Maybe its the mounting holiday frenzy, or the recent tragedies, or the distraction of teaching, or my own peculiar mood swings, but I find myself in a creative quagmire, shoveling at a constantly sluffing muck of mediocre unformed ideas, hoping to find a bright jewel. I keep beginning projects only to dismantle them in a state of agitated dissatisfaction. The ideas that come to me in the night, as I lay churning and tossing in un-sleep, reveal themselves as they are in the light of day. Like the spork or the snuggy, these ideas feel frivolous, irrelevant. I want to make something that rocks me, that sends ripples out into the world around it. I suppose the only thing to do is keep digging.
Fantasy C
In this fantasy I have a special time piece (I likely found it while digging at the beach or possibly it appeared under my pillow on a camping trip. I most certainly did not get it at Target) it ticks and turns as most clocks do but the speed of the passage of time is determined by the quality of time spent. For instance if I am sitting and playing mastermind with my daughter, or cooking a meal from scratch, or walking with a dear friend the clock will slow. If I am mad at my partner, or fretting over my cluttered livingroom, or commuting the clock will speed up.
my first quilt
I dreamed a journey through my body
I dreamed a trip inside my mind
I dreamed I packed an empty suitcase
and left my worries all behind.
on crossing bridges
This is an unstitched work a friend is commissioning from me as a gift to her parents. I just finished the layout and I’m about to begin sewing. I am considering words to stitch into the sky, thoughts on crossing bridges together, making changes and weathering transitions together. Myself, I am typically ungraceful in the midst of profound change, but when I look back across the expanding vista of my marriage and personal life, the bridges are the shiny landmarks, the remarkable memories.
put your hands in the air
for all the commuters out there. I am finished with week 4 of my 7 week teaching stint. I honestly like sewing with middle schoolers. They remind me of pirates, crass, giddy, kind of ungrounded, odiferous, need I continue? What I don’t enjoy is the commute to Junction City and Oakridge. Commuters are a toughened and resilient bunch. Just four weeks of this daily commute and my hands vibrate for stretches, my back aches, my butt is re-shaped and possibly larger, I wake with nightmares of Mac trucks, I’m yelling insults at people I pass in hallways.... How do you commuter’s do it? I need some insights to get through the next 3 weeks.
color
I am enormously grateful for my functioning rods and cones, for my decent vision and this color saturated world we get to live in. What a pleasure it is to look, to notice the bright red berries on the evergreen shrub outside my window, the pale yellow cottonwoods, the vivid white of a clean sheet, the delicate robin egg blue of toothpaste on my toothbrush, the metallic black of a passing car.
I try not to be a hater...
but inevitably she calls just as I’ve plugged in my iron, tuned into the latest podcast of This American Life, and picked up my sharpest scissors for a serious work session. Rinnnggg, Rinnng, “Hello?” I say. “Hi, this is Rachel at card holder services.” (you can’t interupt at this point, she’s a recording) “there is no problem with your current credit card.” That’s about as far as it goes before I hang up on her. But she’s already broken the spell and I have to begin again like my dog situating herself on her pillow, turning, pushing, turning again before I can resume working. That rant ranted, I am thinking of making commemorative bowls or t-shirts that say I Hate Rachel at Card Holder Services. Place your orders now.