I intended to grow enough for the market this year, but somehow I didn’t. I don’t know what happened, but I’m glad I don’t have all of that harvesting to do right now while I’m working on so many other things and am heading out of town soon. I did pick a giant bowl of snow peas the other day and still haven’t dealt with stringing and blanching and freezing them. So much for processing produce at the peak of freshness. I don’t know. My heart’s just not in it. I pass the bowl on the counter and think, string your own damn selves, you stupid peas. What the hell is my problem?

Bugs. That’s my problem. We’re having a lot of bug issues in the gardens this year. Well, that’s not really my problem. It’s a problem. One of many, so add it to the list. My real problem is that I’m trying to change habits, and my cranky self is fighting back by filling me with melancholy and pensive thoughts to keep me from being as productive as I’m attempting to be. Or something like that.

Actually, the issues of soil balance and insect invasion strangely reflects the life inside this house, too. We’re feeling besieged with minor emergencies that suck up our attention and energy. The floors are dirty, the piles have all reappeared, bills need paid, filing is long overdue. I wonder how many years it’s going to take–inside and out. I wonder how many more years I’m going to feel as if I’m living full-time in the waiting place, paused on the shore with the small waves washing across my feet and sucking itself right back into the ocean. One step forward. Thirty two steps back. The tide moves in, so it’s about trust. Or something.

Here’s one of the last shots I took before my battery died. I just wrote *camera battery* on my grocery list for today. Maybe I’ll take the camera in to get the sensor cleaned, too. If I go out.

I wonder if I can get my sensor cleaned?

Meanwhile, I listen to this again and sway my hips like the hoopers, and stomp my feet and jump up and jump in.

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This post is about the ten delicious, albeit butt-numbing hours I spent in the car by myself swimming in the sounds of these two albums by Talk, Talk: Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock. I kept them on constant loop as I coasted my way past farms and fields and trucks and tractors.

I haven’t had the opportunity to immerse myself in music like this in such a long time. I used to do it once a month or so, for five years when I lived in NY and drove out to OH for visits. Sometimes Ty rode with me, but often he stayed with his dad and I spent the 7.5 hours each way in a beautiful cocoon of sound and sight and vision, listening to a single album over and over again.

A couple of years ago, Lisa B-K sent me a video of a Talk, Talk live performance of Give It Up. I think it was this one, but there are several on the tubez…

… I loved this band in high school, but you know, synth pop–it only went so far and I lost track. I had no idea they performed like this, but I can always trust Lisa to hook me up with the real deal. Watching Mark Hollis singing as if he’s pulling the words up out of the stage beneath his feet and sending them out into the crowd with every ounce of energy in his being, well…my goodness. There are other videos from this show on youtube and I’ve turned to them repeatedly, particularly on days when I’m feeling frozen and can’t get my priorities straight. It works every time. Really, I’m going to cling to my fear and insecurity? Really? Gotta Give It UP.

The day before my trip, an old friend from high school and I were chatting on facebook about music and I sent him the link to the above, then watched the video a dozen times in a row. I wanted to hear more, so searched around in iTunes and the reviews for these two albums sold me, so I loaded up the iPod. (it’s so weird that our world is so i-branded–more and more it’s all about Me).

Listening to these two albums on this trip got my blood flowing with an energy I’ve desperately needed to feel–and my mind tumbled the usual thoughts that feel like pointy rocks, round and round, smoothing the edges with the grains of sound.

My family is in a strange and unexpected place right now (like millions of other families) and the fear is a sucking sink hole of mud that’s pulling me towards its center at every moment. It was there as I drove, looping thoughts of worry about the immediate future, the far-off future and judging decisions made in the past. So it went, my tumbling thoughts, the swirling music with a thousand layers compressing my mind into a blankness until I was nothing but the ride, rolling over miles of pavement and aware of myself moving through the landscape.

This song is the one I replayed about 432 times because it takes me from my usual place of Maybe to this whole new land that’s made of Yes. I tried to upload the mp3, but the file was too big, and this is clearly a lip sync job…but ah well..the song is the point.

But here’s the thing: nothing’s changed. I initially thought I’d be able to wrap this post up with a neat little commentary on the power of music to transform a life, but it’s more complicated than that. You see, now I want to listen to this with my headphones around the clock in order to drown out the gawping howl of fear that’s always playing in the background. But that’s just a soundtrack change, and I’ve been trying to learn to think more positively for years.

I make my action plan and set priorities and do the bloody best I can. I try to change my own song, to act as if everything is perfectly fine and abundant and I am plugged into that abundance and everything I need flows to me–and what I need isn’t always what I want, and doesn’t always feel good, and that’s OK. So I tell myself in the few quiet spaces in between.

I try not to give voice to what seems like the facts because well, maybe they’re not facts and maybe it’s an illusion that we’re no longer just inching towards foreclosure and bankruptcy, but perhaps even taking great, long-legged strides. But I fail miserably in this effort. I find myself blurting out the story at the worst possible moments and then I’m in–my legs caught in the sucking, swirling vortex. I’m nauseous, head-achy, twitchy and vibrating so hard I’m levitating.

And that’s what’s so powerful about music. I plug into that and it pulls me back out of the sink hole. It’s an IV hookup to a positive flow, giving me a much-needed transfusion.

You know what? I’m going to go get my iPod and hop in the car and drive around the back roads of Oho until I feel right again. Thanks for riding along while I ramble.

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When you pray, rather let your heart be without words than your words without heart. ~John Bunyan

I don’t tend to pray, at least not to a specific God, and not in a formal way. But I have been thinking a lot about my internal dialogue and how that ongoing conversation with myself is a sort of prayer, or a song about my life and that maybe–just maybe–I need to change the tune.

Doing this Grace in Small Things exercise is giving me some context for my thinking because it’s making me acknowledge five things, (almost) every day, that make my heart spark. Sometimes those things will pop into my head while I’m not at the computer writing, and when they do it feels as if the sky just cleared and the sun shone on me long enough to melt off some of the ice encasing me. In those moments, I’m aware of how negative my running monologue sounds and I wonder how much of that I let out into the world. I sure do complain a lot inside my head.

So here’s my prayer for myself: that I follow the thoughts more closely and help them turn around when they’re headed into a bad neighborhood. That I learn some new notes for my song and then learn to string them together.

I’ve seen this quote a dozen times in the last couple of weeks. It’s the perfect combination of words and they ring in my mind throughout the day.

Ring the bells that still can ring,
Forget your perfect offering,
There’s a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in.
~Leonard Cohen

**

This post is my contribution to the 52 Stories flickr group for week 2.

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I just woke from a dream of news that four year old twins I know (grandchildren of someone I work with) had died. I realized it because I saw their angel-ghosts, two beautiful children with wings hugging each other at the top of a hill. But the twins I know are both girls, and this set was just one of those girls and a boy. After I saw them having their winged embrace, I rushed to my computer to look for news, and found it.

Then the dream switched scenes as dreams so easily do, to Lila and I walking single file (she in front, me behind) next to a swift river. It only occurs to me now that I should have been closer to the water and holding her hand. I was explaining to her how fast the water was moving and telling her to move to the other side of the path when she turned and began to walk backwards. Then she stepped out onto the surface of the water, taking several steps as if it was solid and I yelled to her to turn back, hopeful that she would be able to keep walking on water. But then she took another step towards shore and then sank and disappeared. I woke up immediately.

Half an hour later and my heartbeat is still out of whack and a cup of coffee never tasted so good as this cup of coffee tastes. I’m sitting here in the dark listening to the crickets and the earliest of the early birds, the cat snoring softly in the rocking chair, and Lila turning over safely in her bed.

Needless to say I just spent some time looking up dream definitions. The general analysis having something to do with a disconnection to life and society, with aspects of my child that I wish I had in me (fearlessness, trust), a phase of my life coming to a close, stepping into a new flow, loss of my own identity, and being unable to recognize myself.

That all seems plausible in a loosely constructed, outline sort of way. I’ll know more after my lunch meeting today. This day may be the first day of a whole new life.

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That’s me there, soaking up the sun and shaping my world as best I can, and thinking about how much of my world was lived vicariously on the web for so long. I think for a while it may even have been at the cost of my own emotional wellness. It’s been good for my whole family for me to step back a little bit and work on my own little corner of this rapidly changing world.

There are so many strands to follow around the web of life and every one takes me somewhere I need to go, no matter how outside my comfort zone. But more often than not this summer, I’ve found my way back to the light spot in the center to just rest, reflect and feel the pull of home. Oh, how I feel you, home.

Work is absolutely furked unto the lord right now and the daily insanity is just such a drain. Vendors not getting paid. A massive trial with the parent company that could mean total ruin for everything under that umbrella. Nobody knowing what to expect each day, yet work rolling along as if it’s not all about to crash and burn. I pop out the ass end of each day feeling like I spent nine hours deep under the surface of the earth in the over-air-conditioned dark, trying to navigate with nothing more than my hyper sense of righteous indignation.

I get home and try to putter in the garden before making dinner so I can soak up the reality from the plants. It has the power to bring me back to myself. I love the mirror of a garden’s constant expression of its true nature.

It’s such a strange sensation being gone all day and coming home to see that the children continue to grow, the garden has a life of its own. It’s as if I never noticed it before with such a stark contrast of This and That, Here and There. Maybe it’s just the forties. Time moving so much more quickly than it ever did before. Everything feels urgent, but I make myself slow down and breathe and let it all unfold. I find that I move ever closer to the life that I want by being awake in the life that I have. Acknowledging the sweet and the sour.

While I’ve watched and listened over the summer, something has blossomed and begun to fruit in the shadows. I have a bead on a freelance gig doing marketing writing from home for 20+ hours a week, which combined with the cupcake thing that starts in another ten days will keep us at about the same financial place we’re at now. But I’ll be mostly at home.

I should probably clean off my desk area at home to help reinforce the energy and growth going on. Maybe light a candle in my career center. And try not to cry too much from the sheer joy of it all.

The garden is doing well, but it’s been so chilly that it’s sort of stagnated. We haven’t had any ripe tomatoes yet, but a ton of green ones on the vine. I did a terrible job of marking my tomatoes this year. Again. And I didn’t take any notes in my garden journal, either, so I have no idea what kind of tomato these twisty, peppery looking things are, but I can’t wait to taste them. I think the name might have had blue and/or Cherokee in it.

The summer squash is giving in to powdery mildew, so I’m going to pull them out sometime soon. Lots of beans and greens in the freezer. Time to plant some fall/winter greens and get materials to build a short poly-tunnel row cover over the south bed.

I enjoy the contrast and texture and wonky timing of summer. My dill has flowered and is already going to seed, but my cucumbers are only nubby little inch-long things. Why fight it? Why fight anything in the face of such cheery yellow?

So tell me…how are you?

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Aaack. I really need to remember the sunscreen. I’m only 41 and looking at the age spots on my face is giving me nervous nelly hives on my ass.

It’s remarkable that my brain isn’t getting fat and overspilling my ears because all I think about these days is food. Planting it, harvesting it, preparing it, eating it, putting it up for the winter. Buying it at greater and greater cost. I spent $270 at the grocery yesterday, $35 of which was for wine (yeah, lush, we have parties coming up and it’s not polite to go empty handed and then drink someone else’s wine). I’m still buying some produce because my garden is about 15 days behind and only producing greens and herbs right now. Yummy, but not enough to round out a decent menu.

We just returned from a week vaca in MA where we had a giant family/friend reunion-party-celebration to mark birthdays and a graduation from college and a wedding. Happy Congratulations to everyone (Derek, Mom and Steve, Lila and Tyler). But can we talk about the food? One word comes to mind after gratitude, of course, and that word is excess. It was abundant in a way that had me worrying about costs and the future and priorities with the backdrop of mortgage lenders collapsing, of food prices soaring, of farms failing. I can’t help but wonder if a party like that will be possible in five years. Will there be anything on the shelves of the big box stores? Will cole slaw come in pre-shredded, ready-to-mix gallon bags? Will we still only blink a bit at the thought of so much corn on the cob gone to waste?

Speaking of waste, I just yanked out my pepper plants because they haven’t grown but an inch in the month they’ve been in the ground and they were squatting in prime, full-sun real estate in my garden — square footage that can be used to grow plenty of other things that are less shy about reaching their full potential. So now that space has two rows of spicy asian greens for stir fry and miso soup sown, and in about 45 days we’ll hopefully be enjoying those instead of scowling and cursing at the runty, stubborn little pepper plants that couldn’t. I’ll get my peppers at Hilgert’s u-pick like I did last year.

That’s been a big change for me in the garden, this ruthlessness. I’m no longer looking at each plant as deserving of the opportunity to at least try to make it to the end and produce something. Lagging behind? You’re slowing down my pantry, sparky and you’ve got to go. But I’m kind of feeling that way about everything in my life right now. Weeding out the distractions, like that whole restaurant thing. Oy, did that suck up the whole spring with its hours of research and questions and explorations, or what? I’m glad for it because I came out the other side of all that inquiry realizing that no, I do not wish to chain myself to the deck of a ship with inherent sinking tendencies. I mean, life is hard enough as it is, so why work 80 hours a week and make it even harder?

After all of that inward-looking I have come back around full-circle to the realization that I do, indeed wish to work with food and community, and that I am still intrigued and excited by the idea of starting an urban CSA or farm program. So the research continues. I don’t think anything but my attitude towards myself and my life will change this year, unless some awesome job lands in my lap. I need the paycheck and really don’t feel like I want to struggle with the freelance juggle right now on top of all of the other stresses. But seriously, one more year is my limit. Job? You’re on notice.

God. I feel like such a pussy. I was all blustery such a short time ago with my cocky one month and I’m outta there. But then we did the numbers. And yeah, let’s have an awkward segue right…here…back to food: we like to eat.

Aaaand, here’s another topic change. If you were in the room with me right now it would make sense, but you’re not so you’ll just have to roll with me or close the browser window if I’m making you dizzy.

I’ve been listening to the I’m Not There soundtrack a lot (and right at this very moment). Who knew Dylan was (is) such an amazing storyteller? Oh, you did? Well. OK. I can dig it. I’m always behind the times. And this has nothing to do with food, but much to do with nourishment. I watched the film with Chris a few months ago and he fell asleep and I had nobody to turn to in my confusion to ask, so is that supposed to be from his life? or from a song? I’ve never been a huge fan. The persona. I don’t know, it just gave me a good case of the eye-rolls. So we didn’t finish watching, but a bunch of the images stuck with me and I found myself humming the songs.

Then my brother came to stay with us and he’s a huge Dylan fan. HUGE. And he grabbed it at Blockbuster and after two weeks of it sitting on the coffee table, we finally sat down to watch it. Second time around I was able to let go of the need for a strong plot line and to just embrace the power of the performances and of the use of the vignette. To take it at face value.

Derek knows the music, so I’d turn to him with my scrunched up quizzical face and he’d say “well, you know, that’s based on the song that’s about such and such and it’s during the time that he was involved with so and so and this was going on in the world and so yeah…” and of course the details were way more specific and you know, detaily than that but my powers of retention are just shit anymore. Which is probably why I’m not a journalist. But that’s a whole other post. Upshot: I loved the film. Loved. It. Shut it off after the credits rolled and felt like I’d just taken a swim through some really deep water, man. All clean and mineralized and awake. You know?

We sang some Dylan tunes during harmony sing this month and Keyrist on a crusty stick, it made me happy. I go flat a lot still (sorry Cheril and Saunis), but on some non-thinky level I understand harmony and my voice always wants to reach for it. I drive the family nuts because I sing harmony to rock and roll in the car all the time. I don’t sing along to the melody ever any more, I just reach higher or lower and search for that vibration. I wonder if they know that’s what I’m doing, or if they just think I’m totally fucking tone deaf.

Wow. This really is one ramblyassed post, isn’t it? So hey…let me share some photos, okay?

Oh! But first? Jim James’ voice on Goin’ to Acupulco is making me all weepy. My Morning Jacket. Sigh.

OK, so photos! And no more ridiculous topic changes. And apologies! I’m crazy! And Love is the Drug!

This was the highlight of the Middleborough, MA 4th of July Parade this year. It’s the parade our family went to every year when I was a kid, about a mile from our house where I always bought one of those three foot tall pixie stix full of flavored sugar and then tweaked my way through the holiday BBQ and wished Raymond, my Uncle’s wife’s younger brother would brush up against me in the pool.

Er…ah…aaaanyway... I was beyond pleased as punch to see this float pulling away from the town common, full of fresh produce.

Before we left for our vacation, I gave up most of my Flat Leaf Italian Parsley plants to these bastids:

but my Maude, how does one say no to these beauties? Just spectacular. They feasted for three days and were gone.

I shot this Swallowtail a few days before the caterpillars revealed themselves, so I can’t say they turned into this specifically… but I knew they were headed in that general direction: towards truth and beauty.

It’s been an interesting season of observing life happening. It’s giving me hope or something maybe even a little more powerful than hope… sight…insight (?) Or a window into a much bigger picture than the tiny drama of my own little life and its incessant troubles and trials and tribulations.

Hard to believe that something so beautiful, even with a big bite taken out of its wing, is able to find sustenance, take flight, and angle its way towards whatever destination its destiny binds it to — this fact amazes me with its simplicity. Watching it land on the dandelion, then soar away to a high branch on the locust tree until I back away enough for it to feel safe to land with ridiculous delicacy on the yellow blossom to feast again, makes me wonder why I fight so hard.

Really, just fly, eat, fly some more, stay under the radar, eat again, then fly.

and teach the children to do the same, just hopefully with a bit more grace than we manage.

Happiest birthdays to my two…one five…one sixteen (who wouldn’t appreciate my posting his photo, so I won’t). I love you with all the pieces of my broken little heart, and I will always try to help you stay well-fed in every way.

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We’re interested, but don’t like the space. We also feel that in order to open strong and memorably, we would want to have the menu focus on a few things and do them really well, and then leave room to add in other experimental items over time. We want as much organic as possible and to find a way into that niche. We recognize that it will be very challenging to develop a franchise using locally produced food, but still want to make that at least a tiny corner of the plan, where a monthly special uses a local, seasonal food item.

If he wants to do the sub shop in conjunction with the organic foods, we feel that’s just a marketing nightmare (healthy, whole foods and uh…submarine sandwiches!) and we’re not philosophically down with that. We’re two women in our forties who have worked hard to make other people wealthy over the years. We’re not doing that anymore. We’re ready to dive into work that is meaningful for us, and will be much more willing to put extra time into a project that aligns with our values.

I also said I’d done quite a lot of asking around (thanks Becca!) and using my own restaurant experience and my own fuzzy logic, I knew for a fact that his goal of opening his doors in three weeks (or his revised four) is absolutely unrealistic and way optimistic and is a recipe for disaster. And that his idea to have us hand over a menu and he take care of getting it all set up and just have us start when the store opens is crazy because we are the ones who know the food and would need to set up the line process, figure out the timing on everything and then train the staff to do what we do and to do it even better.

So if that’s his plan, he’ll need to find somebody else to help him with that, but we will joyfully provide him with cupcakes and cookies via our SugarBuzz home catering gig (our business cards arrived yesterday).

So it turns out he had a difficult afternoon with the man who owns the building, trying to iron out a lease that has quite a lot wrong with it. He’s having second thoughts and took in all I had to say and more. He said he loves our ideas but doesn’t know enough about the market and wants to do more research to see what the numbers are for health food restaurants. He also said that several other people have mentioned that it’s a bad location (a strip plaza with zero personality and a lease that states you can’t do anything to the outside of the building to make your store stand out from the others). He said “If I look for a place in downtown on Main St., would you be interested? If I found that space and turned you two loose in it to run with your ideas?”

Uh…yes. Yes, we would be very interested in a project like that.

So he went off to thinkthinkthink, and I went home to stop thinking and worrying about it for the night. And that felt so bloody good. It only took two days to go from white hot excitement to really seeing what is true for me. Phew.

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I think I’m sick of myself. I wonder how people reinvent themselves? Do they start with something on the outside? Because I’m thinking that could be kind of fun. Would my thus far unsatisfied fascination with knit skirts and Frye boots be a step in the right direction?

Maybe if I feel absolutely confident in my body and convinced of myself I can learn how to be with people in a more genuine and present way. People like you. And you. And yes, definitely you. To learn how to not rush into connections in a bluster of me, to not just puncture a vein and spurt the story all over you in a river of images and feelings with no reference, no history. Hi, I’m Kelly and I’m a talkaholic. Maybe I can worry less that while you’re talking to me, my facial expressions are running away with themselves and revealing my inner insecure me. Is it weird that I want to discover the earnest listener inside of me? The one who hears all of the little details and instead of constructing her own story out of those pieces, stores them away as the pixels that redraw you in blooming color in her mind’s eye when you’re no longer there. I want to be the one who sits easy in her chair with soft arms and hands, eyebrows low and relaxed, mouth soft, not waiting or wanting for anything. Just being with you. Being easy with you.

But here…this is her counterpart, with arms crossed tensely across her belly. She’s not angry or holding or trying to block you out, she’s just trying to hide that protuberant tummy so her eyes don’t stray to it every five seconds. She hasn’t felt comfortable in her own skin for a bunch of years and she knows that fact creates a wall that not much passes through, not all the way. Maybe she worries there’s not enough room in there for you both. Even still, yes, she is listening—and no, not only so she can tell you what your storytelling has triggered inside of her own speeding mind. Though, as I think we’ve established…there is that.

When I first started blogging at Baggage Carousel back in 1998, it was for the love of stories—to be part of this burgeoning world of words and pictures, slices of past, present and future that people were sharing. I can’t believe it’s even true, but I feel like I’ve run out of stories, or have come up against the wall that has that sign on it that says: Do Not Enter. Or maybe it says: Enter At Your Own Risk. But there’s no disclaimer to indicate just what the risk might be and I don’t do well with that kind of uncertainty. All I know for certain is that I feel frustrated because I’m not expressing myself the way I want to anymore.

I love garden blogging and writing about food and my misadventures in the kitchen and in the soil. I don’t want to write much about the kids anymore because it just doesn’t feel like my story to tell and there are only so many ways I can be self-referential while recounting their escapades. And these things are only a part of me, not the whole of me and dammit all, it was a very long winter with no gardening whatsoever. I got in a serious rut with my cooking (pizza, pasta, beef stew, pizza, chicken soup, stir-fry, curry, grilled cheese, pizza, pasta, chicken soup, pizza). Hell, we even had frozen fish sticks one night. Yuck. I’m also in a rut with my writing—not just on the blog, but all across the spectrum. I guess I’m just burned out and so I’m looking at ways I can shake things up without walking away because I don’t want to not blog. I just want to find my way back to the stories.

I’m thinking about the reason I titled my blog Her Able Hands in the first place — because I was buried in my novel (no, I haven’t touched it in the last year) that I had given a working title Able Hands and because I was doing a lot of cooking and handwork and raising kids and noticing that my hands were always working on something and how good that felt. I was looking for a new outlet online because I was so tired of the baggage that went along with the first blog. Now here I am again with old stories looking for a new framework, knowing that I don’t want to go changing the whole damblam thing again. So stay tuned, I’m cooking up a little project that I’ll announce in another day or two, as soon as I can get a decent photo to go with it, and I sincerely hope you’ll all participate. That’s right…you. And you. And yes, you too.

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