.open your life, open your hand.

It's August, some how. The summer seems to be evaporating faster than last. I've spent the last two days at Lake Chelan, a place I visited every summer growing up. A place of endless days of sun and swims and no schedule.

It's been a wild and full few weeks with a busy schedule, teaching a slow stitch class, work, unexpected news, slow days, fast days, river dips, community meals, evening walks, good conversations, more unexpected news, art shows, lake swims, and an expanding heart.I saw this poem a few days ago and it felt so true.
---------------------------
Let July be July
by Morgan Harper Nichols

Let July be July.
Let August be August.
And let yourself

just be
even in
the uncertainty.
You don’t have to fix
everything.
You don’t have solve
everything.
And you can still
find peace
and grow
in the wild
of changing things.
-------------------------------

but maybe the most summer of all summer poems is this one, a Mary Oliver classic.

-------------------------------
I don’t want to live a small life.
Open your eyes, open your hands.
I have just come from the berry fields, the sun

kissing me with its golden mouth all the way
(open your hands) and the wind-winged clouds
following along thinking perhaps I might

feed them, but no I carry these heart-shapes
only to you. Look how many small
but so sweet and maybe the last gift

I will bring to anyone in this
world of hope and risk, so do
Look at me. Open your life, open your hands.
-------------------------------
The fire season sunsets are electric - quick explosion in the sky before the night settles in. The days are getting shorter with full darkness by 9:30 PM. The summer is fading but it's still August. Unexpected and full and alive.

I don't want to live a small life.
Open your eyes, open your hands.

.my first quilt.

 I just finished my first quilt. It's my second quilt top to make, but the first quilt to complete. The past few years I have developed a curiosity to explore different mediums beyond metal. I've always been curious to make, as a teen I would spend hours making detailed collages for all my notebooks and binders. In Malawi, I experimented with natural dyes. In Boston, I collected sticks and made nature weavings for my bedroom. In Asheville, I bought a sewing machine and took a quilting class. I've slowly allowed myself more time and space to this past year to explore fiber and sound recordings, especially during this extended time of being at home. I found an online sewing group that meets three times a month. I think the accountability and community from that group has really helped me to commit to my exploration and follow through. 

This quilt has a lot of "personality" but that only proves it was handmade! This quilt was inspired by a book called Create Your Own Improv Quilt by Rayna Gillman. It was such a fun process! I think something that has held me back from quilting was my expectation for perfection, but this approach allows for so much exploration and the result is a truly unique quilt. I highly recommend her book. 

The quilt was inspired by the beauty of one of my favorite flowers, Peonies. My mom has beautiful pale peonies that always amaze me with their elegance. They are fragile and commanding all in one. I'm also including a poem about peonies by Mary Oliver that I love.

 Peonies 

Mary Oliver

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open ---
pools of lace,
white and pink ---
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away

to their dark, underground cities ---
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again ---
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?

.joy is not made to be a crumb.

Don't Hesitate
Mary Oliver, Devotions

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

-----------

I started reading Devotions this morning. Mary Oliver lived much of her adult life on Cape Cod in Provincetown, one of my most favorite places. I found Mary Oliver's poetry before I knew the Cape although, I think my love for the Cape only amplified my appreciation of Mary's poems. Many are inspired by her daily nature walks, capturing simple time moments of the day or nuance of a changing season. It can almost picture the dunes of Cape Cod or a sunset at Race Point Beach when I read her words. She had such a deep sense of belonging there, even when she left. 

Are there stories or poems that take you to other places? Where do you go?

.the journey.

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice – – –

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

‘Mend my life!’

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations – – –

though their melancholy

was terrible. It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice,

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do – – – determined to save

the only life you could save.

.mary oliver.