banjo and the lilac tree

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?

outfit details: eshakti custom made dress, savers/thrifted sunhat

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5 goals for June

The golden light of June is upon us and I am not sure if this is the best time for me to be making a list of 5 goals as I have been given to the grumps all day. Or, maybe, it is the perfect time to make such a list as life continues on despite the mood you find yourself in and sometimes the best way to fight the blues is to find new things to live and hope for. Here are my 5 goals for June. 

What are yours?

1. Finish the vegetable garden. I have been a little behind in the garden this year - despite the fact that I write of it and talk of it so often. I could have swore yesterday was the first of May and now quite suddenly, the calendar says it is June. Time, remove your sneakers please!
2. Shoot the How Long Blues music video. Just typing that sentence gave me goosebumps of the happy variety. I will be posting behind the scenes stuff on my instagram if you are interested in following along. Mostly, I'll be pinching myself to make sure it is all real.
3. Spend as many daylight hours as possible underneath the sky. June can be a treasure trove when it comes to exploring, so I want to tuck myself into those warm sunbeams and live live live!
4. Bake a chocolate cake. I have been craving one for the last few weeks and there is nothing that can compare to something homemade.
5. Press wild grasses. I often find myself pressing flowers, but this year, I want to try to learn the art of pressing wild grasses, too.

How are you?

Tell me of your dreams, your goals, your plans, your curiosities —  

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the good thing about living

 In the belly of a may tree, there is a certain kind of fragrance that feels more like forgiveness and so it drifts from the bough and onto the hair of those who walk beneath it, as if to say "despite it all, you're still something worth holding, worth loving, and worth knowing." I see the garden, I see the cherry tree, I see the little buds where Saskatoon berries are soon to fall, and it is just like the world has put words to a melody you have always wanted to sing but the hum wasn't enough to make a song out of it. I can imagine the cotton dress somebody's mother wore when she walked by trees such as these, rich with the daylight and promise of what places she could one day find herself in.

I wonder how many women have looked at the may tree and said "now, this, this is beautiful" and then went on to pick petals to put into glass jars so they could rise in the morning with something that was theirs and yet, still, like an open window to let sunlight through, belonged to everybody who was there. How many humans have we walked passed on our way to a mailbox, or the grocery store, or the woods who have stood where we stand now with thoughts that look just like ours.

But they don't say it.

----

Yesterday, I had tears in my eyes, they rolled from my face like wet cloth on a clothespin and I couldn't make out which flowers were cherry blossoms and which ones were dandelions. I could hear the ice cream truck merrily going off in the distance, but it has never sounded so sad, so unfamiliar to me. When your vision is blurred from crying eyes, it is a lot like being held together with sticky tape and not glue or muscle. You cannot see what is ahead of you, only the saddest feelings surface. After a certain amount of feeling hopeless, I closed my eyes and the song of every bird in the neighborhood started to mute the sad that was an ice cream truck's attempt to make me realize how I am not a child anymore and yesterday, I was not a child, and tomorrow, I will still be the adult version of me. The neighborhood birds chirped on as if it say "despite it all, you're still something worth holding, worth loving, and worth knowing."

If you are reading this,
let it be known
let yourself
be
It is okay to cry
In fact, it helps build muscle
heart muscle
so when your vision is blurred from crying eyes
you can still see cherry blossoms
and the tall grasses where dandelions grow
you will wonder where the time has gone
when an ice cream truck pulls into your neighborhood
but that is okay too
just because
they tell you you're an adult, now
doesn't mean you cannot have a dance floor
under your bed spring
or
ice cream
on the tip of your tongue

the good thing about living
is not that it ends
but that it has not ended
yet.

outfit details: emily and fin dress, smithbuilt hat, winners shoes

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tulips on the table & good news!

May tree blossoms from last spring sit in books and containers on the shelf next to our bed. They no longer carry that scent we have come to know as a sign of good things coming, but they'll do ever so slightly to make a winter less gloomy. Now, that the sun has woken from its seven month slumber, we can look to the trees and see new May blossoms forming like daybreak on our lids after what felt like long hours of not being able to sleep. I live for this time, as you know, and that is why I cannot go three sentences without writing about it. I have yet to discover a season that has ever felt as right as it does when the trees are alive like sonnets blowing in the wind. A sign of good things coming, no more winter howling, no more cheeks wet from longing for the raspberries or the honeybees, a banjo to ring out in the garden, and hands to pick flowers which soon will be growing. Spring brings with it a measureless peace and I dance such a dance when the warm sun is glowing.

----

Today, I celebrate, because we won the storyhive grant which means we'll be able to make a full music video! You wouldn't believe the goosebumps that fell onto my arm when I realized the news! I came running out of the bedroom and flopped onto the floor as if I had been transported back into happy childhood all over again and everything was as joyful as joy could be. I wish I could thank each and every one of you who voted, commented, and left your encouragement for the daunting task that was stepping outside of my comfort zone. I could not be me, be here, be as happy as I am today without you. 

So thank you, thank you, thank you!

outfit details: thrifted floral vest & hat, gift from shaela❤︎ dress, asos boots

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my life in photographs

Do you ever wake up from underneath the blanket, only to feel a slight tinge of sorrow or regret and there is absolutely no cause for you to feel this way. That is how I met morning — slightly strange, slightly nervous, slightly curious with no need for it, as if I said something wrong the evening before but I know I couldn't have. Honeyed light pours through the kitchen window, a coffee maker makes sounds I can hear, dried snapdragons are in view, dogs who are snoring, what could it possibly be that brings me to a mood that is not a celebration of all that this is? Perhaps, it is not a good time to ask, just a time to go on as I do.

 

 My weapon of choice. The banjo. The reason I ever began singing and ringing out what grows in the bones and the mind and the belly of a human. If it weren't for this moon shaped machine, I could be traveling through this wide unknown world less sure and certainly less satisfied.

When the world looks like roses before you.

I've been thinking of the mountains and how we are nearing the time where wildflowers start to sprout and paint the wild brush that is a mountainside. I grow tired of the city even though it does have good offerings of it's own-- music, people, pipe dreams being born, but I need that wild kind of strangeness and aliveness that seems to only exist when I am not here. 'I am mountain bound' might very well be my favorite sentence in the English language. After, 'I brought you snacks', of course.

Here I am with two dried bouquets, one is bright with snapdragon flowers and the other, made up of leftover plants dried over winter.

Can somebody send a little springtime to my neck of the woods? I want to adventure, catch a glimpse of flowers, toil in the soil, but May begins and although the may tree buds are starting to green, I just want them to bloom because when they do, I'll have more than dried snapdragons and leftover petals to grin upon.

I slept in until 11 am for the first time in years. Then, I was greeted by a warm plate of food made by a kindhearted woman I call my mum. Feeling lucky to be living today. Feeling well enough to take up singing and dancing through these halls.

When I entered the storyhive competition, I was rattled with shakes and uncertainty if it was something I could do - asking for help, asking for votes, talking about myself and my dreams for one week straight. I mean it when I say, I don't want to be a mosquito buzzing my way into your feeds, taking you away from your day, putting a microscope on me, but I now know that the weight of dreams is lifted and softened when you let others help you, confide in you, and love you. I have lived my entire life with the back of a turtle shell, always hiding, always believing that I was unfit to be loved, but the truth is as true as the sky can be blue, there are people in this world who want to lift you up.

From where I sit, I can hear the black capped chickadees parading from treetop to treetop as if the whole world is theirs and something in me says that it is and I am just here visiting. Before I could truly know the beauty that is birds singing on a warm weather day, I had to hear the crows echo through the chimney as I shivered and sighed at the length of a winter. We earn our seasons here, so every drop of sunlight counts. Like memories do. Like life does. Like seconds appearing and disappearing. Like remembering your mother's voice. Or that time you stayed out on the hillside until morning. It is seeing the geese finally return or letting lemonade sit on your tongue. It is the way dust shows on the window and the sight that is dandelions growing from the ground. In you, there is a certain kind of knowing and if you listen to it, you might one day hear it say "you're just visiting, so sit slowly with that which one day you will live without."

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