a year already? wow.

happy first birthday to baby jude, daughter of annie and helen.

yay for their beautiful fambly and their love. their building of a home filled with love is an example to everyone. they continue to be harbingers of hope and it always leaves me feeling gratitude.

and yesterday's minor storm in a teacup has led to some fruitful dialogue. for that too i am grateful. where there was anger, there is peace being sown. and i haven't had to let go of my conscience to be a part of it. which is important to me.

so, i'm moving on. and amen to it all.

LB

then and now

then...




now. before...




and after:


forget about your worries and your strife...

LB

snapshots from Edinburgh

my aunt Morag (on left) enjoying her 60th birthday dinner...as did everyone else. that's 8:30pm, and the sun was beaming...














dinner started with Stornoway black pudding... the best i've ever tasted...
and ended with party favours... tablet. from DiRollo's. yum.














a glorious 2 hour dander through the botanical gardens...





































i found a little piece of AZ in the glasshouse...




























and hugged a tree in honour of my niece...












perfect haddock from Armstrongs of Stockbridge in The Orchard...


a grand couple of days was had...












LB

hit ||

i've been away for most of the past week (lovely first trip to belfast as a visitor since the move & then flew with family to edinburgh to celebrate my aunt's 60th), but it's been packed and i had little time for online things or time on my own.
i'm home for 48 hours and then heading up north again, namely to hang with my dear pal Peterson and do some ikon-ey stuff.

in this space inbetween i've a load of things on my to-do list needing attention and with it that over-caffeinated feeling that comes when there's a backlog of thoughts piling up in the back right hand corner of my skull that i've been wanting to reflect and write upon and not had the space...

needless to say, however, all is going pretty good, and so silence for the past week is simply down to the above and not because i've fallen down a dark well of... well, darkness.

colour me consciously hitting the pause button and aiming for the next 36 hours to be something other than rushed and containing some solitude so i can write those piled up things out of head and onto page.

LB

same story

the screen-saver scoops up photographs and creates a mosaic. and as the images multiply, they combine to become yet another photograph - an image of my little nephew, minutes old. swirls of red paint i made last summer with my right hand colour his florid cheek, sylvia meets jonah charging in the bend of his arm... and a favourite moment of you, laughing with head thrown back, melts deep into the black of his eye...

Even if I were to stretch this letter out, God forbid, to a thousand pages, would I ever be able to convey my full story to you? I suspect the answer is no. I suspect that our stories in their fullness will always be hidden from each other and that all those whiskered old men and bonneted old women looking out at us from their photographs in the family album will always remain mysteries to us even if, like me, they happen to have written their memoirs. And yet I believe that all is not lost. Maybe we can never know each other's stories in their fullness, but I believe we can know them in their depth for the reason that in their depth we all have the same story.

Whether we're rich or poor, male or female, a nineteenth-century Swiss jeweler like Isaac Golay in his oversized frock coat, or a twentieth-century American clergyman like me with a penchant for writing books, or a young squirt celebrating his twenty-first birthday in the twenty-first century like you, our stories are all stories of searching. We search for a good self to be and for good work to do. We search to become human in a world that tempts us always to be less than human or looks to us to be more. We search to love and be loved. And in a world where it is often hard to believe in much of anything, we search to beleive in something holy and beautiful and life-transcending that will give meaning and purpose to the lives we live.


- from letter to benjamin, by frederick buechner, in the longing for home (1996)

all witnesses to one another's becoming... it was never your destination i cared about, just as i've long since forgotten the punchline. your laughter made the air vibrate...
i watch you in the transformation...

LB

my brother

for my bruvver,
with love and congratulations. i think this was on the infamous "All Aboard" kids' compilation album.
regardless, ewan and i used to love singing along to this.

c,xo

big sister, little brother

*sniff*

i hope Lochlann will be as much of a blessing to Sequoia as Ewan has been, and continues to be, to me.

LB

Lochlann... :)

welcome nephew

finally, he has arrived!! Miriam went to the hospital in Toronto at around 11pm last night and delivered baby Lochlann at 2.15am . 8lb9oz with light brown hair.
Miriam and baby are doing well so far and Ewan says his son is, "so beautiful" and, "very cute". he spent his first few hours in the world feeding and sleeping on his parents' chests. if they get the all clear they'll go home Friday morning and Lochlann will get to meet his big sister.

photos to follow when Ewan's had a nap. i can't wait.

hurray. what a blessing.

LB

how to make a new home. with update.

here's the recipe.

1. take all, well, nearly all (as many as will fit in a van) of your worldly goods...













(foto taken yesterday evening by jayne, before the hardest of the "see you soons", which had me crying all the way to the border...)

2. open apartment. make inventory of,
a) furniture provided (marvel at ugliness of lounge furniture. make mental note to find throws and cushions at nearest opportunity)
b) kitchenware provided by landlord that one plans to put away in a box for duration of lease,ie. every single bit of it (while saying, i wouldn't eat off/drink out of/cook with that if you effing well paid me. )
c) miscellaneous crap found in cupboards
d) damage, broken things.

3. stir in insulting names for the previous tenants, who clearly had better things to do than clean. think up further insulting names for the supposedly professional cleaner who supposedly cleaned flat after aforementioned unhygennic messy scumbags vacated premises.
optional: curse previous tenants for removing lightbulbs.

4. take fotos for jayne et al to see.

the hall:














the main bathroom:














"jayne's room" aka the guest room:










as above, with shower room:












i could lie and say i'm being a generous host by letting my jayne and any other guests have the en-suite, but in truth
i'm taking the 2nd and only fractionally smaller room, because,
a. i may end up getting a flatmate to split the rent, and if they have the en suite, i get to have the main bathroom, with BATH, for me.
b. i didn't fancy sleeping between "his 'n' hers" wardrobes.

my room:













my room:










lounge:










kitchen (taken from dining area) containing miscellaneous shite provided by landlord/former scumerators:










lounge, looking toward dining area/kitchen:










5. add all ingredients from van to flat.
6. empty boxes
7. don rubber gloves and proceed to scrub, hoover, wash, polish, wipe. (may take several days.)
8. arrange to suit taste.

i'm currently at no 6 and have emptied 13 & 1/2 boxes already.
more pics to follow once it's all out of the oven...

::

a hard lesson...

last night i talked to my bro on skype, (birth watch update: still no sign of baby no.2 but all is well.) my 25 month old niece was looking through the banisters that lead from den up to kitchen and displaying her counting skills. on reaching 12, which impressed me no end, she disappeared screen left up the steps and then promptly came tumbling back into view head over heels on hard wood in a downward trajectory and exited screen right, where she came to a sudden halt on the tile floor at the bottom of the stairs. needless to say, my visit was cut short to the sound of tears, although i don't believe any lasting damage occurred. but if she grows up disliking maths, we know why. counting and keeping balance are big jobs when you're small.

sunday update: still no baby no.2. and sequoia's only damage is a small bruise on her foot. my brother checked that she can still count to 14. she can. he took this to be a good sign.
it never ceases to amaze me that the human body, especially the skeleton, evolved in such a way that at the very time when we are learning to master control of its movement, is capable of surviving these "accidents" relatively unscathed. that said, i'm not sure i want another skype visit involving quite such dramatic live streaming. next time, i want to see my neice on a chair. the use of duct tape is optional.

LB

don't let the T be silent

i've added peterson's blog to my published list, over there on the right hand side, but he wanted this particular story to get a push. so consider this me circling it with a highlighter pen and passing it over. please pass it on.

through his art and activism, peterson has been focussing increasingly on the rights and stories of transgender people over the past year, and this story is troubling. on several levels.

no time to say more right now as my step-brother is getting married in a couple of hours and there's champagne needing drunk...

LB

happy birthday Miriam

Introducing a brand new series, A Bird in the Hand
Pilot Episode: Oops!
Synopsis:
in which our heroine admits to being a bad sister-in-law and makes a low budget
animated movie in a flagrant attempt to make up for it by morning.
Starring an approximate rendering of LittleBird, and her entirely fictitious imaginary friend, Bob.