Home

An idea, a concept, an intrigue has been floating - sometimes swirling - around in my head and pinging my heart recently. I catch it in song lyrics, conversations, and turning pages.

Home has been a fluid experience in my life, while also steady and stable enough in certain senses to keep me grounded in shifts of geographical location, school environments, and community circles. I am not trying to nail down a definition of it for myself right now, but I am wanting to churn through it intentionally in my art, my interactions, and my writing.



I know right now that "inner settledness" makes a lot of sense in relation to home, and in seeking this, the ability to name a place home for as long or as short as may be the case comes more easily. And love. Love is essential here; being in a place of receiving and getting to offer overflow.

A Day Off

My weekends begin on Sundays, and I like to pretend that the fact that I get Mondays off while most other people head back to work, means my weekends are extra long. Sometimes it feels that way. Other times forty-eight hours feel like twenty-four.

Today was such a pleasant day off that I wanted to share snapshots of a bit of all I enjoyed. Simply having the leisure of pulling out my camera to freeze a moment kept a lightness within me.

The light of sunshine poured through the windows of our home as I pushed up screened opening to let in the declaration of summer.



Radishes on buttered bread with fleur de sel are my favorite summertime snack. I made them into lunch with the addition of this simple dish, subbing in fresh fava beans and mint from the pot on our front steps.



I just love the little details of this home. Especially the fresh flowers that rotate in each week from my roomie's parents' garden.









And then there's the joy of having an art corner of my own with easel and palette and tubes of paint to squeeze and smear. To have a spare room that is beautifully sunlit and accommodates my excessive art supplies is not something I take for granted. (Though, I was thinking, it would be nice if a mat cutting room came with it too...)



I had time to enjoy all these things as well as take a long walk along the gravel trails of a nearby park with towering, fully-green trees shading my way. There are so many cute old houses around here to keep me fascinated on exploratory walks through the neighborhood. And I love that two great grocery stores are just a jaunt away.

I was able to revel in all these things today and am now ending the day as the last orange light of the sun slips behind silhouetted evergreens beyond my living room window. Old favorites, Glen and Mar, softly sing through my speakers. Buttons on jeans hit the metal dryer walls. It won't be too late of a night, and I'll wake up rested for my early morning run tomorrow.

Even though life's current rhythm doesn't accommodate this blog very often, I appreciate you still hanging on and meeting me here now and then. Till the next mood strikes, the next recipe inspires, or the next painting completes itself (I'll definitely have something to share in that regard in a few weeks!)...

Full-Bodied: Creativity Boot Camp

I've had to cut myself a lot of slack lately. There are so many things I want to do: organize my new room, hang art on my blank walls, get up early to run, stay up late to "be productive", finish books long drawn out, move on to new equally relevant ones. Between my hours of work, bus travel to and from, and the appointments in my planner, I'm being reminded that so often I set unrealistic time lines.

I know I am not the only one participating in Creativity Boot Camp with a million other things weighing on my mind. So, I read Madeline's guidance for each day and do what I can with each one and sometimes I get through the journal prompt, other days I pull out my camera for the word prompt, sometimes I do both, and some days I just carry the additional thoughts and awareness in my head.

I loved today's daily thoughts to heighten senses and simply savor each encounter with scent, sound, touch.

While my job does not revolve around artistic creativity, there are a lot of sensory elements that feed this aspect of my spirit. I touch cheese, I smell it, I taste it, and I describe each of these elements to my customers. Our primary "wine guy" stopped in this afternoon and poured me a glass of a white and a red and we swirled and inhaled and savored. These are the obvious elements of sensory engagement in my daily life.

In response to a few questions from Creativity Boot Camp, the most pleasant sensation I recall is in the nose of the Sauvignon Blanc. It was satisfaction alone.

The most memory-invoking was the experience of drinking my tea as I read the prompt for the day and sat at the table with my breakfast. I have a strong affection for hot milky black tea thanks to the four months I lived in Oxford in which I survived mainly on PG Tips and Digestives.

The heart-tugging sensory experience of seeing the sky transition from grey to purple to orange to pink drew me to the stone steps outside our door with camera in hand. I ditched the cliché photos I had snapped of a glass of Pinot Noir and hung onto the definition of full-bodied found at Merriam-Webster:

"Having importance, significance, or meaningfulness"

I looked at the house that has turned into a home in the last week and the sky that was my salvation when I lived in Abilene, TX, where natural beauty rarely amazed, much less surfaced. Since leaving West Texas I have seen many beautiful corners of the world and the contrast I know now makes encounters with beauty that much more beautiful.

Place is important to me, though I hold the term "home" loosely. I'm swift to attach it to geographical locations and particular bedroom walls, but I'm also lax to pick it up and move it along to new scenery when the time comes.

So, for as long as this place is appropriate to call home, I'm finding importance, significance, and meaning in inhabiting and enjoying it. I'm so grateful the sky follows us everywhere we go, and there will always be sunsets and sunrises and reminders through them of how striking beauty is to the soul.

Grow: Creativity Boot Camp

I meant to get on board with this Creativity Boot Camp from day one, but the weekend got away from me and I forgot all about it until my run yesterday morning. By last night I had made it back around to the website and was determine to get down to business. And this is the best sort of "business" I've ever had to do. Yes, it is soul-digging but refreshing and rewarding and worthwhile.



The word for the day was "grow" and the journal prompt was listening to music of your past to conjure up those feelings of deep emotion experienced in younger years, at times of more naivety and/or rawness.

It was perfect timing for me to leap in. I am a music junkie.

I have assigned certain songs or bands to different stages of my life and places I have been. Damien Rice's O and Sixpence None the Richer's Divine Discontent epitomize my senior year of high school. Throw in Brandon Heath's "Small Town Flame" and certain pieces from Les Miserable that I mourned through on the piano and flute, and you have a girl with dreams but concerns about the world's safety in heart matters. Not just in love but in freedom and companionship and the purity of beauty.

To a degree I suppose I still have these ideas and wonderings but with a bit more seasoning. Time has proved both beautiful and tragic in the six years that have passed since I threw my cap in our little school gym and envisioned a life of independence.

I have laid claim to the self-titling of artist. I have trembled with paintbrush in hand, anxiety overwhelming; I have seen brushstrokes moving and colors inspiring beyond my humble inclinations. I have seen brothers marry, friends grow to near-family, and a dad walk out in a way that still sends reverberations. The music and the hope and the dreaming and the loving and the losing have all mixed together and clashed in varying degrees, and I'm left knowing that the best way to move on is to keep sowing beauty. To keep believing Beauty. To keep creating as I was created.

I was reminded of this by the draw to engage in this boot camp, and as I prepared today, one of my favorite bloggers emphasized the notion. A past entry of hers always brings me to tears over the innocent sincerity of this internal desire to re-create that so many of us bear.

I'm participating in this boot camp for me. Because my creative juices need a good, proper uncorking. It's been awfully dry around here. However, a blog is a shared space and I never mean for what I write to be purely selfishly focused. I hope the things I publish in the next week and a half bless and inspire you as I grow and am inspired.

Here's to growth. Here's to the little green fruit I discovered on our tree today in this new yard. It's the tree outside my new window, and I had no idea it was a fruit tree!

Urging Fall into Existence

The walls of my bedroom are empty. I still haven't gotten around to putting up my maps, photos, and artwork since moving in and haven't minded so much, but today their white scratchy texture is ominously silent. I think it's time to let myself settle in a bit more.

One year just sounds like so little time until I pack up my bags, tuck my college diploma under my arm, and head off to another chapter of life.

Yesterday I came back from a couple days in Dallas, and sometimes it is leaving that reminds me that I don't mind staying. This apartment in Abilene is the closest thing to home I have right now. So it's time to decorate the walls.

It's time to let myself move in a bit more and release some grudges against this place that has become home against my will. One grudge I hold right now is against the weather. It is so dang hot here, and we just stepped into October!

I'm looking forward to the night I can crawl into bed and pull all my warm, heavy blankets on top of me. I've tried, but within a couple minutes, I end up kicking everything except the sheet down to the bottom of the bed. I'm hanging onto the idea of baking on a Saturday and enjoying the warmth from the oven, versus walking into another room as often as possible to cool off. And I'm anticipating the foods of fall. Right now, they just don't suit very well. But still I try.

Last night I tried to whip up some fall fare, and it was delicious, despite the fact that as we sat down in the coolest part of the house we could find, our warm bowls did little to keep our sweat at bay.

But if you are in a cooler place than I am, then I encourage you to pull out your cornmeal and make some classic polenta. Its golden yellow color just goes so well with the changing leaves. And even if you're not heading into fall (because I know spring is beginning for my southern friends), polenta is just so good. I don't think your stomach can ever protest against this stuff.

I took my leftover french red onion soup, which I had gratefully been working on since making a big pot of it, and found that age allowed the flavors to mellow out very pleasingly. Slowly softening them a little while longer, and scooping them onto creamy polenta, with the gruyère I bought to accompany they, made for a very happy combo.

It's perfect for fall. Or for those of us who just like to pretend.

Basic Polenta
Based off so very many sources but mostly common sense.

6 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups stone ground cornmeal
1 tablespoon of butter (or up to 3)

Bring water to boil in heavy saucepan. Add salt, and reduce heat to low. Then slowly pour in cornmeal, stirring with a whisk as you go.

Attentively whisk for the next five minutes or so to prevent lumps. Then cover and stir every few minutes. Continue to do this until cornmeal grains have softened and begins to pull away from sides of the pan, about 30 minutes.

Remove from heat. Stir in chunks of butter until melted and combined. Serve immediately.*

*The picture you see at the top of the page is of my polenta the next day, so it has more form to it after being in the fridge in a container. Yours should spread out more on the plate or within the bowl.

French Red Onions
Adapted from this recipe

Red onions, prepared according to this recipe**
3 tablespoons port wine
Gruyère

Using a generous amount of butter (depending on how many onions you have and how much softer they need to get -- I had about half of my soup left and used 4 tablespoons of butter) heat red onions (strained from broth) in a heavy skillet at medium-low heat.

Occasionally stir, slowly letting onions soften, about 30 minutes (mine needed this much time because they never got as soft in the soup-making process). Pour in a generous splash of port. Allow all to combine for a couple more minutes.

Spoon onions and sauce over polenta. Shred gruyère over top.

**I had made the soup earlier in the week. Obviously, you don't have to go through the exact same process to get these red onions. I have ideas for how to get the complex flavor of the already prepared onions without a lot of broth left over, but since I did not do it, I do not want to give you specific directions. I'm sure you can figure it out with some experimentation. Just don't neglect the anise. (It's not so bad after all.)