Such a crashing week of news. One terrible revelation after another. I am gritting my teeth waiting for this tax bill to pass. And that might not be the worst thing happening this week. The FCC. Tom Cotton? The hateful, incendiary retweets. Sexual assault wall to wall.
On a personal front, there was also disappointment: a work place slow down for one of my sons. Money and more money flowing out from here to there. Unsustainable.
Good news? Is there any? It could be that the writing is chugging along with a kind of sparking determination. I’m hard at switching the chapters told in third person close narrative to first person, did I say? There’s a lot behind that. Years of thought actually. And it’s happening with a kind of forward movement that is energizing. Lending coherence.
For years, writing the enslaved characters from first person seemed an impossibility. I built in some distance out of respect. I thought. Then it started to seem like cowardly avoidance. Respectful/Cowardly. Back and forth that went. The debate about Sofia Coppola’s remake of the Civil War movie “The Beguiled” (in which she wrote out the black character, thinking she wouldn’t do the character justice) was a tipping point.*
* the specific debate that was most compelling can be heard here on the podcast “still processing“.
Writing this after midnight.
Here, too is a link to It’s Crow Time blog, where Mo posted about my pennant’s progress for the “I Dream of a World Where Love is the Answer” project. How her summary and the comments uplifted! I want them handy for the next time I sail into the doldrums.
Today, I stitched more than twenty red beads onto the walnut-dyed covering cloth. They look beautiful.
Enough demands on yourself to fill several baskets to overflowing. Good stuff amidst the bad stuff and so somehow you manage to hang on and keep on…but how do you make it snow? You have powers. I saw Mo’s post and pretty sure I commented too.
Not sure where the sense of all the demands is coming from. I do feel a lot of pressure, but the external demands on me right now are so much much lower than they’ve been in recent years!
The snow is a setting on wordpress and I forgot it was on, actually, until you mentioned it. You can set it to show just for December. Don’t remember the particulars but it wasn’t hard to do.
how do you make it snow? (@Michelle) oh! how do you make the website snow?! I actually know how to do that but I’ll let Dee answer. More importantly (@Michelle) is that you spoke my mind about [Dee] filling several baskets to overflowing. How does one sustain oneself through all these simultaneous non-simple journeys? I know that the more pressure I feel, the more energy I seem to be able to put into multiple projects. However, I also find myself collapsing after a few weeks of that. You do just keep going, Dee. I am wishing you streams sustaining power, spiritual and physical and mental, to get you through to publication! Then, may there be a grand celebration!
you are a vocal and dear cheerleader, Maggie! thank you! Did you feel the earthquake yesterday? And congrats on having paintings in a December show!
imagining touching the soft silk, the old satin, following the trails of fine stitches & the glassiness of the red bead
and Yay for the voices coming through, telling their stories in first person!
re the state of the nation Mexico and Canada must look like very real alternatives as does New Zealand here on the other side of the world, our governments have been taken over in a corporate coup run by Vogons…
I keep missing our trips to Montreal. I wonder why.
the pennant….it is extremely Fine. red beads….
Sometimes beads work. Sometimes they don’t. These do.
This has been a shitty week news-wise. I’m feeling very powerless, angry and fearful and not very productive. Your writing progress is inspiring and so is your pennant. You are right about the kind words of blog commenters being a balm for depression.
This afternoon’s news about Flynn’s plea deal and what that likely means is at last a shred of good news. I was awake til 3 this morning. Maybe I’ll know from here on in that it could mean big news is coming?
The last image is other-worldly in the most wonderful way … and Mo’s posts/comments are indeed a bracing tonic for heart and soul.
I like that you can almost see through the pennant (or “pennon” as you would say. I had to look it up).