The dress

The look I'm going for (since you asked) is somewhere between the woman on the left, and the woman on the right. And no, I don't mean the pantsless little one in the middle!

I was thinking about it last night and realized that my fascination with all this stuff is about wanting to get closer to my grandmother, who died in 1989. Possibly as a way of getting closer to my dad? Hmm. Anyway, it was nice to think of her for awhile last night as I was working and listening to some novelty songs from the 1920s (just picked this up & highly recommend it, if you like that sort of thing). This kind of music reminds me of my grandfather, whom I don't remember but who I know loved playing and singing. Must write more about all this sometime.

The dress turned out good. I'm wearing it right now and am realizing, however, that I'm going to need to adjust the straps – one of them keeps wanting to slide off my shoulder.

While I'm at it, here's another great Depression-era photo I found that I really like. It reminds me of all the stories of my relatives, except for the tobacco hanging up behind them (also the man's hat – I don't think anyone in my family has ever worn a hat like that). One of these days I'm going to figure out how to make dresses with sleeves and then there'll be no stopping me!

Next project: aprons. I love making aprons – they're fast, easy, cheap, fun and so utilitarian! If you would like me to make you one, just email me at tinarama [at] earthlink.net and let me know where to send it.

A good day to dye

Yesterday it finally cooled down enough for me to take on a little project I've been percolating on: I dyed everything I own brown.

Well, not everything. But several key items. The most key of which being a bolt of cloth I bought last spring with the idea that I would sew it up into some sweet summer outfits. Now that summer's more than halfway over (because nevermind the calendar – to me, summer is June, July and August, and that's final) I figured I'd better get on with it or reconsider my entire plan. So I got on with it.

Everything turned out well, even though I'm not totally happy with the color I got on a couple of items. I used plain old Rit dye – the only kind you can buy in this town, now that our tiny little fabric store has been shut down by the new Whole Foods moving in next door (more about this later) – in dark brown. The first things you throw into the pot come out nice and dark, but once the dark cocoa-y pigments have been absorbed, anything else you put in comes out a pretty pinkish-brown, which can be good if you know what to expect and plan ahead.

I'm collecting fallen walnuts from our tree in preparation for a "natural brown dye" experiment to be conducted sometime in the fall. Walnut hulls yield a beautiful and very strong dark brown pigment that can be used to make excellent ink or to color fabrics, wood, paper, cement – basically, anything that will absorb the dye, including the skin of both hands, which will remain deeply stained – almost black – for up to two weeks after handling the hulls (fingernails hold the color considerably longer than that). I learned this from personal experience a few years ago and am looking forward to making some practical use of the information this year.

So anyway, last night was the dying party, and tonight I'm breaking out the scissors and thread. I'm hoping to end up with a new version of my standard homemade summer dress; I want to change the neckline around a little bit and do something different at the hem. I've been wearing my hair up in this funny old-fashioned double-bun kind of arrangement on both sides of the top of my head, and I think a funky homemade brown flowered dress will be just the thing to wear with it.

Now all I need is some clumpy old brown men's oxfords and a flowered cotton apron, and my transformation into Depression-era farm wife will be complete.

Wallow

We started noticing some holes. More like trenches, really, up to ten inches deep, appearing overnight in the softest, most lovingly cultivated and watered areas of the garden. We would fill them in, replant the flowers (which the digger had tossed unceremoniously aside), and gently sprinkle their feverish roots with water. The next day, or maybe a few days after that, there would be another hole.

Who was doing it? And why? Neither of the dogs had been known to dig before. But both had dirt in their claws.

Not wanting to blame the wrong one – and realizing as well that dogs don't learn from being punished after the fact (nevermind that I don't believe in punishment anyway, but only in training through positive reinforcement, which so far has always worked pretty well, at least with Tater, and at least insofar as I've ever cared to practice it, which I will admit is not much) – we decided to do nothing until we knew for sure just exactly what we were dealing with.

That moment arrived yesterday, when Mr. A strode out into the yard and found Tater lying chest-deep in a freshly-dug pit of mud, fast asleep. He looked so cool and comfortable, he said, he didn't have the heart to yell.

We did fill in the hole, though, and have temporarily fenced the area.

Some might take this as just one more reason to not live with dogs. I look at it as an opportunity to learn – one more thing to add to the list of things to try when it's hot: wallow.

(That animal in the photo is not Tater, by the way. It's a water buffalo.)

Another cure for the heat

Watermelon's good. But what I'm really talking about here is CUTENESS!

My friend Julie has recently confessed her obsession with brides ... inspiring me today to come out with my own deep dark secret: I love cute things. This photo was shamelessly stolen from the fabulous Cute Overload. It's my new favorite website. I can't stop looking at it. Puppies, kittens, ducklings – even a section for "unusual" animals like monkeys and chameleons.

If the overload of cuteness doesn't take your mind off the burning heat ... well, then, I just don't know what.

What to do when you're hot & crankyand without air conditioning

1. Sit in front of the fan.
2. Fill a blue glass spritzer bottle with cold water and lavender essential oil (or whatever else you like – ylang ylang is good if the heat is giving you anxiety attacks) and spray yourself with it while sitting in front of the fan.
3. Line a shallow pan with a hand towel, set a block of ice on the towel, and then set the whole thing on top of another towel in front of the fan. Then position yourself in such a way as to catch the cool breeze as it flows across the ice.
4. Fill a round purple plastic basin with ice chips and water, set it on a towel on the floor in front of the tv, and stick your feet in it, while sitting in front of the ice in front of the fan.
5. Put some ice in a ziploc bag, wrap it in a damp dish towel, and drape it over your neck while you sit in front of the fan with your feet in the basin of ice water.
6. Fill the outdoor bathtub with cold water from the hose, and sink yourself in it until only your nose and mouth are sticking out. Float like that for as long as you can stand it, listening to your own heartbeat and trying to calm down.
7. Consider trying to sleep under water ... various combinations of drinking straws, snorkels, pvc pipe, et cetera. Realize that this is not possible.
8. Cry.
9. Go to Friedman’s to buy an air conditioner. Find out they have not had any in since yesterday. Their last shipment was gone within ten minutes of being brought out onto the sales floor.
10. Go home and lie in the tub some more. Try to get a grip on yourself.
11. Drag out the old crusty air conditioner that was buried in the pile of stuff that was supposed to be going to the dump, praying all the while that it still works.
12. Stab yourself in the eyeball with a piece of rebar while leaning in to see what the air conditioner is stuck on.
13. Finally get the air conditioner in place and plugged in, and discover that – YES! – it does still work.
14. Fall asleep on the living room floor, snoring like a pirate (complete with eye patch, ostentatious jewelry and filthy, sweaty shirt open to the breastbone).

Sorry for the boring list; I haven't been sleeping and my brain is fried.

The old air conditioner is working, sort of. Definitely better than nothing. I hate myself for using it – I know it's probably leaking dangerous chemicals all over the atmosphere. But that's what happens when you reach the apex of misery. Your world shrinks to the size of a single, quivering drop of sweat and you cease caring about anything but finding relief.

Is it really hotter in Davis than it is here? I keep hearing that yes, it really is. Hrrmm.

We did another bee thing on Saturday, hive maintenance – scraping wax off the bottom of each frame so they don't build it all up inside into one huge mass of honeycomb, a difficult mess to separate. I wore long sleeves and pants, and socks for the first (and probably only) time this summer. Also a hat, veil and elbow-length white leather gloves. Trés elegant.

It was lovely inside the hive. Gold and brown and sweet-smelling, bees everywhere, humming and buzzing and fanning their wings. I held a softball-sized swarm of bees in my hands like a present.

Davis?

Mr. A has been commuting 70 miles each way to Sacramento for just over a month now. He leaves the house by 5 a.m. to avoid traffic, which even at that time can be horrible. Last night he came home and suddenly started talking about something I tried to bring up before he even started the job – moving to Davis.

As much as I love the peace and beauty of this valley, there are a lot of things I hate about living here. My job, first of all, is boring and a complete dead end. But there just aren't that many things you can do in a town this size, unless you're an entrepreneur or in the wine business, which I am not and don't have any interest in being. Besides, unless you actually own the winery or are a winemaker or vineyard manager or something, the money usually sucks. Economically, it makes no sense for me to live here. Second, after eleven years I still have met only a small handful of people I feel are really friends. Everyone's nice, it's just ... they're not typically my kind of people. It's hard to put my finger on exactly what it is. Maybe it's just that it's so extremely homogenous, even more so than Utah Valley in many ways, if that's even possible. I miss variety. Third, sometimes I feel like it's just too damn small. The town consists of 2.2 square miles and about 8,000 people. That's SMALL. And there just isn't that much going on. I mean, yeah – if you're into food-wine-and-art events, you can stay busy pretty much every weekend. But how many free logo glasses does anyone really need? And how many paintings of vineyards, grapes and glasses of wine can one person be expected to look at in a lifetime? I'm sick of it.

I grew up in a university town and while it too was very small – about the same size as this town, if you don't count the students – it was in many ways a much more interesting environment to live in than this is. More interesting people, more flow of new people in and out, people who were DOING things – thinking about things, creating things, getting out there and interacting about things that are important – and not just kicking back on their new redwood deck at sunset with a glass of wine, enjoying the spectacular vineyard vistas and congratulating themselves on their impeccable taste ....

But gah – blah – it really IS so, so beautiful here. It's amazingly beautiful and I never get tired of it! I love it. Love it. I love how beautiful it is.

But what am I actually DOING here? Maybe I'm like that bee, entranced by the stream of honey ... I don't want to get sucked under.

On the other hand, I know very well that moving to a new place does not turn you into a new person – wherever you go, there you are, and so on. If I want to change things about my life, I can do it here as easily as anywhere else.

But Davis! The most bike-friendly city in the world! Trees, bikeways, greenbelts, parks, food co-ops, highly educated progressive people – a real university! I could go back to school. And Mr. A would be so much closer to work. If I can figure out a way to make a living here, surely I could figure out something to do there. Mr. A thinks I should take a state job, like him. If you work there long enough you get a percentage of your income and full benefits for life.

Anyway. Nothing that needs to be decided this very minute. But I am enjoying thinking about it. Also, feeling kind of terrified about it. Last time I moved somewhere to follow a man's job, it did not go well for me. And it's hot in Davis – even hotter than here. Ugh. Still ....

Forgot to mention

The bees don't go into the extractor. You shoo the bees away (not sure how – that happened before I arrived) and move the frames into a separate box they can't get into, and then you take that box far away to do the extraction. They can smell honey from a long way off, I am told, and will make a great nuisance of themselves if they're around when you open the cells.

Earlier in the day I'd spent 40 minutes sitting on the ground watching a cluster of eighteen bees buzzing around the inside of a wheelbarrow that had gotten smeared with honey when we moved the boxes. They were grooving and vibrating and drinking honey until they could hardly fly. Later, while I was watching the honey drain out of the extractor, I noticed a couple of bees had gotten into the greenhouse and were flying in and out and all around the bucket trying to figure out a way to get a taste. They knew enough not to try to land on the surface of the honey in the bucket, but we'd done such a good job of keeping everything clean (this was early in the process) that there wasn't any other honey around that they could easily reach.

As I watched, wondering how they were going to solve their dilemma – honey honey everywhere, and not a drop to drink! – one of the bees flew straight into the stream as it poured out of the extractor. From the way he went in, all business-like, slowing down with legs extended, I'm guessing he thought it was going to be like landing on a leaf or a flower. The stream was so steady it didn't really look like it was moving at all. But it was. It grabbed his feet and swept him away like a leaf in a waterfall, blasting him instantly all the way to the bottom of the bucket.

Death by honey.

Talking bees!

Well, they can't talk, really. I just put that little pretend thing up there, to indicate that the bee was buzzing and whispering "tinarama" ... I do sure love me some bees, though.

A couple of weeks ago I extracted honey for the first time from our new hives at the community garden. The photo above is not one of mine, but it kind of shows what it looks like when the frames first come out. So exciting! To get the honey out of the combs, you start by chopping the top of each cell with a hot sharp knife. The honey starts oozing out immediately ... at least ours did, as we were performing the operation inside a very hot greenhouse in order to encourage an easy flow of the stuff. Once all the cells are open you stick the whole thing in the extruder (ours is the kind you crank by hand), give it a spin – and out comes honey! We got a couple of gallons, which we'll be selling in little jars at a fundraising event at the garden at the end of this month. If you're in the area and would like to come, please get in touch! It's going to be lovely.

Re. bees – I've been fascinated by them for various reasons (so much to like about them) for many years, probably close to 20 years. Now that I'm finally learning a little bit about them, I'm realizing – hey, I could keep bees my very own self! So this winter I'll be starting a couple of hives. Keeping it small to begin, and hopefully having homegrown delicious raw organic fabulous honey to give to all my friends starting in the fall of 2007.

Something to look forward to.

Mind and emotion

During a heated conversation last week while I was visiting my family, something happened that I'm still thinking about. I had paused in what I was saying in order to gather my thoughts, and someone who thought I was done talking started talking just at the same time I started talking again, and instead of stopping so he could talk, I was so excited by the idea I wanted to express that I just kept on talking too. Someone else at the table scolded me rather harshly (or so it felt to me) for interrupting, and – this is the part I thought was interesting – it hurt my feelings so badly I felt physically ill, as if I'd been punched in the stomach. I left the table after a few minutes, retreated to my room, and cried.

It was such a horrible feeling. I felt humiliated and enraged, and I didn't know what to do with myself. In my head I knew I was overreacting, and that my feelings were probably about something other than being publically called on my lapse in manners. Probably, because being in Utah and at my parents' house with all my family is about as emotionally loaded a situation as I could ever imagine myself in, the incident tapped into some old feelings of not belonging, of being thought unacceptable, fears of being rejected, anger at feeling disrespected, embarrassment at having behaved badly, indignation and resentment at being told what to do, loneliness from being too proud to let anyone know I'd felt hurt, etc. etc. – this is all the stuff my mind was going through, trying to find a way to explain or justify the way I felt so I could put it away and go back to the other room and stop being such a big baby.

That was what I told myself at first. Then it dawned on me that really, I was just trying to find a way to make myself right and the other person wrong.

It was painful to realize that that was what I was doing. First, because the other person actually was right – I was dominating the conversation and that was rude. But I was also right – it's not his job to correct other grown up people's manners – that's rude, too. And blah and blah and blah – I was left, again, trying to talk to myself about what had happened, and feeling crappy about myself and about the other person and not knowing what to do. Knowing that I was just casting about desperately for a way to get rid of the way I felt, and feeling guilty for wanting to do that instead of processing it in a mature and compassionate way, etc. etc. etc. ...

And then something cool happened: my practice kicked in and I remembered that I don't need to do anything about the way I feel. In fact, sitting there stewing about what happened and how I felt about it – that kind of attention only makes the feelings last longer. So I decided to try something new I've been working with: taking it out of the mind and into the body. Instead of focusing on the breath, and coming back to it when thoughts arise, I focused on the physical sensations I was feeling. Intense heat in my face and solar plexus, tightness in my face and arms, a crushing, choking feeling in my throat, pain in my shoulders and a tendency to hunch them up, slight nausea, a feeling like my hair was on fire ... Every time my mind started naming it again (anger, sadness, shame, panic, etc.) I brought my attention back to my body. Holding my hands on my heart helped me stay grounded, and felt good too.

I don't know if I'm describing it very well, but I wanted to record that it was a really amazing experience – the first time I can remember working with intense angst in this way – and that I was shocked at how quickly I started feeling better. Or another way to put it is, how quickly I got bored with obsessing about how bad I felt, once I let go of the story I was telling myself about it. Also, it was gratifying to notice how good it felt to consciously let go of the story. We really do fight so hard to drag all of our past hurts along with us forever ... But we don't have to do that. It isn't required.

Later the same day I had an opportunity to be with one of my nephews who was feeling something similar to what I'd been feeling, and seeing how deeply he was hurting over his own conflict and humiliation really broke my heart. I'm not very articulate on the topic of ... well, any of this. The language is still kind of new to me. And trying to explain it to a child was hard. But we did talk a little bit about what he was going through and I told him there is nothing wrong with having intense feelings, and that there are things he can learn to do to help himself when he feels overwhelmed by his emotions. His parents are aware that he's a tender little soul and no doubt will have their own ideas to teach him; what I hope I can do is help him be strong enough to keep his heart open when our whole society demands that he shut it down and stop being so sensitive.

We need more people in this world who know how to do that.

Blueberry feast

I just finished eating a whole cup of fresh raw local organic blueberries for breakfast and am feeling so antioxidized it isn't even funny. Plus – yum.

Utah was hot, dry and so intensely sunny I could hardly see. Some highlights: my niece's seventh birthday party; walking through the house my sister and her husband are buying; making dinner for my entire family, something I have never done before since I am only just this year realizing that I do know how to cook good things; camping with everyone in my family (except Mr. A and my youngest sister – they both had to work); joining my nieces and nephews for innumerable micro-hikes of 100 feet or so; hiking up the side of the mountain through groves of quaking aspen, mint-banked mountain streams, and waist-high grass and flowers; helping my dad make s'mores for everyone; helping a sensitive nephew with some difficult emotions he was feeling; talking about family stuff with my mom; and watching a ginormous fireworks display with my parents on their forty-second anniversary, which also hapened to be my last night in town.

I have another week's worth of vacation I'm supposed to take before November, or I'll get a check instead of the time off – they don't let you roll it over into another year. Our assistant did a great job substituting for me while I was gone, so I'm actually allowing myself to hope I might be able to take the time instead of the money. I would like to visit my sister in Boulder, or possibly some friends who are moving to Portland. Or maybe I'll stay closer to home, rent a cabin on the river. It's always great to see family and friends, but I've really been jonesing for some alone time lately. Just me, my dog, a new tube of sunscreen, and a big bag of books. Or maybe just one book. I ordered this over the weekend and would love to take my time getting through it.

Pile of sticks

Tomorrow morning I'm leaving to see my family for a few days of talking, eating, playing and camping in the Uintas. While I'm there, I'm going to sit down with my dad and brothers and try to figure out once and for all how I'm going to put this mythical building together. The summer's already half over and all I've really done so far (aside from sitting in chairs in various parts of the property at all hours of the day and night in order to test the vibes, and making millions of little drawings) is move this big pile of sticks and branches from one side of the property to the other.

This one was taken from what will be the front porch of the building, looking toward town. Note the apple trees, the neighbor's giant white motorhome, the big junk pile I'm slowly dismantling, and (just off camera to the left) the far back part of the yard formerly known as "poo corner," which I am hoping they will abandon as soon as they realize it's going to be inhabited by me. I don't anticipate any problems with this – they're great dogs, very intuitive. The whole reason they chose that corner in the first place is because it's as far as they can possibly get from where the people hang out.

This one is from the point of view of the second apple tree, more or less, facing where the building is going to be. The white line is a 10-foot stick of the PVC pipe I used to wire together a scale model of the frame, just to make sure I liked the place and position. The trunk of the redwood tree behind it is about eight feet away from the back wall of the building. To the right you can see the eucalyptus that had its top removed last winter – actually a storm removed most of it, and we had the rest chopped off just below the wound in order to encourage better healing. I have mixed feelings about this tree ... my last house had a big row of beautiful hundred-year-old eucalyptus trees lining the creek, and I loved them. This one doesn't seem healthy and I'm not sure what to do about it. Probably I will invite the tree guy back for another look after I get back from my trip.

Dangerous habitat

The other day a friend who was having dinner with us started making jokes about "jurasic frog." I thought he was just goofing around until someone finally pointed to the back of our kitchen door. There it was: a petrified frog. A squashed petrified frog. It had jumped up there when nobody was looking, and then someone closed the door. At least it was probably a very quick death.

If you click the photo for a close-up, you can actually see its little spine and ribs and everything. Sigh.

We're getting a lot of frogs in the house lately – there's a little torn place at the edge of the dog door just big enough for them to slip through. They're tiny little frogs, less than an inch long with their legs all folded up, and they come in when the lights are on in the house at night. We get them on the living room window, too – they jump up there to catch insects that are also attracted to the light.

It's not all frogs, either. The other morning I had left the door open while I was outside taking a bath, and when I came back in there was an enormous brown toad standing in the doorway. I suppose I should be glad it wasn't a toad that was sitting in the hinge of the door when someone slammed it shut ... that would've been messy. In fact, come to think of it, I almost ran over one on my bike the other night. In the dim light of dusk I thought it was a piece of bark and was going to see if I could aim my tire right for it and make kind of a jump out of it (I'm easily entertained), but at the last moment I saw it move and realized it was a toad. These ones are big – between three and four inches. Much longer if their legs are all stretched out.

Anyway. I feel sad that that little frog got smashed. I'm trying to take it as a sign of greater things, though. Mr. A said when his uncle lived here he used to spray for ants once a month, and there were no amphibians around at all. If there are enough frogs around to get stuck in the door, then our efforts to green up the place must be working. Our apples may have spots, but at least they're organic.

Hey, looka this!

Someone just sent me this photo for the paper, and it looks very much like what I'm envisioning for my building! Which I really am going to start actually constructing tomorrow, now that the site is cleared and leveled. I'll get to work right after the 7 a.m. (that's SEVEN a.m.) wrap meeting I have to attend tomorrow morning (tomorrow being SATURDAY!) to go over what worked and what didn't for the Independence Day parade and celebration, of (and in) which I am an organizer, volunteer and participant.

I don't write much about this part of my life here because it's a small town and I don't wanna be recognized ... but I do a fair amount of this kind of thing. Organizing old-fashioned parades, picnics, art shows and fundraisers, volunteering for various traditional town events, etc. etc. It makes me feel very DIY, very hands-on, very can-do. Very American.

One of these days I want to write about my take on the whole America thing. My personal kind of patriotism, which mainly consists of a deep love for what I think Bob Dylan called "the old, weird America," back before mass media, when everything was local and homemade and people pretty much did their own thing – not as a reaction against mainstream taste or values, but because it was what they liked and were capable of.

The book I'm reading contains a sentence I read the other day along the lines of, "The genius of Buddhism is its recognition that much of our unhappiness begins with our belief in a fixed personal identity." I'll be coming back to this, too, because identity is one of my huge issues and I feel like I'm just now starting to get a glimmer of a hint of a possibility of finding a comfortable way to sit with that idea – that there is no such thing as a fixed identity, and that that is actually a wonderfully liberating thing to realize. I think somehow this might have been easier to achieve in a world without television, movies, magazines and all other media specifically designed to make you question whether you really are okay just exactly as you are right now.

In case there's any doubt – You are. Perfectly okay, just exactly as you are right now. Look yourself in the eye in the mirror right this minute and say it! And believe it.

It really is okay to love yourself just exactly as you are right now.

Silence of the llamas

The sneer on this guy's face tells you all you need to know about his attitude: he's hot, bothered and mad as hell, and he doesn't care who knows it!

I snapped this photo last week on my way to work, when I slowed down to go around a police barricade a couple houses down from my house – stopped to ask the cops what was going on (this being typically a pretty peaceful part of the valley) – and was informed that someone's llamas had escaped and been on a rampage all night, until our quick-thinking next door neighbor had lured them into his field and temporarily corralled them with a couple of bales of hay thrown into the gap in the fence. The police cars were there to keep the sex-starved animals contained until their person could get there with a trailer to load them up and take them home.

He was arriving just as I was getting back on the bike.

"So," I asked him, "are these the animals I hear screaming all night long over across the creek?"

"Yeah, that's them," he chuckled in response – as if it was humorous, or charming or something. Except, it isn't. It's horrible. They really do scream, these long drawn-out agonizing screams, and they really do do it all night long.

"What's the deal with that, anyway?" I asked.

"It's just something the males do when they want a lady friend," he replied, tactfully averting his eyes.

"So you mean to tell me you have a whole pack of lust-filled male llamas locked up in a field all alone with no girlfriends, and you think it's okay to just let them scream and scream all through the night out of loneliness and frustration? Don't you think that's kind of cruel?" I demanded. "And if you're going to let them scream, couldn't you at least put them in a barn or something at night, so your neighbors don't have to listen to them? They wake me up almost every single night!"

Well, actually, I didn't say that. What I really said was:

"Hmm! Wow. Well, they sure do make a lot of noise."

"Yeah, well," he chuckled again. "That's llamas for you."

But maybe he did take the hint, or maybe he got rid of them, or maybe he rounded up a few lady llamas to keep them company. Whatever he did, I haven't heard any screaming in several nights.

Now if only the speed metal monster music guys would get some girlfriends, maybe I could get a little sleep around here already!

My heart jumped

I was just nostalgicizing about my childhood, and decided to take a look at some real estate in Moscow, Idaho – the town I grew up in. Lo and behold, on the very first website I checked out, there was a listing for the first house my parents ever owned – the house they moved into right about this time of year exactly 38 years ago.

What a trip! My heart really did leap when I read the address. They're asking $145,000. That would hardly cover your down payment around here. There are photos with the listing that show the inside of the house – the shelves my parents built in the front hall, the kitchen window I remember standing on a chair to look out of, a weird shot of the corner of my parents' bedroom, showing some hollow-core sliding closet doors that have probably been there since we moved into it in 1968.

Man, I loved that house. I remember sitting on the front step – I have pictures of myself sitting on it with my brothers and sisters – but I remember sitting there alone very, very early in the morning – the sun is up by 4 a.m. there in the summer – sitting on the cool concrete step and watching this warm, dappling yellowy-green light sort of dancing and swaying through the trees across the street, like seaweed under water ... and taking deep fresh and very conscious breaths of this incredibly sweet smell of cut grass, or some kind of flowers ... It's a vivid memory, one of my very earliest memories.

I have such strong feelings about houses. I've been meaning to write something about the last house I lived in, which was occupied briefly by some young people who didn't really love it and then sat vacant for almost a year before its current tenants took it over to use as a storage facility for the antique shop they've opened in my old landlord's gallery. I went there a few months ago, when it was still empty, to see if I could scavange a few more plants – I knew they weren't going to be getting watered and was going insane thinking of them languishing there all alone and dying of thirst. I peeked in the windows while I was there and was extremely depressed to see the place looking so neglected. It was kind of a crumble-down cottage kind of place, even when I lived in it, but I did love it very much and still feel really sad when I think of it being used now to house broken old furniture, musty books and piles of chipped dishes cared for by and belonging to no one – as compared with the broken old tables, musty books and chipped dishes I filled it with, and repaired and dusted and washed so lovingly, when the house was mine. When I lived there the house was full of life and full of love, and I felt like the house knew how much I loved it.

I don't think I'll be going back there again. It breaks my heart just to think about it.

Sigh. Old houses. Yesterday I had another brief bonding moment with the house I'm living in now, Mr. A's house – my house? I don't know. Usually it feels like Mr. A's uncle's house that Mr. A now technically owns, which the rest of his family still feels they have some vague claim to and which I get to live in right now by the grace of this relationship, but which doesn't really belong to me and which I would lose in a second if anything ever happened to Mr. A. But we had his family over for an Independence Day barbecue, and in preparation we cleaned everything and Mr. A took down the sheet that serves as a curtain in the living room, and the blanket he hangs in the kitchen doorway to keep the living room from heating up so much during the day ... and we dusted and vacuumed and put a bunch of the clutter out of the way, and suddenly I was reminded of the potential this house has to be a really fabulous little place to live. A place I could love.

It makes me think I should be putting my energy into that, instead of into building a separate little playhouse that can be all mine, and only mine. Then again, part of the reason I've been so longing to build it is precisely because I don't feel much ownership of the house. Sometimes I think building the studio will bond me more to the whole place, and those feelings will then extend to the rest of the property as well. Sometimes I think it's just another way to avoid digging in and talking about some of the things I need to talk to Mr. A about. Probably both are true.

Anyway. I have issues about houses. Not in a bad way. To me, a house symbolizes everything about the way I want to feel in the world. Comfortable, beautiful, simple, safe – a place you can retreat to, or open up to loved ones, a place to nurture and nourish yourself and others, a place to feel proud of, at home in. I want to feel continuously more at home in the world. And make places where my friends can feel that way, too.

I've been thinking a lot lately too about body-as-house. As I was getting my bike out of the back of the truck this morning to ride to work I thought about the "nested-ness" of all these entities – garage housing truck, which transports bicycle, which transports body, which transports soul, mind, consciousness – whatever it is that makes me myself.

All the ways we find to move ourselves through the world.

And where we come to rest, when we need to be still for awhile.