A wind that’s cold. A puzzle that’s hard. Already the narcissus stretch toward the sun.
I am thinking of adding lines of red seed beads on the Dreaming of A World Where Love is the Answer cloth. To represent wounds. Unresolved history. The map becoming the body of the world.
One to the other. Season. Place. Ground and sky. A flight back to Colorado later today. Special china’s been put away but the folding chairs — not yet.
I called this patchwork a “whimsy” elsewhere. An unstoppable doodle. Irrepressible play. Now that the pile of these is growing, I probably ought to figure out what to do with them. Maybe make longer panels for the hall double hungs upstairs? Facing east, those windows get blasted by morning light, so the cloth’d be like glass for a few hours a day.
There was a big smudge on my phone camera lens. Ambience or malfunction?
And, after a couple days away, it’ll be back to the story.
PS Deb Lacativa‘s cloth is playing a star role in this patchwork (from my recent lottery win, blogged about here). Some of my recent walnut dunks show up, as well as older indigo creations of mine.
When you live in a 200 year old structure with a stone foundation, you share your life with mice.* It’s just a given. I draw the line when and if one of two things happen: I find teeth marks in the butter or I catch the smell of dead bodies.
Mice like pistachios, it turns out. Note to self: put the bowl of nuts away at night.
Weeks of catching whiffs of that distinctively fruity and repulsive stench of death got me going. There I was down in the basement sniffing at the joists and lifting up the sump pump well-cover to stare down into its depths with a flashlight. Nada.
But this morning, my hound-like powers of detection pinpointed the stench’s source. Under the fridge! We pulled the appliance away from the wall to a horror show of dust and grime and mouse droppings, urine stains and yes, pistachio shells.
No dead bodies, though.
A thorough cleaning has not eradicated the smell. Could a few little grey corpses have slid along the undercarriage of the fridge when we pulled it from the wall?
Ugh. Now what?
Meanwhile, I’ve been piecing up a whimsy (when I should have been folding up the ironing board and putting some of my piles into closets to get ready for company).
But hey.
I’ve picked up our 15 pound organic, free range turkey from across town and stirred up the brine. And my apron is on and recipes located for candied yams and maybe? — a chocolate pie (others are bringing pumpkin and apple). Before I get to it, you might like to hear this.
Today’s Indivisible Group tele-call became dispirited with news regurgitation. We’d somehow strayed from the more usual constructive format of sharing possible action steps or venues for education. One member said, “I can’t take this. I get enough with the news. I’m going to sign off.”
I piped up that I completely understood but could she hang on a minute more if the talk turned positive? Then I shared about International Peace Day … about love being the answer and peace pins and peace leaves and about making peace a daily conversation. My voice shook, for some reason.
But here’s the thing — the tenor of our call was radically transformed. I have many of you to thank for that! I sent links to some of your websites to the group and to my own and for the first time wasn’t compartmentalizing political and artistic work. Until this morning, I hadn’t even realized I’d been doing that. It was liberating, somehow.
In that positive second half of the call, this event came up: starting on December 2 there will be a 24 hour global vigil for humanity. You have to register but it’s free and you can show up for any part of the 24 hours.
Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends! This week, love and food will be the answer — especially if that food is made with love.
P.S. I’ll take this moment to be grateful that most of my family doesn’t bother reading my blog (who says they should? but then again, why don’t they — at least once in a while?) With this post, it’s probably a good thing in terms of keeping their appetites for Thursday’s dinner!
*autocorrect turned my first attempt at typing “mice” to “love” … Does that mean even when dealing with a mouse infestation that love is the answer?
I can’t see “the answer”. Somehow that is fitting. But in the small domain of a textile piece, it cannot stand. Off to writing class. Finn’s got his bone stuffed with sweet potato, chicken, and peanut butter. I have my chapter listing, notebook, and a flank muscle sore from raking.
** See, It’s Crow Time (side bar) for more on this collaborative fiber project (aka magic). Attributions to follow. Gotta go!
This one hangs on the inside of the studio/cellar door. It’s done? I am beginning to look around (from the side of my mind) with a view toward 2018.
It’s very cold here. Temps are supposed to drop into the teens tonight. If you are subject to this icy air sweeping down from the arctic — stay warm!
I include a couple of pictures of cypress knees from South Carolina because of how much they resemble the figure in the top quilt’s foreground — hooded and slightly bent, like a monastic order of the swamps.
