Curiosity
14th century 1 : desire to know: a : inquisitive interest in others’ concerns b : interest leading to inquiry <intellectual curiosity

After the post about feeling like a jerk for being unorganized, I have decided to offer myself at least as much “inquisitive interest” in how I perform day-to-day as I would offer a work-in-progress.

In quilting, I really have learned to look at pieces with a certain amount of curiosity and detachment, because I understand that my subjective stance, at any given moment, might undergo radical revision as I move along.  Further, I recognize that detached curiosity can be key to discovering HOW to move forward — in quilting.

And, more along these lines, why is it that I can offer another blogger (with children, lamenting the interruptions), the sage advice that ‘interruptions add up to a life’, while feeling desperate in my neck of the woods, as my time gets meted out in one caretaking task after another?!

Carolyn Myss says ‘there are no unimportant jobs’.  If, for even a fraction of a day, I can act as if there are no unimportant jobs, will I feel more freedom?  You can sense what my answer would be here …

A Sufi I had the privilege of spending a summer with at a camp north of here, put it this way (we were cleaning the camp’s bathrooms at the time):  “You can find God cleaning the toilets.”  I don’t think I understood this at 17.  Or, even, why one might want to believe it.

So, forget my little post about being a jerk.  Doing the best I can here.  Might even learn to trust some of my hesitations.  Readers’ comments about the two-sided nature of selling through stores helped pop this into focus for me — thank you all.

I kept seeing the ecru silk in the little abstract (former angel) quilt as a snowy hillside.  It wasn’t long before the upright rectangle in the foreground was begging for a roof.  The moon uses a piece of organza on which I had printed a picture of the World Trade Towers  — a photo snapped in the brief expanse of time between impact and falling.  Smoke was pouring out of the upper stories, as we all remember.   As surely, none of us can forget.

Although this detail is nothing a viewer would be able to know without my telling them, I am telling YOU, dear reader, and so now I can further suggest, that this piece assumes its humble and obscure place in a chain of works about memory.  The little house here is tippy, but secure.  It will hold.  It has survived the winter.  The shadow of events from 9/11/2001, are THERE, but barely recognizable — a mere cast of grey on the edge of the moon.  We get through.

And, boy oh boy, is spring around the corner.  Perhaps that is all I needed to write this morning!