The last time I saw Alvin Ailey was in 2013. It’s a little hard to believe sometimes how time passes. The show, no surprise, was spectacular and moving. It was good to get out.
Stitching to a terrible Netflix Series, Ransom Canyon. Hallmark movie without the Christmas, I say, including the signature near-miss handsome lead. This hero looks like a mash up of Timothy Olyphant and Matt Damon and all I can see is how he’s not Olyphant. Then there’s Ugly Brooke Shields. If you watch, you’ll know who I mean. Lots of preposterous story lines.
Walked over to Chinatown before the performance last night and got a little turned around getting back to the Wang Center which isn’t the Wang Center anymore but hey. It was a lot of steps, steps on uneven, wet, and unpredictable sidewalks. I’m tired today.
I listened to Cory Booker for a short while before my doctor’s appointment and then for a good long while later, stitching in the afternoon sun. I’m noticing how much better I feel. I’m noticing how much it matters for people in power to speak up.
Got quite a few “finishers” in the works. Antidotes to despair I suppose. Medicine against feeling powerless. One stitch at a time.
Trimming, binding, signing, and adding dowel sleeves. It always takes longer than I think.
Here are examples (below) from four recent series of digital collages. Almost all incorporate paper collage or photos of my own. If I weren’t feeling tongue-tied by national events I might have something to say about them but they can speak for themselves I guess.
Because my creative time has been hampered of late, I am sharing some double exposures created recently in my phone using the Diana photo app. This process is satisfying to me — part collage, part Tarot reading. You never know what’s gonna show up. And, even though the actual process of combining the images is facile (performed with thumbs!), there can be an element of artistry to it, depending on the images. Often, they are of quilts and paper collages — photos of work, in other words, where time and thought and effort were expended.
The first one, above, combines a slave quarter photo from Charleston with a close up of a stitched silk pennant I made as part of Mo Crow’s Love is the Answer collaborative project. This is from years back for those of you who were around then.
While stitching on the gown silk provided by Mo, I was at a point in my novel research when I was thinking a lot about our history of slavery (posted about here), so this particular random pairing produced by my app made sense.
This next random pairing could be an illustration for my book (The Weight of Cloth). Swamp photo taken at a preserve west of Charleston. The profile was a Paris Collage Collective prompt and the image a double exposure using a paper collage.
Spoiler alert: the picture could represent Cane Creek, a maroon community established by runaway slaves and others where three of my enslaved characters head at the end of the book.
Women’s March Boston 2017, plus screen grab of dickhead, plus photos of a quilt and neighborhood trees. He looks appropriately malevolent. Not human.
These I share just because I’m enamored with the collage I made using that mirror photo. Or enamored again. The last one includes a gel print I made of a Vanity Fair photo of Benedict Cumberbatch.
A few notes about my hip replacement last week:
Saltines are a blessing.
The orthopedic surgeon is a rock star, the anesthesiologist plays percussion, the nurses and OTs/PTs sing back up and then there’s a huge crew of roadies. It’s amazing how many people were required to replace my joint. I’m grateful.
Least favorite moment: being woken by an alarm triggered by empty saline bag and not being able to find my call button. It went on and on. I called “Hello?” over and over and no one came and still it went on and on. I finally used my phone to call downstairs and they paged a nurse.
I didn’t love throwing up after I got home either. A few times.
Progress: discernible with increased mobility and decreased pain.
Favorite moment today: reading in the sun outside and having to take off my sweater it was so warm!
Finn is a little confused, especially by the walker but also by being banned from the couch, but look how sweetly he stays by!
You could stitch a dotted ring around an indigo moon. The houses below evidence diamonds and trefoils and zigzags, all manner of pattern. Somewhere a child bellyaches. Somewhere else an owl calls out, mournful. Haven’t we expressed all our sadnesses already? The trefoil stamp of trauma, the zigzag edge of semi-repair?
You can’t fool the moon or the lightning striping the sky at dusk.
When the red-tailed hawk screeches, we know to look up. But that’s all we know.
Make your move motherfucker is one way to respond to upcoming events on The Hill. Preemptive bullshit. Flowing like a river into microphones and screens. I wish we hadn’t needed a word like “sane-washing.” And journalists? Please! Even Carl Bernstein wishes he was still on the beat. Imagine Deep Throat withholding evidence to promote his upcoming book release.
The hawk rides the thermal climes – yes, we have thermal climes even in suburbia. If you’re really blessed and it’s a clear day, the sun will illuminate the red wedge of her tail turning feathers into stained glass.
Who you gonna call? Motherfuckers of so many ilks, it makes the head spin. To say “felon” doesn’t quite capture the in-law’s tawdry sadistic infliction of pain upon his own sister. Too bad the French won’t say, Sorry motherfucker — your visa is no good here. So many roiling nations – it’s as if our national disaster is contagious – France, South Korea, Germany, Syria. And Gaza can’t catch a break.
We look for heroes in the strangest of places. Turns out the healthcare CEO assassin comes from money and privilege. Sorry, ladies. Worse, he liked posts by the South African Dipshit Brigade.
But what of poetry you say? What of the elegant, nearly effortless dip of the hawk gliding on the air currents, currents that sweep over even your suburban rooftops? What of these expressions of grace?
The greasy bundle of vice is no longer a fluke. Not a despicable and regrettable error this time. No. Americans knew who they were voting for. Sort of.
He’s grinning in front of Notre Dame and shaking Macron’s hand like he wants to rip that man’s shoulder out of its socket. To see it is to wonder: how will I survive this? How will we survive this? Will we survive this?
Hope is a scratchy wool cape that I put on to address certain people. Underneath, endless itching. Underneath, angry red striping rashes that cannot be ignored. Underneath, deposits of body-ash and rubble-ash that floated in from Gaza. The dusty grey evidence of wickedness lines my collarbones. What washcloth is up to the task?
Get fat. Go hide. Get fat and go hide. Gather preemptive condolences for the retirement of your former self. Sputter, motherfucker, motherfucker, like somebody’s listening, like it’s a badge of honor even if no one is listening and it’s not a badge of anything.
The heat wooshes, reminding me that all the coming misery will take place on a timeline, in a framework of seasons. Does it help to think that? Does anything?
So many takeaways here in Solnit’s article in The Guardian! This is the piece Marti has been talking about. I have to prep for Tuesday Writing Workshop so I’ll leave you with just three points.
Self-care is an integral part of caring for others.
Uncertainty is the nature of reality. We do not know what’s going to happen and we can find a way to act anyway.
Hope and despair can, and often do, live side by side.
I am migrating over to Bluesky. Zuckerberg’s threads is suppressing political content and anyway, who wants to support another Trump-groveling tech-bro douchebag?
I’m at deemallon.bsky.social. It feels like Twitter in the old days and a lot of my favorite commentators are already there. I can’t even explain why it already feels so much better than threads, but plenty of others on the site are noting the same.
BTW Bluesky is an open-source social network owned by a public benefit corporation. Founded by Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, I won’t spend too much time spitting in his direction because what’s done is done (meaning, he could’ve just held on to Twitter).
Having a good social media stream is more important than ever because I’m barely watching cable news still.
There’s more to say about where we all source our news but I gotta go. Here are a few collages. The first two are purely paper, the rest digital combos.
Using PicFrame to combineUsing Diana photo app to double expose
I like the forward movement of female figures in what feels like haunted landscapes. I didn’t set out to make that but there you go.
