We leave for San Francisco on Thursday and I celebrated by dying my hair red. I tried to dye it bright red but it just kind of turned out auburn which is a polite way of saying brown hair with the inability to flame;)

I keep trying to convince myself that maybe no one will recognize me at work tomorrow nor will my children be able to punish me for the desire to leave town without them but thus, I look pretty much the same. I know they’ll find me. Truly, there are days when being on America’s Most Wanted sounds appealing.

In other news, one of my artists today wanted me to help them get a life sized elephant out of the basement b/c they didn’t really consider the doors when they decide to bring “jumbo” to life. I think when Victor asked me, “hey Teresa, I want to make a realistic elephant downstairs, is that okay?", I was thinking more the pigmy variety.

I’m here to tell you---life size is friggen HUGE!

as promised the link to my front yard

 

There’s something about winter that makes me hunger for color. I want to paint everything orange. Olena Kalytiak Davis wrote, I am in love with a certain kind of cloud which makes me jealous b/c I wish I had written that line though I did read a line similar in some obscure Russian poetry book a few years ago which I’m sure Davis somewhere in her subconscious read or heard thus producing her poem.

I’m a firm believer in no original thought and rather sadly, I understand I have this idea, that the human race is like this big soup pot, you pour in the ingredients out comes soup, slightly varied, but basically the same damn chicken noodle.

It sucks to be a cynic and an idealist. It is kind of like being ambidextrous with no hands.

Coffee House Press seems to be putting out some really good books lately. I just finished Sun Yung Shin’s Skirt Full Of Black which was very good, though it always freaks me out to read local writers who I might run into at the coffee shop who turn out to be assholes thus ruining the whole literary experience for me.

I told E last night, that I like all my authors dead. Selfish I know, but if you write a really good book, just put in your will for me. Mediocrity is okay to mail.

The big sled rally was yesterday which meant that we made giant puppets out of cardboard, attached them to sleds, then sent them down the hill with children inside. Seriously, one had to sign a release form! I have photos of a life size woolly mammoth, a black bear, and a star wars thing that exploded into the crowd and took down at least three people. My friend Mark always has to use pyrotechnics whenever he creates. One does not dress flammable when teaching next to him.

Ohhhh the beauty of art in Minneapolis!

I’m trying to form language
with my hands but when I open my mouth
out flies a cathedral of birds.

I crush wingbones brittle from flight,
brittle from wind, because I need to breathe. Constantly
I’m reminded of my limitations. Growing

large to the eye, like a flock of crows
black coming to land, and if I spoke a name
would wings enter my throat-

land on the wire rib, peck out my heart?

if you live in New York

check out this link

come to my house, drink beer

we will build a fire

nine more days before I put my head in the mouth of the dragon

today I ordered my garden

 

crooked necks, everlastings and cut&come again

Yes darling I did remember the moon flowers.

I keep checking on-line to look at the photos filled with all the possibilties of what the seeds may become. Planning a garden is a marvelous thing in the winter--it is like hope all wrapped up in an UPS box!

 


Anyone who has ever written a brilliant book has had



a)A house keeper
b)No children
c)Great blocks of time
d)Someone or something that supports them while they write
e)Cabin
f)Clear ideas
g)Have found themselves neither boring, self portentous nor empty headed
h)Great shoes

 


Happy 10th Birthday our darling pirate girl---we love you!

We’ve all been at a hotel for five days, which seemed like this splendid idea in the middle of February, while our house was being worked on and we as a family could sit in the hot tub and swim laps in the morning in the heated pool.

Of course we hardly did any of that and ended up driving hours out of way just to get to work and school and life but it was also oddly peaceful, in my heart I am much more transient than I allow myself to be. I am home now. The house seems lonely & empty. We have new windows. All the shades have been torn down, rugs rolled up. Furniture gathered to the side. And because we have new windows, the wind doesn't blow in and out of the rooms. It seems as if the house has stopped breathing. Everything is too quiet.

So many times in my life I have felt this odd sensation of walking in on death. The chairs are moved—everything out of place, I want myself to find the order but I cannot. I sometimes feel, as if I don’t remember the simple procedure of putting one foot in front of the other.

I am temporal. While others, it seems walk around with the permanency of planets.