Come Sit By My Chair Awhile.

Look, there, through the westward window the mountains are adrift in a haze of white rain, like ghostly ships, sails at full mast, sailing on a sea of golden reeds that bend and blow and shiver in their bed. Seven swans glide past, a moment and they are gone, the sound of their beating wings lingering as they melt and drift into the white sky.

On the eastern side of the house, the sea is in a temper, heaving itself up at the shingle, and I open the windows all along the front of the house, the better to hear it grumbling and groan in it's ill~humour, and I sit, hands wrapped around a mug of hot tea, scarf wrapped around my head, savouring the chill wind that fills the house like a purge.

The Smallest, a-bed, has a visitor.

You see, we have had a winter dose of unwell~ness here, of coughs and colds and flu that laid to waste even the hardiest of us, though thankfully not me, and yes, now that everyone is well again, or at least back out in the world, I am savouring the quiet and aloneness and the not having to minister to the needs of many, at last.

Day 5: Longing to get out into the air, but like a little flag he droops every now and then.

Is it the time of year? My mind is a slippery thing, unless I pin them down like moths, thoughts escape me, fly away never to be seen again. I rack my brains for that shiny nugget that flittered through earlier, a promise, like a door to a wondrous place but alas I cannot find it. Yet again.

I am surrounded by teetering piles of notebooks filled with scatterings and lines and words, reminders, fragments, whisperings from other days, of weather and wonderings and clouds, of names and songs, conversations, visions, people. All day I drive through the grey and the green, rushing here and there, feeding, tending, nagging, cleaning, sorting, driving, shopping, organising, conversing, picking up, dropping off, putting away, moving, ranting, cuddling, listening, loving, loving, loving, and all the while a bright stream of ideas and desires and creative longings that I simply cannot stifle
j u s t   k e e p   c o m i n g.
And no longer contained they stream out of my head like bright ribbons that flutter and gasp in the air, unable to go anywhere, but desperate to be out there, in the wide world.
I sometimes wonder do people notice? A faint distraction, a blur in the air around me, there out of the corner of their eye?
There one goes right there! In my head, quick as lightening, I did a little drawing of a Distracted Girl With Exploding Head, complete with ribbons.....sigh. Only that I wrote that down, she would have been gone by morning.

But I am shivering now, I think it's time to close the windows and get the fire going.  Will we make some more tea? (yes, The Art of Procrastination)

The wayward sun behind that door is beckoning. Perhaps I will draw her after all....

Something Lovely.

It's many moons since I posted a Something Lovely post, and my desire to share this with everyone I know has prompted me to post it here. Something lovely, something different, something new, for Milkmoon. The beginnings of a shake up? I'm excited!

This here is my video of 2011. It is from one of my albums of the year called Diamond Mine by King Creosote and Jon Hopkins. Don't be put off by the still you see here, it is beyond gorgeous.
I hope you enjoy it.

Where To Now? The Post I Could Not Post....

Last night I lay awake in the dark as a storm raged outside, shaking the walls of our little house, and as so often the dark, like an insidious creature, creeps in beside you, and it is hard not to imagine great foaming walls of water towering up out of their sea bed, straining at the leash just beyond the railway tracks. And as sleep tussles with the dark, and the contents of my days tumble about my head, half-thoughts, glimpses, resolutions, notions, conversations, something settles in my heart.

In the morning I sit in the cold kitchen, watch the blue night turn into day, and as the room finally begins to warm up, and a rainbow falls out of the gloomy grey onto the shadowy, rain-clad hills, I know in the end I will post this, simply because I am annoyed at myself, (and reading Martin's similar themed post over on Square Sunshine gave me the final prod).

I would like to acknowledge something that has been nagging me for some time: it has been a rather slow decline here, a ponderous denial for many months now. After four years, and many, many readers, more than I could ever have hoped, this Milkmoonish place of mine has been neglected of late, (not just Milkmoon, but A Year At My Back Door too, and Scenes From The Moth House, two projects that are dear to my heart) and I now find myself at the beginning of a new year, and considerably unsure of the path ahead of me.

Do I want to continue? Have I paused and realised I am a bit lost, a bit unfocused, and a lot uninspired?
I have no idea. And surely that in itself is not a good sign? Ever since this tiny seed of uncertainty burrowed into my blithe and untroubled mind, it has grown and taken hold, and I cannot shake it. Yet I am reluctant to stop. So reluctant to close the door on Milkmoon and walk away. I really do not think I can.

And yet.

And yet I find my mind has wandered away, to some other place where images spin by but have no substance, where words flit about somewhere in the ether above me, too diaphanous to grasp, and I do not have the impetus to try. And so I post lazy, lackadaisical posts like the previous one. And I am ashamed of it. I can do better than that! I can. So why am I not?

It is laziness that prevents me from taking proper pictures with a proper camera, which is what I started out doing, which is why I started blogging in the first place. The dratted iPhone just makes it so easy, because it is so clever, and so pretty, but the pictures are, ultimately vastly inferior, as anyone viewing them on anything other than a smartphone can see....sigh.

So, I resolve to limit my iphone shots to this other place here, and to my Flickr, for those who cannot access Instagram, and we will see if I can manage to get back to basics here.

The past year has seen quite a number of changes, and the coming one sees even more to come, and I have no idea what they will bring. All I can say is time will tell.

I feel it could go either way~a quiet slipping away into silence, or something of a shake-up of things. I honestly cannot say right now.

So for today, I will update my blogs as heartily as I can, and then, I will leave the door ajar, and the light on, and hopefully Milkmoon will take matters into it's own hands and find inspiration for me, and time, to separate the magic from the mundane, and continue posting.

I do hope so.

After The Long Hiatus, Unplanned, A Recap.

First things first, dear readers, a Happy New Year to you one and all. I do hope the holiday brought good cheer and festive shenanigans, with lots of jovial folk around you!

Ours was lovely, with lots of walks and baking and visiting and do-nothing days. We've sadly had no snow so far this year, although last years white Christmas was a spectacular anomaly, and we do hope we get some yet.

And so, a quick recap of the season's festivities in the Milkmoon household:

Walking the Solstice Spiral in school.

Christmas Eve in our kitchen.

St. Stephen's Day walk.

Out Walking.

My MIL's Christmas tree.

Visiting Family, Friends, Neighbours.

Every good wish to you all, dear friends, for bountiful blessings,

both big and small, for the coming year.

May you be surrounded by lots and lots of love and happiness.