Building

At what point does a row of bad days become a bad week? 

It feels like I'm busy all the time yet progress I can measure seems infinitesimal and ephemeral. 

I need the heuristic spirit of those who artfully build/balance these cairns in the Red Cedar. 

My focus and karma for now must be action not reason; the work itself, not the outcome.

Forever?

It's August and we're still having multiple daily work meetings spaced out all day. The rest of the day is building each class and syllabus manually on our new platform, Canvas. While all this counts as doing the necessary--perhaps even as accomplishing something new--I didn't get a chance to settle in to 'deep work' or dream up projects this summer.

There are days of dread about what might be in store and today was one of them. Would I worry less if there was an end in sight?

Synchrony, serendipity, sweetness

 

A long meander through MSU arboretum early this morning with L, T, and R while the rest of the fam slept in. Moving up and down the line I overheard bits of conversations as one does. But today, two things. 

First, L said she loved lantana. And so, later today, I was able to make her a teensy posy with some of my last blooms for the season. 

Then, R mentioned she'd been spending a lot of time on the Russ and Daughters website looking at all the things she wanted to order and that she was tempted to order the smoked sablefish, but it cost 55$$$$. Now, earlier this week, when picking food for my Imperfect delivery, I thought I had ordered some black cod, because that Nobu dish is a highlight of our lives. As it turns out, what I had actually ordered and had delivered yesterday, was smoked black cod or (the package informed me) sablefish. Exactly What R wanted! So the package made its way to R, much to her delight.

We ended the day with the brownies from bestie LB--some with walnuts for me and Big A and some nut-free for Nu and At. Some small sweetnesses from today.

A Different Season

Perhaps I asked the wrong question 

of this place

at such a time

Imagining what we've become

at that time

in this place

Discovering us borderless 

I open to shelter

--maybe laughter?

Like a wave in our spacious sky 

--I who cannot swim

see my shadow float

'The Big Picture'

Syllabus building proceeds apace. So many details remain to be filled in, but I think I have the big picture.

Kinda like this goofy peacock (?) at the MSU Arboretum--all those individual pots of begonias will fill out the plot with plumage, but for now, we have to compartmentalize, trust circumstances will cooperate, and hope for the best. 

Taking a Few

A hike at Hawk Island and a socially distant picnic with Grandpa R (namaste-ing in this pic) before he returns to N.C.

The water was brilliant; the skies clear and blue; the woods deep and green and quiet. There were tons of people, but there was so much space that it didn't matter--or not very much. The bento boxes I customized (puff pastry rolls and salads) for each of us were a goddamn hit.

No significant 'real' work was accomplished today, and I think I'm going to be ok with that.

Silver Linings

My social media is full of amazing pictures of comet Neowise cycling through on a 6800-year orbit (SJ's, DM's, AD's were particularly beautiful). And here I am taking pictures of the sun finally breaking through in the middle of Service Road. I do what I can, I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Big A and I cycled over to Whole Foods for supplies and assembled poke bowls together for dinner. At was charmed by the cycling, Nu appreciated the poke (esp. as they're still adjusting to the reality that school will open 100% online), and Scout and Huck always treasure all things related to "Mr. Slammin."

Oh, and I finally finished designing a necessary campus-wide learning module and uploaded it. Now it's up to others to refine, repair, or redo, I guess.

Parataxic

#MSU Radiology Gardens

Bright, they flow in at our voices
showing brilliant as hard candy

Through their flicker of doorway
our pour of elastic questions

How much might be washed away
before we are here again

Here if we're drowning, are we
reached by arms? By voices? 

Cool Band Album Cover

We packed up a picnic and headed out to Point Betsie Lighthouse for the day. Long drive, gorgeous water.

Scout and Huck got overheated and anxious, so we didn't stay long. But Nu and At--I could (did) look at them all day. They always seem so effortlessly rock chic to me (Nu's light sensitive glasses help).

I've been giving my family's humans bird-motif shirts for years now, so it was only a matter of time before they all arrived downstairs synchronously wearing 'bird shirts.' Big A too (not pictured here as he was looking for a bigger bottle of water for the puppies who'd already slurped up  all we'd brought).

It was a welcome change from our pandemic ordinary, though At and Nu panicked about so many people without masks and wouldn't even go near the water. We saw lots of "Trump 2020" signs and a sign proclaiming "My governor is an idiot." I took some hope from a series of signs that promised "I'm a woman; hear my roar; watch me vote." Yeah.

Here We are

I feel like I've taken this picture every summer since I discovered the lotus pond near the formal English gardens at MSU. But the early morning sunshine and a very busy bee tweak this picture into being a bit different. The flowers aren't as profuse this year (maybe because there seem to be fewer garden workers overall), but they're still a  high point of summer.

Days, weeks, months have blended into a jubilee of mindful living, serious journalling, busy work meetings every weekday, A LOT OF reading... and not enough writing. This really spoke to me yesterday: 

I figured that there was a magical sequence to daily activities and if I could just get the sequence right, the writing would follow. It was a helpless feeling: oh, no, I've got the sequence wrong. Too bad about today!

Still and all, hoping to do better tomorrow.

Tiny Fan Club

Sad from the book I'm reading--Etaf Rum's A Woman is No Man--and consequently a bit mad at everyone too, BUT THIS IS TOO CUTE!!

Also cute, At asking me if my book was an LOTR spinoff because the title is reminiscent of my favorite Eowyn quote. 

How can we know?

Normal is long ago in the past and faraway in the future, but today I was indoors all day with rain and meetings.

Every now and then I could hear my babies and had to trust that there were two human and two puppy kids in the tangle and that they were all kinda doing ok. 

Anti-Capitalist Walk-Talk

It was At's turn to walk with me today, and we ended up in hammocks after 20 or so mins, because it had gotten quite hot again. Our resident socialist was discussing the cultural theorist Mark Fisher, whose chapter titles are whimsical and full of possibility: "What if you held a protest and everyone came?" "It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism."  But I guess I didn't know the jarring reason why Fisher's writing stopped.

And also, I'll confess--my darling boy's Jesus of the Naxalites mien charms and alarms me in almost equal measure and for different reasons.

On the outskirts of the ordinary

In case you can't tell, Nu got really dressed up... to go on a walk... with me... down our own driveway...

For a few minutes this morning, singing along to Lizzo (Juice) and rigging a bath lighting fixture out of things we already had like X-mas ornament hangers(!), I was blissfully happy--until the enormity of everything else stomped through my chest.

Big A has tummy pains that are terrifying in their intensity--I jumped out of the bath yesterday thinking I'd have to take him to the E.R. right away, but he won't go and he won't do alternative remedies like cumin-turmeric water, and he won't make an appointment with his doc. I don't know what to do, frankly.

At has been in a haze--some of it is allergies and allergy meds, but my sweet child has seemed sad, faraway, and unapproachable all day.

Scout has been acting like a puppy, playing tag extra hard and doing puppy things like he hasn't for years--chewing on pillows and running away with people's slippers.

Hucky? Hucky is always just Hucky. My Hucky bear never cares.

Summer is still magical

But why do so many things make me cry?

Paddling/Pedaling in Place

Early morning ramble with R and L and from a distance, I quite like these geese on the Red Cedar River. I didn't at all like having to pick my way through their leavings and I kind of lost my courage and my hike pals when they crossed the trail en masse. But away in the water, I can forget their meanness and marvel at their grace.

I've added into this weekend all the social structure I mourned at the beginning of the week--a distant visit with CF, a group call with cousins, a movie with EM after dinner, and I've checked in with a handful of students and friends who live by themselves. 

Oh. And after years of mocking Big A and his "Pedalton," I took a Peloton ride today, and kinda liked it... It was right before I left to meet CF, and it got me rather sweaty in just over 20 minutes. Nu, At, and I all wear the same shoe size (and I know it sounds gross), so we're sharing the one pair until we feel committed. A ridiculously privileged version of Children of Heaven.

Babies w/o Breakfast

The biggest = the saddest.

We're moving to a different online instructional platform at work, and my morning meeting ran late (there are so many morning meetings!!) and according to Big A's phone pic, some of the kids got hungry and anxious for breakfast. 😂

It's gloriously cooler with gray-stormy-gloomy weather outside. I canceled all school-adjacent activities for the 12-year-old, and can hear them cackling with their older sibling over ridiculous videos in the rumpus room now.

Out of the meeting, but deep into the woods of my email and editing...

Mostly here

I took an accidental selfie while trying to get a picture of Big A and the puppies the other day, and first, my skin can't really be that clear--what?! But also, my half face is a solid metaphor for my current fragmentation--how it feels a bit empty despite checking off most of my family, household, and self-care goals every day (I continue to lag on the professional front).

Eating my second nectarine in the hammock today was blissful, yes--but also, I could hear myself thinking--hey, look! I'm eating nectarines in a hammock! I'm having such a great time! My somewhat desperate enjoyment of summer, the urgency to do all of the summer things is partly Pure Michigan (ha); but surely, me trying to convince myself things are fine is related to our strange, sad, pandemic times?

Another Day

When Scout climbs up on my hammock the way he is with Big A here, it can set me rocking for a long time.

I spent most of the day outside and people visited me from time to time as I finished the book I was reading (This Tender Land--I liked the Odyssey framing, but some parts were fairly twee and the ending was overstuffed and hurried).

We got some tiny tomatoes from my veggie plot!  And that was all the actual excitement the day held.

1/2 2020 Sonnet

Fond of sun,
my children and I
our thoughts tail us--
or are afterthoughts--
quiet and still as stones
our bones are sinking, singing
their fantasy of thanks to the earth.

Lulled by sun,
my children and I
are adrift on a river of
unhurried afternoons straining
only with birdsong, brilliance, buzz.
We'd say we are quite, quite ruined for the past
why--even the ghosts who call shine bright with future.