handcrafted journals

i make these.
if you want to custom order one, email me at: dreamingmakingart@gmail.com

yum

yellow bumble bee

birch butterfly white magnolia

renewal

flower tulle

purple velvet

talisman

purple geese

purple butterfly

yellow butterfly

thrive

map geese

plant matter

abundance

i love this

i'm working on family history.
i have spent the whole of today so far (5 of my waking hours) sitting at the kitchen table while bread has risen, and is now baking in the oven, sorting and researching and tying together flapping tails of family history. gillian welch's revelator has played at least 4 times, now it's grizzly bear. i've drunk 2 litres of lemon balm tea and 1 of hot chocolate. the sun is now blindingly pouring into the kitchen.
i love this.

one happy thing

i love holding hands (paws) with my cat.
she lets me when she's lying down.

bosphorous

what i'm really asking is...

if i got my wish, what would i miss?
if i got to go back, live on that island,
would emerald rainforest moss substitute for towering cumulus clouds
or endless prairie sky?
would the kids i miss,
tian, caitlin, medjula,
and the kids whose names have not yet met my tongue,
make up for the loss of baby girl elliot,
or oskar,
or isobel?
would a cedar shingled cabin and woodstove,
views void of hydro-lines,
replace the small niche i've burrowed in this community,
the wild hidden places nestled within city land?
would proximity of plum, hazelnut and apple trees
overshadow my friends' effort at carving arable land out of downtrodden city dirt?
if i could see you,
tony, sophia, anna, rena,
would a small ache subside?
if i could dance with denise again
in her large studio greenhouse with the sprung white plywood floors,
the geese honking out back,
and the bathroom of thistle patch,
would i miss city classes?
dancing nine hours a week?
having six different teachers?

if i could travel your curves again,
rocky windswept coastal island,
spend lazy afternoon hours lying atop an unnamed bluff,
reading virginia woolf in salt-soaked sunshine,
would i miss paddling the clear waterways that lace their way
through this rocky canadian shield?

what i'm really asking is,
how do i love more than one?
how do i divide my heart in two?
how do i navigate a world so beautyfull
that i can't bear not to have it all?

if i had you again, dripping grey clouds in a water-logged january forest,
would i miss -20 and snowflakes drifting like glitter in a pink night sky?
if i had fir trees tall like ten-storey buildings, trunks wider than i can hug,
would i miss wide prairie,
yellow canola and blue flax blowing,
far as my eyes can reach?

what i'm really asking is,
how does one begin to let go?
and why does one keep reaching?
if i relented i'd go spend a few years in the yukon
travelling the thin gravel spine of the dempster,
learning the muskeg and fast-flowing rivers of it's surrounding land,
the blackstone, the peel, the ogilvie.
(and then i'd have to learn how to divide my heart in three)
i'd spend some winters and dream away the sunless days,
imprinting a new land,
a new place to love.

what i'm really asking
is for an instruction booklet.
an illustrated guidebook
to the pathways of the heart.

nux vomica, only because the words are beautyfull

what i long for right now, are the paths walked late at night, a waxing or waning moon guiding.
only knowing they will carry you to the road from the experience of them having done so before.
when i lived there, i'd sometimes dread these night walks,
the having to get the 25 minutes out the driveway by sheer wits and trust and remembrance,
encroaching forest on all sides, with its things unseen.
now i miss it, now i want it.
the forest with its silent ghosts and sleeping creatures.
all sound at rest for the night.
driveways skinny and winding always taking longer to navigate than the more direct but exponentially more frightening trail. the trail that, should you look away for a moment, may disappear into the woods.
these are what i miss.
late night wood walks.
daylight exploration through sunlit woods.
ralphs giant firs. too huge to imagine existing.
cow dung.
the bushes formed by spreading nettles on the edge of a gravel road that leads nowhere in particular.
pathless wandering.

some nights

( ( (sea change ) ) ) over wildflowers across the prairie as you go find another lover

pocketing belladonna in the loose pocket of this grey wool sweater
shifting all attention to the letter to be written on the couch.
learning the pathways of love,
boiling water for rooibus chai,
soothing a sore throat of words unspoken,
grief spilling through the locks.

i dream of wading through murky water
tossing around plants
my grasping attempts to filter it.
they get caught in the undertow and re-circulate,
thrashing about,
no place to find root in the turmoil.

i realize today that this is my grief:
turning over and back on itself
going nowhere
not given proper avenue to pull clean water through.

later on shore,
someone appears
who is not you.
i relax into her
relief at having found my way.
there is so much i don't know
about her
but she wants to tell me
and...

you ask if i have grieved,
the death of my gramma.
you are trying to show me the tools.

i grieved her loss before i lost her.
now you are ignorant of what i need.
to grieve you i need to talk, or maybe to just be
with you in space,
until the hurt moves out and understanding moves in.
but there is no time for that, and i misunderstand how important i am.
and i wonder what is important.
and i blame.

you don't hold the reigns to my feelings
like beck's sea changes swell the tides of happiness,
some days.
others,
feed a stream of melancholy,
grey as a week of no sun.

three am last night the pain in my left nostril woke me,
so much burning i tossed and turned for an hour before sleep found a way back in.
this morning i sleep late and dream of letters un-sent and getting left behind, friends taking off in a horse and buggy,
my arms full of clothes and cameras as i try to find my way.
wake to the sound of the mail slot,
just before noon.
today is not sunshine
but partial clouds.
tomorrow will still come.

act 2.

i made a journal for you,
i keep wanting to give it to you.
there is an absence in my life
that you used to occupy.
the fugitives find me here
soft songs of remembrance
pushing into the space you created.
bon iver follows
telling me to be patient,
i turn him up
sending out all sound but his voice.
night brings on the soreness in my throat,
that endless cups of tea or hot water can't smooth out.
will this continue until you hear me out?
i can't wait that long.
i won't.

he sings over and over,
what might have been lost?
and i'm riding a wave with no end.

the journal is called
'sou-venir'
because of my love of language.
how souvenirs have come to symbolize
inexpensive trinkets people bring back from two-week vacations.
literally it means
memory or recollection.
but also,
broken down,
underneath and come.
how will you take it?
as a cheap remembrance of something brief
or
a space to place things
that once held meaning.

(entr'acte)

i have determined to grow lichen on my front steps
as a memory of love passing through.
a petroform made,
in a brief slice of someone's day
reads:
hi (heart) ks
she has no idea i intend this to last as long as the rocks on the canadian shield near betula lake,
formations of turtles, people, snakes.
attracting visitors from provinces away.
written about in guidebooks and attended for healing ceremonies.
a note on the front door says, all visitors to the back door please
my steps are going to last for centuries.
a testament to the strength of love.

(resume)

i could stay up all night writing half-baked poetry.
piecing together memories of dreams
applying them to you in a questionable sort of sense.
boiling pot after pot of water,
looking up words in the dictionary to make this fit the hurt.

but

the battery on this computer is running out.
bon iver is getting old.
tomorrow i need to do things that don't involve sleeping late to dream,
my yard awaits garden beds before
winter wraps me in those unforgiving arms.
if i drink any more tea my guts are going to liquefy.
and tomorrow night is hip hop,
so maybe i will dream of her
instead of you.

things right now

sadness over feeling dislocated
becoming a doula
reading about writing and dreaming of a winter of reading
thinking about the garden and how i will move the shed
feeling removed from a culture i belong to

together again

hip hop is a foreign language.
tight tanktop and running shoes
an aggregate of ballet, modern and improv
tries to crump
and crumbles like shale.
a mass of movement resembling nothing in particular.

plaid shirt, baggy sweats, hair falling out of ponytail
teaches us "house".

[watching your hips roll
i imagine.
watching your hips roll
i tempt the lava to flow through my gangly limbs,
tight tanktop and running shoes
not meant to be hip.]

what if you took your hands,
climbed me.
like a wall of granite maybe then
i'd be solid,
rock.

a little bit of here

and a bit of over there too. a remnant of summer cabin in flin flon. lazy days of crosswords and delicious food and books and sleeping in.

lullaby

the taste of your skin
a new word in my language.
i fumble over it
mispronouncing the formation
of vowel and consonant
til my tongue becomes familiar.

pronunciation affected by location:
the soft hollow behind your ears requires
a whisper, a slackening of consonants.
your breasts elicit
a language mix of old and new.
your belly,
a frenetic spill of mispronunciation and
unintelligible sound.

traveling further,
the words all blend together in a slurry
the lullaby of a foreign tongue.

if you know the route to my heart, why did you take the detour?

i've been busy:
-fostering heartache
-organizing my closet
-experiencing love
-thrift-storing
-screening my calls
-baking bread
-biking into the wind
-listening to the magnetic fields
-homesteading
-examining the things that make me happy

things that make me happy:
-people telling me their stories: the two women at value village, one who makes porcelain dolls and hasn't yet figured out to use her dremel tool, the other with a nunavut license plate.
the man at the goodwill who drove home the two wooden chairs and adjustable workbench that i was attempting to load onto my bicycle.
-attempting to log into my google account and finding that leighanne is still logged in from the last time she was at my house.
-simon and pat being an old married couple at windsor plywood
-david b and his teenage son riding bikes down westminster without helmets, his son signalling a left turn all cool + gangsta and david signaling behind him, completely normal
-riding home after dark behind two kids on bikes. a girl about 12 on a bmx, pedalling slow for her kid brother, about 5, riding a bike with wheels not bigger than 12inches.
-walking at night in the quiet of my neighbourhood, winter coming on strong.

sure-footing rocky trails

ok, so it looks like i'm not much of a summer blogger. i got hi-jacked by heat and fun and lakes and music and the long-day-looseness-of-time.
now it's that september time of change again and i feel an upheaval of all sorts of things.
i bought my house, for one, and it's lovely, but there are things i need to adjust to. and being unsettled with all my stuff in boxes makes my adjustment just a little more difficult. it is the sweet cabin in the city that i wanted, but that doesn't mean it doesn't need work.
tonight, in the slow unfurling of change, comes a little poem of remembrance...

she uprooted her life
on land with an ocean view
to work at a flower shop
in the bustling city.
85 acres of rock, moss, rain-forest,
tides that marked the days,
vines drooping flowers
hiding paths over bridges.
vines that she planted
with calloused loving hands.
chickens and tipi and tequila,
cats whose names have escaped.
harvest seasons of tireless bodies
busy minds
meals cooked
jars scalded
conversation made,
before dormancy and saying no to company.

i had the pleasure of you there.
sure-footing rocky trails to visit you,
in the solid wood house balanced above the sea.
we swam nights neck-laced by phosphorescence.
was it you who taught me phosphorescence?
instilling in me a knowledge i went on to yield casually,
hiding my pride.

here a star flickers in my window,
a distant cousin to the light in the forest night sky.
i am countless cities away,
scratching the surface of sacrifice.
you are only one,
and i wonder if the smell of flowers in your busy city
is enough.