I call it Just Time. A small journey that keeps staring at me. There is no real way for me to say this is done. But it feels close. It is thin, and it embraces shift. The crescent is both like a cradle and a slice of rawness. Another story cloth aka Everything Is So Fragile.
The Japanese Maple has let go.
The Oaks are turning.
Unlike where I moved from where it was almost all Oaks, here it is mostly Maple and Hickory which turn first, the leaves falling before the Oaks begin their transition. I realize in this season, watching the colors has helped me draw a map of how things grow here, in my mind. I am learning by color and timing and relationship to climate. The woodpiles which we have just started to use, have hats fashioned from old pool covers.
In the Nest of Days, I focused in on that woven eye. Vision changes from day to day. Some days I see with my heart. Other days I see with my mind. An eye, for me, vision, contains both of them. Must contain this balance. I just said that to myself. Knowledge is a feeling I also hummed.
I would like to weave more eyes. What if I weave more eyes?
Today I will clean the windows.
After some technical advisement, the short version of the story,I did, indeed,lose the files on my hard drive. And the computer is non functional. So "things" fell apart. But I didn't. And I have kept my needles threaded. Just needing some time to gather some appropriate patches. Seems the older I get, the more pieces there are to work with. And ways to hold them together.
September has taken hold. Warmer than usual but still...
The turning has begun. It will dip into the 40s tonight.
This is the edge of the Coma Cloth. Where the edge was no match for new eyes.
I have so many new eyes. I just feel like closing them all. If only for a moment's rest. I watched the news before bed, woke up, went out to the chilly porch and screamed "I can't take it anymore!". A few moments later, off in the distance, over the hill past the stone walls, I heard "Me either".
Yeah, well, find out for yourself.
Started back here, just for some winter window garden in the first dark days after moving here.
After some research, carrot tops, edible, salad greens, but you cannot get carrots, just greens. OK.
So many roots, after a few weeks I planted them in small pots and then in the raised beds outside the porch. I like the greens. I use them like parsley.
Got so big, started to block the sunlight for other late summer seedlings. Just pulled some, maybe to dye with?
Ha.
Should have left them a bit longer. But there are others...
See to believe.
Good Morning.
It's cool. Cool for the first time in a long time.
Evidence of cycle. I feel like this one was left for me. Right outside the porch door. Yesterday's confusion led me to a small eye sampler started a couple of years ago. Some eyes still colorless... "complete the full spectrum of vision" I said to myself.
There are Shells of Summer everywhere. They seem like eyes today. New eyes. Old eyes. A reminder that we need all eyes. To see.
The first stitching was done on a single layer. I think I used a hoop. But I cannot find my hoops, tucked a way somewhere because I don't use them much. So I added another layer. Because it is easier to stitch on more than one layer without a hoop. These stitches, today's stitches, go all the way through. I thought about through. Eyes that see through. Different eyes. Evolution. How many seasons will it take?
Then looking through New Eyes.
What I noticed here is how the running (walking) stitch outline seems like a solid line on this side. Because I can see the stitch where it disappeared as well. Appear and disappear have become one. Now that's a new kind of magic.
They also look like some new life form.
Named for the wispy silk scraps I am filling space with.
It's like that, holding on to nothing. It has changed since I posted it on Instagram last week.
But also the image is developing slowly around the concept of the name. And the name has 2 parts. Holding on to Nothing aka New Eyes. It's about my changing perception of what is real. How to give form to that. Make it some sort of place to hold on to.
Also, these kinds of images I build with cloth are more personal in terms of how they might bring me back to paper. Paint. I realize that is what they are for. I have returned to a lot of my smaller cloths late at night when it is quiet. I add a bit here. There. Then dream on them. Without words. Without sharing. Because I have no way to say.
My time online is a struggle. Typepad yes, but also a certain kind of energy is hard to find. I read but just don't find a lot of words to respond. Even reading. My eyes tire. I do not think it is my health. I think it is a kind of unnameable shift in priority. Dealing with things I can touch. Maybe it is just a sign of these troubled days. I know others have been floating in a similar cloud.
Floating is a kind of going while holding on to nothing.
I am not fighting with it, or feeling sad. I am just going along each day. To see how it will be tomorrow.
Just saying this..
June's Stray wandered through the green
to the edge of the River of Reckoning
again
for it was not the first time
and there was
Deeper Listening
I'm not done, just begun. I think there will be no words. Just her own reflection.
I say things over and over again.
Usually as I am going. Probably because they work more than once. And that is reassuring. I am on a side trip here for the weekend. Continuing with new eyes. But I do this with Big Cloth too. Manage thickness as I go. Managing is that, problem solving in the moment. Tending to need. While holding on to the bigger picture.
Link to video if you see no player.
It took hours. In the scheme of all things, not long really. I enjoyed it a lot more with the extra layer. I could hold it more easily, the stitch rested in the bed of cloth with more ease. I noticed how many ways I can fold this cloth and birth new eyes.
Maybe we can manage anger with a bit of thin cloth.
Then this morning I just pinned to look. At a thought I had.
I note to myself how I so often create blankets with a center which radiates outward. But then this is interesting suddenly. A path that runs through it. I stacked a few small pieces I had here. Just to see and think about that. And then of course other thoughts surfaced.
audio link if you see no player
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If the path before you is clear,
you are probably on
someone else's.
-Carl Jung