very little art in my life. Photography, yes, but that lovely do-it-yourself down-and-dirty painting/making/creating kind of art, no. I unpacked a few art supplies to make Christmas cards and ornaments last year, but I have been so disheartened by the prospect of unpacking/repacking and in the end, never actually moving, that the majority of my supplies are still gathering dust in boxes. A year and a half now, and my artistic spirit is getting ever more desperate while the rest of me remains stubbornly unmotivated.Obviously, I need a good kick in the fanny, and the Spill It! Online Workshop sounds just so lovely and inspiring and loads of fun, which is all something I need so desperately. And lovely Carmen is giving away free tuition to one lucky person, so hurry on over and join the fun!

And since I can’t for the life of me get the video to embed properly, please click here to find out all about it!

Finding balance

Sometimes, your day will go like this: it takes 45 minutes longer than usual just to get out of town. All of the beaches along the Colombia river are either already occupied, inaccessible from the road, or the water is too low to swim in. When you finally find the perfect beach at an isolated campground, three cars pull up right when you are thinking about changing (in other words, getting completely naked) behind a tree. The house you were planning to photograph has been demolished quite thoroughly in the past week. You miss a turn and end up at a backwoods border crossing into Canada, and since you weren’t planning to leave the country, your only ID is your driver’s license. You walk half of the way from the highway to the winery by the river because your leg hurts too much to sit in the car anymore despite the muscle relaxants and pain killers, and then discover that while you were walking there, the winery has closed for the evening.  You have a killer charlie horse in your big toe, of all places, and your husband gets a killer toothache.

Sometimes, your day will go like this: you finally get to photograph Two Rivers in decent lighting. You watch a flock of wild turkey cross the road a few feet ahead of the car. You put in a CD that you haven’t listened to in years, and right there in the first song is your heart. By the time the second song is half through, you are content and at peace. You find a miraculously empty beach and go swimming at sunset. You watch the mountains fade to royal purple with the last rays of sunlight casting a white-gold haze over their peaks. You eat dinner to the sound of crickets and the lapping of water on the rocky shore. You name a trout Beauford, because he’s a sly one indeed–always jumping out of the water just when you’re not looking. You watch the stars come out over the river until you can find the Big Dipper, Pisces, Delphinus, Cassiopeia. You find the Milky Way stretched across the night sky like a faint cloud of light.

Sometimes, they are the same day, and when you balance everything out, there is more light than dark.

Slowly falling in love

January 2010 will mark the 7-year anniversary of my life in Spokane, my life away from the Texas hill country where I grew up. It has been a struggle coming to terms with the Inland Northwest. I have written poems bemoaning the harsh, snowy winters and poems about transplanting bluebonnets into this deeper, colder soil. I have pined for Austin and dreamed of moving back, sometimes to the point of obsession. When I went down for my mother’s surgery in 2006, I cried all the way from her house to the airport simply because the bluebonnets were in bloom, and they were the first Texas wildflowers I had seen in four years. A large part of my heart will always belong there, always yearn for those warm, green hills. And yet for once, I am dreaming of Washington.

We spent Labor Day weekend traveling from one end of Eastern WA to the next: to Colville, and then even further north, almost to Canada; southeast to the edge of the Idaho Palouse; just outside of town to the farms at Green Bluff. And I never wanted it to end, never wanted to return to Spokane. Or anywhere else, for that matter. The landscape of my heart is changing, taking on the golden tint of the Palouse hills, the dark beauty of the northern mountains, the vibrant shades of harvest in an apple orchard looking toward Mt. Spokane.

It is strangely like the way I fell in love with my husband: slowly, over many years, without realizing it. I think this began in 2007, when in the midst of deep depression I set out with my camera for the first time with the sole intent of proving to myself that there was something beautiful in the world to enjoy. And I have kept doing that, through PCOS-induced emotional meltdowns, fits of loneliness and homesickness, and more than a fair bit of physical pain. I loved it immediately, this exploration of my new home, and I loved seeing its unexpected beauty. But until recently–until I spent some real quality time at the property where my husband grew up in Colville–I had not truly begun to love the Inland Northwest for itself. And I am still struggling a bit: it is barely autumn, and already I am dreading the winter here. I am not head-over-heels, breathlessly wide-eyed, utterly besotted yet. But give me a little more time: one morning I will wake up deeply, inextricably bound to this land.

An ode to the citizens of Spokane

Let me sing you a song of admiration for the people who share this city with me. They drive alternately too fast and too slow, vote utter morons into city government, and act as though “The Zags” are more important than feeding their families. And yet, how I love them, for they are unique and beautiful and oddly inspiring.

They take their goats for a walk in Riverside State Park along with their dogs.

They find their own private beaches along the Spokane River and create timeless moment of beauty.

They climb dangerous paths to take photos of wild osprey.

They stand proudly on the edge of a sheer cliff, posing and giggling and waving for complete strangers.

People of Spokane, I am proud to be one of you.