Category: Writings & Reflections
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Journal (As I Remember): Day 3
10 June 2022 The first toll of the 9 am church bell wakes me up, and I rise from a tangle of covers thrown off in the night. It’s been warm, and I have not yet come to terms with air conditioning. Our cousin Jaci comes over while I am still washing up in the…
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Journal (As I Remember): Day 2
June 9th 2022 I wake up around 6:30 from dreams of being here and walking around the neighborhood with family. I write my dreams, and then scroll. I learn that a family friend from lopez had family who came from outside Budapest once upon a time. I do my watercolor journal for yesterday, open the…
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Journal (As I Remember)
June 8th, 2022 When I get to Budapest it is raining. It pours down the windows of the plane and taps on the roof. It feels like the place saying ‘welcome home.’ There are complications getting the passenger tube hooked up and getting our bags out, but customs is easy and at last I make…
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Beginning in Budapest
The sun is bright this morning, bursting out of a rich blue sky. The cars roll by in the streets, and the church bell tolls at half-hourly intervals. I can hear the buses screeching to a halt on their rails and the constant exhalation of air conditioning in our apartment. I’m sitting next to tall…
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Shoreline says…
Shoreline is the in-between place. The place that is just before and just after and exactly where earth overlaps water. Shoreline is wild and serene. It is the place I go to grieve and the place I go in joy. It is a place that soothes despair and washes aways frustration and anger. Shoreline replenishes…
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Crafting A Path Through Diaspora: Part II
Stitching With Stories As A Labor Of Love Disclaimer: While this is an important and relevant topic, the following is also only my experience. It is not true for everyone, and my experience with diaspora is not the experience that needs to be at the forefront right now. I am privileged, and white, and live…
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Crafting A Path Through Diaspora (Part I)
Disclaimer: While this is an important and relevant topic, the following is also only my experience. It is not true for everyone, and my experience with diaspora is not the experience that needs to be at the forefront right now. I am privileged, and white, and live in a community that is primarily made up…
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A Story from the Shoreline
I was walking on the beach one night when I saw a selkie bathing She lay upon the rocks bright though the moon was waning I’d been taught to fear the human seal and so I turned and ran Along the shore and up the path till I stood on the headland And there I…
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Home is
Home is cold toes and salty skinHome is evergreen-madrona-lichen covered bluff magicHome is saunas on Sunday And laundry on MondayHome is rain and fog and cloudy daysAnd home is woodsmoke and eagle feather cedar ceremony And plants healAnd make it or trade it, don’t buy itAnd leather and woolOr nothing at allHome is friends and family, together…
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Coming Home
In transit between Albany and Seattle, I wrote a poem about the kind of home I want. I wrote the to-do list of big-little events of living in that home. I wrote about the technicalities and the maybes and the what-ifs, and spent most of the past few months thinking about where this home could…
Scatterseed Remembrance 