cloth.paper.string

sunday morning sounds:  the quiet after all the rustle.

call and answer

a convergence happened in june.  of art and movement.  of the familiar and new.  of two of my disparate (and burgeoning) loves.  of handbound books and dancing.

amanda lovelee's call and answer project brought strangers together to eat pie, to pull prints to be assembled into books, to square dance, and above all else, to celebrate community and connection. when i happened upon the event at the minnesota center for book arts, during the twin cities nuit blanche festivities, i immediately knew.  i was home. 

i was home cranking prints for a poignant little book on community and square dancing to be folded together later for sharing.  

i was home fumbling through the caller's instructions.  allemande-ing left, honoring my partner, bowing to my corner, promenading home. 

home you are and home you be.  i knew i had returned home after all of that spinning and laughing and living and connecting.

for more on amanda's inspiring project see here (and if you look closely you'll even see my absolute joy in one of the sequences).

(and... it goes without saying, but i'm tickled to have found a small, though vibrant, group of dancing folk in my backyard.  it had been weeks since i smiled and laughed as much as i did last night.)

(life seems to curate the most interesting of collections for my kitchen windowsill.)

i have an idea.  or two.  about making a quilt for my bed.  and (momentarily) holding a powerful winged animal.  and being direct.  and letting go of crutches that ultimately hold me back.  and stepping forward for my own sake.  and i even have ideas about knitting.  (okay, i have many ideas.)

but right now, i'm going square dancing.  never mind the fact that i struggle with which is left and which is right.  i will put the right foot forward.  it is the only thing i can do.

the bells

the bells are ringing with your compassion and forgiveness.  
 - noted, late july 2010, white sulphur springs, california

as she journeys through the week i follow along, looking back over the notes i took during my time with the redwoods.  i know her experience will be her own.  and too, i know that the format is the same regardless of when the process is experienced. 

i distinctly remember my cracking open.  i remember seeing and accepting myself as myself without all of the armor that i had locked myself into for 'protection'.  i remember the release of that which i thought defined me.  i remember the profound calm that followed the letting go.  

and now i know the catalyst that the process provided.  the living that began to really happen when i got out of my own way.  the staying power of the experience.  the way that it has impacted me, and too, those with whom i share my life. 

looking back through the pages i penned that week next to the creek has also provided a timely reminder about compassion.  mainly compassion for myself, for my experience, for my grief.  i've been resisting stepping fully into it lately, wearing a cloak of stoicism.  it served me.  and now, gracefully or not, it's time to move through.  

i'm grateful that the bells in the tower i can see from my kitchen window toll every day at exactly the same time.  in the morning.  in the evening.  they ring with my compassion, with my forgiveness.  they remind me that all things change when we do.

looking: inward, outward

for a while i made and shared a photo each day. words and light reflected. and then i stopped. it didn't feel right. for me, the photo a day project was about distilling the essence of and recording a moment in time. but things started to feel too big, too raw, too complex. i felt that there was no way to water down my experience of any moment into one image and a mouthful of words. there was so much that i couldn't begin to explain, that i couldn't make sense of on my own. fully embracing, let alone sharing, any of it felt entirely overwhelming.  

it's likely i would have stopped sooner, but a visit to habit pulled me through may. immediately thereafter i put the camera away.  

a few nights ago, cristina garcia's words in dreaming in cuban struck me, shedding light on my experience, helping me understand the feeling that i couldn't put into my own words: 

memory cannot be confined, celia realizes, looking out the kitchen window to the sea. it's slate gray, the color of undeveloped film. capturing images suddenly seems to her an act of cruelty. it was an atrocity to sell cameras at el encanto department store, to imprision emotions on squares of glossy paper.

i put the camera down at a time when too much was moving for me to feel comfortable with working the f-stop, with creating a static image, with labeling it with a reflection. the frame of a photograph felt restrictive at a time when i needed, more than anything, to experience expansiveness. the inherent confinement of images mirrored the constriction i felt in my ribcage.  i simply could not continue.

i recently decided to step back in. the return has been gradual. i look over these months away and see how the dots connect back to now. i've shifted focus, and feel like i'm still working the dials, honing in on the image. not all adjustments have been made. what i'm finding as i pick up the camera, is that i now know that life is truly a work in progress. it's never finished, and always continuing to unfold. it's an amalgamation of many parts. there's beauty and grace and nuance in these little bits, and these deserve to be celebrated.  

another important piece for me is a realization about the power of a photograph. i love that a single image can bring me back to the entirety of an experience. this is apparent again and again as i peek into the rear-view mirror of my life in pictures. i can smell the new scent of her milky breath those first days, can hear the awed exhalation i made when the valley revealed itself through the fog, can feel the wind hit our faces as we turned back to avoid a protective mama and her nest of goslings, can taste the sweetness of sunkissed orbs as i stood barefoot in the afternoon light, and can see that the way that i see things inspires others to take a look for themselves through their own lenses.

my new intent is not to capture images, but use photography and words to highlight facets of the whole while honoring the uncontained, unbounded, indescribable nature of things. to look outward while looking inward. this practice grounds me. brings me into the present. and too, it creates a little archive that invariably helps me understand the larger process through which i am walking, a process that is sometimes impossible to see while i'm trudging through the thick of it. my revived day to day, 2011 flickr set is here.

(i'm similarly ruminating on blogging, but those ideas are not quite ready to emerge. plus, it's late. soon.)

as always, thanks to you my friends for reading, for witnessing.

making space

i emptied my closet of all that i don't love.  all that isn't quite right.  all that could be but isn't, and won't ever be.  all that i've held onto for sentimental reasons, but that i won't ever wear again.  all that i think i might learn to - maybe, someday - love.  all that makes me feel anything less than great.

i'm left with one formal dress, one black wool suit.  three pairs of jeans.  a bunch of practical outdoors clothes.  boots.  more boots.  scarves.  more scarves.  a handful of staples.  my favorite handknits.  a few timeless pieces. some ridiculously fun dress up clothes.  and, hopefully, a very large check from the local consignment shop.

and so, i'm making space.  for lots more of that which i love.  right now, this looks like dresses that make me feel like i'm getting away with wearing pajamas in public.  and those boots i've coveted for years, but never justified purchasing.  this feels like twinkle lights.  and buttery soft bedlinens. this sounds like a formation of migrating canada geese flying overhead. and this mix of my current favorites.

(the spark for all of this clearing out is the incredibly inspiring commencement address i listened to this morning:  steve jobs on connecting the dots, on living, on dying and not settling.  ever.  do make space in your day to listen.)

noticing

i've been noticing that some things demand attention.  like it or not, these bits keep bumping into me until i take notice.  and when i do pay attention, when i do give credence to the fact that four different people asked me the exact same thing, when i notice that i've made photos of the same subject in a handful of disparate environments, when i don't just brush my knees off when i stumble again and again in the exact same spot - when i really open my eyes - i am gobsmacked by what i see.

sometimes it's big.  a revelation that brings new light to most of my adult experience, leaving me with a feeling of profound relief, of great sadness, of newfound compassion.  sometimes it's quite small.  a lunchbox packing epiphany, bringing greater ease to the routine. 

and sometimes the coincidence remains hidden before making a big splash with a proclamation that there is no such thing as a coincidence. i'm sitting with one of these tonight.  

i've been watching a black swallowtail caterpillar rig a fine webbing of gossamer thread to the side of a mason jar.  the caterpillar came in from the garden with the parsley a few days ago, and is now preparing to pupate, to shed its skin and transform into a chyrsalis.  of course the metamorphosis is fascinating to me, especially as i'm rounding out a year of experiences and decisions that have forever altered me.  but the captivating bit for me is that fine thread.  this is what i notice.  finally.

for weeks now, spider webs have woven themselves into my world.  i have been mesmerized by the way webby threads catch the sunlight in the trees.  have been stopped in my tracks by a web spanning the entire path.  have dreamed about webs.  have visited a house where a whole window was criss-crossed by woven spidersilk.  have listened to rowan play a podcast about arachnids over and over.  have come back again and again to a photo i made recently, so much so that i can trace the delicacies of the web therein by memory.

and so, i now see all this webbiness well enough to know that it is significant, even without knowing exactly why.  tonight i know the web as home.  the web as something that can provide for or ensnare us. the web as creation.  the web as art.  the web as sustenance.  the web as how we orient ourselves in the world, how we connect with others.  

there's still much to unpack here, and significance will likely continue to unfold for me with time, with greater reflection.  but for now, i'm sitting with the notion that i get to choose exactly how i weave my life.  this might seem obvious and trite, but on so many levels it's timely.  and sometimes the most obvious is the most profound when it is finally noticed.

(and of course it's not lost on me that this little musing is captured here in my tiny corner of this web. another one of the many facets to be woven into the whole.)

autumnal

we went up the shore to peek at the leaves.  

to drink in the sun.  to collect up the color.  

we tried to capture it all with our lenses; but of course the glory of the actual can't be found in images, can't be conjured up in words.  

our soundtrack included a new (and fitting) favorite, changing colours by great lake swimmers.

and, as with all good trips up the shore, we stopped for pie.  but this time we found something better than betty's at the rustic inn.

a truly delightful autumn day.  hope yours was too.