nichobella

riddles and conundrums

Since my last post there have been more sad phone calls.  It would seem this is a season for major transitions on a lot of personal and more communal fronts.  The resulting shifts would be a ridiculous pile-on of happenstances and crises if life were a movie.  If recent events were the working draft of a novel, editorial process would more than likely slash and burn two thirds of the narrative in order to keep things believable and cogent.  But, as many of us know, life is essentially too messy and convoluted to authentically imitate art.  If anything, it often seems to me art imitates itself.  Not always, of course, but all too frequently.  It takes some real inspiration, in my opinion, to prevent one's creative voice from becoming an echo chamber of familiar forms, symbols, color and personal definition.

Innaways a lot of people I know are grappling with fairly profound variables at the moment.  Have been sitting here looking at that sentence for a couple of stop-time moments because I guess, in my philosophical view of the world, we're all grappling whether we actively acknowledge that fact or not.  For many it is more of a freefloating disembodied type of grappling and for others it's gotten quite personal and more than a little nasty.  How to respond to those in distress without resorting to my clinical persona, platitudes nobody really wants to hear in their hour(s) of need, or highly personalized viewpoints that shift the focus, most unbecomingly, from the person in need to the person serving as a sounding board?  Response factors need to be tailored quite a bit depending on individual personalities.  And sometimes that customized response is going to be at odds with what we wish we could say and/or would wish on our own behalf under similar circumstances.

I think all of this is relevant to this blog because it can take a lot of creativity to meet the challenge of bearing effective witness to the nitty gritty aspects of human experience.  When I was younger it used to really bother me that in my own hour(s) of need so many of the various people I would confide in quite frequently responded with I don't know what to say.  And that was that.  I would feel myself screaming internally do you think **I** knew what to say last month when you told me x, y, or z?  No!  But damn if I didn't push myself past that point in order to give you something more than a handshake with an empty glove! It's human nature, after all, to see the world through a personalized scrim of how we behave versus how others go about their business.  When the two points don't match-up very well it's second nature to quantify the gap as best we can and often that process is more about perceptual fossilization than freshly seeded insight. Thus it took me a couple of decades to realize my refusal to stop the process cold with I don't know what to say was actually indicative of the crowning glory in my personal skill set rather than a model everyone else ought to be following right along with me.  And, of course, encouraging oneself to say something more substantive doesn't necessarily mean one's guaranteed to say the right thing.  Things can get pretty complicated before we even open our mouths and maybe that's a big part of why I don't know what to say feels like such a viable safety net.

But, since I have prided myself as I have, it's taken more than half a century for me to realize such things.  The resulting growth towards greater levels of inter-personal compassion sometimes leaves me confused at an inner compass level.  The more we relate to others on their terms the harder it may be to relate to ourselves.  Because where are we under all the responses and reactions and doing what we can to be use?  My typical program has been to stop myself just shy of unworkable over-saturation and then retreat into a deliberately introverted personal landscape until further notice.  Just give me some colorful cloth, maybe a few bottles of ink, and a lovely pile of embroidery threads.  Let me listen to Love Over Gold a gazillion times in a row without finding it necessary to call Mark Knopfler a one trick pony.  For god's sakes put the recycling in the designated bin rather than letting it collect like a rush hour crowd on a subway platform right at the edge of the kitchen counter!  Usually that's how it goes for me when I feel unequal to the tasks of life's unravelling.

But this time I haven't followed my usual program.  It's been important to me to hang in there, right at the crux of so many matters that do matter to me. I've been listening to Robert Cray and the Neville Brothers.  I haven't freaked out about the recycling issue because seriously.  How easy is it to just take the damn stuff out to the bin myself rather than pitching a fit about it?  Plenty easy, it turns out, but that doesn't mean there haven't been at least three occasions recently when I've really wanted to give myself the option of not knowing what to say and admitting as much.  Last Friday I mentioned this sense of rising personal inadequacy to a colleague who replied just stop answering your phone.  Nice.  And also, in my opinion, quite akin to those who ignore national and world news in an effort to keep themselves in a pleasant balance with their surroundings.  How can I be happy if I pay attention to all that? I can't and I have to be happy don't I?  If I had seventy five cents or a dollar for every time somebody's said that to me I could buy even more colorful inks and embroidery threads and that would, at least temporarily, make me happy.  But it's a zero sum game really - this business of avoiding or ignoring unpleasant communal realities or trying to buy oneself past the first few portals of disquietude.

 I titled this post as I did because we're all such enigmatic creatures, aren't we?  It's a lot like that old adage the farther you go the less you know.  Likewise, the more determined we are to know ourselves the greater the likelihood that we feel as if we're playing one helluva game of hide and seek.  For me, a lot of the mystery and mayhem becomes at least a little clearer when I journal in whatever form.  On the study-oh couch a variety of writing and visual journals are keeping their own counsel.  I took a slew of pictures related to some favorite evolving pages in my altered book project but, unfortunately, none of them are clearly focused.  That's the project where I've been putting most of my creative attention.  Have also been self-soothing by ironing various scraps from my big sorting project.  Minimal stitching has occurred but there's been a lot of arranging, consideration, and re-arranging.  I don't really know what to say about it, so I said all these other things instead.

inbetween

Yesterday afternoon I talked to a close local friend and learned she is a widow.   The news is not completely unexpected but it is nonetheless very powerful in its finality.  I want to measure this next blip of time in ways that arent electronic in nature.  Just chart a new map's legend with a focus on natural reflection and discovering little ways to be of comfort or support.   In my views of death, mourning, and friendship no comments are authentically required for this type of situation and so we won't have them switched on.  See you in the new lunar cycle - yes, that sounds right ...

goodbye to all that

so mainly I am coming into a fresh calendar year with the intention of looking through my personal viewing lens and prisms; I want to look at what is familiar in an unfamilar way.  This is an important yearly ritual for me that always takes a unique form.  For the past four or five days I've been spending the lion's share of my time and attention in the study-oh.   It's a long and largely uninteresting story how this change and shifting view has come about.  What matters is The Now.  N-O-W is very important to any creative equation.  NOW is what makes our individual flare something that might be translated.  It might mean something else through a different lens.  But the eyes that see give root to hearts that remember.

As winter progresses a lot of life's force and sustenance is on lockdown.  But, as someone with a natal sun mercury and venus is the cardinal water sign, I have always found it helpful to keep a deep oceanic altar space.  This gives me a sense of vitality that moves from a deeper source that the frozen ground and bare tree branches.  As winter's sunlight strengthens one day at a time it seems possible to say, with gentle certainty:  goodbye to all that.

goodbye to the order from chaos again & again.  goodbye to sorting and re-sorting.  Resorting to all manner of creative wiles in an ongoing effort to make sense of our species.  Goodbye to all that.

All of this clutter now dispensed with dispersed stored recycled repurposed.  Goodbye.  And if you love a perfectly worded sentence and truly evocative writing Joan Didion said it first and best, I think.

Goodbye.  To all that.

Just past the solstice it caught me unaware to realize we have lived here long enough for the study-oh to need a proper clearing out.  This need was compounded by the shifting piles of things I hadn't properly situated or logically organized since first moving in.  In another day or so I should be ready to understand that beautiful flip when goodbye says HELLO.

completion issues

Thanks so much for the thoughtful comments on my last post!   It should be said that the sun has always been one of my favorite common symbols - along with hearts and open-palmed hands.   All three seemed in strong evidence within the spirit of the comments. Your words motivated me to do a bit of "shopping" amongst my unfinished stitching.  Above is the couched center of an embroidery sample I started years ago during an online class with Sharon Boggon. She recommended that we work on little 4 x 6 inch projects, the better to complete them in a timely manner my dear, but each week the pieces I began seemed to demand progressively larger dimensions.  This one started with a 12 inch plaid square of very hot lively colors to distract me from the endless late winter month of March here in New England.

When the class began I hadn't embroidered much since my teenage years. Sharon's class on developing a personal library of stitches helped me change that.  At the time I imagined I sucked at couching and also believed I didn't enjoy it.  But creating a sun from an outward spiral containing all sorts of threads and a lovely scrap of iridescent silk ribbon taught me otherwise.  Apparently I could be good at couching after all!  I could revel in the process and feel pleased with the results.  Once that sunk in there were a few months when I couldn't stop myself from couching on a variety of scrap fabrics.  So there are some other samples that may be making a blog re-appearance as I consider ways these separate pieces might be arranged as a kind of stitching journal.*

This is where I stopped when the class moved on to a different lesson.  The sun rays enhance the sampler effect as I used several different stitches and threads.  The background (disregard the clashing border at the edges of this picture.  That's just there to cue my dyslexic muddle when it comes to where one thing starts and another begins) is a commercial Japanese cotton that's fairly loose in its weave that makes it perfect for a sampler groundcloth.  After spending a little time contemplating the comments about the angelina sun I made last weekend I decided to search-out and complete this sun so I can hang it in a place where I'll see it all the time.  There isn't really that much left to stitch and it's a nice organic extension of what I'm doing in the yellow-orange-gold exploration journal.  Just have to find my Embroidery Bible and maybe the printouts I made from the Personal Library class note PDF's.  Within the notes Sharon introduced some very cool stitch variations that might be useful for completing the sunrays.

When the class first began I allowed myself to bitch on a previous blog about the cost of good quality linen here online.  It was just meant to blow off steam but Jude spied the complaint and, being like she is, promptly sent me a lovely bundle of linen samples so I could keep stitching beyond the pricey hunk I purchased as per the class supply list.  The linen in these pictures had a firm red "F" written in the corner.  I have always wanted to add uck-you, just to be perverse, but now I am considering something a little less caustic.  Don't know what yet.  But this piece became a color-themed doodle cloth when the class ended and I set about the always-delightful task of more personalized exploration.

*Ultimately the plan is to create a fabric scroll from these (and other) embroidery samples.  To start I will baste the separate sections to pieced batting scraps.  This will create enhanced stability so I can add beads, little shells and crystals, and possibly stitch in a few written remarks beyond whatever I wind up doing with the "F".  Failure is an illusion, perhaps?  That would be a very timely motto that certainly bears ongoing reminders to myself.  I'll use pieced cotton scraps for the scroll's borders and backing.  I like working this way because it's a great opportunity to use up "special" bits and pieces that never seem to find a permanent home.  The scrolls are easy to store and their construction insures that the embroidered sections are protected from dust and too much light exposure.  I think it's time to start stitching something beyond the mending tasks because that's starting to feel a little monotonous as well as monochromatic.

COLOR!  I need to begin infusing more color before I start dreaming in denim rather than rainbows.

sun/shine

I took the patch of melted angelina fibers and my smallest sewing kit back to bed with me the other morning.  It was an overcast and chilly day.  My body felt awful and my mind was struggling to counter-act the restrictions of ongoing malady.  Physical pain is a profoundly inhibitting taskmaster.  Day after day of bowing down to that fact left my spirit ripe for a bit of anarchy.  Stoicism was swallowing itself whole; my dull-eyed state of mind begged for some small gesture of a creative antidote.  If I cannot guide myself beyond the grim edges of mid-line suffering then that suffering wins a war I never asked to fight.  I so deeply resent the language of battle applied to the uphill task of healing or at least maintaining some form of status quo within a dysfunctional body.  And yet lately that language has been reciting its own dictionary and thesaurus throughout my waking and sleeping hours.  It's bird-dogged me so successfully that I've come to finally appreciate why its lexicon is so common in the realm of chronic illness.

But I don't like it.  I rise against it even when I can barely rise from a chair or walk from one point of my home to another.  I am simply not equipped to give up even when I believe that's exactly what I've done.  Thus I set aside my writing journal which is full to the brim with my unrestrained thoughts on this multi-plexic topic.  I set aside my pathetically modest to do list for the day and then I set aside my bad mood.  So what if it's an oft-repeated popular belief that without your health you have nothing.  No matter how ill or disabled I may feel on any given day I deplore the glaring error of the health = everything and illness = nothing equation because I am fully aware that my spirit (and soul's essence) is no more de/con-fined by illness than I'm de/con-fined by any other singular aspect of my life and its experience. I stitched a freehand orange spiral ringed with triangles.   The little sun twinkled and glinted at me as I cut around its shape.  My hands weren't shaking.  I could feel my lips curled in a quiet smile of enjoyment.  Muscle memory carried me through the series of tasks involved with turning raw materials into a familiar symbol of comfort and sustenance.

Here's a look at the YOG exploration journal page spread where the sun found a happy home.  Since then I have been working on mending chores, which seem never-ending.   I've also embarked on an idea I had for sharing more stories and images over on my main blog.  And a lot of behind-the-scenes thought and activity have kept me focused in positive directions that will be at least partially revealed in the near future.  My body is not yet fully healed from my unwelcome reunion with Graves disease but I'm gradually gaining some momentum when it comes to addressing the backlog of email and snail mail that's overdue in so many different directions that I've been overwhelmed just thinking about it for the past few months.  Here's a main thrust of personal context that I waited to share until I had some objectivity about it:

In early November I visited the endocrinologist fully expecting to be told that my thyroid was rebalanced and it was time to stop taking the anti-thyroid drug.  Didn't really feel all that well but have come to understand that sometimes The Numbers right themselves far more easily than one begins to feel like the known Self.  So I didn't give too much thought to feeling as crappy as I did; not until the doctor outlined what my Numbers were [not] doing.  It wasn't time to leave the medication behind after all.  For the next week and a half I felt like an undeserving failure.  Exactly what didn't I deserve?  Everything and anything that was good and comforting.  Because, as much as it terrified me to admit it, I was starting to succumb to that detested belief that I had nothing because I didn't have my health.  Thus it seemed to me (and this is a clear if cringeworthy illustration of the way a thyroid imbalance screws with anything resembling clear thinking  ...) that I hadn't earned the right to be happy or comforted.  I had failed to get well in the fairly arbitrary length of time I'd given myself and it wasn't sitting well with me at all.  While I wrestled with a swarm of uncomfortable thoughts and emotions I kept my own council but just barely.

A subsequent visit with my primary care doc brought my sense of failure out in the open.  We've known each other for a dozen years now and one thing that's grown clear to both of us is that I respond most favorably to analogies that help me understand my body's needs and concurrent sabotaging thought patterns.  I told her I couldn't get past my sense of personal failure.  She replied that "failure" held no place in what I was experiencing.  That's like going out for a run, coming to a hill and realizing that it's steeper than you thought once you start your ascent, and blaming yourself for the hill's existence.  It's not your fault the hill is there.  But you may need to walk instead of running until it doesn't seem so steep anymore.

So that's what I've been doing ever since.  During this time of being too busy dealing with "the hill" to conjure eloquence on my blogs or the comment sections of those offerings I most enjoy I have greatly relished visiting here and there in stealth/lurker mode.  The words and images that others have shared gave me insights and ideas that I wouldn't have been able to sustain of my own volition.  Perhaps this is an aspect of community and why the internet does indeed hold a collective soul but I don't really know since I'm always of [at least] two minds concerning whether or not authentic community really exists beyond individualized imagination in this disembodied state.  My thoughts on this subject are fairly well formed since I've been arranging them for 15 years.  My feelings of cumulative ambivalence may say a lot more about my personality than my perceptions.  This entry isn't meant to veer into buzzkill terrain so I'll continue to keep my own council for now.  What matters most is that I value the person-to-person connections I have made.  It isn't likely that I'll ever become a billions-sold sort of blogger.  But I'd like to think those modest few who regularly visit are glad they did, more often than not.

Whoa.  I really hadn't planned to delve into the issues covered in the previous paragraph.  My goal was simply to express my silent enjoyment of many peoples' creative and mundane endeavors as one week melted into the next and I did everything in my power not to backtrack into failure mode.  It means something quite real to me to feel a sense of sustained collectivity even when my preoccupation with personal healing needs doesn't leave much room for a sense of bona fide inclusion.   And yet, as I stitched my little sun and felt a rising hum of satisfaction for the effort, I knew I was part of something larger.  I was re-connecting to a timeless state of shifted reality that's familiar to all creatives.  Can't really think of a better signpost for glad acceptance of that process than a rough-hewn representation of that glorious sun that sustains all life as we know it ...

 

of potential interest...

...for those readers who enjoy my posts about Greg Robinson's (fill in the admiring superlative of your choice) artwork.  Last night we had a rollicking conversation during which he oh-by-the-way'd me concerning the fact that he was recently interviewed for the PBS program Native Report.  I will post more about this once he has concrete details about when his segment will be airing.  If your PBS market doesn't carry Native Report, the episode should be available at the NR website.  I'm bringing it up now and providing a link because there are some other very cool episodes to watch that may be of interest to some of you.  As far as Greg's episode is concerned, he told me parts were filmed at the Cathlapotle Plankhouse. He was the Plankhouse's construction manager; a nice dovetail (see what I did there?) for his creative and practical talents, scrupulous attention to detail, and rigorous devotion to traditional integrity.  If you haven't caught any of my previous posts but now find yourself curious, look here, here, here, and here.

 

today's learning curve

This morning I was working in the tiny bedroom which has become the flower essence and meditation room.  All the mother stocks (hundreds of them ...) are in there; about half are alphabetized and the rest have been standing around all over the rug waiting for me to complete the task.  When I first woke up I found myself thinking why not just put them all on the shelves as quickly as possible so the floor is clear?  My hope is that this action will make the remaining alphabetization task feel a lot less daunting.  In addition to the essences, my vibrational healing library and certain esoteric trinkets, this room holds our ironing board.  It's constantly up and ready for action which it very rarely sees unless I'm using the board as impromptu work space.  So, once I had the essences away and was through admiring the cleared space I created, I decided to make a small angelina sample to embroider for my Yellow Orange Gold exploration journal.

I was in a hurry to do this and move on to an inspection tour of Jim's latest work in our field. Keypoint:  Before I ran all the way out of energy and stayed that way until that hellish Graves-driven point in the later evening when all of a sudden my energy system goes totally bonkers and I start pacing around enthralled with all sorts of grandiose notions I probably wouldn't be capable of manifesting even if I had zero health problems.  Taking all that into account I thought well it won't matter if I keep the iron on the cotton setting because I won't leave it on the parchment paper nearly as long as the instructions tell you.  Please note I haven't actually read said instructions since I first brought some little bags of angelina home (four or five years ago) and made a couple samples I've basically ignored since then.  Just for the record I'd like to clarify that this lack of engagement isn't because I'm one of those people who can't deal with touching/incorporating synthetic embellishment products.  It's simply because there are only so many hours in a day* and making something that involves angelina never seems to find a place on the daily top ten list.  In other words I didn't really know what I was doing.  I kind of remembered the instructions but not really.

Here's what I learned:  you can indeed melt the angelina successfully, without burning the results, if you don't linger even a nano second with the iron.  BUT.  This too-high temperature will produce a smell that is a sickening duplication of tomcat urine.  Thankfully it dissipated quickly once I opened the window.  Before that it was absolutely horrible although the angelina itself doesn't reek and neither did the parchment paper I used to iron it.  BUT.  While I was finding out that the parchment paper smelled like nothing at all I had one of my herky-jerky neurological glitches.  My arm spasmed wildly in such a way that the corner point of the paper collided with my eyeball.  It hurts.  And now I can't see well enough to read, however belatedly, the [teeny tiny] instructions on the angelina bag.  So I still don't know what I'm doing.  BUT. Tomorrow's another day, right?

* not to belabor any sore points or come across like a whiner but currently the truly usable hours in a day I have available is something like two or, on an exceptionally good day, three.  This is spread out over the usual 16 hours time span in relatively unpredictable increments that average 10-20 minutes.  Hence little bits and pieces scattered around the house like the above windowsill.  But I do think the little leopard cubs enjoy the company and its shifting nature ...

new colors

new inktense pencils and big brush art pens.

My love for India ink has expanded due to these lovely gifts.  The pencil colors are so vibrant and I love how easy it is to move the color around with water.  I also appreciate the way the color stays put once it's dry. Layer-making is a breeze.   Haven't done anything super exciting with them yet but I am playing around the edges of possibility whenever time and energy levels allow.  Am also enjoying the UHU glue sticks.  Of course I see them all over the place on other peoples' blogs but I had yet to graduate from the Valu-Paks of much smaller sticks that are readily available at Staples.  Am currently amazed by the difference this upgrade makes.  These raw materials - and a really sweet fulfillment of items from my ongoing book lover's wish list - insure that I'll have an interesting and inspiring winter despite the odds and obstacles.

such quiet merry making

belated winter greetings!  images in this post are from my Sisterhood Duet altered book project.  Have shown these pages before but the images seemed especially festive and seasonal to me.   My plan is to fill the pink/red pages with line drawings inspired by a cut-open pomegranate.  Because this will be challenging for me and my limited drawing skill set, I have been putting it off a bit.  But am now hoping to have it in place by New Year's.

I hope all readers have been blessed with peace and many quiet-to-large joys.  This particular season of conflated celebration has often felt random or downright contrived to me and yet all the customary wishes are inherently beautiful and something you'd want to wish.  The pity for me lies in how much arbitrary and ultimately senseless importance the dominant culture gives to any number of factors "we" have decided to deem essential for a successful winter holiday season.  Everybody's got a list of some kind (even if it boils down to ways one might avoid other people and their lists ...) and this year mine was pared to the bone.  I have been dealing with sharply increased pain levels but still managed to complete my modest list of tasks - cooking, assembling the items from my son's kitchen wish list, doing the grocery shopping - the successful cumulative accomplishment became a small but vibrant pile of loving and practical actions which this year must qualify as my personal best effort.

It seemed important to include a vesica piscis portal in the Sisterhood project.  I would like to try again with a more elegant and less exaggerated silhouette.  But I do like the frolicking triad and my drawing plans for the page surrounding the cut-out.  Have three or four possible ideas of how I might re-incorporate the cut section.  More fiddling is necessary in order to make a decision.

There's been another inadvertent break in the spine right here.  Am leaning towards doing the drawing as-is and then repairing the break with clear packing tape.  Or maybe tape with a fairly delicate white lace pattern.  Decision, decisions.  It's nice to have a creative respite where the decisions never end but they're all essentially pleasant and personally meaningful choices.  This key factor goes a long way to explaining why altering this book has become as restorative as it is compelling.

split work stations

To conserve on heating costs I have set up transient shop in the dining room.  Right now the table is a disaster and all that must be sorted and slid unobtrusively from sight in time for the dinner hour.  That's a downside of working beyond the study-oh's free reign condition.  As I said it's a sensible austerity measure but this week I gave myself the gift of visiting the study-oh more frequently and at a less frigid temperature.  Love working there in the early/mid-morning time frame.

new jar of soft gel acrylic medium with old rusty brush.

have been adding many items to the Sisterhood Duet altered book project.  Duet because the book split itself in half with both still embodying my intended theme.

I add wax paper filler pages anywhere that I've glued and then stick everything beneath some of the larger books in the room for a 48-72 hour flattening session.

These books are always out of the shelf - this tiny section of the room's linoleum floor protected by deli paper.  The "press" is nearly always in use.  Now, after a full week of travelling up and down several times a day, I am preparing to retreat back to the dining room as a base of operations for the next couple of weeks.

In additon to the Sisterhood Duet I have been paying attention to my Yellow Orange Gold color collection journal.

until then study-oh space keeps its own counsel ...