doldrums

                                                 

When you start seeing random images of things in an around a studio, it's a pretty safe bet that nothing much is going on.

I started another one of those little flings today, just to get the cobwebs off the machine. And yes, hands, fingers, and feet seem to be remembering production work.

this from 2005

The Real Reason Why Kids Refuse To Go To Bed.

I am planning a quilt based on the Truth (as I perceived it) behind a common childhood prayer. You know the one I am talking about... I can clearly remember thinking "If I should WHAT before I wake?? Wait just a minute here...". And then, if you forgot to bless someone you cared about at the end, they would die. How could a kid sleep with that kind of anxiety?? 

My solution to dying or being killed in my sleep was to NOT sleep- willingly, that is. I can remember every single detail of the view from my top bunk and when we moved to the house in the suburbs, I would creep down the hallway and hide under the lace-draped dining room table just behind my parent's field of vision and watch TV until after the Tonight Show. Something about Johnny Carson made me feel safe. And he looked a lot like my Dad. 

nested

I spent some time sorting scraps this morning, setting these aside for a gift. The phone rang and I was gone from the room a few minutes.

Cloth. A world of purpose.

holding on to serenity

.

~

The events of the week, national and personal, have been enough to make me want to sign up for a stint in an opium den. Can't stitch, can't type, can't write or read three lines in a row without dropping the reason for opening the book.

 I don't know why, but at some point this morning, I tried to say the Pledge of Allegiance. I got to the second phrase “...and the United States of America” and... nothing. The problem is that I learned it before they slipped the God business in there. The anticipation of the gap was preying on me. I was never able to stay in sync with the rest of the class, always finishing ahead of them. I had one teacher scowl and call me a Heathen.

Fearing early onset Alzheimer's, I tried again with something simpler with deeper roots. “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake..” that's the one that kept me from getting a decent night's sleep from the time I was two or three when my aunt, grandmother or mother sat chanting that to me at bedtime waiting for me to join in. I never did.

“If I should die??? wtf?” Problem solved. Do not close your eyes. I don't think I willingly fell asleep until collapse before I was a teenager. Not to mention that whole 'bless this one, and that one' and so on, because if you missed someone, they were dead meat. It wasn't too long before I would deliberately leave someone off the list if I was tired and a looking forward to tomorrow.

My mind properly misdirected with pious drivel, I took another run at the Pledge. I made it to “the Republic” and again, the yawning silence. 

A little voice inside my head said, “We are so fucked up.” I knew that voice. You can always count on Jiminy Cricket for the truth.

Then a TV sound bite chirped, “God, help us!”and Jiminy answered from my disordered mind,

“Do you think I'm a damn vending machine? You put your money in the plate and I fix everything to your satisfaction? Nah! I'm done with your stupid shit.

You'll have to solve this problem on your own. The lesson endeth here."

Amen