::: all the love you have :::
Tag: stitchings (Page 32 of 36)
they treated us to a trip on saturday, my son and his girlfriend, the gondola dropping us off at the tiptop of keystone in colorado right as the sun retired for the day. it was magnificent – the togetherness, the thoughtfulness, the planning that went into it, the fondue dinner we enjoyed there, singing edelweiss, doing the chicken dance (timed perfectly to occur between the main course fondue and chocolate fondue dessert), and the ride back down the mountain in darkness.
magical
magnificent
moving
moments in time,
certainly worthy of
a block in my ongoing altar cloth
(not that i’ll ever forget it, mind you.)
because this kind of day
is nothing short of
sacred.
~~~ and underneath it all was love ~~~
after spending a day (a day that seemed more like a decade) of paperwork (thus the decade) (and i’m not finished yet, i have hours to go before i sleep), i crave the life of a simple 9-square, though i can’t help but wonder if less paperwork really does equal simple or if it just seems that way because i hate paperwork more and more every month. wait . . . does living the simple life mean doing less of things i despise and more of things i enjoy? could it really be that simple or is that kinda’ like thinking living life on the prairie in a dugout was simple? either way, today’s altar cloth is a simple 9-square. (a.k.a. wishful thinking.)
Talk about living in the realm of unknowing, that’s where I seemed to have pitched my tent today. This piece of my altar cloth started out as the image that appeared as a response to Pablo Nerusda’s poem called An Ode to Ironing:
Poetry is white
it comes dripping out of the water,
it gets wrinkled and piles up.
We have to stretch out the skin of this planet.
We have to iron the sea in its whiteness.
The hands go on and on
and so things are made
the hands make the world every day,
fire units with steel
linen, canvas and calico come back
from combat in the laundry
and from the light a dove is born
purity comes back from the soap suds.
I saw a sky filled with clothes (probably dirty) falling to earth, forming a dove. But somehow in the stitching, my hands created this, and because I have no idea what my hands are trying to tell me, what they wish to convey, I will leave you with this:
Creating art is like dreaming; there are a multitude of layers that can’t be exhausted with just one sitting.
and this:
In creating altars, we fill a personal space with the power of our own intentions and longings. We take seriously the deep desires of our hearts.
both from the pen of Christine Valters Paintner.
I see
the field
of dewdrop diamonds
sparkling in the sun,
scattered
amid and around
the plentiful
cow patties
and I think
“self portrait.”
it is the sixth day of sun and blue skies we’ve seen since thanksgiving, so we do the only thing that makes sense: we leave. we trek to a nearby town in search of an air purifier – that was our official excuse – and after spending, oh i don’t know, maybe two minutes on that search, we walk up and down main street, ducking in the human society thrift shop – where i found two national geographic magazines i can’t live another day without – then on down to one of the many antique shops on the square.
we see christening dresses, white gloves, a colonial war metal warming plate. we see a small perfume bottle in a sterling silver case that snaps closed with a definitive click. we see an entire cabinet full of keys . . . alas, but no roller skate key. if the woman who talks to herself is to be believed, we see a bible box and an ice cream plate. she begins to talk to me, generously sharing with me news of the best deal around: a mining spot in cherokee, n.c. where you buy a bucket for $13 and set to mining. she went there not long ago, and having decided to hold onto the smaller stones in their natural state, she is heading back over tomorrow to pick up her 3 carat emerald that’s being cut. the man doing the cutting reckons that one stone alone is worth $3,000.00 to $4,000.00, and she wonders how on earth they can make money with buckets costing only $13 each, but soon enough she answers her own question: they own the mining rights AND they get paid to cut and set the stones. she doesn’t think she’s tall enough to pull off wearing a four carat emerald, so she’s fine with the smaller three carat stone.
when she picks up her cut stone, she’ll pay for two or three more of those $13 buckets, hoping to raise enough money to purchase the ten acres on the market for $10,000. it’s uncleared land, but she figures she will sell the stones to pay for the clearing of five acres which she’ll then sell and use the proceeds from that sale to clear the other five acres and have clarence come put her a trailer there where she’ll live happily ever after.
///
spying the glass-front filled with jars and bags of marbles, the young mesmerized boy says pointedly, “dad, do you realize i don’t have any marbles?”
“oh you have some marbles,” his dad says, distracted with the boxes filled with hinges and door knobs and such he’s rifling through “you’ve just lost them.”
///
we see a naked baby doll that’s much the worse for wear, her skin all cracked and peeling, one eye permanently closed in a wink, her smile faded but still radiant. i want to bring her home and love her.
a smaller doll lies in the box with her, a doll so small you can hold her in the palm of one hand. her tag says “porcelain doll missing,” and sure enough both feet, one hand, and one arm up to the elbow have been amputated. i don’t know how to fix her, so i hug her, lay her back down, and wish her well.
///
as i stitch the evening away and as the scraps of fabric find their way together into a new cloth, these lines by nikki giovanni comes to dance in the eye of my needle:
When I am frayed and strained and drizzle at the end
Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt
That I might keep some child warm
And some old person with no one else to talk to
Will hear my whispers.
///
today i stitched my way
through a block
on a piece i started
a while ago.
it was going well,
at first,
then i didn’t know
where to go next
so i laid it down.
but my hands
are so smart.
they pick up the cloth
and before you can say “thread,”
it is singing to me softly,
telling me
stories
of all it
represents.
stitching
slows me down,
gives me space.
it amazes
and amuses me.
“We all have within ourselves a chispa or ember, a spark of divine creativity. and because of this spark, whether we have never even produced a work, we are still in our essence artists. Clarissa Pinkola Estes suggests that even when that ember is not actively tended, it still remains glowing within us, just waiting for the breath to ignite it and bring it to a leaping, dancing blaze.”
~Christine Valters Paintner~
::~::
POP QUIZ:
Did you breathe your spark into a flame today?
Did you treat the world to the warmth from your spark?
What did you create?
What did you want to create but didn’t?
Why didn’t you?
How did it feel to create . . . or not to create?
Tell me about it.
Tell me everything.
Ways to Donate
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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