The Melting World

I switched the furnace on yesterday morning, though by midday we were in T-shirts. That was me running and my son kicking his scooter down the greenway that stretches for miles alongside a cemetery called Sunset. We were flying, suspended, hovering, above the pine tree tops, between summer and fall. You could say it like […]

Yes, it’s now 6am. I’ve been awake since 2:30am. It’s not a bad thing. I finished another story in the span of two hours. Now it’s time to crawl under the sheets and sleep one hour before my son wakes. Outside in the garden, our strawberries, just blossomed, and our carrot sprouts are covered under […]

Well, well, well I am derelict in my blogging duties–I suppose the three month hiatus destroyed my momentum. I used to roll down hills with gusto, and now it takes me a while to talk myself into grass stains and burrs. This is a metaphor, obviously. I am on a mental holiday (does this mean […]

My son and I constructed a Japan Railways Yamanote subway (runs in Tokyo) costume from cardboard boxes, paper and paint. This is his favorite train of all trains, hands down. We got the idea from a Japanese TV commercial he loves on YouTube. Here he is testing out the pilot study. We will try to […]

Side view–still lacks door detailing and we’ll be adding better shoulder straps so the thing won’t tilt like this anymore….

This is the subway’s parked view (sans legs).

Minneapolis Grain Belt Brewery My son wrote this sentence of his own accord yesterday, and he does sum up two of his passions in a succinct manner: “I love trains and computers.” His ability to write and read has grown incredibly, much faster than his ability to speak. I think (but I’m guessing here) that […]

“Hi!”…well, it’s been far too long since I last posted here–and I really miss being able to carve a few moments where I could write to the universe now and again (as I see this blog, since I have no idea who, if anyone reads it–besides me). I have created a life without wiggle room […]

photo by Koizumi/flickr I found this quote by a young man with autism today while online, and I loved it: “We are not born to suffer. We are born to thrive. If you live in a dry area and your garden receives little water, you plant plants which like dry soil. But when you are […]

************** “…half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need.” –1933, Admiral Richard E. Byrd, while living alone 7 months in Antarctica– ************** My sister is caring for my son for the weekend. Fact: these two nights are the first time in over five years I have had the opportunity […]

But if you say ice cream, that’s an entirely different thang….

My son was thrilled to get this Care Bear puzzle for his birthday. He can now do up to 100 piece puzzles, often finding how the pieces go together faster than I can.

photo by keiko fukue 2007 The recipe to life isn’t complex. A few basic ingredients: clean water, food, shelter, and hugs, blended with generous dollops of humor, compassion for the downtrodden, respect for all life. Cultivate the seedlings of self-love with care. Sprinkle yourself with red pepper upon a dark occasion, and pour on the […]

I am back in a nation who believes in daylight savings, so for a few weeks I didn’t need electric light bulbs while shuffling about the apartment from sink to cereal bowl to coat to shoes, and I didn’t need to peer across the park on heightened awareness to see if I walked alone or […]

Well, as the world around me begins to speed up and populate the minutes with complexity, I need to slow down and remind myself in a mantra that ‘stress around me doesn’t have to equal stress inside me,’ and if I can maintain a sense of humor about this chaotic and eclectic circus called life, […]

I love graveyards, though maybe many people find that odd. I like walking where I feel the bones and spirits are resting, reading the headstones and imagining the singular life of its occupant. I once did a research project about an early turn-of-the-century graveyard in Alabama, how it grew into being an idealized community of […]

Here my son sits perched on top of the sofa right before bedtime.

I am here at work early, earlier than most folks, and when the sun rose at 3:30am, I did, too. I am wondering if I have entered that stage I’ve heard the elderly often do, of waking early without the need of alarm clocks. Normally, I am not so eager to rise up in the […]

In a few minutes I will be that person who walks around the classroom actively waving her arms and speaking at a volume unnatural. This is teaching, or rather trying to get others motivated to teach themselves. But now in a spare moment of solitude and window light, I am as quiet as the books […]