More circles and feet…
sometimes just the shoes…
or a shoe form… 
and the occasional paw… (ah… we miss our boy)
Have a great week, all. I am off to Charleston, SC tomorrow — for Southern food, at least one plantation tour (but WHICH one?), to see the Slave Mart, the Angel Oak, the flowering shrubs, the riverways, and hopefully to drive to the place where they believe the Stono Slave Rebellion started.
“Let’s become more beautiful with age, attaining the stature of the Jungian crone. Let’s be wise and mature and queenly. Let’s allow our center of power to shift with grace, from focus on physical expression to focus on spiritual strength.”
~ Marianne Williamson, A Woman’s Worth
“I feel there’s a depth to who we are and what we long for, so uncharted, so unmined, like a field of diamonds beneath the earth’s surface. And in that field, we all lie latent. But there is arising around us, a shining through the rocks, and we are beginning to see and know and share its light. The world will be different for our daughters and sons because of our tears, our bravery, and our breakthroughs. One thing I know about all of us: We have tried so hard, and we are trying still… We have been imprisoned but we are now sprung free.” ~ Marianne Williamson, A Woman’s Worth
Who said that you, even as you move and change and relate from the side to things, are the center? This new indigo cloth has been poured on. Seen lightning and heard cicadas. Sun has dried it.
It is its own thing, and it is a thing-yet-to-be. Not unlike a child going off to college.
The spec of rust is like a beauty mark to me.
When a partial circle is visible, we easily fill in the missing part.
And, when a circle is filled with water, it often captures the sky.
Families are circles. Time is a circle.
We are driving C. up to Montreal tomorrow, so I won’t be here for a few days (thankfully, our house sitter knows all about how to care for quirky, slightly over-sized Corgis).
Our circle is expanding.
The leaves are down, and raked, pretty much. The hydrangea near the side steps catches the morning sun. Each lacecap has retained a ring of dessicated petals. They bob slightly in a breeze, like a spindly offering of gold coins to the coming winter. Cold has finally descended.
Yesterday I hung a selection of work at the New Art Center. Even if not a single piece sells, I am grateful for the DEADLINE — it forced me to finish two new quilts. I am calling one of them “L.A. Circles” because a key fabric was purchased during a visit to Los Angeles this past February.
There are the L.A. circles in the middle, above — a fantastic pink and black burnt velvet.
There are some of the larger pink circles in the lower middle, flipped to their ‘wrong’ side. The hut on the right incorporates half of a woven-strip-square and uses another sheer fabric for a roof — a blouse from a thrift store.
Another couple of woven-strip-squares were incorporated on this side. Many fabrics were overlaid in what seems to be a new way to work (overwork?!!) for me, obscuring the obvious outlines of the squares. This might be the first quilt that I heavily hand AND machine-quilted.
The title “L.A. Circles” emerged quite some time ago – not just because of the burnt velvet, but also because of the solar disks — the sunflower, the stitched linen. I had fun emphasizing the circle shape with machine stitching.
Computer freak over the weekend. I am NOT a PDA owner, I have an ordinary phone, I’ve sent perhaps six text messages so far and two never made it because I pressed the wrong button, I can go on vacation and not look at a screen — but this weekend, when a virus made our whole system go ga-ga, I panicked. A little. (And, probably only a little because I have such faith in my husband’s ability to fix these things).
And Ken DID fix it over the weekend — two days re-whatevering, and it seemed fixed — but yesterday, the weird pop ups popped up again. And again. Oh, GOD AND AGAIN!
So, if I disappear for awhile, you’ll know why.
And then, there are the interruptions. The interruptions associated with having a recently disabled sister in need of lots of help (yes, she’s getting better, but housing? work? benefits? — the list is substantial)… as well as the tasks associated with having two teenage children —
trips to the dermatologist, the dentist, the orthodontist, attending track meets, ordinary pick ups and drop offs, homework review, homework nag, computer supervision, computer nag, cooking, shopping, making lunch, making breakfast, cleaning up from breakfast, making dinner, making snacks before dinner, washing clothes, folding clothes, hunting for things like a particular sweatshirt or the mate to a ski glove,
and other jobs —
hunting for the source of stink in the fridge, cleaning the containers that held the stink in the fridge, cleaning out a closet now and then, stripping beds (I’ll never admit how ‘now and then’ THAT gets done), scrubbing tubs and toilets, unearthing the dining room table, looking for a summer cottage for 14, vacuuming up dog hair, walking the dog, asking other people to walk the dog, bathing the dog, cleaning up after my sister’s cat, feeding the cat, getting the car in for brake-fix, putting shit away, hanging up wet towels (Oh, wait a minute that last item belongs up with having two teenage boys in the house), putting more shit away…
all these things have a way of taking up time without necessarily granting me (or anyone?) the sense of having ‘done’ anything…
This is not a complaint, truly, not a complaint, but an observation that (I believe for cultural reasons having to do with gender), I have to keep making over and over. I have to keep noticing over and over how my time is ‘not my own’ — not only because I forget, but because in forgetting, the accumulated pile of things not-done have a way of starting to criticize me.
And then, of course, there are the queries (upheld by various practices that I needn’t go into) —
why does anything attain the status of ‘interruption’? Why is anything deemed unimportant? Why can’t I see that things unfold as they should…
Ahhhhhhh. There’s the rub.
Above, a mid-winter mandala that I don’t know what to do with — not a pillow, not a wall-hanging — don’t know. But it cheers me up to look at its hot, bright colors.
In the Upper Field with Jack this morning (Bowen/Thompsonville field, not Heaven!), the light spoke straight to my heart about spring. Snow squalls on the way this afternoon, frigid temps returning this weekend, I know, I know, but the light does not lie… the oaks ringing the field were awash in a lemony-rose color that tickled my chest in a way that only people who live in wintry climes understand.