Well, Hello Again

It's been awhile.

I've been posting on FB all along, but there was just so much difficult happening, that I cut bait and went to settle on down into my days and nights, and do what I could.

Which I did.

And then, just like sometimes happens with you, more came up last year around now.

Eeegh.

So, I cut more bait and took care of my kids and studied settling myself and doing what works.

Quite the wtf. But then, these things happen, do they not?

And now? A year has come and gone, of the more stuff, and it's all slowly beginning to settle.

As the world turns and everyone has their own lives and their own tough stuff and their own gorgeous moments and their own learning along their own way.

Every once in awhile, someone says to me "So. You ready to start doing your blog again?" or

"Are you busy working on something else? When will you do your blog again? 

I like waking up and having coffee and dropping in on it. 

I like getting ready for bed and transitioning from devices and the roar of the day 

by sitting down quietly with it."

I say "Huh."

And then I say "Pretty soon, pretty soon." And I smile, thinking of all of them, shaking sleep from their eyes in their morning, getting up and stretching and slipping on slippers and stumbling about in their home, wherever it is and however it is, and stopping for a bit. With breakfast or in between scurrying around kids or kissing someone goodbye or turning from the lover of last night, and heading off into the day.

And then getting home, and resettling everything and everyone and kids or animals or partners or aunts or perhaps the supreme and sometimes tough of absolute free quiet and at other times all too lonesome no-one-at-all. Warming up dinner, getting out clothes for the next day. Taking a gander at the big picture and how to stop by and do a treadmill for a bit in work clothes without sweating, so there is that peace of mind that some kind of exercise yeah is happening.  And then the night descends and they turn on the telly or take a hit at the computer, and as it grows later, they come and visit and see either where we went today, with the winter skies and the shining ice puddles and thoughts about this and that, or the way I sometimes do go ON, as you well know, on and on just thinking things out. And they tell me, "Well, even when you go on, I like to go along with you, and get where you eventually get to. Because sometimes, its comforting as you make your notes to yourself, and the rest of us."

And it makes me laugh. Like, in your life, when a coworker loves that one joke you tell so well.

Or your neighbor comes round again to get that cutting from that plant they think is so gorgeous in your garden. 

Or at gatherings they ask you to do that prayer or that ancestral dance or describe a walk you went on when you saw the Barred Owl. So, as I manage to be human in a human life, so I am drawn outside and drawn to go again and again in all weather with this big muscled needing-the-run Dante. 

I'm drawn to write notes to myself, and to the world, just kind of figuring things out. 

Going on and on about things that come to mind or things that distress or confuse or upset. 

Just one step after the other, untangling and reconfiguring and sitting with and then letting it all be.

So. I hope you are all managing to live your own lives in some sort of stability and balance.

I hope you are managing to be well enough, in this changing time and these strange national leanings, as we so unfortunately have here in the US.

I hope you find your own ways of clarifying your self 

and comforting your self 

and paying your own absolutions to your own bright North Star.

Here we all are.

You take good care,

Gwen

P.S. People have asked me to post the backlog of pieces. 

It's been, like, 15 months. That's a lot of stuff. 

They said "Yeah, but , can you anyway?"

So I offered to post some of the old stuff.

And they asked if I could alternate what I write and photograph and paint today

with old things, so they don't miss anything. And I said, 'Ok. Sure. Why not?"

And, you know, let's just see.

xxxxx