Spirit Cloth

In Between Fear and Longing

And so.   What marks the  line between yesterday and tomorrow?  Self I suppose. Here and Now is somehow self.

In this year that I designated as the time period  in which I became old,  I simply grew up.  Grew to appreciate talking to myself more than ever.  Learned to listen.  I became aware of that space in between  where I used to hide and feel confined as something more expansive.  A place that now seems to  nurture me, as so much more than Enough.    It does not separate me from everything else anymore.  It is not a lonely space.  Because a true sense of self is a place that   can transcend want , more.  Maybe,  this true sense is capable of erasing boundaries in communication.  Maybe because, true sense is more selfless. 

So for me, it's a new year already.  I am centered. I am hearing myself clearly.  It's cold but not very.  There is plenty of wood.  Enough to eat.   The basket, that new symbol of self, seems to fit like a missing puzzle piece in every chapter in the story that continues to unfold before and behind me.   Making sense of it.

These three cloths are yet unfinished.  Seeing them together will help me bring them to closure.

I have not been visiting much lately.  Around the web.  I am staying close to home for a while. Far from the seasonal merchant mind that threatens the sanity of humankind.  I feel this might be a more reclusive year anyway.  This year after the one in which I became old.  But  perhaps in some ways more of my true self might be revealed.  To me, and as natural order predicts, to you as well. 

Ok, I 've used up my words.  I will now go out and buy a bottle of good champagne.  Or three maybe.

 

 

I'm feeling the shift

And it feels good to have a way to express it. Celebrate it. I included, again,  the basket symbol, to hold that sense of change long enough to  transform it.  So it is, this small cloth, about undoing.  At the same time the basket adds an element of trust to that.  At least that is what I am thinking.  Holding is Embracing. Held for that moment I see also a Doing.  A starform broken by going.  Kept by going. Again and again. 

Expressing myself. Clearly. These things became very important to me in This Year that I Became Old. TYIBO 2013

I wish you all a Happy Solstice.

December will be wishing star month

...because I have a thing for stars.

What if Diaries link for today

After today, December,  I will be blogging in pictures only,  disabling comments, saving what little words I have left  to finish up  What if Diaries #1 which runs through the end of the month.  Nine months!  Poof!  A big thank you to all of you for sticking with me  through thick and thin and this and that in this year that I became old.

Some changes  in the format of this blog and shop will become apparent as I go through my annual  remodel.  Have fun figuring it out.  Do it with eggnog. 

PS.  Apologies to some of you who purchased classes today.  The sale expired because I had the time set wrong on the discount. If you did not receive the 20% off or forgot to enter the discount code PEACE ( you should see the discount reflected in your receipt) , let me know and I will refund the difference. This may take a while since I received a lot of orders today.  ( Thank you)   The sale ends tonight at midnight.

Renewing a Quest

                      Art

Art might simply be  the awareness of how we might create self. That we do.   What happens, and then, what we do about it.  The story. And the expression  of that. 

 

Today mySelf stands  with a basket of need , just that,  SomeWhere, miles from NoWhere. From dreaming, into waking,  still feeling  the way forward with sure stepping.   Many undoings  will just make  the Less  more than enough. ( TYiBO 2013)

Celebrating need

The once named Magic Feather Coat, also known as Without End  hangs there.

A small tear along the neckband needs attention.  I am admiring its staying power just a little longer.  I have decided to alter this garment a bit.  Well, a lot.  Let it become a curtain, maybe,  or a blanket.  Let it be more useful.  I have too many robes. 

The less I have, the less I need. (she thought to herself,  finding the time to jot that down) Perhaps simplicity is all about transformation, the clarity in that.  Perhaps transformation is simply making do.  A form of recycling, re-self-ing, sympathetic evolution?  Becoming what you need to.  How is it we come to need more while celebrating less.  In these years of the revival of mending and celebrating making do,  it seems it has all become about art, business and money and not at all about what it is.

An unspeakable sadness washed over me while walking yesterday. Not the kind that poisons you, but the kind that enriches.  Something quite clear but without words.  It will stay like that I suppose, until  it becomes something utter-able.  Until then I will just try to keep wandering off.  Walking about.  Let my journey  become itself.  ( TYiBO 2013  j.a.h ) 

Saskia has been  living her life and also letting her work become quite  simple with a deepening sense of quiet and confidence I can clearly admire.  She shares her work over at Diaries but also on her blog.  I really like this.  If you stop by, please do, say hi for me.

Home as a way

As a tree.  As a river. A mother.  A large cloth becomes a world.  I feel smaller when I sit with it. Yet safer.

Sitting yesterday, with some thoughts that often come quietly.  The enormity of this project,  How to get there.  Life, death,  change.  And now the cloth itself  has body.  It comes together but It is not easy. It is carrying me.  Through my own life issues.  As I transition  to a new place. Perhaps I am testing the cloth's power to heal, to hold, to  become a flight path.  To say it's OK.  I look and touch and sense  evidence of great goings. Flowings. Transformations. Shared.  The load lightened.

And it came back. The reassurance. That it is not about Art.  No, it is about  Heart.  She cut that string.  She did not fall.  What a relief.

TYiBO 2013.  j.a.h.

This is a Magic Feather Project post continued from here.

Spinning a BasketSelf

Is form not just one glimpse of a process?

 

It was no longer laced with fear, this going, that flowed like a river though her.  She felt no obligation to stay too long in any one form.  It would all be woven together into something useful.  A vessel, a boat perhaps, that might carry others even after she was gone. Spinning is  force like no other.  It holds even before it becomes visible. Apparent. 

From TYiBO 2013  j.a.h.

 

Nourishment of days

My thoughts on baskets continue.


And image. 

How we might compose with the real and the imagined. 

How that might happen.

Does happen.

Here I have combined one of my oldest baskets with a photo my son took.

And put some extra space into it.

There is touching and separateness. Held.

That is how I might explain it.

 

There were those hard seasons , the ones where things ripened more slowly  and the sense of waiting seemed to overshadow the intense roundness in the flavor of the fruit.   After so many cycles, she suddenly  realized the nourishment that presented itself in the whole process.  And she ate her days, was able to feel sustenance in the long time of going that stretched behind her and the growing sweetness of the days to come.

From   The Year I Became Old

Living with color and cloth

It's September.

I am glad I decided to grow madder here.  Even though it is takng a while to establish plants.  Because I love the red,  that old red.   I look around at all the cloth I live with.  All that red.  Can't help but wonder how it was dyed.

And why. 

Meanwhile, it is unseasonably hot.  I am patiently waiting for the Walnuts to fall.  And thinking about trend as a form of imbalance.  A most dangerous business model.  Small business is more human.  The business of living.

 

In this year I became old, I reconsider season.  How one thing moves into another.  How to appreciate that without  the desire to control it.

late Afternoon Basket Moon moments

The only basket  I made myself,  that I still have,  has come undone quite beautifully without my help.   An old basket self, for a time forgotten, encourages more truthful  looking. 

In the year I became old,  I let the forgotten re-emerge.