Hi everyone!  Thanks for stopping by.  It’s been a long blog hibernation, but I’m delighted to say I’m out of the making-and-raising-babies cave and can’t wait to share some of where my creative energy is newly blossoming.  My birthday is February 13, and I’m considering that my horizon date for a re-launch of KristinNoelle.com – this time as a soulful sketch blog with all kinds of other offerings.  Can’t wait to see it completed myself!

Until then, blessings, and warm wishes that your winters are full of what you need!

Kristin

The wind and rain are howling outside, and I swear there must be a full moon to boot; something’s gotten into me.  I’m blogging, for one, and when did that last happen?  This has been a fiercely private season of growth for me, one where unlike the last, I hardly have words for what I’m learning, let alone time to form them into sentences.  I’m like that zucchini vine you planted last spring and then forgot about.  For weeks it grew and grew and grew, working its heart out under and over the ground, but noiselessly, and without the fanfare of something like snapdragons, until one day you happen to glance at the back fence and good Lord where did those leaves come from?  You get closer up and see, startlingly, that that vine is, well, alive, and taking up a good half acre, each leaf as big as your head.  And there are zucchinis, zucchinis everywhere, many so big you feel embarrassed even looking at them.  You wonder what in good sense you’ll do with them all, but more than that you want to laugh at how this, all of this, has happened under the radar screen.  Without you even noticing.

I’m working my heart out daily in my bumbling process of growth and have a hunch I’ll wake up one day and trip over all my zucchinis.  But in my day-to-day I live far more in touch with the challenges of raising two active, curious, willful kids as an introverted writer/artist in a very small apartment.  I live and grow and learn and grow and practice self control when my kids are driving me crazy and grow and pretend alongside of them to be a plumber/firefighter/farmer/clerk/mechanic/skunk/dog/cat/bull a hundred times each day and grow and daydream and grow and read a few sentences of a book and grow and journal and grow and try to talk on the phone with screaming and banging and raucous laughter in the background and grow and snuggle and kiss and rock and sing and wipe bottoms and read story after story after story and grow.  And all of it out of the public eye, off the blogosphere, unwritten.  Who can say how big my leaves have grown?  How many golden flowers speak of fruit as good as here, ready for the picking?

Soon (in June) N will walk the stage at graduation, marking the end of an era for us in this city by the Bay.  We’ll pack our things and head to LA to begin our next phase.  I’m not yet sure how I’ve grown, what lessons I’ve learned these last 5 years.  The last 2 in particular are mostly blur.  But I’m trusting that even in the forest trees fall, and even at the backs of unkept gardens vines grow heartily.  I’m trusting that with time, words will start to paint the outlines of meanings in what I’ve experienced, and will find their way to pages, paintings, songs.

I need to write more about identity. In my own mind I circle around this topic constantly. Does everyone?

There is a corner of my self that is a tuba. She plays my baseline. It goes something like: you (pause) need – a – la (pause) bel – oh – you (pause) need – a – la (pause) bel. And this goes on and on with very few breaks. It’s that driving need to be able to say to people what I “do”, or what I “am”, and have them instantly know what I’m talking about and, at least to some extent, respect it. Having a label (“writer”, “artist”, “teacher”) feels safe to me, and like I’ve automatically earned at least a B+ at life if one fits. And “mom” is not a label that’s ever counted, for some reason.

But there’s more to me than that tuba.

In me there is a vast section of drums. Some are of the type you’d find in fancy stores, but many are the kind you’d find only in villages so remote they aren’t mapped. These are drums that make me feel alive, or Alive, rather, which is to say free. Mostly their sounds are unworded. They pull me from small living, though – small meaning living that’s constrained and afraid of not measuring up or of looking stupid. When I hear them, they work magic on my feet, and before I know it I’m dancing and laughing and exploring all kinds of things with abandon – ideas, fears, interests, relationships, my own soul. When I’m dancing to these drums, it doesn’t occur to me to wonder whether I fit inside a label. Labels don’t matter – for me or anyone else – and it feels as if everyone and everything pulses with beauty and color and pathos, and I want to make love to it all. Or just dance.

Across the room from that whole section is a sad violin. The only song she’s learned so far is about how I’ll never be the person I wish I could be, and I’ll never be able to even define the person I wish I could be, so everything related to establishing value and identity is a lost cause anyway. I haven’t had the right life experiences, she sings, and my body type is all wrong, and I can never freely dance with those tribal drums because even if I wanted to, family and friends from throughout my life will always have me pegged as something totally not free, and their words and assumptions and body language will always create the invisible box that for all intents and purposes is the real, impenetrable one I’ll always live inside. Oh, her song is sad!

But there is a piano, too. And she can harmonize with that violin, a kind of empathetic tune, while not being overpowered by it. She plays all kinds of music. All kinds. She knows that an instrument – particularly one like she – is not constrained to one song, and is actually capable of more range and diversity than most people ever imagine. She can spend entire years learning classical music without fearing that’s all she’ll ever play. She knows she’ll play the blues because she’s always itched to do so, and that “tinkering” is where some of the most redemptive, transformative sounds are born. She can be elegant and refined and course and off-color and the sheer weight of her commands the whole symphony’s respect.

And I love her. I love my inner piano. She is easy to love and I feel safe with her, and like nothing is ever a lost cause or too late. With her I feel like nothing of my life has been wasted, and nothing ever will be.

I am a mom right now, yes, and for many years I have clung for dear life to my writer label. But I want to let go. I have no reason to doubt that I will write much, much more in my life. But who knows what else I’ll do? Who else I’ll be? I want to let my piano play what she wants for a while, and maybe put some new music before my tuba. It would sound nothing like the tired line she’s played forever, and everything like “celebrate life, silly!” And damned if that tuba won’t sigh, itself, with deep relief.

I think identity is a lot more like a crowd of musicians than the static, one-dimensional thing I’ve long assumed it to be.

the reasons why I dig (just before Eli tried to steamroll Charlotte)

(See previous post for an introduction to this series.)

Two of the many surprises of this last year have been that my “guts” are both far more limited and far more expansive than I ever dreamed. I have always known that I get edgy when I don’t get enough sleep or time alone or haven’t eaten for more than two hours. I need to pee and poo like anyone else, and tend to get cold easily. I like to have a small pillow between my knees when I sleep. My eyes are particularly sensitive to the sun. Things like this are all true, but I swear, my guts have been my superpower more than not when catering to my own needs has been difficult or impossible. “Mind over matter” has allowed me to make it through sundry discomforts with grace and dignity totally, and sometimes regally, still in tact.

Then I got pregnant for the second time, and realized someone stole my superpower. During that pregnancy I chalked it up to pregnancy–hormones and their accompanying insomnia and mood swings, constantly increasing physical discomfort and its accompanying insomnia and mood swings, anticipatory anxiety and its accompanying insomnia and mood swings, a two-year-old and his accompanying insomnia and mood swings. But once the baby came, and my hormones calmed down, I realized that try as I might, I could not find the bootstraps of my will. I wanted and had committed to so many things–exercising, writing, emailing, hosting friends, assuring dust and grime that no, a sublease wasn’t possible–yet very few ever happened. I came to feel cheated by my own body, since my will was alive but apparently had no one to do its dirty work. I had not experienced life like this before.

Simultaneously, I have been shocked and awed by the guts required to make it through the work of my days. On very little sleep, and rarely with even the buffer of that 4-hour block of deep sleep that happens early in the night for most people, I have needed to interact constantly with a totally dependent baby and a sweet and jealous and curious, active, inquisitive toddler. And I have had to find ways of transporting both of them safely into and out of those stores where you buy food and clothing and stuff. And make food into edible form for them. And deal with the “fall out” of said food hours later.

It all sounds so innocuous, and even appears so when observed, but the guts it has required for me to do it without being mean and destructive by the ninety-fifth time I’ve been asked the same question, or the thousandth time I’ve gone to bed without doing one of the things on the “really want to do once the kids are in bed” list (like, sit still; clip nails; read one page of book), or the millionth time I’ve tried to talk briefly on the phone with a friend or insurance broker or business owner only to be incapable of hearing them over the din–happy or sad–around me, have taken my breath away. I am without breath. Almost all the time.

But I do it! I dig deeper. And when I think I can’t dig one more spoonful more, there I am again, shoveling.

Apparently my superpower has been superfunneled into things I never expected needed it, so much so that there’s little left for that list of things my ego demands I want done.

Capitola Beach, June 2008

Well hello! Yes, I’m here. I can hardly believe it myself. After many, many months of trying to get my head above water, I think I may have discovered a little pocket of air opening up beneath the water (where I’m totally still dwelling), which may be enough to allow for some words here now and then. Writing has always been my primary means of finding and making meaning, and after many months of almost none of it (writing), I’m feeling starved for some (meaning). So here’s a first attempt at naming where I’ve been (in my not-writing life) and where I think I might be headed (on this blog).

Parenting two has turned out to be far more challenging than I ever imagined. It has called into serious question so many things I used to take for granted about myself, like: that I’m organized; that I can strategize my way out of most stressful situations; that I can always find time and energy to write; I can be depended on to arrive on time and not need to cancel (repeatedly); I’m aware of my feelings; I’m in good physical shape; I’m well-rested and clear-minded; I return emails; underneath the social graces, I’m not a generally frustrated person.

In the last year, almost every aspect of myself that I used to like has been stripped from me, and I’ve been on a long and bumpy path of making peace with that. I’d like to write more about that process here.

At the same time, I have discovered a world of joy and wonder that’s off the grid of public life, and, indeed, does not require its inhabitants to be anything like the person I used to be. It’s a world inhabited not by deep reflection, or eloquent words, or ego strokes. Here, no one gauges popularity or stylishness or smarts. Showering, brushing teeth, and lack of offensive odors are completely optional. In short, “keeping up appearances” gets zero traction.

Instead, we’re all very raw, and very real. When we need to burp or fart or drool, we do. When we eat, we always spill. When we’re happy, we squeal, sad, cry, mad, everyone in the room tends to know it. We sing about everything, dance often, and spend huge chunks of our days hugging.

Before now I have had, and desired, very few words to give to my life in this world of engagement with kids, but I think I’m ready to talk about it now. The challenges I’ve experienced in this world have tended to get worded so much more readily than the joys that I’d like the new challenge of balancing what I say about it. It is a breathtakingly wondrous world, truly.

And of course, like I said at the start, I’m starving for a sense of meaning in it all. I have had so little time for reflection that I feel adrift in a sea of not-knowing-how-I-feel-or-what-I-understand-about-any-of-it.

So here goes: a series of posts wherein I try to get caught up with myself and my world.

It’s Saturday. I’m sitting in my new little writing cove, tucked in a corner of our bedroom. Sun is streaming through the window to my right, and the house is quiet. I got about 5 hours of sleep last night and N and Eli both have colds. I’m probably coming down with one too. The house is a mess, toys and burp rags, dust, dirty dishes, laundry, kitchen utensils (E plays with those endlessly), sealed and unsealed mail littering every surface.

But I’ve such a swell of hope inside, such gladness to be alive. I’m coming out of the hardest adjustment phase of a second child – we all are. I’m excited to get back to this computer, however meager and chopped up my hours here are (N’s out with the kids for a little while) – to resume baby steps toward finishing my novel, expanding non-fiction endeavors, dusting off short stories and getting them off to find homes.

And I heard geese today (I think that’s what they were). Their calls came through the bathroom window, cracked to release steam from our un-ventilation into the outside stillness. The world outside was sleeping, blanketed in layers of frost. My sick boy was up on the other side of the door, husband dealing with his varied frustrations, but I heard them. I heard them speak into the sunrise. My bleary eyes and weary bones were caught up in a rush of hope at the sound. That hope flew out the window and joined their brisk formation, coming back happy and cold.

While all of these contrasts swirl around me, every reason to want to get up in the morning and a thousand more to want to stay in bed, I’ll leave you with a quote I read last night, one hand holding a book, the other a baby. It’s from David James Duncan’s book of essays titled My Story as Told By Water:

Our eyes, it has been said, are the windows of our souls. Since the soul is not a literal object but a spiritual one, eyes cannot be the soul’s literal windows. But they are, literally, openings into and out of living human beings. When our eyes are open, they become not one of our many walls but one of our very few doors. The mouth is another such door. Through it we inhale air that is not ownable, air that we share with every being on Earth. And out of our mouths we send words – our personal reshaping of that same communal air.

Seeing, I have come to feel, is the same kind of process as speaking. Through our eyes we inhale light and images we cannot own – light and images shared with every being on earth. And out of our eyes we exhale a light or a darkness that is the spirit in which we perceive. This visual exhalation, this personal energizing and aiming of perception, is the eyes’ speech. It is a shaping, it is something we make, as surely as words are a shaping of air. I feel responsible for my vision. My eye-speech changes the world. Seeing is a blood sport. (p 46)

With unhelpable bouts of negativity along the way, I’d like to try to see my seeing as something I can shape, to let my eye-speech smith a world, among so many other options, where hope peaks out from unexpected places. Where alongside whining toddlers and whining selves there are moments for writing, sun-streaked writing coves, geese in frigid skies, sounding their clumsy-elegant call: See the sun rise. Come: see.

Wow, the spam at this here site is out of control! Can I just say about Wordpress: “not as user-friendly as Typepad when it comes to dealing with this stuff”? My deep apologies for the grossness of it, and I’ll do what I can to get it taken care of today. As my time in front of this computer is *extremely* limited these days, “today” might need a few sets of quotes around it. We’ll see…

UPDATE:  Okay, I’m pretty sure I got the problem taken care of in terms of new spam coming in, but I still have to figure out how to mass delete all the old stuff that got through.  The support forum suggests that Spam Karma 2 pluggin will delete old spam, but so far it doesn’t seem to be doing so.  Suggestions welcome!

This is quite the liminal time for me, a season of transition and finding my bearings after losing them to a difficult pregnancy. As happened after Elijah’s birth, I’m shot with a surge of hope and creativity, a longing to get my hands and feet and face a mess in art and music, poetry, prose.

This time, however, I have a toddler besides the baby, with needs and frustrations and a keen sense for knowing what boundaries to push. And when. And though baby sleeps huge chunks of each day, Eli sleeps but a fraction.  All my creative energy is funneling into daydreams and lists of things I only want to do, scrawled quickly in my journal. My outsides, and the tasks of my days, are not aligned just yet with the yearnings that innerly spin.

Superficially, I yearn for new clothes. Clothes that actually fit, and that bear witness to the me of today. Part of me feels silly for hating my wardrobe; it’s mostly in good shape, and provides the warmth and covering I need. Other parts, though – my inner artist and psychologist and sociologist – know that clothes that fit well and that express outwardly what one feels inwardly (freedom, rather than stodginess, for example, or confidence instead of fear) are actually part of creating reality. They matter. Balance has to be made between wanton consumption and joyless, pious, under-consumption, but given my history with the latter, I’d like some newer clothes. And I’d like to make a plea to stores everywhere to stock clothing for very tall women. Consider that shouted from rooftops.

Less superficially, I long for contemplation. Meditation. Spiritual practice. I’ve constructed and discovered the outlines of a lifestyle that enlivens my soul and questions that spur growth and connect me more deeply with others and God. It feels, though, as if such outlines don’t exist if existence implies experience of them. There’s hypocrisy in all my lofty ideals, as the me of my actual life is far more consumed with doing than being, with trying to squeeze in sleep instead of prayer, with wiping bottoms a thousand times oftener than examining life or soul.

And somewhere in between my surface and my depths, I feel like I’ve outgrown this site. I want a new design, a new focus, a different story to tell. Which layers of me do I reveal here? Which thoughts do I explore? Do I lean more toward ups and de-emphasize downs? Portray myself far more serenely than this tattered, visceral me?

Time will have to tell. Or not, as the case may be. In the meantime I’ll live the gangliness of mis-matched me’s, outers and inners askew. I’ll keep snatching moments for daydreams. Keep scrawling out my lists. Keep hoping things into glimmers of existence, and consider that prayer.

And honestly, those booties, they’ve got to be wiped.

It’s evening and Elijah’s asleep. The dishes are done, and the air outside is cold enough to warrant closed windows. So it’s quiet. Much more than usually so.

I came here to check my email quickly, to browse a few blogs, to put some music on an iPod I’ve never used, which N won in a raffle, with the aim of tackling, to music, more things on my list. The time it just took to figure out the iPod makes me feel old and a generation removed from cool. And then this, a Ben Harper ballad from a CD my dear friend made me, starts playing in my ears:

Beloved One

I’m feeling vulnerable these days, daydreaming, often more subconsciously than consciously I think, of being loved and rocked and tended like a child. Elijah’s been teething this week, waking often before dawn, needing to be rocked and sung back to sleep. And I have often been awake already, tossing and turning in this body that won’t sleep. I want a mama to help me to sleep, too. I want to be sung to. I want to be smiled on, throughout my days, and have meals prepared for me and activities chosen. I want to know viscerally that this body, with its burgeoning belly and veins, its racing heart, its squished up lungs and the aches that make me feel 80, is beautiful. Miraculous. A thing of awe. All things other than what I now feel.

I want to be able to sing Beloved One to myself.

Christine wrote a beautiful post today at her Abbey of the Arts, about bathtime. Its womb images, so poignant to me in this “season of expansion”, sooth me. Vicariously I feel the love I want to be given, the love I want to give myself, and feel myself surrounded by.

I press repeat on Beloved One, offering it as a prayer. Receiving it as an answer.