handstories

Wandering in Erythroniums

    Still having hill thoughts...

 

    Maybe it's the photos Blue sends from his weekend adventures in Chile?

 

    This was me talking myself into joining a friend at a deep water aerobics class.  I did go.  It did kick all the parts of all of my body.  I was sore for two days.  I Will go again.

    THIS was a lovely afternoon... woodland fairy flowers and a wonderful gathering of quilts and their makers.

    The Dunn Gardens were new to us, beautifully designed by the Olmsted brothers, and only twenty minutes from home.

 

    There were delights around every corner.

    "Rhian" (Welsh for magic maiden)

    There is a new energy balanced with my usual clutter and chaos.

    "A Song of Moonrise & Sunset"

Personal Magic

    "Living in Moonshine"

    Katherine May's audiobook, Enchantment was ready to be checked out yesterday.  I finished listening to it this morning, and have begun it again.  It's just the get-together of thoughts that I've been craving.

    "Enchantment is small wonder magnified through meaning, fascination caught in the web of fable and memory."  Katherine May, Enchantment.

    Which explains why, weeks ago, when I accidently tipped the pin bowl, and out spilled glass headed pins, a shard of quartz, a sprinkling of seed beads, and a punched-out paper cross, that there was a moment of being mesmerized by this tiny pile.   Of course, keeping things besides pins in the pin bowl makes for a more difficult quick grab of one of them, but it also offers moments of light when the crystal catches the sun, and thoughts of hope with the tiny cross.  Taking notice of how happy this gathering made me, I jotted down, "I am creating my own fairytales." 

    This is not a new thought.  I've written and talked about it when describing my own marks and makings, but it was the first time that I realized how much I do it in regular life, too.  

    "Singing Stories With the Sky"

    Between all of the piles, I try to set and surround myself with small spells of light of wonder... Velma's soapstone bear and her fierce mama energy, tokens of the sea, that piece of smokey quartz that I love so much.  (I don't know what properties it is supposed to carry, but I hold it with thoughts of strength and centering calm.  And once there were smokey quartz earrings, but they were left on a nightstand in Venice...sigh.)  

    These little vignettes are places to rest and remember the childlike feelings of believing.

    “Darkness & Starlight Wove Through Her Story”

    (Speaking of magic, I wish I had a charm for making the photos show up properly on posts.  If something doesn't look right, please click on the photo or the jumble of letters & numbers where a photo should be, and then you should be able to see it.)

A dusty picture of things

    Received the best text from a wonderful someone this morning (probably because I was thinking about him yesterday, wondering when I would hear from him again...).   It sums up some of how I feel here...

"HOLY CRAP! Hi! Good morning! Missed your birthday, missed your dad’s birthday, missed a whole bunch of other days too, including Pi Day, April Fool’s, and I think national Pizza Day too possibly—all my misses keep building up like tiny bricks and then I find myself behind this wall of “well it’s been too long” and “I’m a terrible correspondent” and those big bricks hold down the little bricks and the wall begins to feel nigh on unbreakable, but I think of you and K and the boys and the tree house and wonder about you all the time, and wonder what you are wondering about, what you are doing and making and all that…so here I am trying to break through my own wall, but I’m afraid the effort of breaking through may have taken most of my energy and now I have not much interesting to say…;) (I’m humming the tune of Tiny Bubbles but singing the words “tiny bricks…in the wall…”

Whew!  And now I have to go downstairs and head out into the world for work…but at least there is brick dust everywhere…;) I will try to keep the construction noise down to a dull roar…love."

    And so, here is some of the dust of my life...

    Deb's wonderful paints, with thanks to her for sharing them and a lovely evening with me.

    I really love watching the blue bubbles through the window on the side when it reaches the boiling point.

    It was awful.  Eventually, there is a nightmare about absolutely everything it seems.  All of my quilts and stitchings cut up into piles to be used in someone's workshop.  I was screaming.  She wasn't sorry.

    I'm working at getting healthier- moving more, and less of other things.  I get in the car as K is heading off to work in the morning and have him drop me off on the way, forcing me to walk if I want to get back home.  

    I didn't paint the frozen mother and child that were on the bench in this nightmare.

    Someone said that all of these dreams are processing my days, that they are a way of working through all of the thoughts so that I can face the next day.  I don't know.  Sometimes I wonder if my days are ways to balance out the images I dream up at night, that I try to look for light while awake so that I can face another sleep.

    Onward...  Hope you are all swell.