i've been away, again, from home - a full week, from thursday to thursday, down in montgomery checking on my parents and trying to be of some help. mostly i spent a lot of time simply being there, in their midst, feeling helpless, useless, adrift. things are changing with them at a rapid rate - my father's dementia, my mother's growing refusal to ask for any help. their world right now seems incredibly isolated, confined, although the home my mother has created in the brand new spot is lovely and homey and filled with love and light. i moved up here to north carolina, six hours from them, fifteen years ago; it is here that my life has evolved, that my world envelopes me. so, the helplessness sits with me here, as well, along with useless guilt and confusion as to how i can help without resist.
while i was in montgomery, i worked on a necklace for myself, using a beautiful precious metal clay heart pendant that my sweet friend lisa gave to me while i was teaching in port townsend. i love this piece, and love wearing it at my throat, where it grows warm, where i can hold it and remember the unconditional love in which it was so off-handedly given. that's lisa: selfless, loving, always a cheshire grin on her face. sitting in my parents' kitchen, knotting smoky blue gemstones and pearls onto cord as a gift for myself, from another earlier gift, was a simple and quiet pleasure that i'll always carry with me in my heart.
i took this photograph of myself late last night, after being on the long stretch of road all day between here and the flatlands of alabama: a little in the light, and a little in the dark. it doesn't look all that different from the photograph i snapped seven days ago, hiding behind a book: tired, unadorned, frazzled and feeling my age. i look at my face and can see how clearly i look as if i am about to slowly dissolve; i see it right there, deep in my watery blue green eyes. i write about this and wince as i anticipate the responses i may very well receive: snap out of it. don't be so selfish. quit thinking of yourself so much. take control. grow up.
i don't feel like i will ever completely become an adult. part of me will always be the little girl raised by two beautiful people who did the best they could, with me. and i'm doing the best that i can, now, with them. i love them and reach out for them, i let them know that i will be there in a six hour heartbeat, should they ask. or even if they don't.
i took this photograph yesterday morning, as i was about to get in the car and drive away. daddy had thought it would be amusing to wear that hat; he had quietly sat in the corner of the living room while i came and went, loading the car, he sat there with isaac on a leash and watched me walk back and forth, in and out. my father breaks my heart, my mother too. my heart is slowly breaking today. xo
Copyright, Nina Bagley
- Copyright, Nina Bagley2005-2013 by Nina Bagley All rights reserved. I spend a lot of time taking photos and editing them; words take that long as well. PLEASE DO WRITE AND ASK PERMISSION before using any of my words or photographs. Thanks for understanding.
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April 2010
self portrait friday
can you tell how tired i am?
i've been on the road all day.
traveling with walter is like traveling with a three year old.
why am i so damned tired?
so here i am - unadorned, wrinkled, bespeckled, supine. a window halfway open to the night. crickets outside, cricketdy - crick.
i'm looking forward to another good book.
good book, here i am. my name is nina. long i. and what, might i ask, will you have to share with me this time around?
xo
ps. friday evening:
i've settled in to our visit, walter's and mine. please know that walter has been the BEST of companions all these many months (his first birthday is may 6!!), just remember that i get tired and overwhelmed after a long day of driving with a rambunctious, full of life pup...
he is, undeniably, my most treasured companion, the best of best of friends, bar none.
april, unfolding
it really is so achingly beautiful, here where i live. every season, every day, brings something new that breaks my heart with its magnificence.
i am a flower, then.
Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and
changing everything carefully
spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and
without breaking anything.
- none other than
e. e. cummings
self portrait friday - under the falling blossoms
i decided to follow my whims yesterday afternoon and drag pillows, quilt, and a bag of books out to the side yard under the blossoming plum tree. i can't remember ever doing this before - taking a couple of hours to stay in one spot outside alone, lying down, looking up into tree branches and blue, blue sky.
i had been in book limbo for weeks and weeks, trying to begin this one and that, never able to dig my heels in and become ensconced in what the writer had to say. that lack of attachment to a story, to a book, bothers me; and, feeling decadent, i spent some hard earned cash on not one new novel, but four.
with walter, i feel like the mother of a young toddler, all over again. book? lying down, outside? instant target. easy prey. while i carted heavy quilt and pillows, books and camera down the carport stairs and out to the little side yard, walter scrambled down with his beloved donut ring we use for toss, and dropped it at my feet.
incoming...
oh, boy...
notice his new summer "do"? or the green grass stains on his trim paws?
two hours were not quiet, not in the way that i would have thought; but they were sweet, and suspended, and very very kind and gentle with me. while i lay there, under the plum tree, tiny white petals, light as air, drifted continually down into my hair, onto my chest, like springtime floral snow. little white petals were everywhere. they fell on walter, and me.
they sifted and drifted back out of the pages of my lovely book last night, when i pulled it out again to read. this made me smile, and remember the feeling of lying down outside, safe in my own green world where birds hovered and sang, where my puppy stayed close (sometimes too close) at hand, where i could reach with my toes high into the branches and further, up into the clouds.
"Each has to enter the nest made by the other imperfect bird." - Rumi
and i have that beautiful, opulent time in my heart, now that i am back inside, now that this new day unfolds, now that i took a couple of hours to carry my inside world outdoors, to suspend myself in time, to step into a new book, to lay myself down under plum blossoms, under blue sky, under clouds.
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
and so...here
...the catching up truly begins. i've been on the road so long, and scrambling so feverishly to prepare for teaching/vending trips, that i can't recall the last time i had any stretches of time to simply settle in, to breathe, to be. i know i've either hurt or angered one or two friends out there with my lack of correspondence, with my seeming apathy or inability to properly stay in frequent touch. i can't help that, in the end; when one is self employed, working hard to stay afloat, to keep things moving smoothly ahead completely and utterly by one's self, there are times when letter writing, package sending, gift giving, even repair work (the worst of all, i'm awful with that) all get shoved to unfortunate back burners, while the necessary business of business sadly takes precedence. picture lewis carroll's red queen, and you have a fairly accurate vision of me, this past winter and earliest spring ("Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place", says she). thinking about this is the sort of thing that keeps me tossing and turning in the middle of the night; where is the balance? where, then, is the peace? now - finally! - i've found my comfort, right here on firefly road, where i hope i can stay put for a while without having to run myself ragged, without having to try to explain myself or the work that i earnestly do, which by all means includes taking the time to keep up this blog (and picture me now as an aging dark haired alice, surrounded by wonder and magic and beauty at every twist and turn).
what is a blog, anyway? i come here to honestly and openly air my thoughts and emotions, my reflections on the wonderful world of nature that surrounds me in the middle of nowhere/everywhere. i come to vent, to pontificate, to question, to lament. i've celebrated in this place the losses of loved ones, the joys of big steps, the monumental stepping stones for me, for my boys, for the ones that i adore. i choose to spend a few hours posting one entry, sharing with you the photographs that document my days, my travels, my journeys both inside and out.
i also come here to reveal my latest inspirations, the things that unfold at the table in my studio. all of this takes time, hours that i choose to spend right here. right now. here. writing. sharing. informing... all of the things that make me keep paying the fees to belong to typepad, all of the things that draw me right back to this computer, the one that shuts down from poor airwaves because i am so tucked in to this little holler in the hills.
i just spent the last hour writing and writing and writing, right here - right here! - only to have my blasted computer connection fail once again, shut off for the thousandth time, and vaporize each and every last word that i had taken precious time to sit and compose. i needn't tell you how frustrating this can be. letters disappear, photos too. all my efforts, gone. don't bother to tell me i should hit the save button as i go. that is precisely what i did, and when i hit that button, my post quietly went away. what i wanted to say, what i had written before, is that i meant to write to you today about the plum tree that stands beside my deck, the one that this time of year in the spring i refer to as a magic tree with all its frothy white branches of bloom that draw a myriad of butterflies, hummingbird moths, and bees.
i wanted to tell you about the way that a green haze is slowly coming more and more into focus in the mountains out beyond these beautiful window views, of the way that the phoebe birds are swooping and diving from this branch to that while building their nest right back in the same old place on the ledge of my bedroom windows.
i wanted to tell you how i cut short my visit with my parents in alabama so i could rush back and be here for roy and his girlfriend alex, who eeked out another night's visit after a concert over in asheville, how we sat by a fire and talked long into the night, and lingered on the deck in the sunshine the next day before they had to head their own separate ways.
i wanted to tell you that walter is continuing to grow by leaps and bounds, that my fellow jewelry designer friend kathy van kleeck came for a nice long visit yesterday, that we breathlessly played catch up and walked by the river and ate wonderful food and shared jewelry designs (and i bought this, one of her newest designs, lucky me!).
i wanted to tell you that i'm feeling wonderful, that i'm absolutely blessed to be successfully selling as much jewelry as i do in this difficult economic time, that i treasure my students i've spent time with these past months, that i am absolutely thrilled to be back home. i'd love to share with you that someone bought this necklace to wear to her daughter's wedding in june, one that she'll pass down to that daughter in years to come;
and i'd love to share that another woman just purchased a piece that speaks of "the voice within", to celebrate the completion of her first year of graduate school.
oh, how these stories make my heart sing! oh, how wonderful that the things i create will be worn with emotion, with love. this makes me feel that everything i'm doing, whether busy or sitting quietly still, truly matters in the end. because it does. i just received an email from a friend who lives all the way across the country, someone i've never actually met but a friend with whom i feel a lovely connection; we have talked on the phone (an accomplishment for me, the one who deplores the device), we exchange book ideas, we patiently commiserate. and we laugh. she very kindly wrote to me that "the joy of having you as a friend is amazing", and this makes me puff up just a bit, makes me square my shoulders and think to myself, why, yes! it is. on both accounts, hers and mine, it truly, honestly, genuinely is.
be patient with me, if you can, my friends. be patient, and understanding, and know that my heart is always in the right place, no matter how scattered i remain. xo
stand tall
self portrait friday - light and dark
today's afternoon sky was beyond incredible: i woke this morning to heavy grey, and then to rain, and the thunder rolled in just as i, myself, was rolling out of bed. such emphasis for weather! the window panes rattled and spoke back to the elements in return. there was wind, and more rain, and then at noon the sky began to break, as they say: the light grew and grew, things became more focused and clear; all things were illuminated, as you can see. i don't get to see clouds like this very much, not where blue is so deep that it takes my breath away, where the clouds roll by in cottony shapes so close that i want to reach up and pull them from the air. while my parents were out, i sat in quiet on the back patio and watched the sky. it was a gift to look up, to see what was passing me by. i was, for a long while, reminded of magritte, and of jackson browne too, all at once. some of you will make that connection; others, too young, simply won't. such a shame. but the light, oh, the light! how it unfolded, how it glowed. life seems so big, sometimes. it seems so close. and here i am, right in the middle of things, living. being. dreaming of magritte and a young girl in the 70's who wore seashells in her hair.
and then tonight in this bedroom that isn't my room, i heard and felt big booms again, huge sounds that bumped the night outside this place. it is opening night of the minor league baseball team here in town, and - now being right in the middle of this town - i realized upon standing at my parents' open front door that the city was sending out a huge fireworks display down at the baseball field.
i couldn't see anything but what you see above - but who needs fireworks, when you have night clouds like these? i walked back into my room that isn't my room, sprawled out across the poster bed and smiled my half dark/half light self into the camera, into the dark lens looking back at me.
the air outside was dark and fresh after all that rain; the air outside smelled silently of spring.... xo
My candle burns at both ends,
It will not last the night;
But ah my foes, and oh, my friends - -
It gives a lovely light!
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
hello
fortunately for me, here at my folks' house the lighting is wonderful - forgiving - generous - true. like people that one loves, in other words, the light gives and shares and gives some more again. i've spent hours walking around with jewelry in various spots, taking three or four photographs of one particular angle, another three or four from this way or that. and more hours are spent editing the images - bumping up the light, tweaking the contrast, making things a tiny bit more focused and clear. also like life, yes?
with my mother's wireless connection (what a novelty! what a concept, for me!), i'm hoping to list some jewelry pieces on etsy, an endeavor that normally takes me a ridiculously long time to do.
it may happen today, in fits and starts; and then again, it may not. it is a rainy and rumbling day, my mother declares a bout of vacuuming, and i have lunch out with an old and treasured friend.
but it is always fun to show you the light in what i do, the way that the sun (or the rain) makes my bits and pieces sparkle and shimmer and shine.
i'll be heading home tomorrow - driving back up that same green ribbon of highway, trying to absorb the scenery unfolding beside me as i roar back up to those mountains that hold my heart..
hello, sky. hello, trees. hello, birds; hello, life. hello. xo
holding onto time
this is the clock that sits beside my bed; it glows warmly in the dark, all hours of the night, and if i set the alarm, the light blinks off and on for a few quiet minutes before a polite bell begins to ring. i took this photograph when i was climbing into bed very late on saturday evening, before easter; it was 1:30am, the boys were still out in the back sitting 'round a fire with friends, and i was too tired to stay out with them anymore into the night.
this is my bed, just before i climbed into it and took the photograph of the clock that you see above. if you squint your eyes and look very closely, you might see the flickering lights of the campfire through my nighttime window; and if you imagine as hard as you can, you'll picture the boys and mary sitting quietly in a semi circle, laughing and talking deep into the velvet night. i stood there in my bedroom, admiring the way that my bed looked under the glow of those little tree lights, feeling that all was right with the world, simply because my children were within hearing range. they were out there in the dark, feeding the fire, telling their stories, enjoying their visit back home with a mother who adores them beyond words, who was happy to climb into bed with the sound of their voices drifting in with the nighttime breeze.
fast forward a couple of days to yesterday, when i found myself driving down the interstate to alabama, six hours of watching the trees turn from bare to whispery kelly green to fully flushed out
explosions of springtime green, the smell of grass coming into my open windows now and again. i've come to spend a few quiet days with my parents in their new home, watching how the sun falls into windows new to me. mornings are bright, birds sing here a lot at dusk; i don't know where anything is, have not been able to settle like an old dog into a familiar spot, but am finding my way by listening to the sounds of my parents' voices rise up from corners that i will get to know, with time.
their new town home is lovely, filled with many of the things that were moved from the grand, sprawling old house of five bedrooms to this quite beautiful one of two. i've been walking around quietly in my bare spring feet on new hardwood floors, taking photographs of this and that, finding comfort in the way that my mother has been arranging treasured things i recognize and cherish, for the fact that these things are my parents', are from a home that was transported from there to here. and all the while, my noisy little shadow bounds and leaps beside me, then lands high up on my bed that i slept in as a little girl at my grandparents' house, as a teenager in the home we called foxwood, where my parents lived for thirty eight full years.
my father spends most of his waking moments watching me walk from room to room, watching me sit and work on these
photographs, delighting anew in the fact each time he sees me that i am in this house with him again. my mother putters, as usual, cooking and cleaning and arranging things this way and that; flowers spill over in both sunny and indoor spots, pictures are hung with meticulous care; she pulled me aside yesterday not long after i had arrived and pointed out the plates that my potter friend julie had made, hanging one below the other on toasty taupe walls.
the ample southern sunshine spills down on my mother's potted pansies; shadows dance on warm brick walls. and in the evening, daddy and i take our glasses of wine back out to the patio, watch the swallows swoop and sail across the open skies, and into the fading dusk my father plays his lilting, broken, wistful tunes.
play on forever, dear daddy; play for the birds, for the wind, play your bittersweet tunes for me, me, me....xo
self portrait friday - hello, spring
come forth into the light of things,
let nature be your teacher.
