Lost Bird Found

movers and shaking

I am sitting in a pile of rubble, cursing my family's penchant for purchasing the heaviest, hardest hard cover books. 50 boxes of books? Not even done packing? Are we insane? Yes. Henry alone has over 25 books most of them over 30 pages and hes 20 months old!
I am craving simplicity and the sugar I have denied myself for a full week now! Cookies! Now! Suddenly I want a cocktail and its 12:44 on a Friday! I always wanted to be an architect or a surgeon. I love the idea of clean lines, blue lines, math, the seriousness of both professions but my hands are too prone to twiddle and wobble and my math skills leave much to be desired. Love crisp white shirts with thick bright necklaces but Im built like a turtle and I am currently wearing a tshirt my mother screenprinted in 1978, with holes in it and I am seriously only wearing one sock. Now that Im checking myself out, Im not even sure that these are my pants. Lovely picture Ive painted of myself.


its amazing what you can do with a pen and patience.
These are part of a collection of patterns from security envelopes. There is great design everywhere if you look. (bad design also if you dont look!) Love, love the super simple super beautiful blog


but does it float



As always graphic-exchange has super great designs.
Okay well, off to pack more boxes. I swear one of the animals will end up inside of one at some point, taped inside and yowling (accidentally of course).

4 years ago I lost her.

A poem my mother wrote, before she passed away. We read this at her service. All day I've fought back tears
Starting sudden, unannounced, commanding me to attention
At the strangest times.
I was wrapping something-it had been my mother's--
nothing much
even tacky
a quick thought but true
as it had been then....
And I thought: there can't be fusion without parting.
There can't be that measured road of parenthood, of childhood
Without the ruts, the tearing of earth, the uprooted branches,
Starting from birth, the splitting almost in two
As if seeming to break
But before ripping to pieces, falling down a soft tunnel of forgetting
Into a new scene entirely, another beginning.
Still, there is this time when one hangs
Very small, solitary, surrounded by thin air,
A spider swinging in the darkness
Assaulted by memories of light.
I remember those times now, though they are usually shrouded
By the velvet darkness that has cushioned and buried my many falls
That has with iron hands helped me up again, to go to higher ground.
Now stripped and bare
Whipping into my eyes in the merciless light
Snapped there by my own heedless forward march.
And I know that they will pass for you as they did for me.
But: small comfort for you that I say this,
You suspended there, hanging between the darkness and the light.
I know that I can't pull you up.
I know that you will find your own way through the night.
And I know that you will inch slowly, surely,
With much doubt and misgiving With much strength and grace.
In the morning your web
The one you thought you could not spin
The one I knew you would
Will remind me once again that there is no ending without beginning
That I will have no night that will not be eclipsed by your morning.

packing

I was organizing photos and letters last night. My mother passed down her terrible sentimental habits on to me. Though sometimes I am glad to find little letters. There was a little letter that a boy wrote to me at camp about how he liked me more than friends liked each other. It was really sweet. His name was Chuck, I have no memory of this boy but apparently at the camp fair I also said that I liked him more that I liked a friend.

I found a resume of my grandfathers. It was before he had children. He was a seriously amazing guy. I knew him when he was quite old so I never really got to talk to him much, though I wish that I could have. I would love to update a resume and include something about "my wanderings", clearly his resume worked? He always had a job.

Also there was an old photo album as well. So I scanned two pictures. I love his handwriting. It seems like he labeled pictures with a lot of inside jokes and reminders.

My grandfather is the one on the right, with the moustache and has the nickname MooMoo apparently. I think that he was pretty handsome! He spoke over 8 languages fluently at the end of his life. He was the Dean of an art school and the Director of Education at a museum in NY too. Its really funny what you remember as a child. I knew that he smelled like Brie cheese and grapes and remember his collection of fedoras. He even had a Rhinocerous foot trash can. My mother told me years later that at mealtimes he would announce with this comedic tone "NEVER FEED ANIMALS UNDER THE TABLE" and shake some piece of food up in the air and then swoop his arm down and feed one of the several animals waiting at his feet. Even though he was in his 90s when I knew him he was still quite lucid. He filled my mind with insane stories about his travels. I am not even sure which ones were real. He would give me ridiculous answers to questions, that now make no sense. My father, sort of did the same thing. I was entirely convinced that he invented the word boom box until I got to high school.







Back to sorting all of these letters. I've just found his journals from when he was in the OSS. I'm sure he would have been a prolific blogger...

right on, target.

Hello, For the month of April you can purchase a Lost Bird Found organic cotton tunic at Target's Red Hot Shops! And you even can get it for a little bit less! They are hand printed and designed by me!
These tunics are super great. The more you wash them the softer they get. I think that they are pretty great...

portraits

i just love these photos. theres more i love right over here. i should really start scanning in some of the photos i have from my grandfather too. i sort of miss the days where the general public savored taking photographs more because you couldnt just delete them on your camera. you had to be sure that you wanted to develop them.