i'll tell you a story.

In otherwords, I’ll be posting again within a day or two! Hi again friends. 

In the meantime, if you live in NYC, check out Bryant Park by moonlight tonight. Or soon. Before the sparkling snow blanketing the limbs of the sycamore trees vanishes. You will not regret it! 

Love, Joanna

Hi again. I haven’t forgotten about you. I found something I thought you might like today. I did. 

I stumbled across my friends Kate and Geoff’s blog and this is apparently what I found, in their kitchen. They’ve added to this list over the past six months. These are exactly the kind of house rules I’d want.

My only regret in posting this is this particular blog interface is WAY TOO SMALL when it comes to posting photos. May have to rectify. In the meantime, lap in the sincere wit and homespun surprises on

www.kateplusgeoff.blogspot.com

Ok, good night and good morning, too, actually! Until soon. xx

Joanna

Hello friends. It’s been a few days since my last post, after I proverbially shook hands with myself and you that I’d post something every day in 2010. Given that the past few days have been filled with a lot of living and a lot of late nights (couch-crashing charming visitors!) and mornings-come-too-soon, I realize now I stepped into that honest sentence a bit too soon.

In the fading afterglow of my original stated intentions, I now can stand back and see what this is really about. At least from my early vantage point. Yes, it’s about discipline no doubt, I need it…getting into a ritual of creating, a habit of getting “it”- the undefined unfolding story - out there, unstuffing the bottle and sending it back out to sea with a new song or message. On an uber frequent basis, whatever that means. For you, and with you, friends. And this place is about being real, which means less editing and overthinking on my part, and more acting, more doing, more giving. This in itself, the messiness (ahem, like missing a few days and re-evaluating my plan), is what I’m really excited about. I will fall down, but darn it, I will get back up again. If you’re lucky, maybe even cut up the floor with some Argentine tango. 

In truth, the idea was inspired by my new friend and ridiculously talented cellist-singer-songwriter-like-you’ve-never-heard, Emily Hope Price, who is aiming to write and upload a song a day in 2010. I admire her, because her project will require some major tenacity! That said, I do believe in her. 

She writes in her Preamble:

In any case, I’m incredibly excited with what the project has already done for me: a realization that I can create anything.  With so many days and opportunities to create something new, how can I possibly hesitate or over-edit?  And I suppose that’s what I want to teach myself: there are no limits and sometimes you just have to let things be what they’re going to be.

I suggest you do yourself a favor and meet New York-based Emily and her incredible, original music on her daily blog www.emilyhopeprice.wordpress.com. In the meantime, to give you a spoon of honey of her music, here are her song and lyrics from Day 14:

Ghosts in My Teeth

instrumentation: guitar, cello, Lady Lamb the Beekeeper and Emily Hope Price

What a sight you are for a night at the sea sideHow the wasp watches you turn and tossWith the waves as cold as ghosts in your teethWhere will you go? Will you wait for…Where will you wait, where will you wait for…Where will you wait, where will you wait for me?

2009 All rights reserved www.emilyhopeprice.wordpress.com

•••

By the way, my plan is still to blog as often as possible, at minimum weekly, as my adventures necessitate. I also have decided as of this moment that my goal will be to keep my posting within or less than one hour. This definition is good for me, as I can be long winded, and I don’t mean talking. Again, less thinking, more doing. Yes! (If I spoke French, now would be an appropriate place to enter a fancy phrase translated from Babel Fish to seal the excitement, like fait-il ce bruit bon?)

Thanks for reading. It’s Monday. I hope it’s a good one, laden with strong coffee and at least one moment that makes you rub your eyes with joyous disbelief. 

See you soon, Joanna

Hello world, hello friends. Happy 2010. I have a question for you.

Do we really have it figured it all out? Do we know what our stories look like, or sound like, or smell like? Fill in the blank here. Done? Or is this, this life, really more like this, what Sabrina Ward Harrison says is “a growing expedition through the tangled and un-filled in parts”?

I’m game for an expedition. I have ridden camels through the Sahara (beware the chafing, people) and, well, moved to New York City with little more than my favorite pillow. And a friend’s scrawled phone number. I am still very much un-filled in, but I have decided in 2010 I am taking out my broken and shimmering oil pastels. 

Right now I am sitting in my apartment in Brooklyn, New York (I have a fierce fondness for this land, I can’t hide my love) and I sense a glow on part of my face thanks to a lively strings of twinkle lights draped from the top corners of my living room windows. My roommate Sara and I hung them yesterday. It is night.

11:27pm.

Outside is a small inner courtyard. Someone is rummaging through the glass recycling and likely waking all the light-sleepers in the building. Shoot. I am craving a cream soda. On ice. Yeah, it’s winter, don’t judge.

•••

Here you are and here I am. Hello again! Where are you and what are you doing right now?

Woody Allen said something once- not to me, though maybe he will someday (not to self: cherry-red lipstick seems to get his attention)- and it has stayed with me. I am not want to carelessly heed directives from people I don’t know or trust. Can’t say he’s one of them. But, hey, something sat right with this one. Basically he said this about life: Turn up. 

Turn up.

Sounds kind of quaint at first, but give it a second.

Turn up.

(These are snowdrops and they turn up ‘round February, when the ground is still blanketed with the cold white stuff.)

Sabrina Ward Harrison, another secret kindred spirit I am certain, writes

We have this chance every moment to be alive and give to this world, which needs each one of us. We must show up for our own life. Be brave be messy be loud be strong. Trust yourself. 

Well, I don’t always trust myself, to be frank. We’ll get to that. I do trust that I am alive and there’s a reason for it. We’ll get to that too. A reason why you’re alive too. This is worth finding out. I have some strong inklings…

•••

I am starting this blog, this running, wild open space, because I want to live generously and I believe our stories, like rectangles in a Klee, matter to each other. Even if we don’t exactly know what they are, or how they are unfolding. Or if they smell like trash courtyards in Brooklyn or fresh baked rosemary bread or both. 

I sat on this blogspace for literally years convinced I had to know EXACTLY where I was going, what I wanted to say, to the T how I wanted to present myself. Classic Joanna, once-upon-a-time.

I don’t pretend anymore.

Ahh, little victories, no?! I do know I want to live honestly and fearlessly and show with every fiber of my being that life is meant to be shared, given away. I’m sure I’ll have second thoughts within seconds of publishing, but tally-ho…we press forward anyway!

(You, me, us.)

So I’m ready! Are you? I give you my word, old friends and new, I will post something everyday in 2010. I can’t promise what it will be be. Some surprises no doubt. C’mon, everyone likes surprises. But a story will unfold. And this excites me! Even more exciting to me is this becoming a shared space bursting, spilling over with your stories too. This is gonna be good.

To pinata parties and muddy feet and the sweetest clementines in 2010!

Joanna

PS When you get home tonight, put on warm socks and google this: Songs for Cello. Rufus Cappadocia. Tell me what you think.  

PPS Alice is Wonderland is coming out soon, I can’t wait.