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It rained early this morning. Hard and loud, it woke me, a glorious downpour. Didn't even care that the car windows were cracked a few inches (fortunately K. did and went out to close them at 5am). Everything seems bright and clean.
More gifts have melted into a Sun for Mo's pennant.
And now for some stars. I've been itching to get to this point.
"Sea Love" is starred, dotted and done. I dipped the cloth waves into the ocean while we were there. It's now in a gathering of a few things from the trip, including a jar of sea water.
The taste of salt is still in it.
Time lost all meaning last night. Cold and then hot, a wrong number phone call at 1am (it was all I could do not to call this person back at 7am and ask how he slept?). three nightmares- of assaults, murders and suicide pacts, and a cat on my feet, who would not be moved.
I woke up delirious, and then, first thing, Moon said, "I want to be like ." (That blank is a member of my family, someone we had stopped to see on our way to the ocean last week. A person who, being around, or even talking to requires a whole lot of self-talk and self-armoring on my part.)
I think I looked at Moon as if he had just announced that he wanted to bite the head off of a chicken. After regrouping, I asked him why?
"I like his attitude, and he's got good hair." (Both sides of Moon's family tree make the fear of baldness a justifiable worry.)
Hmmm. How different things can look from another angle. A bend in time, age, roles. A tilt of the head can move the darkness, or at least allow some light in.
In spite of all of this, or maybe because of, it's been a peaceful day of being lost in stars and moon.
Wishing us all some sweet dreams.
(This is the next addition to Mo's pennant. A golden moon pieced out of scraps from Jude and Deb.)
It seems I'm lost in the last hazy days of summer. Focus is hard to grasp. The other day I had to pull over to remember where I was going and how to get there...to a place I go every other week.
Suddenly autumn has arrived. There's a golden edge to the leaves and a welcomed coolness in the air. It will probably be good for me once school starts, to be in a routine again, be accountable...but I can't imagine it right now.
In an effort to find some grounding, stitching has finally begun on my pennant for Mo's Gathering- her collaborative creation "I Dream of a World Where Love is the Answer." Mo's deep and wide visions, eye and talent for the tiniest details, combined with her deep heart and love for this world and all it holds, are sure to make this installation an amazing gift to behold.
The satin was dipped in the fading moments of last summer's indigo, leaving it with a silvery shimmer. I'm not quite sure how this will go... imagining pieced peace filled spheres (planet and moon thoughts), and there will be stars, many many stars to map the story, guide the way, pin hopes on, and for wishing...
We're home. It was a very good trip. I found two agates...remembering us kids tagging after mom across rocky beaches in her quest for them. Constantly asking her how much longer until we could go to the sandy beach?
A rainbow of petals met us on the first day. Guessing they were remnants of some celebration. I hope it was a happy one.
Some seaside stitching.
And salt water painting with handmade watercolors from here (extra fondness for the pan of "spark" which adds a magical shimmer)
There was wonderful ocean time- wading, walking, watching, and even some beach bike riding. Also, a sweet small train ride between two beach towns, along the coast, bay and trees. While on it, we saw a blue heron take flight, and pelicans diving in the water and flying.
We also saw the edge of the camp lake where K. and I were outdoor school counselors in the fall of 1979 (he was a senior and I was a junior in high school). Where we first held hands while on our first beach walk together.
Speaking of hand holding, while soaking in the sea, when I asked a certain sixteen year old for a hug, he offered his hand instead. Don't tell him, but his was a much better offer! It lasted while strolling, wave watching and listening to his latest insights about life...
The smoke from the distant wild fires was at the shore too, so no stars and there were other-worldly sunsets, but still, the beautiful powerful waves...
...where my soul feels at home.
The four tops/backs/sides of the two boys' quilts were dyed a faded blue in that botched indigo vat.
Not all that was dreamed of, but good and blue enough. Moon's is in progress, there's a moon shape quilted in the center-ish. Now the stitches are circling round and round it. Stitching through layers required finding a thimble.
It's coming with us to the Oregon beach tomorrow. Four days at the ocean! I can't wait to see the sea! To put my feet in, stare at, smell, listen to it... Maybe I'll dip some cloth into it? And maybe, away from the city lights and hazy smoky sky, maybe there will be stars?!
Wishing you all wonder filled skies this week!
"Quiet Prayers" was finished this morning, on what was a nice quiet day. And then I asked Moon to help film the turning of it's pages. Not being an octopus, I needed him to hold the camera. And then it turned out I needed him to hold the iphone I use for instagramming (Blue's old phone, that is no longer a phone, but works with wifi), because camera video cannot be sent to iphones. And then it turned out we needed to use Moon's phone, because it has better quality, not great, but better. I got it up on instagram, he knew how to take the sound out (because the screaming neighborhood children drowned out the sweetly chirping birds), but for the life of us, we cannot get it onto this blog post. And there was no way 16 year old Moon was going to do one more thing around any of this today, or that I was going to ask him.
So, if you'd like to see a blurry, badly cropped, dim video of pages flipping...I think, if you click HERE, you can. Good luck.
Something new for the fridge. It was a very dull civil case, an appeal to overturn the Board of Labor and Industry's decision. Which meant that the two lawyers read the transcript of the original proceedings with the Board. No witnesses, objections, motions, nothing... just pages after monotone pages of testimonies from doctors and more doctors. Days of it. We all nodded off at least once, including the judge.
Working through technical difficulties today. This has been a different kind of a making for me. One that flowed almost instantly and by accident. Cloths that might somehow work together were put into a stack, to pack up for taking to jury duty, and suddenly there was a book-like thing. Pages to flip through. A scrap added, a surprise layer. Unexpected over-lappings. It felt like a meditation/prayer before it was recognized it as such.
The other night, while visiting a friend, I was stitching the pages together and saw that it wasn’t going to work, some of the stitching was too high and being covered by the binding stitches. Took it apart and sat it next to me, looking at it now and then.
The answer was too easy and took too long to realize.
Finally, “I know what to do.”
She wondered about my process. “Just looking at it sitting there, you know?”
"Yep.” Sometimes I get so stuck in what I thought was going to happen.
Same friend, same evening, describing a friend changing plans on her, and how she flowed with the winds of it all…
He had said, “Wow. You’re really ok with things just suddenly changing?”
“What else am I going to do?” she replied.
“Come join us in our crazy clinging panicking places,” I said.
Almost done, with this booklet, and with the trial. Today will be the last day, hopefully.
I wish I knew more about cloth. The patched square is actually the same as the base, just the backside, how the weave creates two different stories is fascinating.
Now to put it all together, and then to think and feel about it all.
