Tag Archives: home

Hawley. Poem.

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In my notifications, I get “look back” compilations from Amazon photos. They’ll show me, for instance, 20 pictures from the same day from the last five years. These from Hawley, Mass. caught my eye.

For several years in August, I joined others for a writing retreat in this small hill town north of Amherst. I forget the beauty of the place and how much, as a Berkshires kid, I really miss landscapes like these.

Where feels most like home to you?

One more thing. While rooting around old files, I found this posted poem. I wrote it in June of 2017 — early in Mango Mussolini’s first reign, in other words. Parts hit hard because of that. I think it’s a good poem.

Accidental Beauty.

Have a great start to your week!

A lesson in pie crust

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It was too shaggy. It barely held together when being shaped into disks for the fridge. Rolling the dough out later was tricky and getting in into the pie pan, trickier still. It was friable, cohering with mashing and not finesse.

And yet. And yet! It turned out to be delicious, making for one marvelous quiche and one delicious apple pie.

What’s the lesson here? Something about the perils of relying on the standards of previous efforts, perhaps. Something about holding low expectations…

I know I’m home because I’m typing to jackhammering.

I know I’m home because I didn’t sleep well two nights last week.

I know I’m home because the garden calls like a Siren.

I know I’m home because I’m looking forward to writing with my Tuesday writers this morning.

Back to dog walks. Back to really tasty salads.

One male. One female. Posse of five

My son returned to Colorado with Covid. If biting your tongue made a sound (regarding masks, which he not once wore), he would hear it from Massachusetts. How hard is it? I truly don’t understand. It wasn’t just him — in almost every mode of transport and crowded venue, I was the only person masked.

Too much?

Lest you think me extreme, a woman coughed (goopy, wet) for all six hours of this flight. About five rows back. It did not sound like she was even bothering to cover her mouth.

Washed, pressed, ready to cut for sachets!

PS. Flight was a red-eye and the coverup helped me sleep too.

Home, prison, companions

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Continuing with Collage Month.* Sort of.

Prompt #22: Breathe deeply and visualize a place that you love. Send it a Valentine.

It may be trite to say that home is a place I love, but it truly is. What follows is a little bit more of a meditation than a valentine — one that includes ‘home’ as well as intellectual/heart preoccupations that have taken place within its walls. Maybe a valentine is to follow.

The nest: a classic symbol of home. My nest is empty now, but it hasn’t t always been.

I put the photo of the prison work force picking cotton behind the nest as a way of saying that from the comfort of my home (and my white privilege), I’ve been able to delve into the darkest period of our nation’s history — a history that some would say hasn’t really ended because ‘slavery didn’t disappear, it evolved’ — unpaid or barely paid prison work forces who are disproportionately black standing as one piece of evidence.

When I noticed what looks like tufts of cotton in the bird’s nest, I thought, “how appropriate,” offering symbolic testament to how the comforts and ease of my life are facilitated by the color of my skin, purchased with black sweat and suffering.

It is my belief that once you truly internalize this, you cannot help but support reparations. (See the Atlantic Article on sidebar).

Home (below), from this morning.

BTW, that first shot is not a double exposure but created by shooting the glass case of a cabinet.

Then I went to find a companion for the tree as directed by Acey in Prompt 21, only to discover I’d already inserted one.

Before discovering Stag Boy already glued in, I’d had the impulse to add a fabulous couple, clipped from Vogue or Elle ages ago. It is the only SoulCollage card I’ve ever made with a single clipped image. I love them so much.

But then my printer went wonky and even after replacing the color cartridge, produced some bizarre and intriguing results.

It’s weird how the stripes continued the reference to prisons.

Prison vs home.


And then, because it came up, here’s an old SoulCollage card about America. You’ll recognize the lead from True Blood.

Not sure you can see, but there is a tear falling down her cheek.

Okay, one more. A less literal more Feeling State card about America.

*

Acey’s Collage Month.

See also my Flickr album, SoulCollage, and the tags for SoulCollage and collage here on the blog.

 

How the roots spread out

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Reading Jude’s blog earlier I was struck by how themes and images circulate, sometimes in nonlinear ways. Her post explores “home” and features a cloth house sprouting branches out its roof. (Spirit Cloth, sidebar)

This small vertical cloth is (6″ x 13″?) combines hand piecing and appliqué. I stitched the pink roots awhile ago but keep adding chips of cloth on top, hoping to find a house in the design. 

Last night, inspired by both Jude and Hazel (handstories on side bar), I sketched somewhat mindlessly. Drawing revealed the house. 

Part of me wants to widen the quilt to create room for the structure to expand. But no. This will be an exercise in containment. 


Also: an exploration of adaptability in tight circumstances or the mystery inherent in observing another’s home when most of it is out of view. I won’t strain to connect this small quilt to the devastating roll out of the new administration, but suffice it to say that notions of safe places are very much on our collective minds. 

A small boy crosses the parking lot

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They say crows remember kindness. This morning, the woods are full of them. By that I mean three cross our path. No amount of animal intelligence will surprise me, ever, but I wonder: what does kindness to a crow look like? Not throwing stones at them? The path emerges onto the shady campus, some event about to happen. Urns line the edge of a folding table as if preparing for a drill. Ready! Aim! Pour!

A skinny boy crosses the parking lot, half in shadow. What is his errand? Later I will remember his tiny half-lit back, something cinematic and bird-like about him.

A man in a tie flings his briefcase into the front seat. Half a lot away, another man sits at the wheel and chortles into his phone.

Watch. Sit. Turn. Place! Watch… watch… By my side! (tap tap tap tap). By my side!  We see four other dogs and Finn does not bark at a single one of them. Not even the one that barked at him. You have no idea how major this is… how much progress it signals.

Husband home from China just now. You should have seen me frantically flipping through his itinerary after watching those explosions in Tianjin. Orange fireballs. He was somewhere else. But he HAS been there.

So many things to feel glad relief over!