Sparks

 

the ragged shift

 The change of seasons -- not much more than a dip in night temperatures here--has tripped me up this year. I feel like I've been in a maze that constantly dead-ends. Not frustrated because railing at being lost is a waste of energy. It's just that I'm on low battery. 

I used to drive around with a friend who would get very agitated about being lost. I said, "We are somewhere between the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean. Relax." About now, I wish for a map. A paper one that crinkles and folds and has coffee stains. Maybe some red ball-point routes marked out. 

It's more than enough to deal with the real. Weeds.

Finding out that the gardenia still had few things to say about summer despite being overwhelmed by a pushy vine that I allowed to take over because I've been neglectful. 

It's teaching my co-pirate the insanity and majesty of language perhaps a little early. Teaching him that not all games are blood sports and how nobody wants to play with a sore loser. He's taken to jotting down Good words. High dollar words, even as I explain about positioning and strategy. Yesterday we agreed to do away with the running tally of who's winning. Word by word, we will build stories rather than empires.

We will save learning poker for later.

It's fishing around in the closet for one UFO and finding a flock of them, all reminding me of the UFO of words nipping at my dreams, sulking in the corners of my imagination. Hiding. 

Their shit (and mine) as scattered as these stars.

And speaking of stars.

 

Throughout this national turmoil, I have refrained from standing on a chair and screaming vile curses to the four winds because this face reminds me what a gorgeous, stalwart thing Karma is.

 In truth, our Karma rarely gave us the time of day she was so self-contained in her feline beauty. But this face, this look she gave me one day. 

              Karma will always have her due. 

the Bruised Heart

I wasn't going to start a new piece so soon. But I just needed something to hold. Something else to focus on. Think about. Something to have a little control over. 

Hours rummaging through the River basket and boxes in the closet yielded a half dozen false starts that are now rolled up and pinned shut, back in the closet. 

This one made the cut. Grabbed my attention like nothing else has for a while.

The base is a little tea towel. A very thin, light damask that came out a bit blah. While I was so focused on composing the elements on one side I didn't notice that there were gorgeous patches of colors on the backside that looked like storm clouds or oil on water. 

I saved them for another time.

 

The stitching has been effortless. It's as if the thread and cloth don't dare challenge me.

Lines, shapes, and masses telling the story.

I don't know the language or what the story is yet, but it will come.

All the elements, the characters are present. Waiting.

Passing

 

One moment we are here, the next we are where? Snipped from this life, I like to think, to the place and in the company of our heart's desires. Refreshing in the recall of the sweetest moments of our time here. Then, in whatever time it takes to be renewed, move on to begin again.

As Jude put it so well, somehow I knew the moment she remarked on Michelle's absence from the internet. 

RBG's passing hit her very hard at a time when her reserves of hope and strength were low and falling.

Michelle and I often chatted via web late into the night, while I worked and she dealt with the kind of sleeplessness that comes of long afternoon naps- one of the few remaining good things on Facebook.

A few years older than myself, we both attended the School of Visual Arts in the mid and late 60s, only blocks from where she lived. We had a cultural commonality few virtual friends can claim. Times and places shared.

It's a comfort to know she'd been to her spiritual font, her Zendo, if only virtually, in the days before she passed. 

Rest, dear one. Renew, then fly on.

Michelle Slater of mscomfortzone.com  From her last post, however long these things, this stuff of dreams, lasts.

Blue Wave 2020 goes to...