addie
Your daddy loves you, beautiful creature.Grandpa Jones – The Banjo Am The Instrument For Me
God how my daughter used to dance to this song when she was a toddler. There’s just something so infectiously happy and accomplished about his playing & singing in this track –the audible little laugh he gives in the last verse, the charming expressions on his face as he sings– it really struck a chord with Addie.
Now I’m old and feeble, grand children by the score,
Every night they set upon my knee,
That’s when I scoot ’em over just to make a little room,
Cause the banjo am the instrument for me.
Gary Snyder – Not Leaving The House
Today is my daughter’s 10th birthday. Though a stay-at-home father for my son, I was a working dad when Addie was young. I have well-thumbed memories of our family at this time, gathered around her like a tiny fire. A child enters a life that predates her existence but only in some ways survives it. The life Gary Snyder describes here reveals the sum of her experience as the bud from which her life will –indeed must– emerge (albeit hereunder in reference to his son).
Happy Birthday to my world-maker.
When Kai is born
I quit going outHang around the kitchen – make cornbread
Let nobody in.
Mail is flat.
Masa lies on her side, Kai sighs,
Non washes and sweeps
We sit and watch
Masa nurse, and drink green tea.Navajo turquoise beads over the bed
A peacock tail feather at the head
A badger pelt from Nagano-ken
For a mattress; under the sheet;
A pot of yogurt setting
Under the blankets, at his feet.Masa, Kai,
And Non, our friend
In the garden light reflected in
Not leaving the house.
From dawn till late at night
making a new world of ourselves
around this life.-Gary Snyder, Regarding Wave (1969)
Ikkyū, or how I feel about children
Watching my four year old daughter dance
I cannot break free of her.― Ikkyū
Applepalooza 2013
Independence Lake :: July 2013
Got snowed out of North Lake by at least a month. Guys with gaiters and poles were coming back down daunted. We however were undaunted by the inattainability of our ultimate goal. Giant ice-slides were slid, smoke-dried clothing was worn to bed, dogs were chased (and chastised). Everyone came home tired; happy.
A Biscuit In The Sun 