Onward

This was a year, to be sure. Impossible to summarize, like trying to stop a watercolor from bleeding off the edge of the page. It was a year in technicolor, intense and terrifying and new in a million different ways. I am changed, changing, working on becoming something better than I was, than I am. It hasn't been neat or nice or even very fun, but I feel lucky and honest and in progress, always moving along.

It was a year of doing what I love, learning and growing into a vision that will eventually become my career. I field tested and tried my hand as an educator, found some things that worked and that didn't, and some others that still need time to brew.

This year I traveled. To Seattle twice, and I would be lying if I said that I didn't leave a part of my heart there when I left. I'm glad I went, and went back, and found space in the bustling city to imagine where my place might be. It may be just empty musing, at least for now, but it's still fun to dream.

This year, my friends and family cheered my heart, challenged me, and gave me a place to hope. In their passion for what they do, in their easy laughter and brilliant complexity, they are a gift and a lesson in love that I am learning, one foolish blunder at a time.

This year I felt, for the first time, true pride in my country and a real place among a people that is ready for hope. I felt change begin to whisper around corners, under doors and between railway tracks and I found a belief that we can, and yes, we will.

This year I became a runner, pushing myself out the door in late summer afternoons, falling for Burlington as I squinted into the setting sun, around hills and back up with the lake glittering down below. I went farther and faster, finding that the barrier was only ever my own stubbornness. As with most things, I could do it if I only decided.

And this year, a decision found me. To go my separate way was less a choice than a thing that happened because it was time and had to be. Weeks of crippling fear grew seasoned with distance, as May turned to June and life, in its way, carried on. The choice was only ever to listen to my heart, and try to love what I heard. And when things grew clear I felt relief, not because it was easy but because finally, my mind had been made. So I went, without knowing how or which way was up; knowing only that it was the right thing to do. It is only now, months later, that bits of the aftershock are making their ways back to me, in photographs and memories and well-worn, traveled tales.

I am looking ahead to a new year and hoping for slowness, for patience, for time. I want to sink in, to live in the heart of it, to keep feeling the tightness at the back of my throat that lets me know I'm moving, I'm growing, I'm here. I wish for more bravery and kindness, for honesty that heals, and for true connection that binds me to the people, the places and the ideas I love. I wish for you and yours a very happy 2009.

beauty

I joined the gym this week since it's finally too wintery outside to go running. There's a huge television that hangs over the row of treadmills, and while I am not overjoyed that it's always on ESPN, I was thrilled to catch this clip today of Jason Blake juking the hell out of Devil's goalie Scott Clemenson.

I wish he had pulled it off during regulation play instead of a shoot out, but still! Sweet fluid beauty. Whoa dudes. It's hockey time.

skinny love

This song, oh friends. I can't stop listening. I can't stop hitting "Replay." I can't stop feeling it sink into my bones and pour through my veins. It's rainy days, it's gloomy skies, it's long trips down flat highways, it's sunrise along the coast. It's everything life and love was ever meant to be. I just love it when a song does this to me.

"Skinny Love" by Bon Iver

l'hippopotame and other cuteness

Is there anything cuter than a toddler speaking French? No, no there is not.


Once upon a time... from Capucha on Vimeo.

-via Lauren

Thievery

Hey internet, stealing is wack.

I clicked through my referrals today and ended up on a Google results page that led me to this and thought, wow, that sounds somewhat familiar.

Dear "chew" from North Carolina,
Those were MY words. I wrote them. You took them and claimed them as yours without my permission or even a reference. That's called stealing, and it's not cool. In fact, it's sort of sad. Please don't do it again.
Sincerely,
Elli

Fourteen Weeks

Autumn, flying by in kodachrome.

All photos taken by me at Robinhood Park in good ol' Keene, NH.

Emerging Zeitgeist

This fall I went to an environmental education conference and listened to a keynote address that changed my life. The speaker, Gibran Rivera, is a consultant for the Interaction Institute for Social Change, an organization in Cambridge MA that is dedicated to bringing to light a more just and sustainable world. He spoke about the state of the things...the environmental crisis, wars, social divides, inequality and many other very real problems that are staring us square in the eye today. But he also spoke of change, of the transformation that is needed, and that we are capable of, to envision and create a better reality.

Over the last few months I have come back to his speech again and again, unable to shake the impact that it had on me. Just weeks after the conference we elected Barack Obama as our president, and the spark of hope in my heart that Rivera's speech had kindled burst into a roaring fire. Since then I have felt bolder and braver. Since then I have felt what before seemed like insurmountable challenges become manageable, tangible and human.

This week my friend lent me a book by Margaret Wheatley called Turning To One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future. It's a book that asks us to reconsider how we interact with one another and to actively reengage our hearts. It asks for authenticity, patience, and honesty. Only later, after finishing the book and letting it stew in my head for a day, did I realize that Rivera had been talking about these very same things (had, in fact, referenced Wheatley and her work directly). Only later did I recognize that this is the same spirit with which Barack Obama ignited a whole movement behind hope and courage, and won our hearts and our votes.

There is a part of me that gets covered over some days in the detritus and dust of the mundane. It is the part of me that hungers for beauty and inspiration, that digs into the depth of things and comes out the other side breathless and starry-eyed and changed. And lately that part of me is ringing in my ears and stirring in my soul. It is sending jolts of life through every last cell and causing my heart to ache with imagination and the limitlessness of overwhelming possibility.

The synapses of the universe are firing at rapid speed, and the beginnings of change are palpable.Things are moving here. We are on our way.


Here are just a few excerpts from Rivera's speech, "Collaboration Across Boundaries." If you do nothing else, read the final quote I have included below and just consider the immensity of that image: we are the midwives to the new world that is trying to emerge.

To read Rivera's entire speech, which I highly recommend, click here to download the PDF.

“Our institutional arrangements, the core ways in which we have chosen to organize ourselves – as nation states, as economic systems, as spiritual communities and yes, even as agents of social intervention – are all solidly rooted in the very models that have brought our humanity this far while also falling dangerously short. What I’m saying – and this is central to my proposal for collaboration – is that our habitual way of doing business, our most established systems, the dominant paradigms are no longer fit for the job of helping us reinvent ourselves. I paraphrase Albert Einstein in saying that a problem cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness at which it was created.”

“It becomes useful to consider a sort of pulsation or evolutionary heartbeat that breathes outward towards diversity and breathes inwards towards integration.”

“The type of authenticity that is demanded for cross-boundary collaboration to be possible is defined by the practice of true inquiry…an inquiry that does not in any way pretend to know the answer.”

“It is an incredible privilege to be connected to a network of people who are passionately committed to figuring out what it takes to be a midwife to the new world that is trying to emerge.”

Clarity, Elegance & Irrelevance

Writer Malcolm Gladwell was interviewed by GoodReads recently, and I love what he had to say about what it means to succeed as a writer. Check that part out below, or read the whole interview here.

GR: Many people read your books who may not normally pick up a nonfiction book, and especially not one with so many references to scientific research. What is the secret to writing accessible nonfiction?

MG: My writing model is my mother, who is a writer as well. She always valued clarity and simplicity above all else. If someone doesn't understand what you're writing, then everything else you do is superfluous. Irrelevant. If any thoughtful, curious reader finds what I do impenetrable, I've failed. My highest compliment is when someone comes up to me to say, "My 14-year-old daughter, or my 12-year-old son read your book and loved it." I cannot conceive of a greater compliment than that — to write something that as an adult I find satisfying, but also that manages to reach a curious 13- or 14-year-old. That's my model, and if that's your model, then you have to write in a way that's accessible. Clear writing is universal. People talk about writing down to an audience or writing up to an audience; I think that's nonsense. If you write in a way that is clear, transparent, and elegant, it will reach everyone. There's no idea that can't be explained to a thoughtful 14-year-old. If the thoughtful 14-year-old doesn't get it, it is your fault, not the 14-year-old's. I think that's a very important fact.

Shutters

Oh hello,
Here's me looking somewhat miserable, but I swear I'm not. Actually, I am pretty excited about things. I know you can't tell it from the look of sheer exhaustion on my face, but honestly. It's just the end of the semester. It's just past my witching hour. It's just that there's so much to think about and see about and be about in the day that by this time in the night, I can't also manage to look utterly pleased to see you. But I am. I really am.

In two weeks I'll be done with another semester of glorious graduate school and I am both terrified and terribly pleased by this fact. In two weeks I'll be about baking cookies and going ice skating and finding a hill in this dang town to hurl myself down on a rickety sled. I can't wait.

In the meantime, I'm all business over here with designing curricula and hunting for springtime jobs. It's all triple-bottom-lines mixed with a little content and process for the ride home. Yup, all business, except for impromptu jaunts up a freezing Monadnock and near-nightly collapses on the couch to unpack my brain with a new-to-me episode of Heroes. It's a thrilling life, I know.

There's so much more to say, always, and not enough time or even proper words to say it. Everything's stirring in my head and heart and I'm finding myself exactly where I'm meant to be. Here and there and everywhere, and really, truly enjoying the journey.

I hope that you are too.
xo