(A roundup post with links to my notes and reviews)
Hey, what happened to all those booklists you used to have in your sidebars at the old blog?
They're still accessible at melissawiley.typepad.com, where this blog lived from January 2005-March 2008. You can also find all my Lilting House posts there, or try the search bar here. All my previous Bonny Glen and Lilting House posts have been imported to this site.
Every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious—and childhood even more so. I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.
(Excerpt from this post about Real Life, quoted here because I don't want anyone to be under the impression that things are always perfect around here! Heaven knows we are anything but. Perfect, frictionless, orderly? Nope. Happy? Most of the time!)
Be like the bird
Who, pausing in flight
On limb too slight,
Feels it give way beneath her,
Yet sings,
Knowing she has wings.
—Victor Hugo
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“Exploration,” says John Stilgoe, author of Outside Lies Magic, “is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun.”
Yes: it is so, so much fun, and that is why I write these posts all chattery with excitement over this or that connection the kids made today. (Or that I made myself!) I know I get carried away, but that’s the point, isn’t it, that way leading on to way has carried me away?
And yet—and yet—I think we are at once ‘carried away’ and made more fully present in the now, more rooted, by these relationships between ideas about things past and future. The joy of connection makes me want to celebrate this moment, this brief encounter with wild-haired child and broad-trunked tree, bus going by, sign on church wall, Scottish warlord creeping over the tower wall and startling the English soldier’s wife who has just put her babe in arms to sleep by crooning that the Black Douglas won’t get him. Child, laughing, shouting “Dinna ye be sae sure aboot that!” across the courtyard outside the library. How can I not celebrate this freedom?
Calli and I are struck dumb.
We like spiders.
A lot.
But maybe … maybe not quite so … large.
And close to home.
Posted on October 18th, 2009 at 1:30 pmeek!
Posted on October 18th, 2009 at 2:40 pmACK!!! I truly feel for you! I didnt touch these guys:
http://jordin-confessionsofalostsoul.blogspot.com/2009/09/i-am-arachnophobia.html
but walking past them was enough to really bother me.
Posted on October 18th, 2009 at 3:15 pmI did that once with a Black and Yellow Agriope and my head. I was weeding the spice bed, and then I screamed.
Posted on October 18th, 2009 at 3:59 pmSounds like the definition of *splat* to me…
lol not really. “All God’s creatures have a purpose” and all that.
but still…
Posted on October 18th, 2009 at 4:15 pmYikes! You have my sympathy. I did that last year but my spider was a Black Widow.
Posted on October 18th, 2009 at 4:30 pmBeautiful!!! You can call her Charlotte and then she won’t seem so creepy.
Posted on October 18th, 2009 at 4:46 pmYikes and ugh.
Posted on October 18th, 2009 at 4:51 pmYep, that’s enough to make me shudder too!
Posted on October 19th, 2009 at 12:23 amWow! Just gorgeous–not saying I’d want to have one crawling on me, but still–the colors! The markings!
How big was it?
Posted on October 19th, 2009 at 12:52 pmBeautiful Spider!
Posted on October 19th, 2009 at 6:26 pmThey don’t bite people – and they are very good for our gardens.
Great shot – Melissa
Sympathy Shudder!
Posted on October 20th, 2009 at 4:32 am