Selfie of the Prairie Life

Someone asked me last week if I were a patron saint of something, what would it be? If I was a goddess, what would my domain of power be?

To me theses are separate questions entirely. I used to really admire Saint Theresa, my middle name sake, the saint of little things, of household tasks. I once did a huge pencil and acrylic art piece of St. Theresa in modern times, asleep on the floor, with yellow latex gloves, mid floor scrub. The judge in the art review paused in front of it for quite a long time, just looking at it. Whispered, "Interesting." and that was it. It didn't win, but to me as an artist, the pause, the moment that stopped the viewer? That was what it is all about to me.

That is how I feel with my writing as well. When someone reads a poem or a blog post and it stays with them, they think about it, they feel something. That is enough. That is art. That feeling. That feeling is why I keep coming back to the page and lens trying to capture it when I feel it, trying to keep the darkness from eating me up.

And today, a lovely amazing woman I know posted a challenge to us all to take more selfies, not less. Take more pictures of the mundane moments in our life, not less. It is not self centred. It is not narcissism. It is trying to capture and share who we are, our own histories, our own beautiful imperfect lives. This is a challenge I live every single day. Or I try to.

It is true that often I leave out the hardest or the ugliest parts of my own life and relationships, but when I can, I post the real moments, the raw ones. It is always a balance to tell our stories while respecting the relationships that dwell inside them. I can only tell my own narrative point of view. This means leaving out the conversations I have with my 10 year old about private struggles she is having about growing up, leaving out conflicts I have with family members over personal choices I make when sharing them would show them in a bad light. Because I love them. I am not a saint of anything, but I try really hard to respect relationships in our everyday lives. I let friends go gently when they ask to be released, I respect the silences that grow from conflict, I nurture the spark of understanding, and I try really hard to be my authentic self the whole time and not hold back who I am even if it makes people uncomfortable sometimes. We all have our own struggles and issues. I get that. When I can accept my own self, I can accept yours.

I am a prairie dweller now. An artist and a caretaker of the land.

And this is rambling. I suspect that forcing daily posts will sometimes produce more and more ramblings than I like, but there you are. This is my mind.

This is how I spent my Sunday afternoon:

 Paper dolls, angry birds, and frying up "circle eggs" for Isaac.

Holly decided to cut out and glue together her own name. It was actually too huge and fell apart, so she joined Lily on the couch to learn about volcanoes and octopus bio-camouflage.

Lily actually is still pretty weak from her bout of the flu in December. She was the first to fall with body aches, migraine, and fever. Then Chad and me. The two littlest had Influenza A in 2011 and so when they got sick, they had some natural immunity and they only fevered and coughed for about 2 days with no asthma incidents. Thank goodness.

Chad and I though? I was so very sick for a long time. Week three now and I still have lingering symptoms. I feel like I am on the mend though. I shall send out Christmas cards soon, maybe. Ha.

Sunday was also our anniversary. We had "not really" tacos. I went to bed really early with a headache.

When I woke up this morning though, I was thinking about the selfie and the domain power questions. Right now, my calling is to document our everyday histories. To share my story. These questions intertwine. I am the goddess of the mundane and the quiet moments, of beauty in the everyday and small things.

What is your calling? What will you be remembered for or what will you want to remember a year from now?

Happy Anniversary Love

Today is our 16th wedding anniversay (I think, I've never been very good with math, but we were married in a snow storm in 1999, so I think my math is right.....). This is also our 6th farmaversary. We moved into the farmhouse 2009, on our 10th wedding anniversary.

We have 3 children, 16 years, 3 houses, 100 pigs, 3 bathroom tear outs, 2 kitchens, 4 gardens, and so many more adventures. So many more adventures to come.

This year though, this year was the hardest of our marriage. We'd survived three major house remodels/restorations (one was a full blown "divorce" house), three surgical births, one medical needs diagnosis for our youngest (the kind of dx that tears families apart), a major bank fiasco selling our other house (also recipe for marital strife), and a car accident. But this year? This year when everything seemed very stable and very calm, that's when it became difficult.

Why? My best guess is stress fatigue. We could finally collapse after surviving the years that nearly killed us. Collapse we did. And hard.

Luckily we fell into each other eventually. Not at first though, and that was a really scary part.

I went to Georgia to pursue poetry. I came back ready to move forward with that artistic endeavour. Chad was deep into learning about permaculture and studying the design aspect. It was not the first time our interests took us in opposite directions, but it felt like it. It felt like a huge distance was growing between us.

Spring came and was absolutely gorgeous. We tapped and syruped the trees. We had piglets born. We began to make space for each other, though terrified at what was happening, at least I was. I thrive on open physical space, but I have always needed the closeness that was our marriage and family. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know who to talk to. I didn't know what needed to be done.

This is the crucial part. I realised that I was looking for a physical space to recreate what we had when we were first married. I needed a porch. My porch, however, was filled with construction debris that needed to be there. So, there it stayed but block by block, every night I moved a few to the perimeter. Soon, the kids joined in. Then one week Chad finished it all. We hung the porch swing. We moved some chairs out. Soon enough this became where we spent our mornings, afternoons, and evening. Dinner was shared out here. Games were played. Art was made. Long, long talks, often with blankets wrapped around us, candles lit in lanterns, and music playing, happened on the swing. Sometimes early in the morning. This space had existed all this time, but was unusable because of all the junk that was piling up.

The distance that was between us filled up with love. Block by block, things that were problems shifted to the outside. Still there, but not in the way.

We came to a place where we realised we really didn't know each other anymore, but wanted to. That was an important part of it: we both really wanted to. We dated each other all over again, made time each day for connecting (usually doing chores together), and made space. Then, once we felt stable again, we really talked about what needed to change to keep things good. We did more things with the children, invited them to our porch space, into our art and music space.

So.....Chad quit his job. The commute was killing him. The sitting in an artificially lit box at a desk all day was killing him, actually and physically. So he quit. We have a farm. We have a farm business, I have a job I like mostly, and the kids need him too.

I need him. More than ever, I need him here. We discussed a lot of other options though and this is the one that made sense, that felt right, and was doable.

This. This making space. Making time. Making room. This is what saved our family. I feel more married and connected to the thing that is us than I have ever before this year and for that I am really grateful.

Happy anniversary, Love.

Daily Grind

Everyday there is beauty. Small things, the way the light filters through the dusty window that has sticky fingerprints from curious children, brought to the window at breakfast because one of them sees a deer in the field. The syrup from breakfast gives away their moment of joy, leaves rainbows on the table cloth when married to the sunlight.

I will wash the windows later, when I forget about the beauty and sweetness of this moment.

That's what happens to our days, the ebb and tide of duty with happiness and childhood play, brings us back to the mundane and in and out of the fantasy play of the small ones.

Today I am working. I will work at the keyboard until my mind is scrubbed numb, then return home to hugs and laughter, make dinner, and scrub dishes and sticky floors until my hands are scrubbed numb. Maybe they will help. Maybe I will lure them to service with the promise of my own made up fairy tales. They cannot get enough of those some days. Other days I tell them their own creation stories. How they were wished for and born into the world. Or stories of their own heritage, grandmothers' struggles, swamp lore, or just stories of my own childhood shenanigans.

I may get a moment to steal away and go into the woods.

There is a blizzard coming tonight. The pond has frozen solid and clear. A dangerous kind of ice, dangerous because without cutting into it, it is too hard to tell how thick or strong the ice is but the clear view lures the curious out farther and farther over deep water, the underwater creatures dancing and waving and we almost forget we are human and would meet and icy wet death if we joined these creatures even for a moment.

This is the kind of thing fairy tales are made from. A warning, too late.

We will bundle up, stoke the fire, eat a simmering and nourishing soup with fresh hot bread, put extra blankets on the beds, make hot tea with honey, and watch the storm roll in. Pray that we put enough bedding in the animal shelters, that they find the water they need in the storm, and that Spring will eventually come back.

I think I will move my desk tonight, to a window with a view of the prairie and the storm fronts.

Focus: Word for 2015

I really struggled with choosing this word. FOCUS kept coming back to me though, and I would reject it as not being poetic enough, pretty enough, anthem-y enough. I wanted something as powerful as SABOTAGE and something that had a Beastie Boys type song to blast with it.

But that is not what I need this year. This year my artistic heart needs discipline. I need the reminder to get up early and get to work. I need the quiet reminder when facebook lures me into the trans-dimensional time suck. I took on more teaching this semester so I will need to also keep on a schedule for completing student grading and lesson planning, scheduling time for that works for me better than any other strategy I have tried to keep up with the work load.

I need to get more work out to be considered. I need to write, edit, and revise more work to be able to send it out. This goal also needs focus and time set aside. If I sit at the table and taunt the muse, maybe she'll join me sometimes, yeah? But if i keep standing her up for our coffee dates in favour of arguing with strangers online about pig genetics, even if it is amusing as hell when the fanatics get all Harry Potter Slytherin about PURE BLOOD lines, the muse will eventually get fed up and go hang out with more dedicated artists.

And what comes of courting the muse?

 Being published.

Experiencing amazing things and making art from the experiences. Having my camera with me as much as possible so that even a moment of inspiration in a bathroom at a concert can be met and played with.

Being published some more.

Going to Prague. Going to Prague to eat the food, experience the social and religious art, and then make some art of my own. I did that.

Essay, photography, poetry......4% of my submissions being accepted which is a pretty good rate of acceptance according to the tracking application that I use.

So. Focus is what I need. Discipline. Tracking. Time.

My goals this year are to see more, take photos of it, and write. I'm going to have a go at a fiction project too. 1000 words a day is a lot, so my goal will be simply 100 words every day. Just that much.  I can do that. If I fail? I will start the next day to meet the goal and not beat myself up for missing a beat, a word count, or a day. Life happens, yeah? Sometimes we take a breather, but the journey is long and even small steps get us there eventually.

On the docket for the year so far:
Ossabaw Island Writer's Retreat. Again. I have to. It's paid for. Ha.
Take a photography class. I'm on the waiting list at our local community college (I work there so I have to wait for students to fill it and then see if I get in.....).
Write more thank you cards and mail them.
Say I love you more.
Send out 25 poems. Twice.
Write.
Take 3000 more pictures of interesting things.
Take my camera off auto and learn how to use it.
Be there.
Have a professional photo shoot of myself done. Or try my hand at some self photography that is more creative and less hand held phone head shots.
Publish.
Attend a permaculture convergence.
Speak/present at a permaculture convergence on the storytelling and social media aspect of farming.
Learn to draw fairies and monsters.
Dance more.
Walk places.
Collaborate.

Learn about:
HDR photography
fermenting
mass tree planting
medicinal herbs
vintage make up and hair
jewelry making
mushroom growing
green houses
learn Yoga and make it a daily routine

What is your word for 2015? Your goal? Your dream? Have you drawn up your travel plan to get there yet?