weaving disparate things together.
combining things in unexpected ways,
ripping to find the true grain,
laying the foundation
and building a basecloth
for possibilities.
Category: Blog (Page 80 of 101)
News of The 70273 Project with a side of Jeanne’s Barefoot Heart
don’t like what i see,
but rather than toss it all aside,
and render it useless
and unworthy,
rather than walk away,
i rip out the stitches,
saving the bits of cloth
and threads,
(it is, after all, my cloth)
the mere act of
ripping
enkindling ideas of
other uses for them
in this project
that i’m now calling
my legasee cloth.
If I tell you I have a headache,
you’ll badger me to go to the doctor.
If I tell you I’m not interested in anything
and would love to sleep for three days,
you’ll encourage me to go to a therapist.
If I tell you that I’m tired
of saying only nice things,
edifying things,
fresh, perky, upbeat things,
you’ll tell me to go ahead
and write what I will
then
you’ll share your testimony of faith,
and try to save my soul by convincing
me that your god
is The One For Me.
i’m spent. seriously. i’m spent to the bone. it’s the move – sure. of course it is. but it’s more than that. allergies, i think. could be. yep, that’s a possibility. then it hits me: i haven’t created anything in weeks. months even.
sure, i’ve nested and placed things and revamped and repurposed and reconfigured – and that is a type of creativity, but my hands ache to create something from scratch, to make the familiar new. they ache, i tell you.
so yesterday i made a quick dash through a vintage store in search of fabrics that caught my eye. didn’t give myself time to think or ponder or justify – just grabbed things that appealed to me, and here’s what i brought home:
i am blank – couldn’t buy an image or an idea if i knew where to look. so tomorrow i’ll just start fiddling with these 4 white(ish) linens and see where this takes me.
Artist and writer Frederick Frank wrote: “I know artists whose medium is life itself and who express the inexpressible without brush, pencil, chisel, or guitar. They neither paint nor dance. Their medium is being. Whatever their hand touches has increased life. They see and don’t have to draw. They are the artists of being alive.”
She wakes up each day
to a blank canvas of 24 hours,
and she fills it with strokes of
love and laughter
and
nourishment and beauty.
She is a creator of relationships.
Friends, family, strangers,
flowers and food . . .
those are her paints.
Her muse may wait for her
in the kitchen
and in her garden,
but her life is her canvas.
Her life is her art.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.
I love you.
Today my to do list is not my best friend.
Usually I actually enjoy the structure
my to do list affords,
lines through completed items
testament to my
worthiness.
But not today.
I’m tired.
Tired to the bone, I tell you.
Which is no small wonder
given all the
huge things
I’ve checked off
My List
since February.
But still that one pesky
committee member
chides me about
all I still have to do,
(which means that I haven’t
earned any down time)
and how I can’t write
or sit
or read,
how I can’t slow down
until
I’ve wrestled that to do list
into a daily structure
of doable proportion.
That is my ultimate plan,
it’s true.
And it’s also true
that my husband
treks down the mountain
to work every day
at a job he doesn’t
especially like.
But I wonder how long
I must pay penance for him.
I wonder how long
I must bear this guilt
that I can’t even articulate.
I wonder if I’ll ever
really be rid of the notion
that worthiness is
directly proportional
to the size of a paycheck,
rendering everything I do
invisible
and of no consequence.
Writing is no carrot,
I say today.
I don’t shout it
and there’s no gnashing of teeth
or clenched fists as props.
I just simply say:
Writing is my blood.
And while it’s true
that my one word –
one itty bitty word
to wrap my ink around,
something that would tell you instantly
who I am
and
what I am about
is still elusive,
today I’m just too tired
to fret about it.
So I’m having myself an
At Will Day.
I nap
At Will.
I read
At Will.
I sit by the falls
or eat
or have a Smirnoff’s Ice (grape)
At Will.
Most importantly:
I write
At Will.
Yes, that is my
to do list for today.
And hear me on this:
I’ll do things
At Will
in spite of the
committee members who may attempt
to guilt me into submission
because today’s submission
is defined by another
committee member.
And since I seem to be on a roll,
I’m hereby officially
and publicly
nominating Her
to chair this committee that is Jeanne.
So there.
Today I am blank.
Not as fill-in-the but
just blank.
Blank.
I need an umbrella
Something to hang my interests under
A cause
A central theme
I crave a word.
A single itty bitty word
that tells you
who i am
and what i am about.
If i had
my word,
I am creative enough
to twist
and turn,
to wrap any story
and any experience
and even any question
right around it.
I would make clothes
out of that word.
My house would
utter that word
in every nook and niche.
That word would bloom
in my garden.
It would trample weeds
and sing me awake in the morning.
That word
would be my jungle gym
and my ticklebug.
But I haven’t a word.
Not a single word.
Sigh.
Maybe tomorrow
Or the next day.
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integrity
This work by Jeanne Hewell-Chambers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.TheBarefootHeart.com.
here ‘n there