I want you to Look

I want you to look down

Do you see mud?

If not

Move.

I want you to look up

Do you see birds?

Do you see sky?

Do you see the woman you love?

If not

Move. 

           

I want you to look in

Do you see your heart?

Do you like its color?

Do you believe in its strength?

Can you see it beating?

If not,

Change.

I want you to look in the mirror

Do you see yourself?

Do you like who you see?

I hope you do.

Beautiful Heartbreaking Human

It grew on crooked lumber and broken glass

It grew in potholes and highway divides

It grew in sidewalk splits and rusted drains

It will grow. Trust this. It will grow. Whatever we plant will grow, so make it worthwhile.

Our love and California poppies line the sides of the road and fill the spaces between hope and grief.

We must carry grief, gratitude, and grace. And we must do it humbly and nobly.

There is no greater gift and pain than the opportunity to be human.

There is no task more important.

Give your heart to itself and to the world. Learn the dance of space between and fill it. Keep your bones in your skin and keep your skin a part of humanity.

Believe in magic. It is the only thing that will carry you through. Bend your knees and say thank you, and then rise to your feet and give it all back.

The world is in the palm of your hand. It was placed there gently the moment you took your first breath.

We must carry grief, gratitude, and grace. And we must do it humbly and nobly.

There is no greater gift and pain than the opportunity to be human.

There is no task more important.

Eggs

We are beginning to create our home. As we nest into our space we slowly add pieces of furniture, hang bells and tapestries, light candles and put flowers in vases.
We also fill our refrigerator and pantry with food. I do not truly feel home until I have chocolate, butter and eggs. These are the three ingredients I need most for anything nourishing and until they have found their way into my cupboard, I am restless.

I find solace in eggs. They are extraordinarily adaptable, mixing their way into anything sweet or savory. They can be dropped in soup, mixed in cookies, they can be fried, scrambled or poached, they can be beaten and whipped and still hold their own. With eggs in your fridge, the world begs a creation.
So last night we experimented with eggs. We bought quail eggs for the first time!

Aren't they just beautiful?!

I had never quite understood why anyone would eat a quail egg, but they were relatively cheap at the magnificent Berkeley Bowl and so we decided to experiment. We boiled them for 4 min which seemed to be the perfect amount of time for a "barely hard" boiled egg. They are so cute and make the sweetest little boiled eggs, but I could hardly notice a difference in taste between this and a chicken egg. 

I concluded that they are beautiful and quaint, and appropriate for garnishing a salad or toasted rye bread with gruyere cheese on top. 

We had also heard that if you take an egg and encase it in a long sleeve shirt, and spin quickly, the egg will scramble within itself. Then after boiling, you can crack the egg and have a pre-scrambled egg. 

Although obviously a fun and exciting trick, our efforts were proved mute and our scrambled boiled egg turned out to be simply a "harder than usual to peel" regular egg. Perhaps we did not spin the egg fast enough, but either way our efforts turned out to be in vain. 

Eggs are entire worlds encapsulated in a fragile shell, but are also strong and hearty and hold their strength. I love eggs. I think they are incredible and an endless source of experimentation and nourishment. 

If left untouched, eggs would eventually hatch and fly. Let us then too hatch and fly and remember that we too can be coaxed into incredible things. Let the soft world of an egg in our hand remind our own hands to be gentle with themselves. Hatching is not always easy, and half the time we are thrown into a boiling pan of water. So too will our hearts be thrown into hot pans, but let us hold up against the heat. We too are meant to fly. So lets eat our eggs, fill our bellies, and throw our shells to the ground!  

Move

We moved to Oakland! 

That is the big news for this week and also the reason for the lack in consistent posts. Our time was packed with looking, driving, calling, and moving our small world of "things" into a new home! 

 We walked dogs. Big toad and little toad.

 We ate clams and oysters for the first time.

We played in the water

Gypsy played in the sand

All in all it was a whirlwind and I am still catching up to having a new home, my partner and dog nearby, and remembering that wherever my feet are planted the earth will always hold me. Here, there, and everywhere in between. 

Happy first week of April! I hope the showers and flowers find you warm and full. The earth is so full of incredible secrets and good fortune. Remember that there is always a flower or a feather, or perhaps you walked into a kiss, or a rainstorm, or even the sweet reminder that the world is always there to catch you. 

To falling, to finding, to loving, to diving, to laughing, to fighting, to prayers and to change. I light my candle to all of this.