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It’s my last Sunday on this favorite porch. As much as I talk about not making this world my home, I still like a good home now and then and this place as been that. This little house on the corner of Market and Grove with the revolving door and perhaps revolving hearts (who said the [...]

We shared a rock and stared at the brilliant sunset. Some things you can count on, I said, a thaw in January, a frost in May, and every day a brilliant day in autumn in Potsdam. This is my favorite season; I wait for it every year and nearly cry when the last maple leaf has [...]

You making a list, he asked and gestured to the open notebook on my twice painted wooden coffee table. Yeah, I said. I glance at it, sections labeled according to their content’s demise. I am unapologetic in my efforts to scale down. I’ve never been a stuff person, the most expensive thing I own is my [...]

I’m not going to rant. I promise. I have no room to rant and no room to spout. What I’m learning is at the feet of a hundred other people who know far more than I do and who have lived it out far longer. But there are things brewing in me that have been brewing [...]

I landed on the hammock when I got home today and stared at my beautiful roommate and our beautiful porch table. I love my roommate, but this isn’t about her. It’s about the table. I like that table, I do. It’s a pedestal table, wooden, with delicate details carved into it. Our porch is this bastion [...]

I’m selling tons of books–if you’re interested, let me know (I’ll ship, if you cover postage). Here’s the link to all of the books: http://tiny.cc/0j0mv (Ignore the colored slots–these are books that have been claimed and are colored to help me keep track of who’s getting them and to let you know that they’re taken!) I [...]

I’ve been thinking about tent pegs for a few months now. Years maybe. A while for sure. Probably since I sat in a car with a friend in the spring of 2007. I cried and he challenged, unrelenting with his words: you are tied to an earth that is passing away, untie yourself or you will die [...]

I don’t know when I got it into my head that everything about me must be certain and solid and unchangeable and forever. i don’t know how this lie crept in or when. I’m hardly bothering to take account though. Somewhere along the way I demanded of myself that every word, written and spoken, ought to [...]

Our house is the full gamut, whatever that means. This afternoon one person after another sits on our porch, lays on our couch, sits on her bed, hunches on our front steps, tromps up our back stairs, and finally pulls into our driveway in a little red car with New Hampshire plates. The last one, and [...]

I just got home from an amazing ten days in Texas to a found sweet vintage road bike, a dinner of whole grain rice, our favorite lentil dish, and carrot sticks, and my favorite roommates. And a card from my Ma which had arrived sometime during my time away. The front made me cry and what [...]

We are: Sweeping our house of miscommunication and dustballs. Filling our house with lilacs and Kissing the scarred trees we stole from. Making movies. Riding bikes in circles on The May Road. Moving furniture. Making plans. Getting vision. Falling in love and changing our minds. Everyday. –because we are girls and girls may. Turning our porch light on after nine and Putting bouquets in jars on porch tables. Sitting [...]

This is not much to you, but to me, to me it is much. I’m not sure how to start this. I suppose, in a million ways, I’ve started it a million times over. Small leaves, bitter smatterings, hopeful batterings, and still voices, the beginnings of essays that never were are scattered throughout my draft folder. I’m [...]

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I’m keeping my options open here, but it’s slow going for sure. We’re trudging across the grass, an afternoon walk to break up the four walls of our day. I’m asking her if she feels any different, spiritually, not physically. We’ve been fasting for three and a half weeks now, subsisting on fruits and vegetables. Every [...]

We are learning to touch the fragile things, carefully. I remember being small and learning that touching the petals of a flower made them wilt and drop. And I remember feeling this unfair advantage over things of such beauty–why would God make things so touchable, so off-limits? Now that I am older and somewhat wiser, I [...]

I walked to the coffee shop tonight, trudging through puddles and thoughts the whole way there. I am determined to make something happen in my soul these days. I am determined to find a course and stay on it. I find that the options are huge and full and there was once a time I didn’t [...]

The clouds roll like tumbleweed over the Saint Lawrence, gathering their supply before heading back over the mountains to our right. It is grey everywhere recently, not like Summer or Autumn around here, where everything is lit with color. We grow accustomed to the sameness of Winter and Spring; even the daffodils and small violets are [...]

Before I moved into this house I said it was the first place that felt like my home since the miracle house on 345 6th Street in Tennessee. I lived there with some of the best friends of my life, both roommates and others who filled our open door home. When Christina and I drove in the driveway of [...]

From my sent box: And if contentment is all I need, and is all He’s doing, than I hope He answers my daily prayer soon. I wonder how one can want contentment as badly as I do and still find it ever illusive. As I was driving home tonight I list the things that make me feel [...]

34. Swimming with a favorite person. 35. A gifted bag a dried mangos. 36. Dreaming about exact colors I wanted to paint some furniture, then finding those exact colors already mixed and on the clearance shelf at the hardware store. 37. A perfectly beautiful movie in every way. 38. A clean house. 39. Hearing a chickadee [...]