The Months of Kindred Spirits: Part One

I loved this phrase the moment I first heard it from little Anne Shirley (of Green Gables fame). Kindred Spirits.  Those souls whose core contains a piece of our own...who trigger the feeling of deep connection in even the most simple of encounters.

May and June brought me two precious encounters with Kindred Spirits.  (July brought a war between my camera and my computer, with a momentary truce attained just today.)  

In May, I returned again to the Crow Timber Barn for another week with fiber artist Dorothy Caldwell.

Remember how much I loved her first class, Human Marks? This workshop is called In Place. It consists of various exercises that capture Dorothy's passion for experiencing place, recording information about it, and translating all this onto paper and cloth. Specifically, two small handmade books.

So there we were, 19 women. Some in pairs of friends or sisters, many on their own. We started with a simple map and three pins each. One by one, we pinned 1) where we were born; 2) where we live now...

...and 3) a place that is important to us. In the stories we told explaining this last pin, we begin to perceive Place as much more than landscape. "I left Cuba when I was just a little girl." "This is where my daughter was born." "I saw the Aurora Borealis here." 

"Look how much we impose on the land," Dorothy points out. "It is the library. It holds heritage, experiences, and people.  It holds everything."

For Dorothy, everyplace is Place. Look how she records airplane landings from every trip.

She makes rubbings from soil or plant matter everywhere she goes (or ink wash, when the mood strikes). I noticed she uses a singular expression about her fieldwork and it fits: When I am working, when I am In the Land...

 
We start by comparing dirt she had asked us to bring from home...

 ...and rubbing it into fancy Japanese paper.

There were many other exercises. We made cord and colored it by rubbing it in local flora...

I couldn't get enough of this one.

We wandered with pen on paper and then stitched those lines.

We each selected a Place on the farm (roped off with our cord) and recorded with simple lines the sounds, the sensation of the air there. And then stitched THOSE lines. We examined maps and how they reflect our beliefs. Read through this one if you can:

We dyed with rust and plant, we marched blindfolded around a pond. We talked about curating collections, comparing the 100 objects she asked each of us to bring from home.

As if you couldn't guess which one was mine.

Are you wondering where the Kindred Spirits come in yet? From their introductions and samples of work, it was clear that many women in the group were dazzling professional artists. From the remarkable use of paint, of color, of line, it became equally clear that the quiet ones too were extraordinarily accomplished Makers.

Yeah.

Yikes.

It didn't take long for me to feel underwhelmed by my own work. Seduced by the colorful pages emerging around me, I too took watercolor brush to paper. At which point I felt even worse. I had a sleepless night and then called Himself in tears. I don't know how paint works, I sobbed. He suggested that a one-week workshop might not be the place to master a new medium. And anyway, wasn't I there to learn and absorb the approach Dorothy takes to Place?  

And feel grateful that you are in the midst of such talent, he added. Would you rather you were spending a week with people who didn't know how to do anything?


Sometimes, he is the most Kindred Spirit of all, that one.

I took his advice and surrendered into the warmth and comraderie in the studio.

After all, when in the history of time have 19 girls ever gotten along all day, every day? Seriously, this place was far from the high school lunchroom as possible. I felt the strand that ran through us all, the urge to create, and just hung on to that.

 Creativity is probably the most elemental part of my spirit and it became magical to be among others made the same way.

 By Day 4, I recognized that while I don't understand paint, I do know more than a little about how fabric works. Hey, now I get it. I am not a painter. I AM a quilter.  So I asked each person for a two-inch square of fabric, whatever she could spare. (One woman--a gifted professional painter, naturally--shrewdly bartered her Japanese shibori scrap for a piece from my 100 finds from Dead Horse Bay.) 

 I sat with the squares and within a few hours, had the last page of my book all sewn together.

 

While You're Waiting...

I am trying to write a brilliant post about Kindred Spirits. It is taking me a long time because 1) I can't bear to come in from the yard in this beautiful green June; and 2) Picasa is stubbornly holding on to the mistaken belief that my photo files are corrupt.

So while I 1)wait for a rainy day and 2) wind my way through yet more troubleshooting forums (fora?), I have some news to keep you entertained.  Oddly enough, it too is on the theme of Kindred Spirits.

For Molly has found hers, in the form of her new friend.

 Meet Tui, a four-year-old formerly male boxer. He's a rescue from a family who adopted him several years ago as a stray and then had to relocate to New Zealand and did not want to put him through the rigorous quarantine requirements.

 My best guess is that this explains his name: a tui is a New Zealand bird with a stark white chest (feel free to step in and get the record straight here, Mo).  His two inner toenails on each foot are white, while the outer ones are black.

He loves squeaky toys and food on the counter and jumping into bed with us at 5:30 AM.  It took the obligatory three weeks and then we became a new family.

Here we go again....

My Life As An Alfred Hitchcock Movie

Every day for about two years or so, at every groundfloor window in this house, we have this.

Apparently, he is defending his territory against the Intruder he imagines he sees in the reflection of the glass. 

What a metaphor.

Billy Dog

Of all our dogs, Billy was the simplest. He was not "almost human." He was not "my best friend." 

 Billy was a dog.

Last weekend, Billy's abdominal tumor snaked into his well-being. When we fed him, he collapsed in contortions of abdominal distress. When we didn't, he told us he was starving. In the wild, he would have been killed by another animal.

In our world, the animal was me. 

 He didn't make it easy on me, the little bastard. By the time we made the decision, six months to the day when he was given three weeks left to live, he could no longer get himself up without me lifting up his butt.  Except when I asked him if he wanted to go for a ride. Then, he jumped into the car, bounded out at the vet's, and eagerly answered all the doggie messages he read on the landscaping. 

Once inside, he wriggled in insane delight at being the object of so much attention. I love this practice--they had already spread an old comforter across the floor, complete with a dog treat in three corners. A box of tissues was in the fourth corner. But my wonderful older vet had just recently retired and sold the practice to a new fellow. Kind and gentle though he was, he has not yet learned the magic words.

"You're doing the right thing."

When I expressed alarm at Billy's apparent animation, he told me that the burst of adrenaline an animal experiences at the vet's can supercharge an impaired body. He said, "that makes it hard."But he didn't say what I needed to hear.

"You're doing the right thing."

As the sedation took hold, Billy's head slipped onto my lap and damn if his tongue didn't slip an inch out of his mouth, exactly the way Clutch slept. Oh God, Billy, don't you be making that moronic face too, I smiled to myself.  I wish I could tell you I saw it as a sign Clutchie was there to welcome his old friend, but I didn't think that.  All I thought, as the up-and-down of Billy's chest slowed and then stopped, was This is Death. I thought, I still am thinking, that Death gouges out a deep black footprint onto the soul. Separate and apart from the heart's loss is the hardness of this act. A being...a big sloppy dog, but a being nevertheless...

is no more. Is No More.

I don't need reminders that this act was merciful in light of his suffering. Now, I don't even need to hear that I did the right thing. Because, let's face it, I have already done it. I--we--need to feel the weight of this when we make it happen. Its only right to feel overwhelmed in the presence of Death. Simply, as Grace so often reminds us,to stand and face it.

Oh My God

I had always wanted to make a quilt by Karen Stone, which, as you can see even through this miserable image, is essentially an insane concoction of Tiny Little Pieces That Can Kill You.

My friend Dr. J was thrilled to be the recipient of it. In return, she offered me her handiwork: a needlepoint pillow.

So last year around this time, we spent a Saturday hunting and gathering our respective goods. First, we went to the needlepoint store, where I fell for a pattern of Chinese spice jars. She let me have my brilliant red and lime wool and told me to shut up about the rest of my crazy choices that were disrupting her conservative color sense .  Then, we tore apart her local quilting store for fabric. We needed tons of bits and pieces in each of the five different colorways that form the quilt. I let her have some conservative choices and told her to shut up as I filled in with crazy outliers that reflect my sense of color.

And, yes, we really say "shut up." It takes a long time to make old friends and the ability to speak to one another with minimal filters is a clear sign of that you've reached that point.

We then sat outside in the April sun dripping massive Greek salads onto our laps (well, my lap) and promised to exchange the finished products in about a year. We each headed home, took naps, and then started our engines.

Now, as a concept, doesn't needlepoint seems like a no-brainer? In and out of little squares that are colored right onto the canvas, no more than paint-by-number with a needle. Except that the one time I tried it, my square turned into a trapezoid and the flat surface became a relief map of the Himalayas. So I had a tremendous sense of awe when, sometime last fall, Dr. J presented me with this:

 

The squares are microscopic and yet she captured every shadow, every turn, without a burp. Oh my god, I couldn't even do that with fine-tip markers, let alone a needle and fat hunk of wool.

Meanwhile, I was still cutting little triangles and dropping them all over the floor. In fairness to me,  she gets to take her canvas with her to airports, movies, and medical appointments so that she can make track all through her week. That doesn't work so well with machine sewing.  Nevertheless, a month or so ago, I took the finished quilt top to her house. My normally highly articulate friend not stop sputtering. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. She taped it to the kitchen wall in ecstasy but eventually surrendered it as I touted the merits of quilting and binding. 

I am naming the quilt, Oh My God. In a few days, she will see this:

I bound it with scraps from the quilt itself, my absolute favorite technique. And look at the extraordinary machine quilting by Barb Persing and how it brings each little corner to life:

The quilting changes about every two inches, try that sometime if you want to understand

Those circles are about a half inch, little kalamata olives

Dr. J and I are now embarking on our next project. She is going to needlepoint a pillow that she will create from the circular star pattern here. I said she could also make one for me. And we will meet up again with the finished products in about a year. 

Still Stitching "And"

An NPR radio show this week asked this question: if you could go back and talk to your high school self, what would you say? Most men who called in urged their teen selves not to be afraid of the popular girls (bad advice: be afraid of them. Be VERY AFRAID). Women callers didn't care about the popular boys. They wanted their girlselves to stand straighter, stronger and with their true selves facing outward.

I thought about this a lot these past few days. So my advice to teenage me? In the lunchroom, concentrate less on where you sit and more on what you eat. If you remember, I explored this concept as it relates to stitching here, in my blogging infancy. Three years later, I find myself completely comfortable and at home anywhere in the stitching lunchroom.

Here's one side of me. Remember this?

I turned it into a gift for an amazing young woman who I taught to read Hebrew. She just recently converted to Judaism.

The embroidery is the Hebrew name she chose for herself, words that perfectly match the glow you feel in her presence: Shayna Or, or "beautiful light."

 

I feel so self-expressive and satisfied weaving these bits and pieces of scraps. But sometimes, the occasion calls for more than that. Here's Stefanie's chuppah (fermenting here):

As you can tell by the canine point of reference, its pretty big.

I've been appliqueing the circles to the base (and occasionally, to my sweatpants) all winter as we cycled through our Netflix and Acorn TV (a BBC salad bar, the best) play lists. I've got about 10 circles left to stitch down and then its time for fine-tuning: removing excess branches on the sides, putting their initials onto the tree, reconsidering the use of two birds made out of cloth bits their moms sent on to me. And then, figuring out what to do with the edges so that Mr. Wedding Planner can get it in place.   

Sometimes, I just have to follow rules. Liza and Kaffe invited me yet again to create a quilt for an upcoming book. (The one that will follow the book coming out in September 2016, for which I created this. So we're talking about September 2017, which feels like a date in a sci fi movie about the far distant future).

The quilt inside me was already named. "Auntie Em." Lots of little squares echoing Depression-era Kansas, like Auntie Em's faded old house dress. But the design itself eluded me. After listening to me whine one too many mornings, Liza kicked my butt to a magical place called The Quilt Index, which archives more than 50,000 quilts from the past. And I found her.

The archival record just says "Medallion, scraps. Circa 1930-1949." And while it comes from Connecticut and not Kansas, the person who donated it attributed it to "Great Aunt."  Good enough for me! I wish I too could make my quilt out of old workshirts and mattress ticking and maybe I will do that next. This time,the rules say new fabric from the Kaffe Fasssett Collective. Here's where I am so far:

I am still playing with choices for the outside borders. And my quilt will also have an outside border that is a series of 16-patch blocks nested on their heads (called "on point," like ballerinas only without broken toes).  She looks a little more Raggedy Ann and Andy than Auntie Em at this point but I will wrestle with the name at the end.

Same stitcher, different stitchings. Something my teenage self would never have been able to understand. That's why, while my heart goes out to that kid, I really and truly like the old lady version a lot better.

Irons in the Fire

I made the mistake of opening my email in front of my father the other day. Now, at least 50 years have gone by since he last told me to straighten my room, but he picked up right where he left off.

"You have too many posts in your inbox," he snapped.

Dregs of defiance from 50 years ago bubbled up into my throat. "Well," I observed, "I don't have to answer to YOU about the state of my email."  Then, as the adolescent stomped back to her place in my gut and slammed the door, I found a more conciliatory tone. "You see, Dad, the posts in my inbox all require some kind of action. People I have to call, purchases I am waiting to receive, links I want to read, things I have to put on my calendar. And when I finally get to it, THEN I file or delete the post."

"Well," he said, "you sure have a lot of irons in the fire."

And that's the start of my explanation for where I've been for the past three months. I started to list my irons here, but honestly, they're no heavier or lighter than your own. What is true for me is that I let them distract me, pull me off course.

What course? Being present in this very moment, with my two feet on the ground or the two halves of my tush in a chair. So I'm back to meditating and I can already feel the results. The irons are still there, but they are clearly in the fire, not inside my brain. Which makes a lot more room for me.

And that me has really missed interacting with you all. So how about we pick up where we left off?

When I look to the last post, I see that we left off with Molly, who is still snoring in the key of E minor. I am happy to report that Billy apparently did not read the memo from October 2015 that gave him three weeks left to live. He has lost lots of weight and in the absence of fat, he sported a handsome apres-ski sweater for most of the winter.

Apparently, this abdominal tumor has a rather large appetite and so in order to maintain Billy's weight, we need to feed them both.  Every day, he eats two meals that he could probably share with a pregnant elephant and that involve lots of dog food cans, brown rice, and many trips to the feed store. No wonder he doesn't die, he already thinks he is in heaven.

Talk to you more tomorrow.

Molly Meditating

Molly is always at my side and so its only natural that she's been picking up meditation techniques.  She is completely at one with her breath.

Now I've done it, I've become a person who uploads pet videos.

Cloth Again

The retreat recalculated everything. Instead of my usual wrestling match with cloth on my design wall, I mysteriously channeled three cloths as I sang some of the retreat chants aloud. The singing moved Molly out of my studio, through the dog door and into the far reaches of the yard. But it moved that little place between my eyes where creativity lives, too.

My intention was to develop one prayer cloth, where I could see the words to my favorite chant from the retreat.  I also wanted to create a gift (since she may be reading, no more details yet).  I started by diving like a boxer into a trash can into my basket of miscellaneous component parts.  And it all just happened.

 

The prayer cloth...

 

The gift...

 And the bonus, as in "make two, get one free."

They all feel like me.

So a Jewish Girl Walks into This Monastery...

Meditation, silence, and simplicity cultivate mindfulness. 

Now, mindfulness is a concept that pervades our zeitgeist as deeply as oxygen permeates the atmosphere. Its very ubiquity makes it easy to be cynical.  However, in the uncomplicated space of retreat,you ultimately discover that, like oxygen, the stuff really works.

Our teachers thankfully broke their silence each evening to share teachings about courage. A word that, in Hebrew, actually translates into two words that mean "heart strength." 

I've been trying to capture their words for you. So I've spent most of this day in a cycle of inspired typing, followed by demoralized deleting (interrupted by intermittent attempts to rescue the chili that I started cooking before realizing that I actually have no fresh, canned, or dried chilis anywhere).

So what did I experience at the feet of these masters in Jewish text and tradition, seasoned by deeply refined and precise Buddhist tools, inside the stone walls of this once Catholic monastery?

 

It only makes sense to let a German poet stirred by Russian Orthodoxy explain.

 From Rilke's Book of Hours, translation by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy:

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,

then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,

go to the limits of your belonging.

 Embody me.

Flare up like flame

and make big shadows that I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.

You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.