October 24, 2010

I’m doing the very thing they say you’re not supposed to do.

If you have insomnia you should not get up.  Certainly do not turn on the computer.

But let’s not call this insomnia.  It’s much more romantic to blame it on the brightness of the moonlight that’s casting midnight shadows through the window.  Wild with a full, illumined moon, I’m throwing caution to the wind at 1:15 and posting my daily chronicle.

In this reckless abandon, I’m tossing open the curtain in raw exposure to reveal myself in all my cyber nakedness.  Yes, here’s a screen shot of my Sexy (in this case, not so sexy) Stats.  Thanks to Nick, who’s hiding out in Saginaw (at least one of my of two loyal site visitors is going to love the mitten connection) I’ve got Flot to make my charting more robust than ever and my stats page “super sexy.”

Posting about your blog stats is pretty unsexy, I would say.  Especially when you’ve got single digit numbers like me.  But I’m feeling careless in the moonlight.  Besides, what do I have to lose to expose myself this way?  As the bar graph reveals, this bold move will only be viewed by a handful, half of which are crawling search engine robots.  They’ll never read these words.

So what am I doing here, standing naked all alone?

The words of William Stafford come as some semblance of an answer (October 9 post:  The Way It Is).  I’m following the thread.

And I sort of like that no one’s following me in this process.

An artist reminded me recently of the cycle of the cocoon to butterfly.  That there’s no need to tear into the chrysalis before it’s time.

And there’s no holding back the butterfly at lift off.

Who knows, maybe my site stats will get sexier.  For now I’m just following that silken thread which may unravel to me to flight or wind me down some other road.

October 9, 2010

For a special Saturday morning treat my son, Jeb, and I buy donuts and eat them in the park.  I buy him his first surfing magazine at the check out counter and we look at big waves – “oh…look, he’s in the tube!” – while eating maple glazed pastries.  Sugared up, Jeb wants to run the training course and swing really high.

Back home, we try playing Neil Young‘s “Razor Love” together.  I’m strumming the guitar his dad brought back from India and Jeb sounds great with the harmonica and shaker.

jade and garnet on waxed linen - photo by Jessica Dofflemyer

I’m still obsessing on jade and spent part of the morning stringing beads on to waxed linen.  I ponder over the coincidence that we saw a toddler named Jade at the playground on the swing set.

There is no point to me making a necklace but it feels good and I don’t want to stop.  A line from what I think is a poem by Rumi comes to mind – something about following a thread.  But after searching through old journal entries and online queries, I realize that I’m thinking of William Stafford‘s poetry.

The Way it Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change.  But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

Something’s changing.  I don’t know exactly where I’m going but I’m following the thread.