“where always it’s spring ” cherry blossoms polaroid taken with my sx70 camera ~

Spring’s blossoming crescendo is announcing itself most triumphantly all about me and I am having a love affair with topaz, cobalt and violet. Please forgive my exaltations yet again as I wax poetic over my vintage polaroid camera ~ those images that I treasure for the romantic grain and glorious color leaks ~ truly polaroid lends itself so well to my poetic nature. That sound ~ the whirring of the picture announcing itself to the world is music to my ears.

This morning it is particularly beautiful outside with singing birds peering down at me from blossoming trees, the scent of seawater in the air and the lure of my bicycle propped up in my backyard. Perhaps I will fill the basket with thistles and blooming stems and peddle to the beach. Later perhaps alas since I am really committed to various work realities and must cover my ears to the beckoning sonnets of springtime. However I am also feeling incredibly girly lately and thinking I may have to buy some new spring dresses and shoes ~ I keep popping into a certain beautiful shop in seattle which I won’t mention because i get so grumpy with the prices ~ but oh! the dresses are divine. I am so committed to my morning yoga now so I am toning up for pretty summery outfits and feeling quite like this actually

This week has been….warm, lovely, receptive, magical with songbirds singing. My home smells like cinnamon coffee, there is blueberry/apple crumble in the oven and I am teaching tomorrow. Life doesn’t get more perfect than that, of this I am so sure. And well, a little love goes a long way.

life is a bowl of cherries

Darlene took this photo in my studio the other day and i quite love it ~ it makes me smile for the light and twinkles and nifty yellow warmth. Today I cleaned up said studio as it was getting awfully messy with piles of books and records stacked on the table, floor and chairs. Not to mention all the crumpled up papers under my desk and various scattered mugs of coffee and tea consumed at odd hours of the night when smitten with my writing fits. It felt so good to clean my studio since I put on music and brought up a tray of chocolate biscuits and set about returning the room to a pleasing sense of order (all ready to be messed up again sooner rather than later but nevermind)

However I am not in my studio now. I am in my livingroom with a cozy fire and cup of homemade chai listening to the rain pattering outside in my garden. And thinking. Thinking once again of my grade seven’s I am teaching a photography class to. Oh, you will love this. This week we talked about love and beauty. I asked which they wished to discuss fist and they all shouted ‘LOVE!!!” We chatted about how deeply personal love was, so abstract and complex and difficult to define, we talked about romantic love, platonic love and spiritual love and how you will find it everywhere in art, music, dance, photography etc. We discussed deep tenderness and emotional closeness and how love makes you feel so great by the happiness of another. And then. A very sweet boy put up his hand and said ‘And there is self love too.’ “Self love” I responded “Oh yes, and why is this important?” And he said “Because if you don’t love yourself how can you really love anyone else?” And then another boy put up his hand and chimed in….”You know when I do things that make me happy for myself then suddenly I am all filled up with joy and I want to go share that with everyone ~ it makes me feel like I have more love to share and I am just bursting with it.”

And well, I have to tell you it didn’t stop there. Discussing beauty later we chatted about inside beauty and outside beauty, feelings of inferiority through perceptual experience of attractiveness ~ I showed them this film and then asked them if they could give examples of inside beauty. A boy put up his hand and said “Have you seen the film Forest Gump? Well, he really wasn’t that good looking of a man but he was SOOOO kind and soooo gentle and funny and inside he was a very special attractive person. Everyone responded to him even the beautiful girl in the film.”

And then it really hit me ~ children KNOW ~ children are born KNOWING and who am I to believe I am teaching what was seeded in their soul’s from the beginning? I am not here to teach ….just to remind…to keep the faith and and hope alive in our world that it is true and beautiful and worth trusting and illuminating in self expression. Children always have their arms wide open….they remind me how easy it is to connect with one another and how far we are capable of reaching out to each other.

I am so so so SO grateful for every moment I get to share with these kids!

sweetness… and love…

See that most wonderful vintage mokka pot on the little pile of magazines? I found it this week at the thrift shop with Duke and Darlene and am quite pleased to report it makes the most astonishingly delicious expresso. (a big shout out of thanks to Duke for teaching me how to perculate to perfection) I am madly in love with it, and also the adorable vintage granny crochet pillow you see in the background which we also found at the thrift shop along with a delightful record happily entitled “Merengues and Mambo’s.” (which I am listening to right now as a matter of fact)

This morning I made oatmeal and a green smoothie (Darlene has been making them for us all week and now I am hooked) and am working on my lesson plan for my grade seven’s photography class this week. It is a quiet springbursting day in February and I just adore this photo Darlene took of me, this lovely set from ‘the four’ and this seaside shot I took with my polaroid camera ~ my greatest fear in life is to run out of polaroid film so if anyone has any stored away they would like me to take off their hands please do let me know:)

Happy monday!

Ocean

‘I have a feeling that my boat

has struck down there in the depths, against a great thing

and nothing

happens!  nothing….silence….waves

nothing happens?  Or has everything happened

and we are standing now, quietly, in the the new life?’

~ Juan ramon Jimenez ~

~ photo of paper boat by madelyn mulvaney shot with a vintage sx 70 polaroid camera and 779 instant film ~ boat designed by Noah

I am so happy with my new tripod I found in a thrift shop ~ it is metal and collapses down to a tabletop size ~ I used it for this shot perched on a picnic table. This image make me feel quite poetic and is called “I make only permanent tenderness’ ~ I am sure he would say I also make a lot of trouble but he’s wrong:) It is Monday and Monday is throwing challenges my way so while I am listening to a wonderful mix of songs my girlfriend made me, I thought I would throw a few links your way by way of compensation:)
Also a big shout out of appreciation for my beautiful friend Catherine who let me fling myself on her couch yesterday, drink her entire collection of tea and clean out her tin of homemade cookies while I talked about myself the whole time.
Very rude. Next time it’s your turn Cath ~ I promise:)

the Frances Han collection
my favorite poet
this brilliant treehouse
Delancey, in so many words
cursive buildings
story book collection drive!

well now…have a lovely week:)

I am getting myself all ready for my very first bones of a poet e~course class which starts on Sunday. Which means a little bit of nervous and a whole lot of happy. Hence the chocolate face mask. It’s my way of celebrating:)

have a most surprisingly perfect weekend!

Today I picked up my film from the lab and I have always said if I only get one, just one beautiful shot out of an entire roll then that will surely make my day.

Today was a very good day.   This   photo of a vintage Shwinn bicycle was taken with  my Canon AE1 camera and Fuji Reala 100 asa color film.  It made me so happy with that light glancing off the seat.  The rest of the roll was otherwise quite disappointing but we won’t talk about that:)