you can measure
the change, shifts, growth
in your whole and beautiful soul
on a small roadtrip
this is the real poetry

those unresolved inner longings
are so pale and distant, nonexistent
spinning along the bends, drifting landscapes
summerscented pines towering majestically above
i know who am I am until the next turn in the road
and then it changes…

Neil Young sings along with his moonshine voice
(‘when you’re lonely, heart breaks’ for the purest ache,
‘slowly burning’ shimmering homespun exaltation)

and I feel so utterly beautiful
slipping my warm body into a clear cool mountain stream
washing away the dust of a day’s disquiet
contentment swims into my lap

I emerge reborn
to embrace the reverence of this summer’s night
the pull of the moon and an abiding sense
of ‘enoughness’ for this gift you have given me

xoxo

maddie

Today I am wishing you drifting dreams in clearwater streams, a bowl of golden watermelon and a nap beneath the summer stars…

‘words to shoot by’ is perfectly ‘open’ this week and the ‘four’ percolate a little rebellion and this image has given me the idea to start a new journal illustrated with my polaroids ~ any excuse to buy a new moleskine makes me happy…not to mention fabulous interviews

photo by david pohl

listening to 45′s on the porch chosen most perfectly by an enthusiastic dj ~ which is beyond magical and I am on a quest to buy some 45′s of my own now ~ and perhaps a sweet little box with a nifty handle to carry them ~ don’t you just love that adorable vintage toy record player?

Well I am humming along summer’s way this week exploring the billowing corners of my heart, lime snowcones and drive in movie theaters (with 98 cent onion rings no less!!!) Not to mention splashing in pools of sunlight while flirting with lots of girl and boyness.

I feel like such a quivering vessel as inspiration runs rampant in my mind and am over the moon counting the days to teaching at Liz’s retreat (which is almost full, YAY!!!) ~ as well, my first run of  the ‘art of living cheerfully’ course was a brilliant success, and I am presently wading through a waiting list and preparing to add a second class in September to be the most accommodating I can be. I feel positively grateful for all your enthusiasms, support and wonderfully kind emails so thank you so much for being such sparkling gems in my life.

Here is a fabulous dose of heavenly heaven for your listening pleasure ~ Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio show ~ download them all ~ they are beyond wonderful although I particularly cherish ‘love’ and ‘laughter’ and ‘dance’ of course. Who doesn’t love dancing after all?

Wishing you pinpricks of magical summer days, skipping stones and spinning freshly cast dreams with some renovating gusto:)

*photo of maddie by david pohl*

getting a few of my favorite things ready for my trip ~ a very special and wildly expired box of time zero film for my sx70 polaroid camera, my holga and some most fabulous film for that (fuji reala 120) a book, some pustifix bubbles because you just never know, and my alkaline booster water drops …and sunglasses so i don’t squint

this weekend
I swept floors
washed windows
hung sheets out to dry in the sunshine
(smelling like the sea)
made avocodo green smoothies
and lemon squares

along the way (sunshine alley)
I found a yard sale
tablecloths with roses, silver spoons and eggcups
lace napkins ironed just so
two green depression glass containers
with delicate tin lids
perfect for my earrings
and also
a Christmas elf made of china, chipped,
which I brought home for 25 cents

and there was pie
at the farmers market
(raspberry rhubarb)
which I scooped up
wearing a vintage skirt
on sunday of course

i have new freckles
and sunkissed skin
and a summer smile
wider than the widest sea

the other day
i left a gift on my best friends porch
windchimes made from recycled glass
I pulled the chair under the beam
and stood on tiptoe to hang them up
the sun spinning on the crystals
(this made her so very happy but
not as happy as me)

and now

i am packing
my wild open heart
into a satchel
with film and cameras and
paper umbrellas
(just in case we have drinks on the porch)

looking forward to roadtrips
waterfalls and campfires
collecting seed pods and feathers
reading books by the lake,
good mornings and ignoring clocks
which is always most important

oh
and I found such a pretty cabin on flickr ~ and asked most kindly the universe to gift one to me:) ~ and this post is positively beautiful and exactly ‘so’

well..I am wishing you kisses under waterfalls, magic off the beaten path and fresh homemade pie with your morning cofee ~ until next we meet!

English Bay, Celebration of Lights ~ hanging out on the beach with friends and crowds of happy onlookers, listening to a lineup of bands playing as the sun set golden, chillin’ in the the spirit and soul of summer. Bliss.

oh and RUN out and buy this book ~ I am smitten.

trash indeed

“…to be led calmly down the stream of time
to the ocean of futurity, which has no boundaries.”
~Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Paul & Virginia, 1849 ~

This past week I felt a lot and wanted to share a lot with my friends, my children, the world around me. Eight evenings, three friends, two children (and also their friends), one love, a rabbit, a dog, blossoming freckles, the sky, sea, rainy summer mornings and homemade Irish oatmeal, hundreds of seabirds swooping past, laying on our backs staring up into the warm languid summer sky.

I unplugged myself from the internet this week preparing meals in the slowness of the everyday, taking long meandering beachwalks, listening to music, delving so deeply into the reason for things whilst swimming in a tranquil pool of strength, grace and love with incredible, active emotional openess.

Taking my time.

The most beautiful things in the whole wide world are so simple really. One morning spent wandering along Commerical drive, shopping for fresh produce which found it’s way into a gorgeous evening meal spent with dear friends ~ we lit a fire in the backyard, guitars were played, voices ringing gently into that good night. I thought I would cry from happiness ~ (perhaps I did, I can’t help it sometime’s I do.)

Just an hour ago I wandered into my garden ~ things are growing here, raspberries, blackberries, wild cherries and chocolate mint. I feel as if this is something tangible ~ that I can hold, turn over in my hands, gather deeply in my heart.

Remember this post? I think I found my little shelf ~ a tumbled, bleached, and most beautiful piece of driftwood which I will put up in my studio and fill with treasured sea bottles and shells and whatnot. I like that word ~ whatnot.

I am feeling generous, loving, real, beautiful, personal, unfettered, joyful and wholesome after this week ~ and keep smiling in the middle of a sentence.

As I type I am listening to Neil Young (harvest moon) and contemplating the quiet sanctuary of my moroccan mint tea. There are flecks of gold spinning through the leaves in my garden (I can taste them in the raspberries)

Later I will watch summer rearrange the sunlight as the pendulum of the sun swings west.

this beautiful photo of me wandering and wondering taken by my lovely friend darlene kreutzer

This photo Darlene took of me when I was in Edmonton makes me so happy ~ wandering and wondering with friends and my poaroid camera picking spring blossoms, a book of poetry tucked under my arm, and ignoring clocks which I think is most important every now and then. Somehow this image makes me long for a roadtrip ~ with the wind and the sea in my soul as my compass.

This morning I awoke to the sound of rain which I completely adore, made a wonderful aromatic cinnamon coffee in my moka pot and stepped out onto my porch to inhale the ordinary, extraordinary scent of the sea infused air and peer up into the pearly grey sky. At this time of the year with all the wildfowers in bloom the aroma is completely intoxicating. Such a soft gentle morning and it’s so strange, even the birds are gentler with their tune on a rainy day. On such a day I could so easily burrow deeply into my studio, spending every minute making art and poking through books I am reading.

I completely forgot I promised another giveaway of one of these original polaroids I created for words to shoot by ~ I even snapped one with my spectra polaroid camera and they really are incredibly lovely ~ so please leave a comment and I will enter you in the draw for the polaroid ~ the original polaroid no less! ~ winner will be announced on Sunday (my favorite day of the week just in case you didn’t know this)

I am in love with this necklace, these stunning glass chimes (I already have a set from Ilaria) and these captivating journal pages. Oh! and my talented friend Celeste is accepting commissions for her gorgeous portrait work here.

What are you in love with this week?

I was reading today ~ curled up in this vintage green comfy chair i bought at a yard sale for just a few dollars. I carried my chair all the way up the winding stairs to my studio, settling it in the corner, tossed a silk red skirt over the back for a little flair and made a tower of ‘must reads’ on the floor by it’s feet. ‘Modern Painter’ magazine which I completely love as well as poetry by Borges and Cummings amongst other sunful treasures.

I opened up my book of ee cummings poetry and it fell upon a most lovely poem which contained these lines…

“suppose
Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head’

and I thought to myself “Yes!!! Life IS an old man carrying flowers on his head.’ I felt like dancing thinking how magnificent it was that Estlin understood this and expressed it so splendidly. I love ee cummings..he also wrote in a poem

(but i imagine that yes is the only living thing)
and we’ll make yes

Imagine! Making ‘yes’. Let’s make yes.

Oh and let’s not stop there because thennnnnn…in another poem he wrote...’the blue slender hands of god’ and now I am determined to find those hands and photograph them. So, if anyone out there has ‘blue slender hands of god’ please please do contact me so I can capture them in a sublime photo.

a few of my favorite things this week….

the gleam, fleck and swoop of seabirds drawing skycircles
jazz and poetry and summer thunder
golden rain and the silver moon
jade nailpolish
blood orange lemonade
petals and ribbons and roadtrips
all shiny things including the exquisite stars
leaping greenly
yam fries with chipotle spice
my holy curiosity
seaglass and feathers, shells and beach pebbles
bees
the sexy perfumed scent of my garden swooning into bloom
hovering butterflies and ladybugs
singing, smiling, laughing and especially church bells
the beautiful sketch my dear friend Celeste createdfor me
morning coffee
roses les bluets (just because they sound lovely)
chimney’s and tulips and chocolate
aaaaaaaaaaaaand…
Sunday’s (always, because they are perfect)

I am just filled to bursting as well as my beautiful friend Lizzie just gave birth to a gorgeous baby girl so a big BIG shout out of joy and love for Lizzie. I am hoping she will bring the little beauty to her ‘reveal’ retreat I am teaching at this fall:)

More ‘conversations’ are perculating away and will be unveiled in the next few weeks ~

happy weekend everyone!

this hill is so beautiful where I walk my dog by the sea, i love
to sit here while she bounces around chasing bunnies,
leaning into small meditations as balletic flecks
of seabirds swoop about the sky

one hundred percent dazzling

my polaroid was taken with a vintage spectra camera
~ and the softtone film I bought from The Impossible project
which is completely splendiferous I tell you.

today i am loving words
‘balletic…poem…leaping, petals and jazz too’
oh, and ‘guffaw’ due to my inclination for
loud, unrestrained bursts of laughter lately

and a new ‘conversation’ with my lovely and supremely soaring friend darlene kreutzer

Have a beautiful Thursday filled with unexpected magic!

I snapped this polaroid walking along Whyte Avenue after stopping for yam fries and fresh homemade lemondade ~ so sweet!

Oh Edmonton how I love you! I have just returned from such a perfect week visiting my friend Darlene and all I can say is it was utter ‘bliss.’ Now, what you may not know about me is I am not fond of the word ‘bliss’ (to put it mildly) Something about that word makes me cringe I have no idea why. Yes, I realize bliss suggests all that is profoundly happy, joyful, satisfied and spiritually euphoric but when I hear that word it just makes me grumpy.

And yet. This week was utter bliss and I said so out loud at least once if not more every single day much to my astonishment and amusement.

There were summer hot art garden fiesta’s in Darlene’s back yard (with delicous Sangria and Duke’s band rehearsing in the background) spring salad’s freckled with raspberries, whistle stops in tiny magical hidden cupboards, book shops and custard tarts ,river walks and ruminations, fabulous jazz shows and Aiden’s delicious wild blueberry sauce, sublime vegetarian restaurants, wandering into neighbor’s gardens and hanging out in bathrooms which always makes me happy, goodness knows why.

Oh! and I cannot say enough about this series we watched one evening which was a whole new level of astonishment all by itself.

Today I am back in my pretty home and pondering new ways to decorate which always happens when I visit homes that are beautiful and inspiring. Does this happen to you? You go away and stay somewhere that is so lovely and can’t wait to get home and bring a little of that inspiration into your own abode?

I promise to share pictures ~ next post!

aaaaaaand

there’s the zen guy!

I have a little porch off of my studio upstairs that is really beautiful
if only because it is built right into the branches of an apple tree.

Until this afternoon I did not have anything on this porch with the
exception of an old indian rug, and since the porch is partially
covered with this beamed roof I love to sit outside in the morning
for quiet meditations/morning coffee/bird symphonies.

This afternoon however I got it into my head to pot some purple basil
in these clay pots I found abandoned on a walk down Sunshine alley
leading (as all alley’s eventually do in crescent beach) to the beach.

Whilst I was potting I brought my portable record player up to the porch
and played Duke Ellington’s jazz party which I cannot say enough about, it
really is that fabulous.

Of course I had to snap a polaroid and was so happy with the apple green
leave’s reflection on the record as it spun around and around and around.

Such a happy afternoon. Music. I love it so ~ what music are you listening to?

*****I took two of these d’appled jazzy polaroids ~ slightly different but beautifully similar. Simply by leaving a comment I wil enter you in a draw on Sunday and the winner shall receive one of the original polaroids as a little gift. Just because I’m in that kind of mood today:)