the light of my being

A mix of soft snow and fog is creating such an ethereal afternoon here on the hill. Music is playing and a little girl is getting ready for her french class.  I like the drive that brings me to madame Sabine's house, where i drop of my little Poet but for a moment afterwards I am lost, who am I when I am not mothering, who am i when i am not running or creating something.  Those questions are slowly being answered as i try to navigate this new path.  

It is wrong to wish to go back to certain times of certainty and confidence a time where maybe i took happiness and in the moment for granted. Forward, will bring me to a  place similar in feeling but how much does the heart crave peace and solid beats.   This year, will be one of travel as that side of me stayed dormant last year due to being spread to thin. right now I feel as if there is so much of me to give,  but no clear recipient or vessel other than my darling to catch it all.  

Again i find myself wanting to do something beyond what benefits me. The hill needs so much of  my attention and i can not wait to make it all shiny and new again.  I have been working on a project that if successful will teach me so much about the merge of past and future- helping to create a balance i often seem to lack in my personal path.

Today it is the keys of the piano  that has me feeling all sorts of things and this image i took of Poet the other day as we traveled across the mountain with our recovering bodies and sat at a cafe. I spotted the light and before i could say anything this little being ran to it and then i suddenly forgot where the light source was coming from,  i remembered it was all her…..

(today's music)

the soft rain and warm air

Dear friends, thank you so much for the comments and emails, made me smile but moreso gave me this sense of familiarity that I have been craving.

Poet and I have been home with head colds and except for the chores we have not ventured outside in days, Today I just needed a walk and although it was raining the air was warm and the drops soft. The landscape always changing, today my favorite winter colors emerged the ones that feel as if you are walking in painting, Andrew Wyeth if i was to be specific.

I have decided to devote a half hour of my day to write here in these pages, a half hour of listening to music and writing. I sat down with Poet and  told her my plan and that she could read or draw during that time, she looked at and said " I will make dinner" I write this as she is handing me slices of oranges between her preparing dinner. She cooks so beautifully and passionately at her age, I taught her knife skills very early on, when i realized she would always go for the knife and it was best to teach her the proper methods. She knows how much olive oil to put in the pan, how to snap asparagus and peel garlic. She can combine food  so beautifully matched like chickpea, lemon, garlic and fresh herbs. I should take photographs for you. I am sipping some sparkling water as I type the only way I can drink water these days and I make it myself, I know it seems silly to speak about it but this simple machine that requires no electricity and can instantly turn my well water to this bubbly water makes me kid like happy.

It is amazing how we could run from a certain kind of rain and in another walk gently not caring how wet we get.  I have not done so many of the things that used to come easy, like daily walks no matter the weather. Today we started again.  The weather has gone from mild to extreme cold and mild again. I like my winters with a good two feet of snow and in the thirties,  it healthy that way- the things that need to be dormant are allowed to do so, the animals body temperature is steady, food intake predictable and healthy and the quiet that snow brings helps one quiet the urge to do more than one can. 

I must go now, Poet has nappa cabbage, pineapple, garlic on the counter, i am wondering what we are making:)

finding my way back here, this abandoned place

Dear Friends,

I will never be able to fill in the pages with the moments and stories that have taken place in the years I have been away. Yet i  might on occasion travel back to memories that helped thread together parts of myself that has brought me back here.

I am  not sure, if anyone I once knew and think of often will find themselves back here to this abandoned place. Either way, I will paint you picture with little vignettes of words and images and let you piece things together, take what you need and for those who felt abandoned by me, i am truly sorry- i paid the price for doing so.

I am sitting at my kitchen table, it is winter , dark and windy the kind that makes the windows rattle and has the fires warmths disappearing before it reaches my skin.    I am listening to Keaton Henson, my beautiful four year old daughter Poet is on the couch "reading" and i am pleased that i am typing away, finally.

There is reluncholus flowers on the table in a white pitcher that i bought her on my way back from Montreal because I was told when I left she thought " mommy is gone to get dinner and buy me flowers" it was bittersweet to get that call, that i could not turn around right then and make my way back to her hurt, All is well now, we have spent the last three days in pajamas with head colds, roaring fires, tea and to many documentaries, her latest infatuation Volcanos.

Keaton just sang this phrase" do you know who you are……are you tired" gosh,  i am and this very moment i do not know exactly who I am. You see the last few years I threw myself in project that took every ounce of me and although it gave back, with people and kindness those things quickly got devoured by a horrible man who desguised himself as a caring loving human and even though all the signs where there that he was the opposite of who he portraying, i thought that no one could see his kindness but me only to realize I was the only one that needed him to be kind therefore i willed it but it never came and it broke me.

You see it was not that i thought i was different from all the men and women he has done this to before but it was simply because i thought, surely he had evolved as a human, recognizing that the power and happiness he must get by  being an instinguisher of light, destroyer of dreams could not be sustainable, could not keep him happy for long- I was wrong, he needs to see you  build partially so that he could hear the recking ball of his being destroying another. Always saying how he needs biggest and the best and yet not being able to come even near to being decent or good enough, kind enough, helpful enough- he hears it to or perhaps sees it in you when you realize that he is a fictional character and yet you have the grace and kindness in you to not point out but the reflection he catches is enough to bring his fury, call in his ego and as lightning hits a tree he burns you. I once said to him I forgive you, it took all i can to say it,  such a long journey to get to that place where i could genuinely mean it, his reply " your not god" the man with no empathy i realized then, the reason he was always working on his spirituality was because  where once laid a heart now was colder then the river he swam in. Yes dear man, I am not God how could i be, when you believe yourself to be.   I will be well, I have a lifetime to get there,

I love the violin, even now the music playing is heavy with it, it has been an influence in my life and now more than ever it has become a sanctuary and at times even a daily live performance.

I must go now,  put on my wool hat and socks and walk against the wind with feed buckets filed with sheep and horse grain- how lucky is the life i lead, where every night I am summoned outside under the stars to be doing one of the most primitive things to man.

I am going to give you what i can, dear readers while depositing memories here.

With Kindness,'nadia