invitations

Babytje in het park

Lieve Alice,
Kom ook op mijn verjaardag en kom ook met mij samen dansen. Wil je dan ook verfen met mijn mama en wil je dan ook een tekening maken op de verf, alléén met krijtjes, liefs, Isabelle

Roze wolk, blauwe maan, groene uil

Lieve Sonia,
Kom je alsjeblieft op mijn verjaardag? Kom je vaak bij me om te kijken naar de nieuwe baby van mama of hij goed lacht naar je en of je het leuk vindt van mijn verjaardag, liefs, Isabelle

Meisje met papa en Piet

Lieve Fiep,
Kom ook naar mijn verjaardag toe om naar mama’s baby te kijken maar ga dan niet hard schreeuwen bij de baby, liefs, Isabelle

Likkepot

Lieve Olivier,
Wil je op mijn verjaardag komen om taart te eten en wil je dan ook met mij tekeningen maken? Liefs, Isabelle.

puzzling

the thing is...

... i am not going to have 50,000 words by the end of the week. in fact, if i manage to have 40,000 (and that's counting the lyrics of the three Brel songs that somehow made it into the manuscript, each accompanied by a lovely rhythmic translation into English), it will be a small miracle. i have been feeling really bad about this...

... but the other thing is, so what? so this first draft will have 40,000 words. that's not bad. that's a whole 40,000 words more than no words. i have a plot (sort of). i have characters (sort of). i have (a few) really good pieces. i have (lots of) shite. and it has been a learning experience (by gawd, it has). that's good enough...

... and the final thing is, that this here november, i breast-fed (a lot), knitted (some), wrote in my journal (lots), meditated (almost daily), did yoga (almost daily). socialized (more than i normally do in a whole year). AND wrote a 40,000-words first draft of a second novel. that's not bad, not bad at all...

conversation

- Mama, waarom slaapt hij niet?
- nou, dat is between God and Antoine.
...
- Mama, wat is dat: Gawd?
...

quote

"kazhdyj pishet chto on slyshet

kazhdyj slyshet kak on dyshet
kak on dyshet tak i pishet..."
B. Okudzhava

"everyone writes what they hear
everyone hears the sound of their own breathing
how you breathe is how you write..."

(with apologies for the bad translation: i can't get it to be as elegant as the original Russian. this is from a song that i have known and loved and sung for close to thirty years; incredibly enough, i seem to never have picked up on the actual meaning of the words.)

slow writing

i had been meeting my daily word-count. religiously. every evening, having put Isabelle to bed, i handed Antoine over to Marc, sat down at the computer, put on my head-phones (Beethoven "Moonlight" sonata, third movement, presto agitato), and bashed away. sometimes i was done in fifteen minutes. sometimes in twenty-two. this cost me no effort, other than the effort of sitting down. and strangely enough, this sitting down business really was hard. and seemed to become harder every day. maybe because although it cost no effort, the writing brought no satisfaction either. it was such a thoroughly flat experience. easy but completely non-...

i kept waiting for it to change. i thought, if i just keep showing up, great stuff is bound to happen, something will shift somewhere. but it didn't. and then i hit the end of week 2. and it still hadn't.

Sam said: 'if you keep approaching it in the same way, you're bound to get the same result!'

Sam said: 'why don't you stop trying to outrun the beast, turn around to face her and say 'back off, bitch!''

i wailed: 'but what should i do????' and before Sam could answer, i knew what she was going to say.

"ssssssssllllllloooooooooooooooowwwwwwww down... write slowly, excruciatingly slowly...'

it's that breathing business again, isn't it...

'but what about my word count??????????', i asked.

and Sam answered: 'would you rather have three rich words or 1667 empty ones?'

Sam is a wise-ass. thank god for Sam. yesterday's word count: 482. today's word count: 987. for the first time in two and a half weeks, i look forward to sitting down.

food for thought

i was reading and thinking, two activities in which i clearly indulge too much. the result of this particular bout of cogitation is to wonder whether anyone is interested in starting a blog (yes, yet another one, clearly i am not busy enough...) about food, on which we could post our favourite recipes, in particular the ones that match the following constraints (these are obviously only my favourite constraints, anyone joining in can add and/or substract from the list, and we could make labels and categorize the recipes, ooh so much fun!):

- made from fresh produce
- seasonal
- vegetarian (or fish, need more recipes for fish) (although i wouldn't mind getting to know some new meaty dishes...)

to which you might add:

- can be made with one hand (in case my pinkie finger is otherwise occupied)
- multi-coloured (for feasting of the eye purposes)
- involving tofu (i have never made tofu and am terrified of it, and maybe hearing your battle stories will get me over my angst)

that way, next Tuesday (menu-for-the-week night over here) i can leave Jamie, Rose and Ruth to sleep on their shelf, and turn to the real life experts instead. So, who's in?

half-way through

this is my last novel. i am not a novelist. i am a poet.

death and the maiden

chapter 1

- mama, Céleste is dood.
(surprised, i look up from my supine position on the couch. it's baby-feeding time.)
- dood?
- ja, kijk... (she holds up the limp little elephant body for my inspection). ze was gewoon de vloer aan het natspuiten, met haar slurf, want ze wilde schoonmaken, en opeens boing, viel ze dood...
- oh, wat erg.
- ja, kijk... haar slurfje doet niets meer (she lifts the limp little elephant proboscis to demonstrate)... ik ga Céleste naar de dokter brengen (she walks away from the couch, carrying the elephant in her outstretched hands. stops, turns around). mama, jij bent de dokter. (she walks back towards the couch)dag dokter, mijn olifant is dood. kijkt u maar (she carefully lays the limp elephant on the edge of the couch). kijk maar naar haar slurf (she lifts the proboscis). helemaal niets (she lets it drop).
- nou, ik kan niet zoveel doen voor dode olifanten. alléén zieke olifanten.
- ook hele zieke olifanten?
- ja, dat wel, maar niet als ze dood zijn.
(a moment of silence. she is thinking.)
- dokter, kijk! zag je dat?
- nee, wat dan?
- haar handje bewoog! (she lifts up the paw) kijk, nu beweegt ze ook haar slurf (she lifts the proboscis). ze is niet meer dood!

chapter 2

- mama, Sinterklaas is heel oud, toch?
- ja.
- wanneer gaat hij dood?

chapter 3

- eerst zijn de mensen groot, en daarna worden ze kleiner en kleiner en kleiner, steeeds kleiner, totdat ze heel oud zijn, en dan gaan ze slapen, en dan gaan ze dood. net als Sophie de spin. dat was een zielig verhaal, hé mama?

(and now in English for the non-Dutchies:

- mama, Céleste is dead.
- dead?
- yes, look.... she was spraying the floor with her trunk, she wanted to clean the floor, and suddenly boing, she dropped dead...
- oh, how sad!
- yes, look, her trunk doesn't work anymore. i am going to bring Céleste to the doctor. Mama, you are the doctor. hello doctor, my elephant is dead. look. look at her trunk. nothing.
- well, there isn't much i can do for dead elephants... only sick ones.
- also very sick elephants?
- yes, but not dead ones.
- doctor, look! did you see that?
- no, what?
- she moved her hand! look, now she is moving her trunk! she is not dead anymore!

- mama, Sinterklaas is very old, isn't he?
- yes.
- when is he going to die?

- first people are big, and then they get smaller and smaller and smaller, until they are very old, and then they go to sleep, and then they die. just like Sophie the spider. that was a sad story, wasn't it mama?)

alone

following the advice of a good friend, i left Marc to fend for himself and got away for the afternoon. all by myself. freedom is exhilarating, and terrifying. so after a short stop at the new wool shop (which i managed to leave almost empty-handed...), i took myself and my knitting to the only place in town that serves proper yogi tea and warm chocolate cake, swimming in real double cream. it was crowded, warm, the windows all steamed up, it smelt of fresh scones. so many people, normally it would have freaked me out, i can never be in a room without feeling the urge to see and make contact with everyone in it, so the more crowded a space, the more lost i become. but this time i had my knitting. so i knitted. and listened. and felt like a little old lady (Miss Marple-style). and enjoyed myself tremendously. and forgot the time... and got into trouble for being late.

(Day 10: still meeting the word-count. definitely flowing by now, although no idea where to. have added funny looking button in the sidebar, so you can follow my progress)

storm

my son woke up this morning, looking a little wind-blown. they have been forecasting a heavy North Sea storm. if you want to know the colour of the sea, look into his eyes; if you want to know the strength of the wind, look at his hair. my magical boy.

fall knit #2

this is a joint venture: her design, my hand labour. i told her she needed a new wooly hat and she could choose everything: the wool, the colours, the extras. she now wants a scarf to match. with little pockets to keep 'stuff' in.

(day 3 word-count: 5714. 713 words ahead of schedule. i seem to remember this hoarding becomes important when hitting the week 2 sahara desert of words. the book i thought i was writing is almost done now, by tomorrow i will probably have written up everything i thought of beforehand. this is both terrifying and exciting: from that point onwards, i have no idea what the book is that will be writing itself. it's a bit like those old-fashioned roller-coasters, where you first climb really slowly, with a rickety-tickety sound under the wheels, excitement and fear mounting, and then as you reach the top, you can feel the cart levelling, and you know it's too late to get off: you're in for the sheer drop...)

feijoa

this week on the organic farmer's market, a long-forgotten childhood taste. my grand-mother used to get them for us from Baku. turns out, she would have had more luck in Auckland, NZ. still, felt very clever explaining to the girl at the market (who knows much too much about fruit and always makes me feel like such an idiot) (yes, i come from a family where fruit knowledge can make you or break you) what they were called (feijoa) and what you can do with them (open your mouth and eat). the best thing, though, is the scent. through the paper-bag, across half the living-room, i can smell them. like bubble-gum, says Marc. like paradise, say i.

(day 2 word-count: 3904. i wouldn't say we have flow (although thank you for lovely supportive comment, Jost), but we're moving. i managed to suss the editor by adding an extra challenge. i promised her i wouldn't spend more than 45 min. a day on the novel; that way even if i end up producing nothing but shite (unlikely, but don't tell her that), i wouldn't have wasted too much time on it. speedy shite, you might call it (the real reason for the added speed factor being that she can't read that fast, but don't you go telling on me!))

day 1

word-count: 1740

(every single word is bloody awful (or maybe not by itself, but taken in conjunction with the word before and the word after, and the word a bit further down the page...), i have no idea why i am doing this to myself or to you (the poor people who will be asked one day to glance at this rubbish), there is no way i am going to be able to produce so many words a day for a month, no matter how bad the words are, taken alone or together, i have children to take care of, food to cook, yoga to do, and what's the point anyway, there is no story, no characters, no dialogue, no poetry even this time, actually, by comparison with this stuff, that first novel was pretty much a nobel prize in literature, and maybe that's the only purpose of a second novel, to make you realize the first one is worth resurrecting, arggghhhhh!)

(i seem to remember there was something one could do to one's internal editor during nanowrimo, send her to the bahama's to get a suntan, or lock her up, duly tied and gagged (especially gagged) in some dark humid dungeon... whatever it was, it hasn't happened, they must have forgotten to pick her up, or maybe she managed to escape, she is a crafty little thing, anyway, please to come back and take her away before i wring her neck (problematic, because we share one). please please pretty please)

play

- mama, kom, laten we een spelletje doen die ik verzonnen heb!
- wat dan?
- nou, ik maak hier een stapeltje van stukjes hout, zo, en dan nemen we ieder een stukje hout, en dan moet je probeeeren om je stukje hout op de stapel te gooien. en degene die niet wint, die mag iets leuks uitkiezen.
- wat dan?
- nou, een stukje hout.

- mama, come, let's play this game i made up!
- how does it go?
- well, see, i make a pile here with these bits of wood, and then we each take a bit of wood, and then you have to try and throw your bit of wood onto the pile. and the one who doesn't win gets too choose a nice gift.
- like what?
- a bit of wood.

two tomato plants

the one on which i lavished my love and care.

the one i threw on the garbage heap.

why does this smack of 'deep wise lesson to be learned'? and what lesson is that(other than 'sell the garden!')?

anniversary

eight years ago, on a beach in California, Marc and i were taking photographs of our shadows on the sand and promising each other love ever-lasting. we were crazy in love, so we meant it, even though we didn't know what it meant.

four years ago, in an ugly grey townhall building and in the presence of ten people, Marc and i were trying to avoid being photographed and promising each other love ever-lasting. we were pregnant and no longer in love, so we meant nothing much and knew even less.

yet another four years and two babies later, we're back to taking photographs of our shadows and promising each other love ever-lasting. sort of knowing what it means. and meaning it too.

fall knit #1

the fall 2007 collection includes (well, so far it's more 'solely consists of'...) this little cashmere number (wool and pattern from La Droguerie). seriously cute, though i say so myself. and i mean both the creation and the slightly puzzled-looking model.

(speaking of the model, ladies and gentlemen, we have figures at last. Antoine went for his first check-up last week, and it's official: he is a big boy. at 7 weeks, he was at least 61 cm long and weighed 5650 gr.)

bakfiets

'Look, mama, i have a bakfiets too!'

fallen leaves

sweatshop

my dear friend Pauline, midwife, mother, poetess, photographer, seamstress and many other things is having a no-spending year. for an entire year, she is purchasing nothing (well, unless it can be proven to be a) absolutely necessary and b) not obtainable in any other way). how cool is that? 'very' is the answer. anyway, i finally chickened out of joining her (my latest excuse is the woolies, must have woolies, ... and gardening tools, and a bakfiets, and ...). still, it is an inspiration to spend radically less, as in NOT buying a Petit Bateau winter coat for Isabelle that we cannot afford in a hundred years, no matter how cute, but making her one instead. like this princess coat from last year's Ottobre.

the only problem being that i cannot sew. at least not clothes. at least not that i know of. whenever i gather my courage and open a pattern, some word jumps out at me (usually in the first line) that i don't understand, and i give up. but not this time: Pauline has kindly agreed to coach me long-distance and to do so here. so if any of you at any point want to either add your expertise to hers, or alternatively learn to make a coat together with me, that's the place to go. I warn you, though, be prepared to see/hear some seriously dumb questions ('there is no such thing as a dumb question', says the patient but tired teacher's voice inside my head, 'oh yeah? try me!).

polaroid

on authorship

a while ago i wrote about quoting sources, and this week Marc asked me to no longer add his name to the photographs that i post on this blog (mind you, i'd stopped doing that anyway, but more out of laziness than anything else and assuming that you all know the really good ones are his) because, as he says 'although they were taken by my hand with my camera, they are never the photographs i would have chosen and you combine them in your own way'. i've been thinking about this, how it adds a whole new dimension to the idea of authorship. he says those photographs are mine, not his. so apparently you don't even have to click on the button to be able to claim a picture as your own. then again, would he feel that way if it wasn't his best friend and other half posting them but some unknown person on internet?

and in the end, methinks, who cares? it's all ego games, isn't it? the bottom line is still: either it's a photograph/text/sculpture/ painting that moves you or it isn't. who cares whose camera, whose eye, who clicked, and who bought the film roll?

unless, of course, it pays for the bills. but we're not quite there yet. in the meantime, i like to think of us as a joint venture. in more ways than one.

chinoiserie

the craft

'who's the old witch?' i asked. turns out it's me. with a well-filled baby-sling. trying to capture a confused yellow buttery flower (it's October, it's too late, go back underground!!) with a polaroid camera. 'aaaah! now i remember'.

this is not a post about polaroids or buttercups. this is a post to say that the writing bug has caught up with me again and i decided to join the NaNoWriMo. Yes, world, be prepared: novel number two is on its way (what happened to novel number one? some of you may wonder. please not to wonder).

how did it happen this time? pretty much like the first time, which means there is a pattern here, which means my muse is consistent, which means I HAVE A MUSE, and SHE RECURS. that makes me a writer. officially.

so here is my muse's modus operandi: some autumns, i notice this sticky image in my head, a photograph, either an existing photograph or an imaginary one, which becomes imprinted on the back of my retina and simply will not leave. shortly afterwards, a piece of music becomes magically attached to the photograph. the two together act like a magnet: they attract dreams, thoughts, characters, plot lines, dialogues, and many many pieces of dried fruit.

i have to tell you, i'm looking forward to the ride.

walk

conversation

he turns to me
this man
with the eyes of my son
with the eyes of the sea

he turns to me

'the truth is the way', he says
just like that
'the truth is the way'

just like that

the curling light smoke

of
a
little
inconsequential
lie

caught out between lips and hand

'it is' say i

and extinguish
that small stubb
of shame
in the ashtray of my mind

autumn evenings

knitting on the couch, with a sleeping infant in the sling, a purring cat under one (woolen-sock-shod-) foot, Marc reading up on art history under the other. autumn music on the stereo. howling wind outside. hot yogi tea and white grapes within reach. more of these evenings to come. life at its very sweetest.

birthday gift for Isabelle's friend

finished just on time for the party, using Hillary's birdie pattern. i personally think it's very cute, but it did remind me of why it is exactly that i am not setting myself any goals involving deadlines for the time being (the stress, the stress, the stress!).

la mer du nord

my son's eyes are like the north sea: bright blue, murky green, sandy brown, dark dark grey, and many shades in between. it just depends on the day. on the mood. on the weather.

Sammy's recipe against depression

Ingredients:

for the filling:
- 3 morning pages
- 1 inner dialogue on paper between shrill unhappy voice and wise still voice
- 1 five-minute cuddle with Marc (or other loving sane person in the household)
- 1 conversation with loving sane person from outside the household
- 1 prayer to the universe, spoken out loud

for the topping:
- 1 cold shower
- 1 walk outside
- 1 'facing the challenge of tomorrow' meditation
- 1 nourishing food (optional)
- 1 nourishing piece of music (optional)

Consume all ingredients, one by one, sequentially, in any order you like. Repeat every day.

perspective

i bought this beautiful book as a gift for myself (and for one other special person) and it is even better than expected, amazing appositions of word and image, and would you believe it, on the very day it got here, i found it on the coffee table (which should really be renamed: it hasn't seen any coffee in years and has long been requisitioned as a drawing table by you-know-whom), defiled. thoroughly scratched through with blue ball-point pen (i.e. impossible to remove). she said she was just colouring it in. i threw a fit (obviously), all the while beating myself over the head for being so materialistic, and assigning such value to such unimportant things as books, while a wide-eyed child was needing my attention (this did not help the fit, or the child (obviously)). and even once the fit was over, and the wide eyes back to their still-rather-too-wide-for-comfort self, i could be heard muttering under my breath what sounded remarkably like "my pretty book, my pretty book is ruined, whaaaahhhhhh".

then a wise woman dropped by. said twenty years from now, it's the scratching on the cover that will bring tears of joy and regret to my eyes, it's the blue ball-point markings that will make it my very favourite, my very prettiest book. so i decided not to wait twenty years.

static

never stop reminding me
to put on my shoes
and start walking
to smell the rain
and draw a deep breath

to rest a hand on
the gap
in the chest
where the sore heart
is

to letdown compassion
for feelings i have
(rage, grief, pain, loss, confusion, frustration, fear)
and feelings i lack
(love, love, love, love, love, love, love)

never stop reminding me
that as long as my feet
are walking
as long as my hands
are holding
it is not evening yet

ours!

the rundown wooden shack, the swamp, the old apple tree, the greenhouse, the work, the fun, the headaches, and the amazing hollyhocks that will hopefully come out of these seeds.

S.O.S.

tomorrow Marc is going back to school. he will leave the house at 15:30 to return around 22:00. or never. but i'm trying to ignore that possibility. that means i'm on MY OWN. WITH TWO CHILDREN. FOR ALMOST 7 HOURS. no, i'm not panicking or anything, and i know it's all about expectations management (thanks Pauline) and that means also no hidden expectations such as having them in bed before 23:00, or them being fed and clean, or me still having all my hair (thanks Sam), but i still need some rather urgent advice from anyone listening on the following point:

Isabelle goes to bed between 19:00 and 20:00 and Antoine is always awake and rather unhappy with the world between 18:30 and 21:30. now taking Isabelle to bed before 18:30 is silly, she just won't sleep. leaving her up until after 21:30 is an option which does not have my preference.

so my question is: how do I manage the 30 minutes of Isabelle's bedtime ritual (washing, story, boob) while at the same time tending to my son's daily dusk depression? any tips, suggestions, ideas, thoughts, however relevant, are a godsend. i'm all ears.

footsteps

Ik droomde eens en zie ik liep aan het strand bij lage tij.
Ik liep daar niet alleen. De heer liep aan mijn zij.

We liepen samen het leven door en lieten in het zand
een spoor van stappen twee aan twee de heer liep aan mijn hand.

Ik stopte en keek achter mij en zag mijn levensloop.
In tijden van verdriet en vreugd, van diepe smart en hoop.

Maar toen ik goed het spoor bekeek zag ik langs heel de baan,
daar waar ik het moeilijk had maar één paar stappen staan.

Ik zei dan heer waarom dan toch, juist toen ik het moeilijk had,
juist toen ik zelf geen uitkomst zag op het zwaarste deel van het pad.

De heer keek toen vol liefde mij aan en antwoordde op mijn vragen:
mijn lieve kind toen het moeilijk was toen heb ik jou gedragen.

(thanks Marjo for the anonymous poem)

in the margin

i sort of stopped using capital letters in my posts, a fact which has not gone completely unnoticed ('it reminds me of my ex-boss's notes, and that's not a good thing' said Marc, 'total exhaustion? a renewed flirtation with e.e.cummings?' said Sam). and so i had to think of what had prompted me to abandon this particular form of punctuation, and the first answer that came to mind was: because it makes writing so much easier; but i wasn't sure what i meant by that until i noticed that i also started commenting on my own posts, or rather commenting on the comments to my own posts (and doing so in Dutch), and that i find that makes writing easier too, and then suddenly i knew.

i am hiding from the editor. for some reason, this blog is not 'internal-editor free' (actually i can think of a few reasons why it wouldn't be, such as the fact that there are actual people reading it, or the fact that one of them is the real editor... (hi there mum!)). in fact, come to think of it, i can never write a post without hearing that well-known whiney little voice: "this is so bad, why do you bother? who's going to read it anyway? your vocabulary is pathetic, you only know ten words, don't you? where did you learn to spell? why can't you write real stuff, like her, or her, or her? if you don't have anything interesting to say, just shut up, you are embarrasing! i can't believe you're putting this stuff out there". and more of the same. it's distracting. it doesn't help. it's what you might call an irritant.

but it turns out there are ways of dodging the voice. there are places the voice doesn't visit, such as the scribbling in the margins, the comments (and the comments on the comments). there are texts the voice doesn't recognize as texts (those with as little punctuation as possible). there are languages which i am supposed to speak so badly that anything i write in them is not worthy of even the most cursory critical glance (Dutch being notoriously one). and then there is speed. i have found out you can outrun (out-type to be more precise) the voice. and what better incentive for speed-typing than a baby who is slowly (but not so slowly) becoming aware of the fact that the pink has been removed from his mouth and the warm motherly arms have been replaced by a carpet, a computer threatening to crash any second now and the desperate need to pee.

Yep, I can see how children might enhance one's creative process.

meditating together

and now for some mild raving

"And then of course you shouldn't forget that your hormones are all messed up at the moment" "But isn't this perfectly normal, what with your hormones being out of balance and all that?"

my friends, i know your intentions were pure when uttering these words, but... i still wish to say something about these 'hormones'. for one thing, have you noticed the term is only ever used when talking about women? as if men didn't have them hormones. now a term used almost exclusively to describe women and originating in a medical body which is notoriously, historically, traditionally and by definition woman-unfriendly, that already makes me very suspicious.

then there is the added fact that 'hormones' usually appear when talking about the most important, fundamental, creative, life-enhancing, spiritually transformative phases/cycles/moments in women's lives: puberty, menstruation, pregnancy, postpartum, menopause. what an ugly flat humiliating little word to speak of such wonders. what a reduction to absurdity of that which makes the world go round.

now i'm not trying to say that there is no such thing as 'hormones'. nor am i suggesting that the studies (which our tax payments finance) seeking to prove the relation between life-changing events and changes in the fluctuating levels of hormones are a pack of lies. i'm just saying 'who cares?'. you don't tell a man who has just lost his wife (assuming the man was fond of his wife and actually mourns his loss) 'but then of course, there is the change in your hearbeat rate and blood pressure, it's no wonder you feel like shit'. not that it ain't true, but it is only one, not particularly relevant physiological detail of the major life-changing crisis that this man's system in its entirety is going through.

now you might say: oh well, we knew them big guys weren't particularly interested in women, but really, it's terminology, innocent terminology, a bit degrading perhaps, but still just terminology. well, in this case, terminology is anything but inconsequential, because hiding behind the label 'hormones', there is always a pill. some kind of pill, any kind of pill. if it's hormones there is a pill out there for it, which will give you more of this, less of that. let us fix this for you m'am, you'll be back to normal in no time. that well-known non-existent, white male of 35 normality that we are clearly all aspiring to (did i mention this was going to be a raving post?).

so, no, this thing i have, it's not hormones. it's not pill-fixable and i don't want it fixed. it's Big. it's Change. it's Growth. it's Life.

guess where we took him for his first outing

my friends

are amazing women. they have shoulders broad enough to carry the weight of the world. their feet are firmly planted on the ground. their love is endless and unconditional. they see everything as it is because they judge nothing. they are funny, they are beautiful, they are pure manifestations of the goddess.

and I am so very very blessed to be loved by them.

i tried to pick up a spot off the floor

thinking it was a coin. and spent fifteen minutes pondering the deeper meaning of that sentence only to conclude that it didn't have one. and that pretty much summarizes life these days.

what i don't really get is how this very small person can so completely disarrange us even though he is hardly ever there. he spends no more than 2 hours a day downstairs, and most of the rest of his life sleeping, and yet, he has us all, two adults, one child and two cats, upside down, inside out, and diagonally disoriented. all has changed utterly (... "a terrible beauty is born"... who wrote that?) and he did it, but how? is it his sword of Damocles effect? so that even asleep, he claims our time through his sheer potential to wake up? it feels like lack of control, but surely, since a compromise has been struck with Ms. Blom that we can all live with, there is a more than reasonable amount of predictability in his schedule. so what is it then?

you veterans out there, tell me: what is it? and is it even vaguely related to trying to pick up a spot off the floor?

one more

autumn on my balcony

with his eyes open...

... for a change. I know i am utterly insane to even think of complaining and in fact i am not complaining, simply inquiring, and if the gods of broken nights are listening, i wish to emphasize that i am NOT complaining in the least, it's just that i miss him a little sometimes, i mean you have a baby, you like to see him from time to time, right? anyway, this is just an inquiry, like i said, and maybe he's just running for the golden medal of Ria Blom, but still please please to reassure me: is it normal for a ten-day old person to be asleep an average of 20 hours a day?

inspiration

Now that I am forever with child
Audre Lorde

How the days went
while you were blooming within me
I remember each upon each--
the swelling changed planes of my body
and how you first fluttered, then jumped
and I thought it was my heart.

How the days wound down
and the turning of winter
I recall, with you growing heavy
against the wind. I thought
now her hands
are formed, and her hair
has started to curl
now her teeth are done
now she sneezes.
Then the seed opened
I bore you one morning just before spring
My head rang like a fiery piston
my legs were towers between which
A new world was passing.

Since then
I can only distinguish
one thread within running hours
You, flowing through selves
toward You.

and in between the tears...

... I find myself roaring with laughter (not so nice for the stitches...).

Every evening, Isabelle gets to watch one story from her new Fabeltjeskrant DVD. Then she replays the story (at least twice) with her puppets and the help of either Mama or Papa. Today, she got lucky, we were both available. She sits on the couch and directs us: 'You, you do the beaver and the wolf, and you can do the raven and the stork'. The story also involved an ant.

Marc: Nou Isabelle, dan kan jij Juffrouw Mier doen.
So, Isabelle, then you can do Miss Ant.

Isabelle: Ik doe geen mier, ik ga rustig mijn Danoontje eten.
I am not doing any ants. I am going to quietly eat my Little Danone.

There. That's us told.

first

The post brought this gorgeous softie from Elianne. Thank you thank you thank you. It's Antoine's first toy ever. Isabelle was thinking of confiscating it, but she then changed her mind, and returned it to the rightful owner. She wanted to know whether Antoine had already thought of a name for it. Mmmhhh... I told her he's still thinking about it.

décalé

What I heard myself say:

"Don't walk on the bed! How many times did I ask you? Stop jumping! No feet near his head! Stop it! Now! Last warning! Ok, get out! GET OUT! If you don't stop it right now... If you want to cry, do it outside! NOT near the baby!"

What I really wanted to say:

"Help me, I'm lost too... I don't know how to do this... I know how you feel... Look, I'm crying too... I love you. Come here. Let me hold you. We'll figure something out. Together. I miss you. I miss you so much it hurts. Come here. Come here..."

Breathe. In. Out. Unclench teeth. Try again.

Read this post this morning, it made me cry. How many more tries will I really get? Nobody knows.

Breathe. In. Out. Unlock tears. Try harder this time.

the view from my bedroom

the nick of time

Early on in the pregnancy I had the idea of making a Waldorf doll for Isabelle, thinking it would take a few weeks at most. Then procrastination hit in, and ten days before Antoine arrived, it was still not done. Still, I managed. Just on time. Her name was first Isabelli, but then, following a visit to Sam's house, she became Zaza. Judging by the reception she got, she was a goooood idea.

Isabelle et Antoine