Goodbye to the Forced Paperwhites

Samson by Regina Spektor, you know, makes me want to sing, so much.  Also Ode to Divorce, also Better, also many, many other things.  I’ve had sweet potato fries straight off the pan and a mini cornbread with chunkiest of chunky applesauce and Emily and her kids are here with me. 

This afternoon I stitched the last stitches on the new peony journal and cleaned my room.  You should see them both.  I make beautiful things, I make things beautiful sometimes, sometimes some things, so do these friends of mine.  Joseph’s quilt, square foot, perfect stitches, Matt’s picture frame, Shiloh’s baked play-do puppy.  Also the card he made for me that had planets and stars and said, Happy Birthday  in spaace.

But really, my room, I mean really.  This is the first time I’ve really asked God to let me stay here and not move out.  Because I put those postcards on the wall, hung the roses over the window, hung the camera bags on the door frame, put all the Euros and Pounds and Broken Glass into a Box Especially for Them.  I swept furiously and dusted the radiator and almost died of dust poisoning, still cannot say goodbye to the forced Paperwhites.

Honey Do

Things to do today:

• Look for a job.  Moving right along:

• Work on journals.  I’ve got a great 6″ square text block and two others that need to be glued.  While they’re drying I should of course go ahead and plan their design…the great and glorious question of the day is: should I resurrect the Grey Goose, or is it a thing of the past?  The sparrow seems so appropriate for this time in my life, but I have sometimes an attack of nostalgia, and the realization that Van and Davy and everything there about mercy and severity will always be appropriate for my life.  Such questions.  And maybe I’ll do some more of the moons / suns / hands?  Who knows!!  So exciting.

• Call auto places about a strut.  Since I’m going to Nashville on Saturday for Lauren and Matty’s wedding, I need to have a new strut, and perhaps an alignment.  This is annoying, and even maybe impossible, due to finances, but.  Just have to wait and see what kinds of prices we’re talking about, here.

• Call Samantha and either have her over or go out or go to her place.  I had coffee with her and Nick at Java yesterday and I remembered how much I miss her.  She’s one of the most beautiful women I know and also one of the most interesting.  Something about the jagged edges of green and blue in her eyes, the dark wavy hair and how she can be the poutiest and still so reasonable, sulky and sensible…there’s an element of sanity to her, a sense of justice and a profound art.  She’s one of the best artists I know, too.  And I do like Nick, indeed I do.

• Drink coffee all day long.  After a season of tea and abstention from coffee (had to ease back into it after the surgery), I rediscover the flavors and textures of this marvelous drink.  I’m having some now, Co-op brand, out of my Trinity College Dublin mug, bought in a crowd in the university bookstore…and those short weeks were filled with the burn and tang of coffee, too, good coffee, some of the best I’ve had.  Not that I’ve had a lot, or have a discerning palate.  But it was good, rich, served in thick white teacups on saucers with pitchers of whole milk.  And the greyness of the weather and the sense that one of my dreams had come true.  And my beloved sister, who generally had to have tea instead, because of her stomach.  We had tea four times a day … quite a novelty for me.  Oh anyways—

• Buy some 1/2 & 1/2.  Also some sweet potatoes (running low).

• Start some flatbread.  If I’m going to eat this tahini dip I made the other day (oh it’s divine), I need better bread for dipping than either biscotti (fig and toasted almond—I recommend it—from Smitten Kitchen—so, so good) or Mom’s whole wheat loaf.  Also should I get some vegetable from Kroger while I’m there?  I’m eating entirely too much bread, these days.  Sigh.

• Pray.  J’ai besoin.  I’ve started praying a couple of the Hours every day (lauds, compline, for a start) but need to be closer.  Sometimes living is the most precarious thing; I need more stability…  And I need healing.  I watched American Beauty last night with Knox and Emily and I couldn’t accept it…that zennish denial of pain, or any negative emotion, really, would kill me.  Pain is awful, but the denial of it is even worse.  I can only believe that it has to be fully felt, fully lived-in, before it can be healed.  Hm.  I want to think more about this.

Things I hope I can do today:

• Use Emily’s camera to take pictures of the envelopes I made and then put them on Etsy.  Um, they’re gorgeous.  Please take a look.  My own design.

• Make another sizeable dent in Cold Mountain.  It’s very good so far.

• Write more letters.  I have so many more to write.  And it no longer helps to think about all I’ve already written, because I’ve been doing that for three or four days, now, and really OUGHT to start several today.  Well, I mean finish more today.

• Make something beautiful.  Wear Indian Jasmine and pomegranate oil.  Stare out of windows, clear out clutter, sweep our redwood floors shining and crumbfree, read a poem, write a poem.  Take a walk.  Don’t despair, instead notice the thin air, notice my growing health, notice my ignorance, notice my beauty, notice where I end and the Lord begins, notice that, again and once every quarter hour.  Ok.  Here the day begins.

KUB, Grants, Fragrance

After having transferred the KUB bill to my name, um, I’m very conscious about phrasing.  how distracting.  this has nothing to do with KUB bills, though, and everything to do with the fact that I’m at a grant-writing workshop that’s been intense.  and incredible.  completely intimidating and inspiring.  and I can hardly write a sentence without being really aware of how it already needs drastic editing. so, today,  after hours and hours of lecture / Q&A on the pre-writing work for grants, the forms for state and federal grants, ways to find relevant & generous foundations (and their 9900 tax forms online, woa), agencies with data and statistics, formats, tips, rubrics, lists, stuff … after all of that we were supposed to go ahead and use the information she (Susan) gave us to construct a grant application / letter of intent / inquiry.

grant-writing?  I wouldn’t have thought of that — would YOU?  I mean, I’ve had lots of bad thoughts about mammoth corporations and various bad operating procedures of the state and federal governments, but I never really thought about how much money is just given out, these days.  comparitively, probably still mortifying; not comparatively, I’m flabbergasted.  these corporations get some sort of tax breaks by putting their billions of dollars into foundations instead of the operating account, and hire foundation directors, whose job (partly) it is to give some of that money away.  obviously they want to hang onto as much as they can — I think they just give the interest on the principle? never the principal? probably?  but it’s still millions — like, who was it?  I think Garth Brooks’ foundation has given more than 6.2 million since 1999 to nonprofits who’re focusing on kids and “at-risk” families.  Wal-Mart, apparently, has given over 160 million (as of what date I don’t know), although that doesn’t come from them — it comes from their Children’s Miracle Network telethon junk junk. but every movie star has a foundation, everybody on the NFL and NBA?  Tiger Woods.  Madonna!

but having said all that, I’m still nervous.  I wish I knew more about my future.  Mary (my boss, Global SEEDS, for which I’m going to be the new grant-writer) bought me some Burt’s Bees last night.  pomegranate oil … lovely reddish … and now I have Indian Jasmine perfume … which I’ve been waiting for all my life (though I knew it not).  I’m very ok with living in this moment.  smelling ravishing is one of the most beautiful things to happen to me.  I love.