A Mindful Life

If there’s a thing, a scene, maybe, an image that you want to see real bad, that you need to see but it doesn’t exist in the world around you, at least not in the form that you envision, then you create it so that you can look at it and have it around, or [...]

November’s Art Every Day projects were a way to play and engage with a part of myself I hadn’t in a few years. So I want to keep momentum, and I’m playing along with Illustration Friday. Luxurious / 5″ x 7″ pencil on sketch paper

When I face a blank page with the intention of creating, it’s a little daunting — or, as Claire days, “nervous-making.” If I don’t have any ideas, I try to sit with my curiosity as my hands move. One line on the page begets another, and another. Sometimes I’m really surprised with what comes up. [...]

This year, Claire has discovered a show called Octonauts. She passionately loves this show, and most particularly enjoys pretending to be the intrepid pirate cat named Kwazii. The Octonauts are undersea explorers who help aquatic life in trouble and learn about the ocean. So when I asked if she wanted to be Kwazii for Halloween, [...]

“A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” -John Steinbeck Been on the road and in the air a bunch this summer. School starts for Claire on August 20. Kindergarten, all day, everyday. A big journey ahead!

Pigtails streaming She kicks her legs with freedom Running toward life

The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky. –Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Lately I’ve been going dancing every Wednesday night — one of my best decisions of late. Called ecstatic dance, it also involves something called contact improv dance. Here’s a sample of how beautiful it is. The man in the video, Brandon, is visiting various cities in a search to relocate, and has come to Silicon [...]

When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. And now when every new baby is born its first laugh becomes a fairy. So there ought to be one fairy for every boy or girl. [...]

As Claire grew out of infancy and toddlerhood, it became evident that her rich imagination generated all sorts of stories with many plots. Our playtime changed. Claire has found it difficult to “share the story,” to play with. It isn’t really parallel play either (which is normal for the age). Instead, her play partner has [...]