The advice to “take one stitch at a time” is comparable to the advice to “take one step at a time,” but when you’re stitching a little scene with houses, windows, and trees, other metaphors spring to mind.
Such as: oh look, I’ve just stitched a shelter into place. Before, it was merely pinned to the surface, but now it is secure.
A secure shelter.
Oh look! I’m connecting the foreground to the background, which is to say, the land to the sky. Integration. The power in that.
My oh my! I’m flying with my needle through the sky! There will be a place for the moon tonight, the moon who is now and always has been, my friend.
Here I am at my kitchen sink in Pittsfield, MA. Age 24? I lived alone in a sweet third floor apartment and gave over one of my bedrooms to painting. That seems like a different life.
More recent collage Supreme Court backdrop
Why didn’t I keep at it, you might wonder. Well, paints are really expensive for one thing and probably the more important other thing, in my family my sister was the painter. I was the writer. You know how potent those early designations can be!
I post the purple painting fragment to demonstrate the way motifs endure. I didn’t know when I painted Lady Liberty as a young woman that she would become an urgent symbol of American resistance later on. None of us could’ve known.
How fragile our democracy! How resilient white supremacy! How infecting to our institutions Christian theocratic tribalism! In those days I worried about HIV and how to create a reasonable worklife.
Just as a recent data point: Trump got booed at the US Open. His dictate to the Association to air clips of him with the sound off were foiled by — oh, I don’t know — the internet?
Do you hear that though? Not the booing, but the tyrannical imposition of his insecurity. He KNEW he would be booed. He KNEW the association would bend the knee.
Northampton, MA
Last summer when friend Lisa and I attended an indigo workshop we stayed very near my last college residence (above). Two Isabella Street, Northampton. Near the railroad tracks. From there I went to San Francisco for a short six-month sojourn before returning east. But while in SF, I worked in a copy shop and had access to what was then cutting edge technology: a color Xerox machine with a color dial. I got an employee discount! It allowed you to make endless variations by changing how color was laid down. To say I enjoyed making collages and then tinkering with them on the machine would be an understatement.
Also talked about here. I repeat myself. I give myself permission to repeat myself.
Anyway, there is that house motif. And below, a photograph I took while still in high school.
Along Rte 20 in New Lebanon, NY
Sometimes I wonder (not at all to my credit), if my endless house creations indicate a profound loneliness and inability to connect. What no people? Not even a cat in the window? Or maybe they reveal artistic limitation — living creatures being much harder to render than walls and roofs after all.
At least they have gotten more richly rendered over time!
Short commentary, then pics, a short video, ending with Thank You.
The pinboards were made for displaying my work in craft shows back in the day. Now they receive scraps as I go. I share them because they change day to day and reveal something about themes and moods.
The Turtle Quilt is past decision-time. I’m getting tired of all the ways I might vary the bottom fifth section and since none of them satisfy, I may just eliminate.
Ancient polar bear scrap made of cashmere sweater. Skirt edge topped by patchwork that was formerly bottom edge of Turtle Quilt.
Lastly, I am so glad you all are here. California, Georgia, New Jersey, Holland, New York, Washington, Maine, TExAS!, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Alabama, and more! thank you. You really matter to me.
Finn and I took it slow. Mid-walk stretch was a revelation: glute-pain vanquished! This is a major breakthrough.
The boys are off in search of hiking boots. That would be Natick. Now, I learn, it’s Boston.
There will be bruschetta when they get back with homemade ratatouille and a tomato, basil, burrata salad.
So far for temperatures, we can rely on fans. We’ll see how the afternoon progresses.
PS I will never braid the ugly and the joyful in a post like that again. It felt icky. And the point is so obvious (i.e. we are living with mega-dissonance in America now), that I hardly needed to labor it.
But if you have the bandwidth, here’s a really good discussion about Israel, genocide, and the future of holocaust remembrance.
When the water heater died yesterday, we assumed we were probably three months past warranty. Or, you know, two weeks. Turns out it was a 12-year warranty! We saved a bundle.
I’ve picked up needle and thread again. It means no Danish or French murder mysteries for a while (or to be honest, Scottish). It also means cursing at the fifteenth attempt to thread a needle.
Note to self: thread a dozen needles in the bright afternoon sun. Have them ready to go. Note to self: not one but two friends gave you needle threaders for Christmas. Use them!
And regarding the upstairs furnace? Because the first floor is heated, it turns out we don’t really need the attic one on at night. Revelation.
I’ll end with a question: from time to time do you fall in love with a stranger? And if so who? The server at the coffee shop or your mailman or somebody on TV?
For me, last night it was the guest on The Daily Show talking about the organization he and another former inmate formed to help fire-trained former felons segue into firefighting as a profession. He had the best smile, such beautiful gestures, and the brightest spirit.
This is a still screen shot
You probably love him a little now too.
Watching my husband rally in his broad competence to install a new water heater has me falling a little back in love with him too.
