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Sometimes it's all about the blue. Maybe the rainbow will find its way in through the stitching? Tiny dots of the spectrum holding the blue together. But then again, blue can hold everything. The sea, the skies...
The sea and the sky, they hold it all, too.
If you were to wander by a certain college classroom on a Thursday morning, and happened to peek in, you would see students in an abstract watercolor painting class. Most of them have taken courses with this wonderful teacher before. Most of them know what they are doing. But there is one student, just left of center, who you will most likely find with her head resting in the tips of her very tense fingers, looking around at others' work, furrowing her eyebrows as she looks down at her own, trying to remember what the assignment was, and wondering . . . What are the fracking rules?!?
There was a kind comment from the person next to her, "Just relax, don't think so much . . .," to which she replied, "Have you met me?"
And then there was the day when she clearly heard the teacher say, "Rectangular . . . touching the edges . . ." Then later, as the teacher passed by this student's rectangular, touching the edges piece, constructively commenting on its empty square center and boxiness . . . she thought in her head, with clenched teeth, "But that's what a rectangle is!" more confused than ever.
Thank goodness for the friend who met her for lunch and knows her (and her need-to-follow-the-rules-control issues), who said, "You just need to add an "ish" to everything."
I give you, "Rectangle-ish". . .
This class is going to be SO VERY GOOD for me.
I ordered notecards with images of some of my makings to send out pieces from the shop in. They turned out great! Maybe they'll inspire some real letter writing? (Something I always mean to do, look forward to doing, but rarely make happen . . .)
Also, as I shared a few days ago, some exciting things happened at the hair salon lately. It started with a haircut a month ago. . . it had been a year since I last went to her, and only the third time I've ever seen her. So, there was both getting caught up and "getting to know you talk". At some point it turned to my stitching, and all of the good and new things that have happened with it over the last piece of time.
She said I should bring my work there (they have different artist's work on the walls each month).
I said maybe she should see my work first and see if she even liked it?
She said she didn't need to.
So, after a quick discussion with self…"Say, "NO!" She's just asking because I've been especially funny for the last half hour. She's just being nice. It will be too much, etc. . . Just say, "NO!"
Instead, I said, "Thank you, can I think about it? I'm going to try to take this in." We made the appointment for the blueing and said goodbye.
Since . . . emails and photos were sent. She does like my makings, and I said yes, inspite of myself. It's a small shop, so I'm going to try and finish ten pieces or so by mid-November. I don't know if anyone actually buys art from hair salons, but I think it will be a good experience, and she is looking forward to having something new to look at.
And do you see that little card in the photo above, in the bottom left? It came with the cards, with my order information, look what it says on the other side . . . I'm taking it as a sign, not sure what of, but something swell, I'm sure!
The wind is still blowing across dark gray skies, while I try to stitch twinkling flowers into a kind of star shine. The afghan beneath it was a seventeenth birthday gift from Grandma Blanche. It's thirty-something years old and made of polyester yarn, it will last forever.
Maybe I'll mix in some of the usual white stars, too. To float with the flowers and house in a riot of giant blooms. Grandma would've liked this one.
(More about Blanche and her afghans here.)
What an absolutely blustery day. I accidentally got up an hour early, and had to wait and wait for some daylight to stitch by. Even stars are hard to stitch in the dark. I suppose there's a paradox in that, ha.
"What kind of blue do you want?"
I told her, "Deep dark blue, and twilight, mermaids, and the sea . . ."
I've struggled along with stitching in the last couple of weeks. Well, not the stitching so much, as the completing.
"There is a difference between something being finished, and something being complete," someone said to me recently.
Wanting each little piece to have a feeling of fullness and possibilities, I kept running into cloth walls. Round and round, picking up a piece, adding a couple stitches, setting it aside, then another. I think there were seventeen unfinished squares in the basket on Friday. Something loosened on Sunday (or perhaps, most likely, it was at the gathering on Saturday).
Things are flowing again . . . a few of them into the shop.
Yesterday, in Oregon, our home town, for my dad's wife's memorial gathering. Knew her for over thirty years, but not really. She was a good kind person, things were/are complicated, but not.
I went with anxiety, but ended up being surprised at what else was found there. People from the past, from childhood. A few had been beacons of possibilities back then, others were reprieves, some were just the same as I had left them.
And seeing my dad so sad, and alone in it all . . . watching him lean against a wall, in an orange shirt, starting to cry, snot dripping from his nose, wiping it away with shaky hands and a blue bandana kerchief, the same kind that I practiced ironing on, way back when. I took a step across the empty space that was between us and touched his shoulder. Stepping back, after a moment, while someone handed him a can of beer.
Trying to understand how opposite truths can exist at the same time- the now and then, and the then and then. And how to hold all of them, because they are all true stories.
