deep happiness

dear readers, i had not meant to be gone this long. life on the hill changed in one minute and my heart is so full. I am not able to explain just yet but i desperately want to share my happiness with you. It is the kind of happiness that comes with great risk, so everyday, many times a day i whisper little things to myself to keep me in the moment, not looking past today.

I leave for Europe in a couple of weeks, that did come so fast. Leaving the farm and all that it means is so very hard but now it seems unbearable but i also know that once i hot Italian soil, i will know how lucky i am to be in such a place.

I am thinking of you, i hope life allows me to share more of my happiness with you in a more open way, i hate keeping anything from you, so i will whisper it into the wind and you just might hear it.

nesting time

Dear friends, i hope you are well and that february is being kind to you. My camera is fixed and i hope that i can begin posting regularly, the last few month have been iphone photographs and i am grateful to have been able to capture  what has been going on this winter on the hill with it, but i am glad once again to hold something that requires a little more thinking. I have spent the last few weeks at home, nesting with animals and as they say finding my center.

I am happy though to be going to montreal for a few days to spend with family & friends, we will celebrate christmas and new years on saturday since during the holidays everyone was under the weather. Sunday will be just my immediate family and we will make all our favorite foods and hang out and no doubt reminisce on times past. I have a need for family time, there will also be good coffee drinking and if i am lucky i hope to find a canele or two.

wishing you a wonderful rest of the week, hope to take some photographs to share with you soon.

a bientot,

nadia

spirit in a storm

hi, how are you. I am good, i feel happy. it is friday and little signs of holiday cheer begin to fill the house.  a wind and rain storm came to the hill last night and stayed, today i could hear trees fall in the forest as horses bolted across the fields, such power in both sounds. I had to walk against the rain and wind to recconect the horse lines to post, i could barely manage it, how is it the ducks and chickens just sit there while giant trees get moved around and the weight of me begins to feel feather light, a wonder.

there is pine in the house and it hangs from every window, i found in me a deeper breath, i had taken too many shallow ones and now i slowly come back to life:).  there will be many trips to boston and a trip to montreal in the next week. I hope to bake and make soups, listen to good music, take long walks and hope fully play in snow and a string instrument ( hope).

Okay i must go collect more wood and feed the fire, hope you are warm and that you find your go to space if things get to hectic for you. i will write again, i think soon.

Happy Solstice.

waiting for snow

i am waiting, that is what i have been doing. minutes, hours and days slip through slowly, yet a feeling of things moving quickly are also being felt. I am waiting for snow to fall, there has been none in fact since i have moved to vermont and this being my second winter there has been no snow, the planet is changing it's layers putting on new clothing to adapt to the rising heat and i don't like it.

There is no sign of holiday's here in the house and i keep telling myself to go out there and forage and bring back some pine, but in a time when i  hope for new life- taking any kind of  life seems unkind and i can not seem to do it, in fact a huge grey birch tree fell inches from the coop and house and as i cut into it yesterday i was filled with sorrow, the hypocrisy i feel writing this down for i burn wood to heat my house daily, life a delicate entanglement of wants versus needs. There is a huge branch of evergreen that fell because of it, perhaps i will simply string that along in the house or on the barn doors. you must think i have no spirit, i have asked that myself to myself and the timing of the holidays is mixing in with something much more pressing in my life and i am consumed by it, yet i stay quiet and still not to fully grasp what is coming. as i write this i know i must go out there and get that piece of green, i must fill the house with good spirit for in turn it will fill me.

I did go for a beautiful walk this morning, hence the photographs above. warm rain and fog kept me company, i explored the pond, writers shack the walnut grove, apple orchard and then entered the forest. i love it here, in fact this just might be (is) my favorite place on earth and the happiness i feel here i have never felt elsewhere.

nature of me

i am good at it, good at staying quiet when my insides scream. i am good at letting things roll off me even though they somehow end up inside of me. I am good at not pretending to pretend. i am good and believing it is my fault when it is not. i am bad at speaking when my insides are screaming, i am bad as i  keep things in when i should let them roll off of me. i am bad for taking the blame when you are in the wrong.

somehow things work themselves out, somehow there is fog and rain, sun and snow in one day. sometimes i am four seasons, i grow and shed, change and bloom all in on hour that is the nature of me and i am finally realizing some of it i can not change and some of it i no longer feel the need to change. i am i, like wool is wool.

I like this song for in it i recognize the quietness behind the screams, the static between two feelings.

can i tell

can i tell you about my days, can i tell you the small details that accumulate and fill the space of time, would that be okay? there so many little moments through out my day and even though i just asked if i could tell you, i realize how much there would be to write and i am not the best of writers. Instead can i tell you that right now i am sitting on the floor by the fire with my back to the couch my laptop resting on my thighs  tea cup to my side and music pouring out of my speakers. The sun is behind thick clouds but  still manages to create such a beautiful light.

Can i tell you that even though there is so much to think about, i have finally found a way to quiet my mind, not rush to get to a place i do not know. can i tell you that i have added some more things to my daily routine/rituals like holding a pencil in my hand and writing a few things that have trouble being said or written any other way and how i am doing push ups, gosh that sounds so harsh in contrast to what i usually say here but such a quick stress reliever and brings me a sense of calm. hands flat on the wooden floor, my weight resting on them as i move towards it and then push against it, move towards it, push away from it.

can i tell you that i took a long walk today and i touched the bark on trees and scooped the greenest of moss, it felt nice to feel these things,  to feel things in your hands.  right now the winter sun is coming in and that is nice on my skin, and the piano playing is also lovely. i am calm and that is unexpected.

hush

there is part of me that wants to hush everything, put a finger to my lips and say shhhh and yet there is part of me that wants to say everything empty all my thoughts, fears and hopes. i started to think is there anyone one who has that person in their life that they say everything too. I have some great people in my life but not one those, although i have no doubt they would except that role but it is i who has trouble.

Tomorrow will be epic, i can not say more even if i tried for even for myself as the very thought of it comes to surface i quiet it down. we all have things that change the path or confirm the path we are on, i wonder how many of those we get in out life time. i wrote those very words to friend via text yesterday, can i just say how much i hate texting i feel like it is some sort of demotion in friendship in a way,  anyhow as i wrote that down i thought surely i have had many path changing events but more i thought about it more i realized some of what i thought was huge disappeared shadowed by greater things.

I found this and something about it lifted my spirits, "stars in still water" by Jonsi, i know how to see those, i do not know how it came to be, perhaps my  mother teaching me to see beauty in everything.

*sophie and grooming created such a ethereal scene.

awoken

i decided i want to remember it the way it was when we were in it,  not how our over thinking minds and rationalization made them out to be. i guess what i am saying is that i do not feel the same but i am okay with not saying, me too anymore. i am putting away the armor now and i will greet you or him or them without it with the risk of being broken but also the possibility of being woken:)

*shots taken with iphone

elements

i think you might be looking for post about europe, work and play and i apologize for again putting those posts off for a little longer.

I am sitting at the dining table a mix of grey clouds made brighter from a sun that is trying to pierce through. this weeks rain,  wind storms and fog brought clarity and somehow there is both a lightness to my step and  a heaviness that allows me to know that i am in the moment. I avoided so many things in the last few years in the hopes of protecting walls i had painstakingly put up but the last week i walked towards those and attempted to shake them to see that they will still stand if attacked and i think they will, yet one can not know for sure. so instead i decided to carve out holes like look outs in it's facade and by doing so the sun came into my being and it felt warm and kind and raw but without edge.

dear readers i do not often express wants of physical objects since i hardly want such things but i have had a deep desire to learn the cello or even more so the bass and would like to find one that might have a story, one that has been allowed to age naturally, if anyone should know of such i would love to know about her, it's time for me to no longer put it off. you  might like this, i have listened to it  for a few days now.

the photographs were taken once again with my phone a tool that sees how i see and i have come to except it as such. i hope you are well and that your weekend will be good i have been craving the ocean and will make a good attempt to see it and ask why she let the wind get the better of her, NY i am sorry for the heartbreak.

the valley below

i am working inside the house, i am cold but i know that the house is warm between the mild weather and the fire burning i can tell  my core tempertaure is off i do not mind it since  it keeps me moving. the light is also unusual as well and i should pick up the camera but for some reason i stare at it instead.

the last few days have been one of returning to home not so much the physical home but the one within me.  i have done this by listening to a lot of music and reading some passages and also by taking an early morning walk or two but most of all by letting thoughts swirl and fall away more easily than i have been able to let go of them in the past. sometimes when i think of writing to you i want to list all my dreams, hopes and desires but lately i have realized what i want to do more than anything is describe the feelings i want to feel, like how one would describe the afternoon sun hitting a dusty window pane and the warm glow that comes from it or how the fog makes everything surreal as it's mist gently touches your face.

I am not numb, i say this because i think i must have been for a while, a long one even. yet i  also have a feeling of being one of a blank canvas with only slight brushes strokes just waiting to take shape.

the other morning on my way to montreal i came across this valley right down below form my home, i stood there for a long while, then i shot, the images are not what i hoped them to be but the feeling remains.

seeing the light, opened by friendship

early this morning, after a good sleep which is very rare for me i grabbed a sweater and a hat, a dog and my camera i set out for a walk, i needed it. the cool air greeting my lungs and i felt every breath. that my dear readers is also how the last few days have played out, i have purged so much unwanted clutter that has been piled in the walls of my heart and mind that every inhale and exhale has been felt.

this is not the post i promised to write about other peoples lives, the city and their success and i will but today i needed to write about being in the shadows and how i never minded it, in fact i have been pretty good at it my whole life, but as of late their has been such an unbalance that i am afraid i woke up and felt smothered by the lack of light i have received. I have for the very first time in my life a group of people  in my life who care for me, this perplexes me for truth be told i have not done anything for them in comparison to what i have done for others yet they somehow when i am speaking with them put me first and for some reason keep me there, i feel the difference and it is incredible feeling one that is both overwhelming and so kind that my heart feels the bittersweet ache of what true genuine loveliness is.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for believing in the possibility of good in me dear friends.

i read this quote yesterday and although i admit to hating to tell you  who said it ( keira knightly) i found it to be so true.

I don't think that you can fake warmth. You can fake lust,

 jealousy, anger; those are all quite easy.

 But actual, genuine warmth? I don't think you can fake it.

I also have been listening to Jonsi and he my friends can put fairy dust to your every day dream and make your daily life even more magical