define.

little forest, olympic national park . april 2009

When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.

Wayne Dyer

tuesday truths (a guest post from geek girl)

photo by geek girl

it is tuesday
and newly fallen snow is
slowly beginning to melt
again...

when liz asked me to guest blog,
i did a little dance of "me? me...someone-wants-me-??"

this is a familiar dance
for me.

and it makes me wonder why...
why can't i see the value in what i have to offer
when i can see it so readily in anyone else?

i have a photo show happening right now
as we speak
and i downplay it to anyone who asks...
"oh, it's just..."
"it's only..."
"it's nothing really..."

i don't want to make money from photography.

i just want to be known for something...
that's all. i want to be thought of as artistic in some way...
and yet, i can't accept it when it is given to me.

does anyone else ever feel this way...
struggling so hard to be good at something
but then,
not sure if you will ever know when you are being good
at something...

will i ever be good enough for me?

*****

AG is a reader, a writer, a picture taker and card maker. She is a
lover of words, a collector of phrases and desperately wants
a treehouse. You can often find her on the side of the road,
if the light is right, taking pictures of weeds...totally oblivious to
oncoming traffic. You can also find her at two of her familiar haunts:
her blog, geek ink, where this month she is attempting a poem a day and flickr.

love.

spring returns . march 29, 2009

The only thing we can never get enough of is love. And the only thing we can never give enough of is love.

Henry Miller

(thank you)

scenes from a saturday adventure (of lizzy and jonny)

five (really) really good things (a guest post from kelly b)

clancy and kelly sporting new sharpie tatts, photo by kelly

I thought of doing a cheer to introduce myself, but I wasn’t a cheerleader. Maybe a sorority song...sorry GDI all the way...or maybe a Buddhist style chant, well as much as I like to think I am, I really am not that enlightened. So I will stick with what I know and just give it to you straight:

I am the next guest blogger for my dear sweet miss liz. I have slowly gotten to know liz over the past couple of years, via our blogz and last year I was blessed when I got to finally meet up with her at squam. To say the least I have fallen in love with the girl. I wear her aprons, scarves and mantra necklaces and when I do, they make me feel like I can conquer the world.

Where liz is soft and kind, I am a bit loud and silly. Liz is studious [she edits], I am not! liz drives a bug and I drive a vue. But we meet in the middle sharing our love of vintage finds, pretty necklaces, giggling, a deep love for our grandparents and our home state of Indiana. One day we are going to sneak off and rent a beach house on the ocean..right girlie!!

Since it is good Friday – how about five really REALLY good things:

1) if you haven’t heard of jeremy sweet – his name says it all. he is one sweet artist. Check out his new screen prints and other art work. sueno is one of my favorites…

2) don’t forget to submit your artwork for the squam art show! if you attended last September, then please submit. liz and susan are working so hard to make this happen for us. Plus you get to show in a real gallery…seriously – get off your duff and do it!

3) Looking for something black and white – check out my new find: megan auman. Her jewelry and sculpture objects can be found on etsy. They are bitchin’.

4) Have you seen the little terrariums at made by mavis? The greens of the moss make me drool.

5) …and my last really good thing is not a link. It just a shout out to each of the chicks who rock my everyday. I am so blessed that I get to hang with you whether it is, taking out the tandem road bike, belly laughing through lunch, watching you hold your new great niece, catching up on the phone because I am in the Midwest and well, you aren’t, or just keeping in touch through the blog lines.

On this good Friday, so much goodness in my life! peace. out.

(we would love to hear about your really good things. please share one or two or five in the comments)

*****

Kelly Barton has a warped .crazy .colorful mind, is happiest when she is creating in her attic studio, and truly believes in world peace. She dreams one day of living in warmer lands, listening to the crashing waves, as the sun beams down upon her face. She blogs over at camp indigo and her shop is the happy girl over at etsy. She would love for you to come visit…..seriously – anytime.

a photo series (a guest post from jonny)

for the last few months, jon has been taking photos using his "not so young" cell phone. he turned off the flash and the results are often surprising. they look like old photos taken with a larger camera, perhaps even a polaroid...

here are a few from his ongoing series:

evening sky, photo by jon

diffuse, photo by jon

space needle, photo by jon

march eve, photo by jon

wax moon, photo by jon

Jon says: Since the cell phone is with me most of the time, it is a convenient tool for capturing spontaneous pictures. At first I was disappointed in the resolution of the photos, but then I realized that they have their own sort of charm. I have found myself thinking more about the look of my surroundings when considering picture subjects.

*****

Jon is a teacher and likes to ponder the mysteries of the Universe… He lives in a little house in the Pacific NW with his wife (Liz) and their dog Millie.

See more of Jon's photos (including some "blasts from his childhood past") on his flickr.

notes for the journey (a guest post from kristen)

away, photo by kristen perman

Hello all, sweet Liz has graciously bestowed the honor of guest posting here while she's away. I've always loved Liz's Notes for the Journey. I find some great links and almost always find my wallet a little lighter because of some yummy etsy store or website that I can't resist. Wink.

Liz and I have been reading one another's blogs for awhile now. We share a lot of blogs in our readers and we also have blogs that neither of us visit. It's my intention to either remind you of familiar friends, or introduce you to someone or something you might not have seen yet.

Without further ado...

My crack online, the selby. I love the side links most of all.

Luzie is here in the States for a year from Berlin as a Fulbright scholar teaching at Gettysburg college. Her time here is ending soon; in this beautiful post, she writes about living in the moment.

I'm not much of a cook despite my small love affair with chefs and cookbooks and cooking blogs. The Wednesday Chef is one of those blogs. I bounce a little in my chair when there's a new post in my reader and I plan recipes for the week from the recipe index. Tonight when I go to Whole Foods, I'll pick up the ingredients for gingerbread.

My friend Jen is a bit of a superhero. After years of helping the homeless find housing, her little family of three sold off most of their worldly possessions and packed the car to move to Belize. Her blog posts are compelling and thoughtful and for me, a bit awe-inspiring because I know I could never be that girl.

It wouldn't be proper for me to leave here without a little enabling, I mean a glimpse at a few of my favorites over at Etsy.

These bags are beautifully constructed with a fun interior fabric. Divine. These polka dots would be perfect on top of these coasters, don't you think?

Thank you Liz for allowing me to visit here,

Kristen

*****

Kristen Perman is a coffee-drinking, tea-loving, mama, acupuncturist, and herbalist in love with photography and polaroid, trying to find her way in a suburban oasis. Read more from her at her blog, Sticking to the Point, and visit her etsy shop, Abishag, to see more of her photography.

gramps

my grandfather died on march 28 as jon and i were on a plane flying across the country to south carolina to see him. we spent the last week with my family. i was able to stay in my grandparents' home.

it was a gift to stay in that home for six nights as family came and went. it was a gift to take down a mug from the cupboard for tea . to sit on my grandfather's bed and lay my head on his pillow . to walk around the yard in the morning chill and see the lily of the valley peeking out and hear the neighborhood children's laughter....

it was a gift to show my family the family tree she had shown me the last day i saw her in 2004 . to hear my uncles talk . to hear the glass of the china cabinet rattle and remember hearing it as a child when i would walk through the living room hoping not to get caught but then suddenly that noise would fill the house and i would scurry out before she found me and then to share that very same memory with my cousin...

it was a gift to stand before him and tell him how much their love shaped me and how i would share that love for all my days . to listen to my great-aunt tell the stories and the tall tales and the snippets of truths i did not know . to hold jon's hand when i struggled and to always know he was there as a constant source of grounding for us . to feel my mom's arms around me when i crumbled when the surrealness gave way to truth . to share moments of what is real with my brother...

it was a gift to walk through the house and soak up every corner and breathe in the smells and take in every texture and open my heart to memories . to hear my uncle sing a song grandpa sang to us all and in that moment to be able to hear his voice fill that kitchen and remember that it always lives within me, within us, and know that the energy surrounds us if we are still enough to feel it...

gramps and me . at the beach . probably 1978

it was a gift that my mother held the phone up to his ear that night before so that i could say i love you and to then hear him rally for a moment and recognize my voice and tell me he would see me soon and to hear him say i love you and then repeat those words again as she took the phone away . it was a gift to have those last words be the last words i would hear and to know he was saying them to me . it was a gift to see the photo of him with me and take it home in the frame so that i could have a little piece of him, of us . it was a gift that today, as i am back in my home now, that i easily found the poem he wrote a few years back and emailed me...it is a gift to find that poem today and hold him in the space around my heart...

In my room on a chest

sets a picture, one of those I like the best.

A man and a child walk along in the sand,

He looks down at her as he holds her hand,

she's looking back at someone and seems to say,

don't worry, I'm with my grandpa today.

*****

i'm going to take some time away from here for a bit. and i know, in the way things go, i will most likely be in and out with notes to share, but for a couple of weeks, starting tomorrow, some friends have agreed to step in and share some words and posts and links and really good things with you here in this space.

thank you for reading and being out there in the world...

blessings,

liz