About

Bare Bones

To start.

Daughter of a Mid-western artist/carpenter/athlete and a Southern ex-hippie artist. Granddaughter of writers, the Dust Bowl, and the Great Depression.

Product and sometime steward of an 1870’s Folk Victorian farm house on the outskirts of a now-booming Southern city. Cut my teeth on picking and popping string beans from the u-pick fields, hiding crab apples in my 7-year old bathing suit with my best friend to pretend we had grown a pair, stoking the winter woodstove, and dancing pink leg warmers room-to-room with Dylan’s Slow Train Coming and The Eurythmics’ Ball and Chain.

The past is not so easily quarantined. My childhood has had a tremendous effect on my imagination.

Feathers

To carry me.

When I was a child, I wanted to grow up to be a bird. Nothing has changed – except now I realize it might not only be possible, but unavoidable.

All the things that interest me offer some form of flight or float: Dance, boat, hike, travel, sing, write. Writing is the one that is deeply personal and relational. Art should unite us despite and in our aloneness.

One of the most striking things I’ve read: “Nonresistance is the key to the greatest power in the universe” (Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth.) The sea bird is a totem of this power. It must learn to withstand and even play in the roughest of winds. Words and ideas are light as bird bones, but built for riding out the weather. Nonresistance is not apathy, but the ability to stay in the game and turn it into dance.

So, I am a theoretical artist when I can get away with it. Actual artist when I must. Master’s student of the Creative Writing Program at University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Grateful for my Southern-grown roots and, once root-bound, — western expansion. I currently live in Oregon.

Flight

Where I want to go.

I want my life to build bridges. We are living in a time of instant, global connection, but with so many barriers built from naming, categorizing, blaming, and separating. We don’t have time for that. We’ve got to work harder than ever to mend the burnt bridges and start from scratch on those not yet made manifest.

That may be an act of compassion, shared skills or information, or just listening.

This is primarily a space for me to share my words and captures. However, it’s highly possible I will include links to other writers and works because, well, some are just so striking. When I do, I’ll credit the artist.

Artistic expression is critical for us to understand our relatedness. I see this as an historical moment where we must act, hope, and embrace one another. Until we learn that the life within us and throughout the entire natural world is indistinguishable and embrace it with reverence and compassion, we will continue to imperil our species and many others.

Each moment offers another opportunity to be who we want to be. Who is that?