Trampoline; rosemary

A late spring evening. Western Australia, November 2012.

Evening view

Shannon in the vegetable garden

Western Australia, October 2012.

Shivers / nephew

I have had a shivery buzzing feeling since yesterday, couldn't quiet my still faintly jetlagged brain enough for sleep — or couldn't make myself want to make it quiet badly enough — until about six in the morning, but this evening after dinner it vanished and I was left with a sudden emptiness, the tranquil kind.

I met my nephew today for the first time. He is five weeks old. (How can that be a sentence? A human who is five weeks old? It boggles the mind.)

"Holy Never, have mercy on us."

It's comforting to be tired with the parents of a newborn, because you know you are not alone and yet they still have it so much worse than you.

I'm making a crafty little photocopied book of Australian stuff, of some of the things I wrote there as well as some other bits and pieces. Let ya know when it's finished.

From the top of Harvey Dam

Where there was a stunning echo. Western Australia, October 2012.

Gemini and Bella

The morphine cat — unlucky child of incest — and the elusive cat. Both rescued by Shannon from people too stupid or self-absorbed to be pet owners.

Gratitudes + things that are making me happy

• Edna St. Vincent Millay's poetry — I read through this online collection recently

• smiling kisses / kissing smiles

• harmless people

• good friends

• leisurely art museum afternoons

• a new pen pal

• taking time in the morning to feel put-together

• the numerous excellent dresses I op-shopped in the last two weeks of being in Australia, and how I now get to wear them with the extra jauntiness of lace-up boots and woolly winter layers

• not half-assing on my needs

• a somewhat epic friend rescue from LAX, staged by Sui in my hour of desperate need

• the simplicity and clarity of dancing sober and simply happy / with Erin in a dark concert venue during clean-up

• disco balls, by the way — not at ALL overrated

• short flights

• airports with free wi-fi

• and a brief visit with my Arizonan little sister for the first time in three and a half years

One Saturday, having driven out to the hills

Western Australia, October 2012.

And the only pain

Here the soft hills touch the ocean
like one eternity touching another
and the cows grazing on them
ignore us, like angels.
Even the scent of ripe melon in the cellar
is a prophecy of peace.

The darkness doesn't war against the light,
it carries us forward
to another light, and the only pain
is the pain of not staying.

– Yehuda Amichai
from "North of San Francisco"

Breakfast with my sister and my niece

Some time ago, in their old house.

Sunday morning colors

Gifts

Following my feet

Sometimes I just need to get outside, and my feet know exactly where to go.

Glashaus

I told you about this place a couple years ago. I returned this spring with two friends visiting from the Midwest, this time with my film SLR.

Going stale

Forest-dwellers and moss for fingers

Facing east, December

Scone dough

What we did with the raspberries (the ones we didn't eat right off the bush). I actually did not get to taste these; while they were still in the oven the time came to hug my friend's mom goodbye and get in the car for Anna to drive me to the airport. But I heard they were good, and that they got fed to a social worker.

A short walk from Highway 1

A woman I love on a day that I loved. There was nothing to hear but a soft wind, and once, the wings of the hawk that drifted in wide circles above and around us. Though there is something about the sun, like the color of the sea, that is almostnotquite soundless in these mild coastal Januaries — at least in my memory...

Here is something we did in September