Thursday, July 27

summer flowers

flowers, gardening, outfits

Things have been quiet around here lately, you can almost hear the crickets singing in the distance and the clock quietly stirring. Things have not been as quiet in daily life as I have been moving from one thing to the next, and it is good to be in this head space, of trying, of walking out of comfort zones, of travel, of little sleep, but for today, I just want to sit in the garden until the moon is showing. Nobody else around but the magpies and the bees and the dogs inside sleeping.

To be with and to be without, I am realizing both have their place for me. Some days, you sit in the garden. Some days, you run into town with so many errands and plans, you have little time to think or feel or remember what senses you do have. So, I thought I would make a post, documenting some of the lush flowers we have seen here this summer, trying to slow time, trying to remember that there were times I wished and wished for this busy life.

I hope your July was wide-eyed, able, and full of good times.

Tell me, what is on your mind?

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5 comments flowers, gardening, outfits

Tuesday, July 25

How Long Blues Music Video

Art, music, outfits, storyhive

I am both over the moon and out of the comfort zone sharing this with you today. The music video for my song 'how long blues' has been released into the wild and it is my greatest hope that those of you who watched the storyhive pitch video and voted for this to come true are pleased and proud with our final video.

I may have wrote this song out of a bad day, when I was bit by the blues, but to think that in my own strangeness or misery, I found a home in a song about sorrow and out of it came a music video. Let it be known: you can doubt yourself sometimes, because not all flowers grow out of warm days, but never doubt what you can do. I used to sing around the house with a round brush but I never once thought I would sing for more than the mirror or the yelping dogs. Those dogs never did like my singing voice anyway. For years and years, I had given into the worry that because my voice wasn't what I wanted it to be, that it meant I shouldn't sing.

So, whatever it is you may take from these songs I write, I do hope it empowers you to sing, because the world has too many voices we don't get to hear.

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There is also a second round of voting, which began yesterday, but the winner of this gets to go to SXSW and continue pursuing the dizzy dream that is being an artist. Voting only goes until Friday, July 28th at noon PST. You can vote here and share daily. You would make for a very very happy human on this side of the computer.

Love, Amy

4 comments Art, music, outfits, storyhive

Thursday, July 6

griffith woods in july

griffith woods, hat, outfits, summer, travel

In Griffith Woods, the birds hop from tree to tree and the bells of nostalgia ring. Here, I find reminders of my own childhood — the light, the warmth, the way Alberta flowers are growing from the ground, the distant sound of creekbed water rolling over fallen logs, the sense that nothing matters, yet everything does. I could spend many hours here and I would still want to spend an hour more. To be away from the world as we know it, to set this brief life as something good, to wake as if waking from a fever and to find myself in these woods, how could I want anything else?

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Tomorrow, I will be leaving for Hawaii with my mum. Hawaii in July was never something I planned, only because the winters here can be harsh enough, if I were to ever dream of a holiday, it might be to escape the winter's bluest days. I am feeling a bit strange about missing out on the garden or the singing gigs that seem to come in double during this time, but I am also feeling a slight twinge of guilt for worrying about these things that come to mind at all. How often in my lifetime will I get to adventure with only my mum by my side and the taste of mangoes from the tree? Isn't it just like a human to find reasons to worry or complain when everything is actually quite good and lovely?

I will leave C behind. I will leave my banjo behind. And the snapdragons too, but it has been so long since I left the city and I know it will treat me well to do so.

If you want to follow along,

I will be posting on my instagram!

outfit details: winners blouse, good looking objects leaf earrings

9 comments griffith woods, hat, outfits, summer, travel

Tuesday, June 27

at life's crossroads

flowers, gardening, outfits, summer

The sun is doing a dance between cloud and open sky. I should be so glad and feel as if I am a part of it all, but I spent the morning crying which made the sun just a soft spot for drying my eyes. Some people will tell you that you need reasons if you're going to be crying but the truth is sometimes crying is just a human way of saying "look after yourself." Many a dream or idea was born out of the badlands of a crying bout, it is a certain kind of reaction that happens when hearts and heads meet. Today, it was no other than feeling like I have so much to be done and not knowing how I will get to it all. How does one measure the day with just the right amount of work and rest so you can carry on happy as a fat caterpillar on its way to becoming a butterfly?

Below the lilac tree, honeyed light colors my hair red, a color that used to sit on top of my grandmother's hair but we never had the chance to meet. I wonder what she would say to me now. Perhaps, she would say something along the lines of worry less and live more. It takes time, these things we do, these meanings we try to uncover, these dreams we try to pull out of the ground, but there is an art to befriending time in such a way as to not fear it, but to welcome it, an art to keeping time without wishing it away.

I know the nasturtium is growing wide-eyed and able, the snapdragons are climbing, the marigolds are already tall, and I remember how long I waited for this. To be able to rise in the morning and walk barefooted into the backyard. To look for hummingbirds and bees and all sorts of signs from the living. It is not yet over for us — even when it feels like it is as your eyes fill with salty water, you're just a human being and what you do with that both wicked and beautiful understanding is

up to you.

outfit details: topshop embroidered jeans, thriftstore blouse & sunhat

6 comments flowers, gardening, outfits, summer

Thursday, June 15

banjo and the lilac tree

banjo, gardening, outfits, summer

I trace lilacs as they grow by the hillside, a hundred or so poems for those who survive. I move from one to the other like I have done so many summers before. I bite the air and when the sun meets my arm, it feels like somebody loves me — despite any failings or misfortunes one may think I have. The sun does not care to remind me that I have had bad days or how I have ignored the doorbell when it rang or how I have wondered what the point of something was even if it meant everything to somebody else. No, the sun just lifts its head and in doing so, gives rise to a joy like no other.

Knowing how many days I have lived without the warm sun or the lilac tree blooming makes me clutch to the moment, these moments, where I know so well that it will all inevitably come to leave me behind. What was once a bookshelf will soon become dusty and the spines of the books will no longer open without the crackling sound of pages touching pages. Where there was nothing, there is now something. Where there was something, there is now nothing. Such is the way of our strange, strange lives.

—

When I come to the lilac tree, I come to know all there is to know about living. It happens until it doesn't. The lilac is blooming until it is not. Your love is here until it is gone and so I drift, I drift and I drift until there is nothing else to do but untie my shoes and watch the tiny purple buds once attached to the tree fall to the grass and go away with the wind. One day, that will be me, that will be you, but not yet, there is still living in our lungs and lilacs growing on that tree. Summer afternoons with a banjo bigger than my pocket, what will become of the hazy sun and the little green sprouts that line the backyard garden? What will be loved and what will be forgotten?