This is my grandfather in 1959. He had a massive heart attack last night and is still not in the clear. Please include him in your prayers.

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And happy Thanksgiving, friends. I hope there is much love and kindness in your lives, and that you have much to be thankful for.

gracious Father, who open your hands and fill all living things: Bless the lands and waters, and multiply the harvests of the world; let your Spirit go forth, that it may renew the face of the earth; show your loving-kindness, that our land may give her increase; and save us from selfish use of what you give, that men and women everywhere may give you thanks.

http://marinahale.wordpress.com

Following the trend, and moving away from livejournal, I guess. I'll keep reading here, though, of course.

Some other places you can find me:

Goodreads
Facebook

I do hope you'll keep in touch.

guysssssssss !!!! i am going to library school !!!

finishing up a scarf for Joshua. 3 March 2009.

All my life I have loved travelling at night, with a companion, each of us discussing and sharing the known and familiar behavior of the other. It's like a villanelle, this inclination of going back to events in our past, the way the villanelle's form refuses to move forward in linear development, circling instead at those familiar moments of emotion. Only the rereading counts, Nabokov said. So the strange form of that belfry, turning onto itself again and again, felt familiar to me. For we live with those retrievals from childhood, that coalesce and echo throughout our lives, the way shattered pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope reappear in new forms and are songlike in their refrains and rhymes, making up a single monologue. We live permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever story we tell.

Michael Ondaatje

My husband writes me a love letter in Hebrew and gives me a key to help me decipher it. A love puzzle.

Something continues and     I don't know what to call it
though the language is full of suggestions
in the way of language
                but they are all anonymous
and it's almost your birthday     music next to my bones

these nights we hear the horses     running in the rain
it stops and the moon comes out     and we are still here
the leaks in the roof go on dripping     after the rain has passed
smell of ginger flowers     slips through the dark house
down near the sea     the slow heart of the beacon flashes

the long way to you is still tied to me     but it brought me to you
I keep wanting to give you     what is already yours
it is the morning     of the mornings together
breath of summer     oh my found one
the sleep in the same current     and each waking to you
when I open my eyes     you are what I wanted to see.

I admit it, I've recently come to really like American football.

Diecembre, from Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry by les Freres Limbourg

Today is the anniversary of the first time I heard my husband's voice. I have grown this year in ways that I could not have expected, and for which I do not entirely have the language. Every day I choose to love and to give of myself, more and more, and it is in the choosing, I think, in the decision to love--to share myself, the minutia of my past, the yearnings for the future--in this opening, in this gifting, that my life is becoming not less mine, but more. It is in our consciousness, in the fullness of our vulnerability, in the generosity of our shared life, that we grow more and more into ourSelves, forgiven and humbled by the light of loving.

Spicy Hermits, canned for Joshua's grandparents, December 2008

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flipflopping Florida winter weather, the dry windy cool makes me think rain and then the humid heat bears down, sweet and burdensome, casual and usual as yearning
missing Santa Fe winter
cookies, with the windows cranked open, warm nutmeg and cinnamon, warm walnut skins on the tongue
Friday's small black puppy paws on my legs, small black puppy eyes begging for raisins
curling up to netflix movies stored over the week for the occasion of my days off
focaccia with pesto and hummus for dinner
the nourishment of kisses

i love my husband.

New Hampshire. August 2008.

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Heading to California tomorrow!

the tide coming in. New Hampshire. August 2008.

California from the 22 October through the 29 October.

For my birthday dinner Joshua and I made butternut squash-sage-pecan raviolis with garlic white bean sauce and braised collard greens. There was homemade coconut cake for dessert. There were many kitchen-related gifts. There was chardonnay.

Sweetness abounds, here.

Sending my love.

a bowl of cicadas collected on my last day of gardening, Boston, August 2008

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spent the entire day at the science museum
leaving tomorrow

the tan line of my gardening gloves
free yellow watermelon from Alice at the farmer's market
mosquito bites on my ankles
the mist coming off the lake at 5 am
the concentric circles of a fish's mouth at the surface of the water
molecules
the scent of our bodies spooning

molting cicada
last day of work
figuring out how to say goodbye

416 pots of vinca
sunburned knees
false fall
how we pray