the week in pictures.
in Loved Ones, there are pictures here, Thoughts and Feelings
as bob, Buoyant, few words, friend kevin, friend nick, friendships, gift, girl, half, heart, Jess, life, little apple, lucky girl, mittens, new friend, nothing, puppy, sign, something, Speaking, tonight, water, year
And a few words, too, I guess.
Today, I marveled at life. I’m feeling all whole and full inside lately. Buoyant, even. Like a little apple that continues to happily bob along in the water.
It’s really good. Life is really good. And lately, I’ve been feeling it.
“Nothing cataclysmically amazing has happened,” I told my friend Kevin who called me from LA tonight, “But I’m just feeling so good inside.”
“That’s great, Jess!” he said. “And it’s okay to feel happy just, you know, like normally. Even if there aren’t great events that are making it so.”
This is good to know.
And my mom–she is good to know. 50% Italian and 100% adorable, that one. And since I am half of whatever she is, I suppose that makes me 25% Italian and 50% adorable.
50% is better than nothing!
Oh, and I like to make cards. “I am happiest–absolutely thrilled!–when I am making something,” I told my friend Nick tonight. “Even if it’s just a puppy sign. My heart sings when I am busy creating, is the thing.”
Speaking of making things, these friendships have been years in the making. Decades now, actually. I’m a lucky girl, to have two such as them love me.
And who doesn’t like tiny mittens? They were on the outside of a gift from a new friend this year. And I knew just what to do with them.
all full up tonight.
in I Lift My Eyes Up, Thoughts and Feelings
as airplane, beautiful mystery, black sky, body, cannot, choreography, contentment, face, feeling, fingers, free laughter, Furth, gift, hand, heart, holes, hou, kind, land, mind, mystery, patches, patchwork quilt, Peace, person, phrase, psyche, quilt, run, running through my mind, sense, shooting star, sky, song god, special person, thread, tonight, wear, wellness, yellow fire
All full up.
Oh, it’s terrible English, I know–and I cannot remember where I first heard this phrase–but it keeps running through my mind tonight. I have this sense of contentment, of wellness, that feels even bigger than my body, if that makes sense. Like my fingers only go so far when I reach; but, oh! this feeling of peace, it extends. Further than I knew, maybe.
And I feel, well, all full up.
Like the holes that have been poked through my psyche and my heart and my mind have started to patch. And you know what? I’ve always really liked patches. One of my favorite parts of flying in an airplane is looking down and seeing the land assembled like a patchwork quilt.
Which is something else I love. I’ve always wanted to make one, actually. And I’m gonna do it someday, too. And then I’m gonna give it to a really special person. You’ll see.
But maybe it was the shooting star I saw, falling like a thread of silver through the black sky; or the very short run I made with my dog in the kind of night that is so dark, it forbids you from seeing your own hand in front of your face; or the honest and free laughter that I shared with my parents (some laughter isn’t free; unkind laughter takes from you, leaves you in a debt that is hard to pay back); or talking to some friends late tonight in a house made warm by a yellow fire and happy by music; or the choreography I taught to a friend who loves to dance, sees it as a kind gift from an even kinder Creator; or maybe I could cite every last good thing I can remember and still not quite define what has me all full up tonight.
Maybe it’s like stripping the rose of every last petal in an effort to find what makes it smell so lovely–this peace, this life, this love–it’s big. Bigger than me. Bigger than one day or night. And I am happy, so happy to be included in it. I feel like traces of the song God first sung to cause everything in this old world to grow and breathe and bloom and be can be heard tonight.
And it has me all full up.
joshua tree national park.
in Loved Ones, there are pictures here
as boulders, camera, camera lens, carpets, consensus, discrepancy, east tomorrow, green, heart, house, Jase, joshua, joshua tree national park, lens, nbsp, park, seventies, sort, tomorrow
Don’t worry, Jase was jumping, too. Just from behind the camera lens. And all those boulders behind us? We climbed them. And there was quite a discrepancy over my hat. The general consensus was that it is yellow; I maintain it’s a sort of green. The kind of green you’d find on the carpets [...]
monsters.
in I Lift My Eyes Up, Loved Ones, Thoughts and Feelings
as bed, bedroom, brother, couples, dirge, downstairs, everything, heart, innocence, life sentence, matter, monsters, pain, pop, sadness, sense, sentence, taps, thought
So, this: It’s true, isn’t it? I stopped looking for monsters when my heart stopped. Well, partially stopped. I mean, it kept beating. But it sounded more like Taps than anything else. A slow dying dirge. I stopped looking for monsters when I grew up. Well, I grew up and became a child at once. [...]
seen it all with you.
in MP3, Performance, video
as Better, changes of the heart, heart, looong, looong time, mind, person, rap, song, time, voila
Folks! Sorry, I didn’t mean to yell. Folks. How’s that? Better? Good. Moving on. I finished this song that I wrote a long (looong) time ago. It no longer applies to the person I originally had in mind when I wrote it. So, I dusted it off, threw in a rap, and voila! it’s not [...]
not the best, but it doesn’t even matter, really.
in I Lift My Eyes Up, Performance, Thoughts and Feelings
as anything, beat, blue eyed girl, body, BOOM, boom boom boom, bum, change, class, corner, crazy things, dancer, dreams, drummers, girl, Guy, half, heart, hour and a half, kind, love, mea, person, poem, presence, Read, samba, Shakespeare, Shakespeare--maybe, shy, something, tra, truth, wonderful things, wonderland, world
I will say it: I am not the best dancer in the world. Truth is, I am not the best anything in the world. But that doesn’t really matter. Because who is? Not being The Best In The World is peripheral compared to this: What is it that you love? And I mean real love. [...]
light the world on fire (for christine).
in Loved Ones, MP3, video
as birthday, candle, colors, dreams, fire, friend christine, glow, God, Happy, happy birthday, heart, hill, lyrics, monsters, rendition, standard, today, ukelele, world on fire
I was gonna do a little rendition of that old standard, Happy Birthday, for my friend Christine today. But then I got to thinking…And decided to just write something else for her. (It’s the first thing I’ve written on my ukelele) Lyrics: Though life’s not quite always what it seems You still need to paint [...]
the ocean again.
in I Lift My Eyes Up, photography, Thoughts and Feelings
as afraid of tomorrow, beach, falling, good heart, heart, home, krista, ocean, photo, photo credit, skin, sun, tomorrow, Touch
*Today I did this. It was at the beach. But I guess you can tell. Doing that was not without some trying, either. Zach and I fell on each other a few times before it actually worked. Some things are worth falling over for a couple of times, I guess. Or more than a couple. [...]
look, I’m smiling.
in I Lift My Eyes Up, Thoughts and Feelings
as apparent reason, ballet dancer, bed bath, blue eyes, cash register, classical dance, course, funny look, Guy, heart, house, joy, kindness, little heart, moment, moments of joy, reason, register, road, today
I keep finding myself smiling lately. For no apparent reason. Sure, I can blame it on Ted, the super friendly former ballet-dancer-now-turned-theater-dancer I met at Lululemon today. We commiserated with each other over how difficult tap is after you’ve been studying classical dance. He is tall and skinny like me. Except he has bright blue [...]
show!
in Funny Stuff, Performance
as blast, course, date, Definitely, drummer, heart, kind, landenberg, mojo, money, music, one of the guys, sentiment, show, stage, stranger, tonight, way, yellow pants
Tonight’s show. You guys. It was super fun. Like, I still feel it. All smiley and stuff. We played a full set at Mojo Main and there were four of us on stage making a pretty nice wall of music and then there were all these people listening. And the yellow pants club was in [...]
