sugar magnolia (hill)

magnificent magnolias. majestic magnolias. marvelous magnolias. merry magnolias. you get the idea. my neighborhood is bursting with magnolia blooms, and i see so many varieties on our daily dogwalks. and every time, they make me think of another beloved roommate of meg's and mine, laura. she and her hubbie's first dance at their wedding 20 years ago was ... sugar magnolia by the greatful dead. laura is the most straighlaced deadhead you'll ever meet, even nerdy in high school (you said so yourself, laurs!). so as i wander around, inhaling the saturated magnolia fuschias, pinks, and whites, and gaze at their beauty, i think of laura and hum along to myself and sometimes even out loud to daisey. this one's for you, laurs:





Sugar magnolia, blossoms blooming, head's all empty and I don't care,

Saw my baby down by the river, knew she'd have to come up soon for air.

Sweet blossom come on, under the willow, we can have high times if you'll abide
We can discover the wonders of nature, rolling in the rushes down by the riverside.

She's got everything delightful, she's got everything I need,
Takes the wheel when I'm seeing double, pays my ticket when I speed.

Well, she comes skimmin' through rays of violet, she can wade in a drop of dew,
She don't come and I don't follow, waits backstage while I sing to you.

Well, she can dance a Cajun rhythm, jump like a Willy's in four wheel drive.
She's a summer love in the spring, fall and winter. She can make happy any man alive.

Sugar magnolia, ringing that bluebell, caught up in sunlight, come on out singing
I'll walk you in the sunshine, come on honey, come along with me.

She's got everything delightful, she's got everything I need,
A breeze in the pines in the summer night moonlight, crazy in the sunlight yes indeed.

Sometimes when the cuckoo's crying, when the moon is half way down,
Sometimes when the night is dying, I take me out and I wander around, I wander 'round.

Sunshine, daydream, walking in the tall trees, going where the wind goes
Blooming like a red rose, breathing more freely,
Light out singin', I'll walk you in the morning sunshine
Sunshine, daydream. Sunshine, daydream. Walking in the sunshine.

     e---------------------2--x------------------------------|
     a---------------------3--2------------------------------|
     d--1/2--1/2-----------2--2--1/2--1/2--------------------|
     g--1/2--1/2-----2--4--4--2--1/2--1/2--------2-----------|
     b------------4--------0--0------------2--4-----4--2--0--|
     E---------------------x--x------------------------------|
                      ~ by the grateful dead

my brother, my self (hill)

my brother is moving. temporarily to a new house, just until the school year is over. then really  moving. out of state. far away. he is my only sibling, our parents are gone now. he is my ballast,  my roots, my oldest ally. we are different, and  also very, very similar.

so when it came time to move from their three-acre homestead containing precious belongings and equipment and tons of  old *stuff* which had rested peacefully for 20 years in two barns and one shed and one other outbuilding and the house and the little house ... it was a hefty job. moving house is an act of heroism.



after moving the house stuff carefully and tenderly came the dirty, dusty, spidery, rusty, boxes and boxes and containers from the barns, and the huge heavy awkward equipment and stoves and old motorcycles, etc ... backbreaking, footpounding, back and forth, over and over again.



load, tie down, drive, hoping the old vw bumper or grandma's sofa doesn't bounce off the trailer. unload, and "process":  into the new house, or organize as storage in the garage, or in the little shed in the yard, or dump. my sister-in-law was the  master of processing. man, that girl can organize!

two solid weeks of moving, squeaked out of the old house on deadline day. oof! somehow we managed to find the energy to celebrate my brother's birthday in the midst of it all. he can wrangle a tractor, and he likes strawberries and cream. that says everything you need to know about my brother. (and he also kinda looks like george clooney, though he always says "nawww.")



the best part of all this exertion? i got to see my brother, his wife, my nephews and nephew's girlfriend every day. we laughed. we teased. we swore. we stressed. we survived.

the new place. beautiful, especially in springtime. me and my brother? better than ever. everyone said, oh it's so nice of you to help your brother so  much. nice? it's not nice at all. he is my everything.

"No one could tell me where my Soul might be.

I searched for God, but God eluded me.

I sought my Brother out, and found all three."

~ Ernest Crosby

Trade-offs (Meg)

Sitting on the deck in the warm morning sunlight yesterday, I realized why I've had a raging headache for the last few days and took a picture of it.  Green dust covers our cars, sidewalks, and I'm sure puts a light dusting on everything in the house too, if only I wasn't too old to see things that small.  And once again I was able to fulfill my god-given roll as keeper of all information, solver of all problems and finder of all lost objects (otherwise known as Wife).  I'd woken up to the source of my own pain (let's call it hay fever enlightenment), so when Chris came home, dragging and sniffling, and had to go lie down before dinner, I made him take a pill first.  He emerged from his nap clear-headed and peppy.  Glorious spring weather vs. drippy headache-y allergies, which would you choose?

i am your valentine (hill)

i think st francis of assisi's prayer is especially meaningful today, valentine's day. especially the part about loving rather than being loved. we often think we want/need to be loved, admired, heard, understood, etc. and we expect others to "give" these things to us, and we are disappointed when they don't. we don't always leave people free to do or not do these things, and often manipulate them into making us feel better. i'm trying to do less expecting and more feeling love/d all by myself, thus allowing other people be FREE to LOVE and understand me, or not. i can choose to love and understand others regardless of what they choose to do. grant that i may not so much seek to be loved as to love. let me ask not "will you be my valentine?" instead, let me say, "I am your valentine."

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, your pardon Lord;

and where there's doubt, true faith in you;

O Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

~ st francis of assisi

i am love (hill)

JOURNEY HOME

The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.

I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my
voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.

It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself,
and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.

The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own,
and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.

My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said `Here art thou!'

The question and the cry `Oh, where?' melt into tears of a thousand
streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance `I am!'

~ Rabindranath Tagore



so while i have been venturing about here and there and everywhere -- travelling; holed up in my house; starting a business; stopping a business; meditating; on the kitchen floor; india x3; etc etc etc -- i have much more of a sense of my inner Self. and along the way i rediscovered photography, my lifetime love that i abandoned 13 years ago when i left my job as a photojournalist and when my dad married a photographer. i didn't want to compete anymore ... with other photojournalists, nor with my stepmother. so i stopped. this summer i started again, working on a film set in france and spain, and am officially in love again. happy valentine's day!

Diiii-nner! (Meg)

Such a big part of my oh-so-domestic life revolves around food that I've decided weight gain is an occupational hazard for me.   Much of my time is spent trying to figure out what to cook that's healthy, not too pricey, and that three out of four Hunters will eat (I don't have time to care what dentists think about it).  Sometimes I win, and sometimes I lose, but as the years go by I more consistently rack up wins than losses.  An interesting solution I tried recently was the October Real Simple magazine's Month of Easy Dinners.  Once a week I printed out the shopping list and went to the grocery store (such a treat to only go once a week--with out a plan I often end up going everyday) and five nights a week I had a dinner ready to cook that didn't repeat too often, was fairly healthy, and if someone whined "I hate that", it was the magazine they hated, not me!  Our family doesn't eat at home on average two nights a week because of activities so five recipes per week was perfect.   I also did have to plan for lunches and breakfasts, but now that Mettlin is driving she's the one to run to the store for another gallon of milk if I mess up.  There were four real keepers for my family--recipes I've added to the family favorites--and not having to think every day about what we were going to eat that night was worth triple the price of the magazine.  But check it out--it's available for free  at http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/recipe-collections-favorites/quick-easy/month-easy-dinners-00000000020770/index.html And our most favorite recipe is Ravioli with Apples and Walnuts, available at http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/ravioli-apples-walnuts-recipe-00000000020572/index.html

how do i love thee? (hill)

not the smoothest of days: woke to cat puke, made coffee (love the smell) and drank it (makes me crazy), decided to drop a class (which p had rearranged her schedule around with much difficulty, thus my severe guilt), needed to provide proof of student status for my student-version software but my computer decided to punish me for waiting til the last minute and crashed hard, couldn't find a suitable poem to scribe for my calligraphy homework since we still only know 15 letters and all the poems wanted an r or an l so tried to write my own poem and ran out of time, took my computer in but had to wait for an appointment so missed calligraphy anyway, computer seemed to magically right itself (i think it's a hypochondriac!) ... and amidst all this chaos (usually my days are much much smoother), i took miss daisey and my camera for a walk and saw SO MUCH BEAUTY. my camera offers me solace, helps me see Nature, and points me towards peace. o canon, how do i love thee, let me count the ways ...

Why I swore I'd never blog (meg)

Why have I been so reluctant to add my name to the ranks of those engaged in this august genre?  Do you promise not to judge me if I tell you?  Okay, I'll tell you.  I'm afraid you'll judge me!  Also,  I suspect that the blog moment has passed.  I'm always late to the party: by the time I like a thing the cachet is gone, the glow is dimmed, the bloom is off the cosmo (or the mojito as the case may be).    In fact, one of my friends, when told about this project, indulgently smiled and told me not to worry because people weren't really blogging anymore.  And by that she meant the cool people.   In addition, the thought of putting my most personal and trivial (but hopefully catchy) thoughts out into the I-guess-it's-called-the-blogosphere clashed with the part of me that has always thought the folks who do that are attention whores.   Nature abhors a vacuum; I abhor an attention whore.  Also, who cares anyway?  What about my life could possibly be of interest to anyone else?  Or more disturbingly, do I actually have anything to say? What if I go to the well and find only one or two good ideas there?  Does that mean my life is less than the lives of those who manage to fill up page after page?   And last but not least, do I really want to be some pathetic old woman overusing emoticons and making a fool of myself?  I suppose all those really boil down to one thing:  I don't want to make a fool of myself.  However, because there's no guarantee that I won't become a passive, foolish and pathetic old woman anyway, I've decided it's better to perhaps be a foolish, pathetic old woman who tries new things than one who doesn't.  So thanks Hill for pushing me and fear be damned--here I come!

all quiet in the neighborhood (hill)

The ornament of beauty is suspect,

A crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air.

- William Shakespeare

They, the normally noisy neighborhood nuisances, mostly sat quietly huddled in pairs on branches, spirits and wings dampened by january rain, with only short flights between nearby trees.