Picture of the day

How do you say in french...

That work is kicking my butt. Plus the bird quilt. Plus trying to draft a letter to fight the 80 foot cell tower that is going in three blocks from our house. Plus starting a new business.

There it is again. Life getting in the way of art. What's that about?

It gets heavy.

I just read a blog post where someone said “I’m rearranging the corners of my home.” I read it as “I’m reassuring the corners of my home.” I love that idea. Who knows if corners don’t need reassurance. I would guess that they do. It’s a lot of pressure. A place where many angles meet. They bear loads. They define and instruct a room’s shape. Sounds tiring. When I get home tonight I’m going to reassure the corners of my home.

I think I'm going to come back. March first. It's time. A lot has changed. I'll tell you all about it.

Thinking about the wanting

Did you ever want something so bad, but you just weren’t able to swing it? That’s how I feel about writing, this blog, sewing. Every time I write a post, I feel a little bit renewed. A little bit more like myself. I sit down in the evening and make a few stitches and I feel like I’m doing something. And then the days pass. The full-time-job-in-a-cube days pass. Then night comes with the stories to read, the food to eat, the dishes to do, the dog to walk, the tucking in and the tidying up…

I should take a lesson from my husband. We talked yesterday about how he’s accepted his job right now. To raise the kid. His music is on hold and he’s okay with that. He puts his two hands up, parallel, and says “I can see a trajectory,” then says “I’m probably using that word wrong.” But it’s a good word, a right word. It’s a shot in a direction. Like a flare. A message to the you that you hope to be when the crazy dies down, if the crazy dies down.

There are some times when you need to trust in the future. When you need to relax, and let what is, be, and quit fighting. It can’t be summer and winter at the same time. You can’t get sleep and write and sew and care for all at once. There is a season, turn, turn, turn.

I’m famous for stuffing a suitcase. It’s always seemed a philosophical question to me…when is a suitcase full? Can’t you always fit one more thing? I’m learning the answer. It’s full when you can’t shut it. And then you have to pull something out, do without it for a while. And maybe you won’t have everything that you want, but you’ll have everything that you need, and you’ll be lucky for the having.

In Which I Recount a Dream*

Sometimes I’m better at things when I go away for awhile and then come back again. So there, away I went. Not purposely. Well, maybe purposely. But purposefully, too.

It’s a strange thing about finding your voice. Part of it, for me, is the struggle of allowing the search. And part of it is the battle to convince yourself that it matters, one way or the other, that you do find it.

I had the most wonderful dream last night. It was a yard sale (so many of my dreams center around yard sales, the wonderful white-elephant world, those everyday portals to the subconscious). I was admiring a rustic, folk art, hewn together set of drawers. The kind of object that draws me in, that could only have been made by its maker, the kind of thing that shouts of history and story and love. It was reasonably priced ($60 dollars) but I couldn’t figure out how to ship it home, (I was on an island…less romantic than it sounds).

Who should appear but my mother. And she appears and I know that not only will she get it for me, but she will figure out how to get it to my home. And then my brother Tim is there, and I know he’s going to help. It was the feeling of being taken care of. It was the feeling of being spared regret, longing, and remorse. It was the deep feeling of comfort.

Strange and wonderful and glorious. I can count on one hand the number of good dreams I’ve had about my mother since she died. In fact, I could count them on the toes of a sloth, if you know what I mean. Good signs, people, good signs.


*Recounting dreams rates second only, on the scale of that-which-bores, to retelling (preferably in an office setting) any skit from Monty Python's Flying Circus. But this is my blog. And I get to write what I want. (See. Look at her go!)

Number One

So the decision has been made. Not a list, as I’d thought, but an un-list, so to speak. It’s my birthday soon, another opportunity to make a fresh start. To re-evaluate my last re-evaluation. And the decision was so simple, so clear, I’m embarrassed that it took a bestseller to lead me to make it. (A bestseller I read quickly, easily (part of the attraction) and half-concentratingly, and somewhat begrudgingly and judgmentally but there it sits – simply still what it is, what it was before I ever got a hold of it and, incidentally, I was drawn to read it because I watched what she had to say about muses and liked what she had to say about muses.)

So the answer.

Meditation. Quit asking the questions for a while. Shut my brain up for a while. At least twenty minutes a day, in whatever form that takes. Cross-legged and proper-like, on the floor of my tidied up living room or walking the alleys with the dog, taking a break now and then from quieting my mind to command the dog to “drop it” (then quieting my fear of what “it” might be.)Or even in the cube. Or in the car. Or in the moments between the other, more busy moments.

So it wasn’t a list at all. Unless the list was simply one number one. Silence. Because it sounds so dang delicious.

Catch and Release

I step up to write and I think Ground it in action. I still don’t know what this blog is and that stops me, so many times, from writing anything. And then when I do write it’s the thoughts, all the thoughts, the belly button staring and the hand wringing and I wonder Who wants to read all that?

And I’m not sure of the answer. Not even sure whether the question is relevant. Shouldn’t it be What do I want to say? Shouldn’t that be the question?

I’ve been thinking a lot about art, which I always do, and looking at people I admire, mostly online. They don’t ask, they do. They don’t ponder they move. But then again, there is a place in the world for ponderers. Contemplate. Ruminate. Meditate. Masticate.

What is making art? What is writing, sewing, painting, potting? Is it an expression or a gift? Is it for yourself or for someone else. I know, I know the answer…it’s both. But how can you entertain two intentions at the same time? How can you think I write this for myself and I give it to the world -- without being attached to how the world will treat it? With whether or not it has, you know, real meaning.

All I know is that I feel better when I do….when I complete and release. And the other thing I know is that I always fight the release. Which leads me to think Release. Which leads me to post these thoughts. Whatever they mean.