Christina Rosalie - A Field Guide to Now - Notes on Mindfulness and Life in the Present Tense

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

Matsuo Basho

This is what I know: Remarkable things emerge from the smallest, most ordinary circumstancesfrom taking note and then taking action.

This book is in your hands because making it became unavoidable. Its inklings persisted, even when I was afraid, even when everything else in my life was riddled with uncertainty. Its truth showed up again and again with such insistence until I could no longer procrastinate, or pretend that there were other, more important things to do, or shrug it off with the promise of someday. And so one February, in the same week as my sons birthdays, I put myself 100 percent behind it and asked for support with an open heart. I launched the project on Kickstarter, and friends and family and complete strangers backed it. I cannot express how deeply grateful I am for the opportunity their support created. Their funding afforded me the possibility of taking the time to focus wholly on the work of creating, of turning the drafts and sketches scrawled in my notebook into something tangible and certain. It gave me the courage to claim this work for my life.

This book is evidence of that work. It is a glimpse into the turbulent process of becoming, and a reference manual for the observations, artifacts, and bits of wonderment that emerged from that process. It is both an invitation to you to create whatever opportunity your heart yearns for and proof that it is possible. To begin, to be in the mess, to be right here. Because it is in these ordinary momentsof writing lists, sharing things, keeping secrets, preparing food, sleeping, making love, fighting, rushing, folding laundry, and dreamingthat we become, always and again, whoever it is we are meant to become.

Each chapter has the following elements:

It is my hope that this book can be useful to you as a kind of survival guide, and also, possibly, an adventure guide for pursuing an authentic, passionate, creative life against the many odds of living with children underfoot, too little sleep, too little money, and never enough time.

The chapters are short, and there is breathing room in this book on purpose. It is meant to give you some space to pause, to wonder, to discover, and to create. Youll see. Youll find yourself here at the page, and then gone in an instant on your own adventure of identifying the moments that are unfolding in your life. You can read it straight through, or read starting anywherelooking for inspiration or seeking clarification, the way you might use a field guide.

FIELD GUIDE

field guide | fld gd | (n.):

1. a guidebook designed to help the reader identify flora or fauna or other objects of natural occurrence; often containing illustrations and descriptions of characteristics and behaviors; 2. a manual generally designed to be brought into the field for identification purposes.

A Note About the Illustrations:

I have always felt like words make a home for my ideas, and that images create a road map for my heart. In a field guide, both are necessary.

I used postcards inherited from my father as the backgrounds for the illustrations in this book. They were generic touristy postcards from the 1960s, collected from his travels around Europe. I have always loved the way a postcard preserves a handful of moments in time in a particular place, and I began to imagine how I might use these to convey that essence of impermanence. I also love how they represent the creative process Ilate.xpgt" typ

I am sitting, eyes closed, face upturned to the sun, when I feel compelled to look down at the grass beside me, and there it is: a frog, half inside a snakeits brief life already obsolete among the universe of small things that make up these woods, this sloping grassy hill, this place that I call home.

Ive come to this spot much the way the snake must have, drawn by the sunshine falling in slanting angles onto the dying grass, and I can picture the way it might have been: uncoiled, its striped body lying like a forgotten hair ribbon on the ocher stubble of the lawn, its blood warming gradually in the weak October sun. Then the quick seconds when the frog approached and the snake pulled back its head and struck. A sudden silent struggle among the crumpled autumn leaves.

My three-year-old sees me watching and runs up the hill from where hes been playing near my husband, who is splitting wood. He launches into my lap, his questions eddying and eager.

I point to the snake.

His first reaction is to poke it, curious and unafraid. I hold him back, acutely aware of how the snake is captive here beside us in its process of devouring.

Why is he eating that frog, Mama? Liam asks, watching the snakes body expand and contract, its mouth gaping wide, wider as the frogs glistening belly slides slowly in.

I guess hes hungry, I offer hopefully.

But now the frogs not alive anymore, is it? He looks up at me, his eyes reflecting the trees.