Cup of Bliss and Snapping Sails

I have heard it said that a danger in songwriting is when your songs become too personal, too autobiographical. I can understand why that could be; I have written some songs at low points that, while very good, I'm not ready to share. When you're a sensitive songwriter-poet, one rocky spell, one terribly sad day, can send a song onto your pages that doesn't really represent your life. Some day I will share those songs, but not now. The "Wow. My Honey!" songs actually do represent my life, and I'm sharing those now. 

Cup of Bliss by Harper Meader

My song, Cup of Bliss, is an exception in a way, because it alludes to having trouble together. The line, "I don't know where we'll be tomorrow" really needs to be there, if only because it's true (and I know people deeply in love can relate) that my greatest fear is losing my Honey. What is also true, but couldn't be worked into the song, is that I know with my whole being that I can only be with Her going forward, or alone. More than anything, the song is about how as a poet I feel the depth and mystery of the world moving within me, demanding that I write it down somehow, that I sing it. Finding love has woken that side of me up in a way that I'm still coming to grips with. For me, the most powerful line, referring to a transformative dream that I will never forget, is "I'll keep my seat, the tiller-handle tightly held while the current rages."

The title, Cup of Bliss, is in fact a deliberate echo of Amos Lee, who is a major inspiration to me. My song is not really on-topic with his song, Cup of Sorrow, but that phrase has worked into my head far enough that it has become an important inner symbol of mine. It's hard to put into words, but the way we experience our world with those close to us is a cup that we drink together, and what kind of cup it is becomes an essential part of our shared experience. I'm truly blessed to share a cup of bliss.

For the musicians, I play this in standard tuning with the capo on two. Chords are Amaj7, A, E, Asus2, A7, and Ddim. I very much enjoy working with clustered chords that move together easily, and this set is very good that way.

 - - - - -

Snapping Sails by Harper Meader

When I first started playing mumblety-summat years ago, the music I most wanted to play was that of Gordon Bok, Stan Rogers, and Gordon Lightfoot. Whales and sails, hauling nets, hardened tars, schooners, clippers, sea-foam...oh, the language of sailing is so evocative, gut-level imagery for someone like me, with sailing in my genes! 

One day when I was practicing my way through all the love-songs that have come to me me recently, my Honey said, "You know, Harper, you really should write a sailing song since you love the sea so much..." I just nodded at the time, but one day at work, maybe a week later, Snapping Sails came to me, all in one sitting, and I like it very much. Of course, true to form, by the end of it, it's another love-song; I just can't help myself.

For the musicians, this one is dead easy. Standard tuning, using Am, F, Dm, G, and C. At the end of the chorus you'll need to do a little "add4" to the C chord with your pinky, and that's it. I play it two-fingered, but it strums well too.

The Glassblower's Breath and Magic in the Moonlight

"The way the scent of wild roses makes me want to pull her down, down by the ocean..."

Rumi, that seer and poet tormented by love, wrote often of the consuming power of ecstasy, the ecstasy sometimes of love, sometimes of simply touching the universe. My very favorite Rumi poem, The New Rule, has a couple of lines that have stayed with me my entire adult life. One is:

"Here’s the new rule: break the wineglass,
And fall toward the glassblower’s breath."

The other is right at the end:

"Only love.
Only the holder the flag fits into,
And wind. No flag."

Don't worry, I'm not going to interpret mystic love poetry for you; I know what it means to me, and that's enough. My own song, The Glassblower's Breath, in comparison, is more accessible.  In it I'm simply reaching for the words to say adequately just how much my Love has changed my life, rescued me, brought me closer than I believed possible to that ecstatic love that Rumi knew. For her I'd surely smash the glass, and fall toward the Glassblower's breath!

For the musicians, I play this in standard tuning with a capo on only five strings at the second fret. The low note remains an E. I discovered partial capo-ing this year and have already written four songs that use it. You get the benefit of almost completely normal chords, with the added benefit of a dropped bass-note, really much cooler than it sounds! Chords are mostly variations of D, G, and A. One of these days I'll try to write up tablature for it. The bass run on the D chord is easier if you can fret with your thumb.

The second song on the CD, Magic in the Moonlight, is another of my favorites. I seem to write a lot of music late at night, sitting up in bed with my guitar, just barely touching the strings, while my Honey sleeps smiling. She tells me this is magical, that the music filters through into her dreams. All I know is that on a hot summer night, with the moon reaching through the window to light up the center of my world, words of love come to me powerfully, and that's where this song comes from.

"Oh, there’s magic in the moonlight,
When lovers sleep
With just a sheet
And a glass of water sweating by the bedside"

For the musicians, I play this with a two-finger pattern, standard tuning, capo on two. The chords are Am, Dm add 9, Em, G, Asus2, and F. It's a nice chord sequence, and not hard.

I hope you enjoy my music, and pass it on if you know anyone else who might appreciate it. My hope is to finance the next recording project by selling enough from this one. The songs waiting to be recorded are at least as good!

Beloved Love and Snow Drift Love

We have a couple of fun new things going on at Ironwood Hollow, but no photos ready today for those posts, so they'll wait. In the meantime, if you'll indulge me, I'll just talk a little bit about a  couple of the songs that can be found at Harper Meader Bandcamp.

Life in our winter is simply amazing.

The oldest song on the CD is "Beloved Love", and it's dear to my heart. Honey and I knew that we were meant for each other. We longed to be together, and our lives were just not quite ready to allow us that gift of waking up to see the dawn together. For me, our precious moments of time together were the finest moments my heart had ever known, and I was caught in that perfect storm of being exactly where I wanted to be, needed to be, and knowing that it was fleeting. Dreading the dawn, because I would once again awake alone, and at the same time thanking whatever Gods or spirits had brought us together for showing me the answer to my heart's quest.

For the musicians, I use a four-finger picking pattern in regular tuning, sort of Gordon Lightfoot-style, and the chords are:  Dsus2, Am, B7, Em, and G.

The next oldest is "Snow Drift Love." I wrote this last summer, on a very hot day, knowing that soon we would be living together, that we would spend our winters together, awake together in the morning to see that amazing blanket of snow that sometimes stops everything here at Ironwood Hollow. My favorite word in the song is "dooryard," a quintessentially downneast term. I once met an Italian New Yorker, name of Gaitano, who had moved to Maine, and remember asking how he liked it here. He was thrilled. "Oh, the language is endlessly fascinating. Just today I learned to pronounce a new Maine word." Then he crossed his eyes, and carefully said it: doouh yaahd! Then he clapped his hands with delight, and said that he found our country ways so charming. 

...underneath is still the front yard we know...

He has gotten tired of our country ways, and gone back to the city, but Honey and I, who truly love when we can see our breath in the bedroom on a frosty morning, still love our country ways, and this song is from when I looked forward to sharing that together with her. I hope you like the song, and queue it up on a blustery February morning...Honey and I will be tucked in with our tea, living the life we dreamed of, storm-stayed together and loving it!

Oh, for the musicians, I play this one with an alternating two-finger pattern, regular tuning, and the chords are: E and Asus2 alternating for the verses, and A, E, and one B7 snuck in there, for the chorus. Very easy, and one of my favorite chord patterns.

Cordwood Masonry Acoustics

As I wrote last time, I'm excited (me, Mr. Mellow, excited, yup!) about the final appearance of some of my recorded music. Actually, 'excited' doesn't cover it; I'm having a hard time thinking about anything else, except for that new song I'm working on, which may be even better. The physical CDs just arrived, sounding great, and the cover art (photo by my Honey) came out perfectly. Since I can't think about anything else right now, I'm going to elaborate on this recording project.

Music from a cordwood masonry mead-hall!

I've been writing music for a long time, and in the last couple of years, after falling in love with my Honey, that creative impulse has just skyrocketed. Finding that my heart is where it belongs, finally, has been amazingly good for my writing and composing.

 Months ago I asked my friend James Lindenschmidt of Crafted Recordings, who has all kinds of recording expertise, for pointers about getting some recording done. To my delight, he offered to help out, volunteering his considerable skills, at least in part because he had been wanting to try some recording in our house. The mead-hall, our central room with twelve-foot-plus ceilings, cordwood walls, and an adjoining space with gracefully curved walls, has great acoustic qualities. 

His version of this may be different, but here's why I think the space is so good for music. Cordwood masonry is not flat. It has a combination of very hard and somewhat hard surfaces, curves, and little angled segments all over it. So while it bounces sound nicely (compared to a curtained room, for example), it doesn't sound at all like a tiled space or a stairwell, with that complicated echo on top of everything. Not only that, but it is a magical space, made by hand with love, using natural local materials, and it is the perfect place for me to record my music. After all, it's where I write most of it, and it's where my Honey and I first met. Unless somebody tells me otherwise, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this is the first professional music recording in a cordwood masonry space!

James and I have much in common, including acoustic music, a similarly spiritual way of living in the world and a long-standing love of mead and mead-brewing. My first experience with his recording expertise was when he interviewed me years ago for his excellent blog, Bardic Brews. Back then, he made me feel very much at ease in front of a microphone, and this time was no different, except that it involved more microphones! Then he put in many hours fine-tuning everything for me. The end result is a very good presentation of my and my songwriting at its current best, and I can't say enough about how sweetly he worked with the very raw material. Please check out the music, which is downloadable from most mainstream venues, as Harper Meader's EP, "Honey."

Coming up, I'll talk in detail about some of the songs in particular, and also about why I like Bandcamp. Stay tuned...

Long Time Coming

Check out my (at last!) recording at bandcamp.com

I guess you may have noticed, if you are a regular reader of mine, that I have been absent for way too long. Sorry about that! Here's what's going on...

A long-time friend of mine, James Lindenschmidt of Bardic Brews and Crafted Recordings, offered to help me with some recording. I have been a musician for my whole adult life, playing folk harp, fingerstyle guitar, hammered dulcimer, and an assortment of other instruments, but in the recent past my songwriting went into overdrive, fed by the life changes that came with falling deeply in love. Happily, my musicianship has kept pace with my heart and my writing aspirations, and I have a steadily-growing collection of really good songs to show for it! 

I went into overdrive, consulting with my Honey about which were the best songs to break out with, practicing like mad, making sure I had the words just the way they should be...and new songs kept intruding! But eventually, just a couple of weeks ago, Jim came to Ironwood Hollow, toting all sorts of esoteric equipment, and Honey left us to our own devices. He told me that he has always wanted to try recording in our home, with its very unique acoustics that come from the cordwood masonry, the high ceilings, and the curved walls. 

Long story as short as possible, we had about three hours of good recording time all to ourselves, and in that time we recorded six of my songs. For each of them, I played my solo arrangement and sang at the same time, then went back and recorded a harmony track and a second guitar track in some cases. The one that sticks in my mind the most is when I said, "Jim, let me just hear the tune, and I'll play through the lead guitar, and see if I remember how it goes..." When I was finished, he just said, "Oh yeah, I was recording; that's great. What's next?" 

Six songs of spiritual love recorded in a cordwood masonry meadhall!

It was that kind of session. Jim's knowledge of recording and innate calm made it a pure pleasure. Followed by many hours of his skilled time mixing and mastering, one of the finest gifts I've ever received, this session has turned into an EP of a small sampling of my recent music. (An EP is an extended play, several songs, but not long enough to be called a CD). I have been working my way through the process of making the songs available, now that Jim has declared the tracks finished. Actual CDs are in process, and I'll post details about that when it's all set up. In the meantime, harpermeader.bandcamp.com is where to go to hear them. I hope you will purchase all or some of them for download! Bandcamp offers music affordably, with the option of paying anywhere from a minimum up to what you feel the music is worth. They will appear in the other usual venues shortly (itunes, amazon, etc), as that process does its thing. 

The changes in my life and my heart that my Honey has brought to me are only hinted at in these songs, but I am so pleased to be able to share a bit of that joy with you. There will be more, since I've determined to make songwriting a major part of my future. Stay tuned. Among these songs you will find a steamy celebration of midsummer loving (Magic in the Moonlight), a rousing sailing song (Snapping Sails), the perfect tune for when you're storm-stayed with your love (Snowdrift Love), a partial-capoed pattern-picked epic-love-song for the guitarists among us, with a nod to the great love-poet, Rumi, (The Glassblower's Breath), and more.

I hope that you like my work. My hope is that this project will fund the next recording, and that my love of music, words, spirit, life, and my Honey will become something more than a hobby, that it will bring a piece of that joy that is my life into the homes of many.

Okay, a final note...anywhere else you find my songs, they're likely to cost about the same, but at bandcamp, you get the lyrics for free, and you can hear the whole song right there before you decide to part with a dollar or two. Also, just sayin'...as one of my blog-readers, you know where to find me. If you play, and want to know my chords, or get a hint about the picking patterns that I use, you know where to find me. 

Songwriting Takes Me Over

You may have noticed that I've been quiet lately, and I apologize for that. One of the reasons is that I have been plowing what creative time I have into my songwriting. A good friend has offered to help me record three or so songs, and I have been working like crazy at polishing up my best five (or so) songs to prepare for that. The trouble is that Love and the Muse, encouraged by the remarkable love story that is my life now, keep sending me off to write more songs, and what I think of as my top five songs keeps changing!

My fervent wish to express my feelings and experiences in a way that touches hearts, that may even brighten somebody's world, has pushed my musical ability to new heights, which after many years of being fairly intermediate is a very pleasant surprise. Inspired by the likes of Amos Lee, Ray LaMontagne, K.D. Lang, Jack Johnson, Gregory Alan Isakov, and a few others, I'm writing music that would have been impossible for me two years ago. So when James, my recording friend, gets me set up, I think the results will be very good indeed.

Just for a sneak preview, Honey and I have decided almost for sure which songs are in the top three. The first one is a love song written back when we had very little time together. One night I wrote the words in my head while lying awake wishing dawn would never come, because she would have to leave. It's unabashedly emotional, grateful, wishing for the moment to never end. Partial lyrics are:

"Beloved love, wake to me!
I hear you speaking in your dreams,
Asking all the spirits 'round us
Why does dawn come?
Every time I wake to find you
Sleepy-eyed, my arms around you,
Waiting for your gaze to find mine,
I thank them!"

Number two was written last summer, when I was looking forward to having my Honey move in with me, imagining that we would be snowed in here in the Maine woods together, the inexorable, beautiful drift-building weather a powerful metaphor for the way our relationship has only become more beautiful over time. It's very "Mainish," even using one of my favorite local words, 'dooryard.' Partial lyrics are:

"That's the way our love grows,
Building slowly like these all-night snows.
Underneath it all, just like our dooryard,
Never changing since I fell so hard
For you, that's what you do to my heart!"

Number three is recent. I have always loved sailing songs. I imagine my sailing ancestors whispering to my soul that the sea is calling, that I should follow in their salty footsteps somehow. Maybe this song will satisfy them. Like nearly all of my songs these days, love makes an appearance, but at heart it's a song about the lure of the sea.

"Once I asked the captain what he looked for in his roaming,
He said sometimes he rounds Cape Horn, sailing back from Nome
And then it's all downwind from there until he plants his boots at home,
And that's all he said when I asked why..."

For the moment at least, these are the top contenders, but Love and the Muse keep distracting me with new ideas, and the songs are starting to pile up in my notebooks, about twenty so far. I'm champing at the bit to share them somehow, either by recording myself, or by finding homes for them with good recording artists. At least a few will make an appearance soon, recorded solo at Ironwood Hollow. Stay tuned!

Writing and Reading on Paper

Yes, I have been remiss in my blogging. Sorry about that! My excuse is that I haven't had an interesting DIY or cooking project going for a little while, and have instead been busy with things like the water heater not working, the snow needing lots of snowblowing, and similar efforts. The real reason though, if I'm perfectly honest with you, is more complicated, and has to do with this medium, the internet. 

I was just reading a fellow bookseller's blog, and he very intriguingly related books to horses. I think his point was that, even though we have always loved horses and relied upon them, they have been needed far less in the mechanized era, but books have been more resilient in the digital age. That's how it struck me anyway. I enjoyed the post very much, and it got me thinking. I find that once I saw through the glittery show of how much the internet and social media can connect us, bring information to our fingertips, render encyclopedias obsolete, and so on, and realized how thin the experience of digital media is, I am more than ever in love with paper books.

Apple Valley Books in Winthrop Maine

It's not just the books, though. I am more in love with live acoustic music, song from vocal chords, friends to talk to in person, real food on a real plate, and most importantly, love with the woman who shares so many up-close breaths of real air with me. It goes on...chess with Soren at the kitchen table is vastly more rewarding than chess online with strangers. Frisbee or other real outdoor play will beat any online play you can conceive of. Pinterest may show us the most delicious pictures of bacon-wrapped goat-cheese monkey-bread with avocado glaze, or whatever, but the finest thing to cross my palate lately was cooked by my Honey in a real pot on a real stove, and was not shared or liked online. For those who want to know, it was sweet potato and brussels sprouts baked with herbs, bacon, and chevre, but it could have been ANYTHING and beaten out pinterest.

Back to the books though. What I've been doing with my time hasn't been something that shares well on a blog, at least not yet. I've been fine-tuning my song collection with the goal of recording, for one. I have about a half dozen songs that I think are as good as any of my favorite recorded songs, within my musical taste, and will find a way to get them out into the world. Also, I've been writing, a novel, on paper. It's moving along nicely, and I am happy with it. I'm writing in pen on lined notebooks, then revising it just a bit as I type it on the computer. I found my old typewriter, got a ribbon for it, and when I can type out on the porch so as not to deafen everyone in the house, I'll switch to that for my first draft. The relationship between our dreams and imagination, and the physical act of writing down words, is a magical thing that I believe will survive the digital age intact. In this age, it may well be an e-book at least as fast is it can be a paper book, but the book-lover in me hopes that paper copies will be kept and loved for years on good old-fashioned bookshelves by people who live most of their lives away from glowing computer screens.

I'll be back into the blogging, I promise. There are many projects waiting for spring, waiting for the workshop to be warm enough to do carpentry in, waiting for winter to loosen its hold on those of us who live under the snowdrifts until May up here in Maine. In the meantime, get off this computer thing, and go play, write, cook, read, be with your loved ones, eh?

Satisfied

Satisfied

Copyright Eric Robbins November 21 2012

By the sweat of my Father,                                                        C             Cmaj9   Am                       

And the tears of my mother,                                                     C             Cmaj9    Am

I got no call to be faulting the weather,                                   C             Cmaj9    Am

I’m satisfied…                                                                                G

See those leaves blowing one way,

And that crow flies another.

As long as the two of us are together,

I’m satisfied…

(Chorus) How could I ask for more than I’ve got,                 G            F             C             G           

When each day begins with you?                                              C             F             G

I got my head up in the stars,                                                    G            F             C             G

My feet in the morning dew, and I’ve got you…                    C             F             G            C

The wind blows the world ‘round,

From the treetops and the whitecaps,

But warmed by the fireplace and held in your arms

I’m satisfied…

When I know that you’re coming home,

I’m waiting by the front steps.

We hold each other safe from any harm,

I’m satisfied…

Got a roof to hold the snowfall,

Warm blankets for the frosty chill.

Together we don’t need to fear the deepest frost,

I’m satisfied…

Your heart is my compass rose,

To guide me like the stars at night,

Steering ever homeward where once I wandered lost,

I’m satisfied…

Almost Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving I will truly count my blessings!

Love songs by nature are about gratitude, and my latest is no exception. Coming up on Thanksgiving, I feel like a kid before Christmas. Much of my family will meet much of my Honey's family for the first time. I will be a puddle of emotion, there's no doubt, watching her make a banquet hall of our little castle in the woods, seeing our parents watching us both finally be arm in arm with the love that we have always needed, seeing generations come together under the roof of our sheltering home.

We are both keenly feeling the fortune of having our parents still with us, of watching the children move out into the world in their individual ways, of having brothers and sisters who support and love us, whose lives we support with our own love. With all of this swirling around in my heart, I've written another song, one that only scratches the surface of these emotions, but that's okay. It leaves space for more songs, next time I stay up late, lightly playing, while the love of my life, and the kids, sleep peacefully in the Hollow. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

  -Harper

"Satisfied" copyright Eric Robbins November 10, 2012

By the sweat of my father, and the blood of my mother,
I've got no call to be faulting the weather, I'm satisfied...
I see the leaves blowing one way, and that crow flies another.
As long as we two are together, I'm satisfied...

    How could I ask for more than I've got, 
    When each day begins with you?
    Got my head all up among the stars,
    And my feet in the morning dew, and I've got you!

The wind blows the world 'round, see the treetops and the whitecaps.
Warmed by the fireplace, and held in your arms, I'm satisfied...
When I know that you're coming home, I wait by those front steps.
I watch over you, and you keep back the storms, I'm satisfied...

Got a roof to hold the snowfall, heavy blankets for that winter chill.
The two of us are safe against the deep December frost, I'm satisfied...
Your heart is my compass rose, to show the way like the stars at night,
Steering every homeward, though once I wandered lost, I'm satisfied...

Snow Drift Love

 Copyright 2012 Eric Robbins

The way the snow drifts,
On and on and on,
Made me think of
A shape for this new song.
Falling past the window,
Blanketing the yard,
Paper said it’s bound to
Come down mighty hard.

Tiny changes in the shape of all the snow,
Underneath is still the front yard we know.

And that’s the way our love grows,
Slowly building like these all night snows
Underneath it all, just like our dooryard,
Never changing since I fell so hard
For you, that’s what you do to my heart!

When we woke up,
Pulled the drapes aside,
Watched the first flakes
Building like the tide,
And we pulled up the
Covers to our chins,
Sipping tea and loving
Being all snowed in.
All the edges gradually shift
Under swirling shapes of growing drifts.

And that’s the way our love grows,
Slowly building like these all night snows
Underneath it all, just like our dooryard,
Never changing since I fell so hard
For you, that’s what you do to my heart!

On Being Alone

I'm reading Weight of Stone, the second volume of Laura Anne Gilman's fantasy series, The Vineart War. In it, the main character, Jerzy, finds himself alone for the first time in his life, just for a few hours. He has always been in some company or other, always working alongside somebody, sleeping in a space with others, told what to do and where to be. The experience of being completely alone unnerves him, leaving him frightened and uneasy.

Apple Valley Books or your local Independent.

This struck me as something to think about. Of course, with my love of the outdoors, there have been times when I have been away from humanity entirely for hours on end, snowshoeing, hiking, motorcycling. But in the more general sense, I grew up in a family that held me close in a fine way. I went to school. I never went more than a month without being in a relationship. I never lived alone.

Until now. For months now I have been alone at home more often than not. Evenings fixing a solitary dinner, nights with nobody to reach for, mornings with only cats to talk to. I don't listen to the radio much, and don't have a television. I don't have internet access at home. By "alone" I mean much more alone than most people think when they hear the word. I am not looking for sympathy here, don't get me wrong. My phone is always within reach, and when it rings it is either my sister, my mother, my father, a good friend, or, best of all, my Honey. I am loved, and have places to go where I will be hugged. My Honey spends all the time with me that she can. We've been moving carefully toward living together, not rushing, so as to give the kids time to adjust to me, this new guy in their life. I know there are people MUCH more alone than I am, so crushing solitude is NOT what I'm talking about.

I find myself imagining what other solitary people hear in their heads as they go through their days. As for me, I'm typically male in that whatever project I'm working on takes up 95% of my brain most of the time. I can be working on the railings for the stairs, and have nothing in my head but "32 1/4 inches, remember to turn it the right way, don't forget to bring the drill bit back up the stairs, that one has a nice twist in it, will be pretty, 32 1/4 inches, are there enough screws left in the box, probably going to have to sweep up after this..." Nothing but all that AND an awareness that my Honey will call sometime before bedtime, that I am doing this work because I want our house to be a haven for the whole family, that soon there will be teenager radio, the thump of a basketball on the porch, the smell of food cooking that I'm not stirring, the give-and-take of floor space, quiet space, bathroom time, that come with a full house.

All that is in my head too, and I don't feel alone. I feel beyond lucky, beyond blessed, to know that even though nobody is in the house with me for a few hours, even though the thrushes sing me to sleep, the chickadees wake me up, and I talk to the cats more than to anyone else, I am in somebody's heart, and that, for a long time to come, there are people I love who need me and love me too. Solitude does not mean loneliness.

Scooby and I talk a lot.

Back to Jerzy in the fantasy novel, what happens is that, right away, he finds an amazing inner strength, a magic that surprises him. In the real world it's not that simple, but I know, right up there on the short list of things that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that truly loving someone, the right someone, the one who knows me fully and loves me anyway, means that I am never alone, that my life is far better than it ever could be without that love. The proof is in where my mind goes when nobody else is here. My thoughts don't go to the Bahamas, the upcoming football season, or whether the fish might be biting, but to the fine constellation of love that fills my heart-space. And that makes me want to write another love-song, which just may be my own magical response to being alone while I work toward our life together.

Nesting

I am nesting. Have been for months now, and the whole process is culminating in a way that makes my toes curl and my stomach get the best kind of butterflies. I've been building my house for the last 15 years, raised a daughter in it during much of the process, and often look around when I am alone here, unsatisfied, seeing unfinished edges everywhere. Things like ceilings not painted, doors not trimmed out, floors still only exposed plank in some places. Everything has changed now, though; I am in love. Crazy in love, in the kind of love that fills my heart to overflowing, that has me writing love-songs unabashedly on a weekly basis. The kind of love that always used to make me sad when I saw it in a movie, read it in a book, heard it in a song, because I knew I didn't have it, though I wanted it more than anything. 

So here I am, a grown man feeling like a teenager in some ways, alone in a very unconventional unfinished home, with the woman-better-than-my-dreams moving in, bringing her kids, her cats, her enthusiasm, her own hopes and dreams. Am I excited? Oh, Hell yes. Nervous? Well, of course. Prepared? Oh, boy...

Some of that reclaimed wood.

For months I have been making room, hoping against hope that she would say yes. Several unfinished rooms had become, over the years, floor-to-ceiling storage areas. The "utility room" is simply mounds of tools, scrap wood, totes, motorcycle gear, with just enough room for a litter box and a bowl for cat food in the middle. The "library" was, until not long ago, simply filled with boxes of books, the mismatched shelves stacked with rugs, photos, paperwork, unwanted nicknacks, camping gear, and the like. The "balcony" was blessedly hidden behind some stapled-up batik fabric and overflowed with mead-buckets in various stages of production, books, lumber, junk, empty boxes. We're not talking about clutter here, but about whole parts of my house that couldn't be navigated without a flashlight, a duster, and some climbing skills. 

I'll be coming back in detail to some of the specific projects, but for today I just want to touch on some of them briefly. The bathroom, for years mostly finished, is finally getting its corner trim, small slats of cedar customized from cedar closet-paneling. The outdoor shower, long a fond dream, came together in two days of intense soldering and drilling, and now needs only some enclosing and floor-surfacing. The balcony and stairs are getting a complete make-over, railings made of peeled hemlock saplings. Watch for that entry; for the cost of some screws and just a handful of three- and four-inch boards, I am building what would cost hundreds to build conventionally. Saving lots of money, at the same time as conserving natural resources, is great when you can do it, and I'll talk in detail about how this works for me.

Almost ready to tame the wild railing risers.

The library is empty now, and I've been surfacing it with reclaimed lumber from the transfer station, my goal to finish the room with only the cost of screws, nails, and paint. One wall is surfaced completely with cupboard and other doors. A built-in bunk and a secret cabinet are further signs of nesting, wanting so much to have two girls find it beautiful and magical as their new bedroom.

What once was going to be a study for me, then morphed into a guest-room, can now be home to two teen boys. Since I made it from my boyhood dreams of "the perfect bedroom," I have some reason to hope that they will like it, secret shelves, hanging chair, curved walls, and all. Am I prepared? Not yet, but working on it is indescribably satisfying.

This journal will be about much more than my nesting, this process of making my home suitable for my Beloved, sweeping, fixing, improving, building; today that is my focus, but as my new life, OUR new life, grows, many other facets of this love-filled path will find their way to these pages, and I will try my damnedest to bring you inspiration, motivation, hope, beauty, song, art, and goodwill.