An Athem for Wherever You Are

La Blogotheque has a series featuring a few "take away shows" where bands show up, give an impromptu performance of one song and then take off.

I love Sigur Ros, so I was double excited to see this edition.

As my 4-year old notes whenever we listen to Sigur Ros in the car, "I don't know the words. They don't speak English Momma." {It's in Icelandic} But she still nods her head and tells me, "Can you turn it up?"

And you can still enjoy this song which has become an anthem for my somewhat tearful, yet triumphant, completely normal day.

Sigur Ros - Við spilum endalaust - A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

If the scene in the cafe makes you long for Paris, check out these awesome photo prints from Simply Photo at Etsy. I love them.

Much Needed Time at Home

I gave up on finding the perfect closed storage jewelry box for my chunky beads. Instead, I picked up this blue document box by semikolon at The Container Store for nothing and it works perfectly.


It even had a divider in the packing that I kept to separate colors. I'm excited.


I really want this guy to keep blooming. Fingers crossed.
This is the first hydrangea that I have planted and haven't instantly killed.

Both of my grandmothers were aces at growing huge, beautiful hydrangeas. When I asked them how they do it, they would both just say things like, "oh, you just let them grow." Not true for me. I'm working on it though. I try to summon their advice when I'm watering each night.


When my peony blooms it feels like a gentle reminder to live in the present moment. I used to put off planting in my yard. I would think about how it takes 3 years for them to reach maturity and how we may not be in this house in 3 years. Finally, I gave in and planted thinking that at least the next person can enjoy them. Science tells us that every two years, we replace our entire body, down to the last atom. In some ways, I am the next person, not quite who I was three years ago. Thank you prior tenant for planting them. I really am enjoying them.

Next week -though abbreviated- is filled with depositions and travel. I wish I could hold on to this day a little longer.

Why Real Simple Needs Me & You

I love Real Simple and the June issue has a great article by Pico Iyer called 10 Things Every Traveler Should Do that I loved and will put in my journal for keeps.

But I find myself scouring blogs, books and other magazines for what should be in the rest of its pages. Simple living is, after all, in the words of Nathan Arizona, their raison d'etre.

When the magazine launched, I found lots of articles - ones that I still have - about people living simply. Now, those articles are the exception to the norm. There are more consumer reports-type comparisons of the best pickle and what not.

I know I have blogged about this before, but let's write and tell more stories about how to live simply in our very complicated world. They don't even have to be about entire families or take place in homes. People live in all sorts of ways: like the story that ran years ago about the family who sailed past the Statute of Liberty each morning. They would tie up at City Marina so that the little girl, whose symptoms of ADD washed away on board, could walk with her mom to the subway to go to school. They were the kinds of stories that children's books are made of and deep breaths and summer afternoons: stories about family beach houses, and connectedness and community. I need those kinds of stories to figure out how it is done.

I'm beginning to believe that a lot of families are doing magical things every day and finding ways to incorporate peace into their lives, but no one notices. Instead, there are endless stories about Heidi & Spencer and attacks on people, and just boring clutter.

Let me know when you need me Real Simple. I'm on the road a lot litigating already and I'm writing anyway. Why not incorporate a paying side-gig and maybe contribute something that inspires someone to relax and live a little more simply. That is the point, right?

Magpie Food

I'm told that magpies are attracted to shiny things. I must be part magpie. Here's my bird's eye view {forgive the pun} while shopping yesterday in a store that starts with "A" and ends with "ologie".


click on the mosaic to enlarge.

Window Shopping

I have been eyeing this market bag forever from Moop.



Dreaming of a summer closet full of skirts from Orangy Porangy beginning with opal blue diamonds and ending with jane hoodie skirts.

Reading about the inspiring family life as a live aboard {every sailor's dream} told here at Zach Aboard.

Enjoying affordable redecorating over at Eddie Ross. This is my favorite post of late.

Picking up Rosie Flo Coloring books at Morris Bookshop for my neice -a 6 year old artist - who has a birthday coming up.

I found the loveliest...

...posts about morning tea and summer evenings from Curious Bird. {a new-to-me favorite blog}

...real life Under The Tuscan Sun story {except in France} in progress over at Stephmodo.

...story about loss, guilt, and chickens here at Mommy Coddle.

...ode to Paris on Simply Photo -though once you click, scroll down the page a bit.

...coastal wedding story board on Snippet & Ink.



...prints from Anne Harwell available at Etsy like these two that arrived for me yesterday:
.

How My Light Is Spent

Plateworthy (my husband - a literatura academic) walked into our home office on Monday night to find me reading in quickly fading evening light. He says to me, "Alright Milton, you gonna turn the lights on?"

So I ask him, "Is that how Milton went blind? Not some congenital thing?"

"Sure," he says. "He had to dictate Paradise Lost. The whole thing. Some other things too like (he says this smiling as if to make his point) the sonnet that begins 'When I consider how my light is spent' about his blindness." I love that he remembers this sort of thing -entire passages- even though Milton is not his area.

Then in seconds, he pulls Milton's Complete Poems and Prose from the shelf, flip flip and bam, there it is, Sonnet XIX, and it is lovely.

I love that he brings beautiful words into my life. It's like that line in Wonderboys, "She was a junkie for the printed word, and lucky for me, I manufactured her drug of choice."
I really get that. And a phrase like "how my light is spent" is something I could chew on for a few days. Warm chocolate chip cookies I never knew were there.

How my light is spent.

What an image, a phrase, a challenge.
Not just about blindness, but about how life is a brief light.
In.
Flicker.
and then
Out.

How will I spend it?
How will I share it?
What will my life illuminate?

I don't conserve my light either. I don't limit my attention to things that are good or beautiful. I don't always spend my light in ways that make me or any one else happy or the better for it.

But I should.
Because I am so damned lucky.



**if you enjoyed this piece, check out the albums of Orchestra Baobab. Perfect summer music in every way.

More Inspiration Fodder

Since I have the journals out, and since we're all mourning the loss of Blueprint and Domino, here's some eye candy for you...

Cut out from House & Garden, this one inspired me to paint our bedroom cerulean blue when we lived in Georgia 8 years ago. Now I just settled for a door this color, but I still love it. It's like Greece, and England all in one.


I adore this house from Cottage Living, I think.


House & Garden. Love the tone on tone matching vase and the close bunching of the flowers.

Love this. I think it's a paint ad, but I just see the movement.

Good grief. So sweet. I think I found this in Working Mother. The story was something from a husband's perspective about his wife and how she was her happiest, most mellow with her children.


My sisters and I would cut out old magazine pages and paste them onto these coloring book style scrapbooks at our grandparent's house. This page I kept. Love the movement, the 1950s fashion, the simplicity of it.

In the foreground I've posted a quote from a famous fashion photographer about photographing people in O Magazine. In the background, I have pulled this page from the Garnet Hill catalogue (which always delivers for great copy) because I've been thinking of getting a lemon tree for the house.

When I went to the Vatican in December of 1998, the lemon trees had all been moved inside and lined a hallway. The smell was amazing and the light came through the french doors all along the corridor making them look like shiny jewels.


I believe this one came from H&G (House & Garden). When I pulled it, I was more interested in the color contrast of pink and black, the roundness of the boxes against the square books than anything else. Very French, no?


This appeared in some Cookie or Wondertime. Not sure. I just thought it was awesome that they took a wall, put in shelves, painted the background and voila! dollhouse wall.


This one was from Real Simple with a great quote about how it's best to be in a modest cottage with books, family and old friends.


I pulled this years before I knew I would be photographing weddings, but it is perfect bridal inspiration. Love the lines- chin, swoosh of hair, eye line. Got to be a Chanel ad. It's text book perfect.


This one inspired me to line up plastic clear containers for all of the brio trains, crayons and little people.

This may have been from Organize and inspired me to get wire baskets for the fridge. I'm still hunting for the perfect wire rimmed basket like Kate Capshaw's character uses to get mail in The Love Letter. Speaking of Kate Capshaw...

I could not love this portrait of her and her daughter any more than I do. J'adore times 12.
Super photography inspiration, my friends.
The Gap often has killer photography. I still think about their 2001 commercial with Carol King and her daughter Lois Goffin singing a medley of So Far Away {} and Love Makes The World Go Round. I love that ad. So much clean space, hardwood floors, a black piano, her daughter singing, "So far away. Doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore? It would be so fine to see your face at my door. It doesn't help to know your just time away," and Carol answering, "I can't stop believing love makes the world go round." I'm sure I rushed out to buy jeans as result. :)

But the most inspiring thing I have seen or heard in a long time was from President Obama today speaking to graduates at Arizona State after the University chose not to award him with an honorary degree. He said, "I come to embrace the notion that I haven’t done enough in my life. I heartily concur. I come to confirm that one’s title, even a title like president of the United States, says very little about how well one’s life has been led — and that no matter how much you’ve done, or how successful you’ve been, there’s always more to do, always more to learn, and always more to achieve.”

So, enough with the pretty pictures. There's work to be done.

Whatever I Am

So...if it is true that, "Whatever You Love, You Are," I get a bit stuck on the You Are part. I flip through my journals and look at the images I have saved* for insight. I begin to wonder if maybe I love too many diverse and incompatable things, like salty air and snow.

So I make the list, uncensored and honest:

I love
words

water

paper and books

magazines and typewriters,
bookstores and pens,

music and romantic comedies,
writing and paintings,
photography and advocacy,
helping someone find the word that sets an emotion free,
color,

humor,
bringing order to something,

listening,
making connections to make sense of things,
resolving conflict,
travel,
scotch tape,
hydrangeas and quilts,
flapping sails and harbor sounds,
thoughtfulness,
pianos and violins and cellos,
coffee and scones,
tea and chocolate,
Polaroids and

porches,
pink tissue paper flowers on the way home.



I love catching a moment that will never be again.

...when no one is looking...

...and just before it is gone.


I love stories around a table.
Burgers on the grill after a long winter.
Cold beer & avocados.



I love seeing her hair in the sunlight, like an Andrew Wyeth painting.
I love making my dad laugh out loud and seeing my mom inspired.


I love all that I have
and all I have lost.

I love it all madly. So what does that make me?

Today (which I qualify because this sort of thing changes) I think it means that I am one of those books you can find in a couple of different sections, or an album that has to be cross-referenced to find because it's not kept where you would think it should be. I like to think I'm on the nightstand under a bottle of water, or in the carry-on traveling on the overnight train to Madrid with wavy pages from the saltwater, or maybe just bath water. Or that you called in sick just to finish reading, but that the words made all the difference in the rest of your life.

I've heard someone say once that in a crisis of faith, she turns to books. I do too. I hope that some day, I'll be the book that has the answer for someone.

If I'm working on litigation or taking a photograph, or writing an essay, I hope that the work, the purpose, fullfills the prayer a dear friend shared with me from Marianne Williamson, that "if this is the highest and best interest for me and those around me, then please allow it to happen."

I guess that's who I am.

But, it's still a guess.

*The images photographed in my journals are old copy from Home & Garden, O at Home, Oprah Magazine, and Real Simple respectively.

Whatever You Love, You Are

I'm reading Molly Wizenberg's thoughtful, delicious, heartbreaking memoir, A Homemade Life {me reading is brought to you by finally giving up cable and TiVo}.

In the book, she mentions a Dirty Three album called Whatever You Love, You Are . It was the phrase that led her create her wildly successful blog Orangette and the book too, I suppose.

It has me thinking about this question of what I love. I'm working on a list which, after my family, is quickly followed by the almond macaroon cookie I had at Magee's on Saturday that was pass-out amazing. But then again, the question isn't who you love or what nouns you love, but what en general you love. Hmmm.

What do you love?
And, in turn, who are you?

It's like a fortune cookie game. If only they were almond macaroon fortune cookies.

Changing Hats

I've been buried under depositions until Saturday when I was able to put down the redwell and pick up the Canon for the dreamiest engagement shoot ever.

Here's a link to the slideshow. On the same vimeo page, you can watch my daughter (the one over the letter "Y") tap to Chocolate Ice Cream. It's a win-win really. She turns 4 this week. It's amazing the things you learn as a parent in 4 years. That's a college degree's worth of time. And yet, I'm still stumbling around in the library, searching for answers most days.

A Case for Keeping Music in Public School

This
MAKES
my
day.

Thanks to Molly & Josh for sharing this with me.

{Don't you just want to hug every performer for putting their heart in it? And the teacher? Anyone who can inspire our children like that deserves the moon and the stars.}