today, i am thinking about noticing.

i am thinking about how, when your eyes are more softly focused, you do notice things that are important. in addition, you see those things in relation to the whole, instead of in isolation.

this feels important somehow.

there is a post about the peculiar shame of loneliness and my related need for connection wandering around my mind, but it needs to percolate for a day or two.

in the meantime, i am popping in to remind you that the birthday celebration sale in my etsy shop will end on march 25th. enter the coupon code ATLASIS9 at checkout for 18% off your entire purchase. once the celebration ends, the shop will close for most of april.

if you are wanting or needing a dose of beauty, or have had your eye on something in my shop for a while now, do go visit!

at the moment, i have two favorite coffee places: the dragonfly coffee house (in the alphabet district, on thurman and 24th) and barista (on alberta, between 17th and 18th).

i was driving to the dragonfly on saturday to meet a friend. traffic was slow around and through the tunnel so, to amuse myself, i decided to look at the license plates to see if they held a sign for me.

the car next to me had the letters DAT. the car in front of that car had the letters BUY. when i read them back to myself, i realized they said BUY DAT.

we were planning to visit anthropologie after coffee, so you can imagine my delight at my sign!

{a photo project honoring radiance, one of my words for 2012 :: 52 photos that represent radiance, 52 photos that represent luminosity.}

another picture that makes me think of both radiance and luminosity.

p.s. i was closing registration for the secret garden earlier today, when i decided that i loved the card set for the circle of aqua so much that i wanted more people to have it. so, just for fun, i am leaving registration for the circle of aqua open through monday. if you were interested in it, there are a few more spaces available, and you have a few extra days to decide. maybe you want your year to be full of happy surprise, delight, and gleeful anticipation too!

today, atlas is 9, so i am wishing a happy birthday to my dear little puppy.

i love him more than the sun, moon, and stars.

i love him times a million and forty seven and thirty three. (that's today's number. i make up a new number for him every day.)

he is the best four-legged friend a girl could have, and i am grateful for every single day i get to spend with him.

(insert a pause as i get up from my chair and give him a kiss on the nose, because he is watching me with an eagle eye as i sniffle away while typing.)

today, i am full of love for atlas, and i am full of love for all dogs. our world really is better because they are in it.

i am following a number of threads, and they are all leading me to the same place – to the wanting.

thread the first.

for a long while, whenever i asked the question, "what is between me and earning money?", the answer that came was usually some variation of, "i don't want to earn money".

this was supremely frustrating to me. it seemed illogical – of course i want to earn money. it also seemed more and more hopeless – i have worked through so many layers of this belief and yet there it would be again. it is so frustrating to want to earn money and to find that you are – yet again – in your own way.

this came up again a couple of weeks ago. i asked, "what is between me and earning money?" the answer was, "i don't want to earn money" and then i cried, though i didn't really know why.

i sat with the question and answer. i felt a swirling in my belly. when i felt into it, what came up was, "what if i want to earn money and then i don't? what if i'm not enough?" i had the sense of an abyss, of terror, of wanting something to happen but it wasn't happening and i couldn't make it happen and so i decided that there must be something wrong with me. i had the sense that i stopped wanting in that moment because not wanting was a better reason for not getting something than feeling like there was something wrong with me, that i was wrong.

when i talked to the fear of wanting to earn money during a meditation, the image i got was of a very tiny baby screaming as loud as it could. it said that it was afraid that the pain would be so great that i would disintegrate, and the only way it could keep me safe from that pain was to keep me from wanting.

thread the second.

i might have mentioned this before, but i am reading your dog is your mirror (kevin behan). i just read a chapter that was very interesting to me. in it, the author talks about wanting. he talks about how, as we become aware of our self in relation to others, we begin to realize that others have something to do with our wants coming true. he talks about how we learn to justify our wants to satisfy the people we need in order to get what we want. he talks about how the only way we know how to make sense of our wants being corrected or denied is to create judgments like "i am not good enough to have what i want" because we are not old enough to have the necessary perspective.

the general idea of the book is that dogs manifest our unresolved emotional issues. he says that it takes his dogs about eight years to manifest his deepest stuff.

when i look at atlas, and the things i most love and the things i find most annoying about atlas, they are all related to wanting. interestingly, when atlas turned 8 1/2, which was also the time of our 8 year anniversary, i remember saying to one of the girls at the pet store, "it's like he woke up one day and said, 'i am 8 1/2 now! we shall do what i want from here on out!'"

in atlas, i can see a perfect mirror of my relationship with wanting. i can see that i think you have to subdue or ignore or set aside your wants in favor of what other people want in order to be good or liked or wanted or accepted.

thread the third.

i was sitting at the dinner table yesterday, feeling guilty that i wasn't giving atlas some of my meat sauce. never mind that it was my dinner and i had already fed him. i asked what was behind the guilt. i could feel that it was something that would make me cry, only i was trying to avoid it.

i sat with it for a while, and then i realized what it was. when i see atlas' hopeful expectant expression, it reminds me of me – and how i never get to feel that. i am avoiding the guilt of disappointing him by feeding him, because i am afraid that if i feel the guilt, i will feel my own loss, and i am avoiding that at all costs.

except i felt it in that moment, and now i do feel lighter.

i don't know where all of this is leading exactly, but i think it is leading me toward a better relationship with wanting, and with wanting what i want, and i am really looking forward to getting there.

happy monday! i do love mondays. they're such a nice fresh clean slate sort of day. even though i have let go of most of my "i'll start on monday" patterns, i still love the newness of monday. i suspect that will never change.

do you remember when i introduced the secret garden? something (or somethings) you love plus a year of happy surprise, delight, and gleeful anticipation? there are still a few spots left and, in case you are thinking about it, i want to remind you that registration will close on march 15th. that's this thursday. (it's also atlas' birthday!) i just got the photos that i am using to make the card set for {the circle of aqua} and i cannot stop looking at them and smiling. they are magical.

this past week was very full of sunshine. on a walk on thursday and a hike on friday, i did not even need to wear a jacket! i am the sort of person who is still wearing a jacket when the rest of portland is wandering about in shorts and a t-shirt, so clearly it was warm. i celebrated with gelato.

i hope your monday includes birdsong and unexpected magic.

(title courtesy of adele)

{a photo project honoring radiance, one of my words for 2012 :: 52 photos that represent radiance, 52 photos that represent luminosity.}

this picture makes me think of both radiance and luminosity.

i am sinking into the memory of recent moments of beauty.

the warmth of sunshine on my skin. the feeling of spaciousness. a spoonful of marscapone & pine nut gelato. the happy sigh of the pup as i tuck the blanket around him. a flash of blue as a bluebird flies past me. the sky at twilight. the warm yellow light on the trees during golden hour. a hug from a friend. laughter. the feeling of possibility. a sparkling and dancing river. puppies. walls of windows. the sound of rain on the roof. the chill crisp morning air. settling into my body. the tweet-tweeeeeeeeet-tweet of a bird outside my window. the feeling of belonging. the deep throaty call of the owl. coming across a secret staircase in a hilly neighborhood. getting a glimpse of my inner space as a very old belief clears and seeing it as vast and endless and expansive. the bright green color and fresh taste of steamed broccoli.

i’d love it if you shared some of your moments of beauty in the comments!

look what atlas found on our hike in forest park yesterday! a stone house!