just sitting in the quiet, feeling happy and grateful this morning for more things than i can say
I don’t quite understand this, but adjusting to the 12-hour time difference when I arrive on the other side of the world isn’t that big a deal, really. For the first few days, I crash h-a-r-d in the late afternoon and take little skipping naps before dinner and go to sleep relatively early but that’s it. Then I’m adjusted and that’s that. Coming home, though, is another story. If you’ve been here long, you know this is what I talk about after every other-side-of-the-world vacation. First, I don’t seem to need very much sleep, which is bizarre. And second, no matter when I go to sleep I’m wide awake just after midnight. I crash h-a-r-d in the late afternoon and take little skipping naps before dinner and go to sleep around 9pm, and then I’m wide awake at 1:30 or 2am, and that’s that.
Boring. Real boring. What I realize this time is that resistance is indeed futile. I have these precious mid-night hours, all to myself. I’ve come to really love and appreciate this and will be kind of disappointed when my regular sleeping pattern returns in several weeks (that’s another thing, why does it take so long on this end!). I’ve been up since 1:30, reading and knitting, and feeling a lot of pleasure for these things:
The delicious humor of John Prine, especially in Dear Abby:
The wistful gorgeous beauty of Judy Collins singing Sons Of:
The color red, in all its punch and power and vivid life. I especially loved it this morning in the work of Catherine Ryan:
I just love the quality of color in that piece, but it’s characteristic of her work and the colors all make me feel grateful to be alive this morning.
Stick with me on this one: death. I’m grateful for death. I don’t want my life ever to end, but the fact that it will makes everything matter. Is this what I would be doing, right at this moment, if I knew I had 3 months to live? Maybe, it’s only 3am and I’m enjoying this moment, but keeping the question in mind makes life vivid. I’m thinking about it this morning especially because one of my dearest friend’s mother died on Sunday. She’d been lost to Alzheimer’s for years, and my friend was lucky enough to spend an hour with her mother Sunday, telling her stories of how much she’d been loved, and then other family members arrived and her mother slipped away, gently. Her mother had introduced her to Mary Oliver’s work, and my friend is the one who introduced me to Mary Oliver’s work, so this morning I remember her mother with this poem:
When death comes — Mary Oliver
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
I’m also grateful this morning for metaphor and the artistic articulation of meaning. My daughter Marnie just got the first part of her new gorgeous tattoo done:
that's Pallas Athena
See this blog post she wrote about the levels of meaning behind her artistic choices, what these images mean for and about her. Since the image and story are on her public blog, I assume she won’t mind my putting them here.
There’s a lot more — I seem to be feeling extremely grateful this morning! — but this is getting long and I want to get back to my knitting. Speaking of: I’ll be finished with my Wintry Mix sweater in about an hour, and the yarn for my Vodka Gimlet arrived while I was gone and ohmygod it’s a gorgeous color. Another post on knitting-related things to come soon!
[and p.s., posted here for myself, so I don't forget: two nights ago I dreamed I was being held in the back room by the Chinese. That's it. There were no images with it, I just woke up and knew I'd dreamed that. WTF!! It's kinda funny.]
wow! I’m proud all right, proud as a whitewashed pig! (~the widow Sugrue, Darby O’Gill and the Little People, 1959)
Artists toil away in poverty and obscurity, making awesome things, giving it out to the universe, and recognition can be slow. Hard to come by. There in spirit, but spirit doesn’t cover a loaf of bread. You know how proud I am of Marnie’s work, and today Chicago is hearing about it. She was featured on the Chicagoist website! She made a wonderful set of graphic prints of the prerecorded announcements on the L train, and that was the primary point of the Chicagoist post. Here’s the one they featured:
They wrote:
Few things become unwanted earworms more quickly than the automated “L” station and train announcements. People have had harrowing nightmares where “Attention customers: an INBOUND train toward the Loop will be arriving shortly” plays endlessly, with the train never arriving at the station.
Monkey-Rope Press is the brainchild of illustrator, printmaker and bookbinder Marnie Galloway. Galloway’s Etsy store is a glorious time suck of amazing prints, none more so than these letterpress posters of “L” station announcements. We also love the bicycle subculture pugilism prints.
It’s never too early to begin your Christmas shopping.
!!!!!!!!! IT’S NEVER TOO EARLY TO BEGIN YOUR CHRISTMAS SHOPPING!!! Let the shopping begin!
Daughter! what words have pass’d thy lips unweigh’d! (Replied the Thunderer to the martial maid;)
….because I’m shouting it from every electronic rooftop! Marnie’s first chap book is completed and available now, and it’s a limited run of only 175 copies. This is the first volume of a 6-part story titled In the Sound and Seas. I already bought 5 copies, and she set some aside to send out for reviews, so if you want one you’d better hurry. It’s only $15!!
all drawn by hand. Every tiny leaf. The hatching on every tiny leaf. Thousands of tiny bunnies. Really. You will be awestruck.
Marnie’s one-a-them Arteests. She simply is an artist, it’s how she thinks, how she perceives the world. So, for instance, I look at her book and say oh, so gorgeous, it’s about three women who are building a boat! And Marnie says it’s about the difficulty of doing her work. Her – huge artistic view; me – immediate surface-level view. Her – artist; me – reader. Her formal description of this book is
This 22-page mini-comic is the first volume of a six-part, wordless narrative about obsessive creative production and failure. Volume 1 frames the future volumes, as 3 storytellers sing the tentative world of the rest of the story into existence.
Here’s a link to the flickr set so you can see the pages; here’s a link to her announcement on her professional website; and here, two ways to buy. She’s a smart cookie! You can either buy a copy of this volume, or you can subscribe and receive the additional volumes as they publish. Feel free, do one or the other. 
shout out — in NYC, or coming to NYC, and want to see the Picasso exhibit?
I am a member of MOMA, and yesterday I received two free guest passes in the mail for the February 9 – June 6 exhibit called Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914. Obviously, my membership will get me in, I don’t have two people who might like to go with me.
Does anyone want them? I’ll drop them in the mail to you, if you can use them! Airfare and expenses not included.
it’s amazing how our kids can transform the tiny gifts we give them, isn’t it.
I’ve been thinking about this for such a long time. We give our kids whatever gifts we have, passing them along from those who gave them to us, and sometimes passing along some that are ours alone to give. Once I was on a bus in Austin – must’ve been the University Shuttle Bus, the only bus I ever took in Austin – and I saw a mother and her grown daughter sitting across from me. It was clear the younger woman was the daughter of the older, she carried a ghost of her mother’s expression underneath her own. And I loved that, seeing the echo.
I didn’t really grow up with my father, but when I met him when I was an adult, I realized all kinds of tiny ways I was just like him, things I couldn’t have picked up from seeing him. Like the way I wipe both corners of my mouth unconsciously, the way I used to search the personals section of the newspaper (back when that wasn’t code for porn), looking for something someone might’ve written for me – he did both those things too. OK, big deal, so do many people, but to see that we did both things in the exact same way, it was a little eerie. Gifts, characteristics, invisible threads connecting us across time.
So all my children received many things from their father and from me, and I think about them, and am struck by them now and then. There’s a very clear example in my daughter Marnie. Marnie’s dad draws these little cartoons – always has, as long as I’ve known him. He draws a waving guy, and a dog, and they have not changed over all these years. The only variation is that now and then the waving guy has a palm tree behind him, or something like that. Here’s a new example, he signs all his letters to his kids like this:
he's been drawing this since i met him in 1978
He and Marnie used to spend hours drawing together, filling up page after page with cartoon line drawings, fantastic creatures, all kinds of things. (I can hardly draw a breath, or a straight line with a ruler, so Marnie’s visual art talent didn’t come from me, that’s for sure!) So Marnie took this very small gift from her dad, and some other small gifts from me, and turned them into this GIANT thing. She’s creating a graphic novel now, and it’s staggering and will be staggeringly beautiful. Here’s a seed of it:
something marnie describes as a "sketch"
The link to her professional site is there to the right –> do check it out.
Life is really wonderful in this way, these tiny invisible threads and bonds gathering and growing over time, and changing by the aggregation. I love this stuff.
JR’s gorgeous TED win.
“women reveal the whole condition of society”
What a genius idea.
let me introduce you to one of my favorite artists – Andy Goldsworthy.
One of my dearly-loved friends told me she might be going to Scotland for an Anselm Keifer exhibit; since she’s my art friend (among other things) we started talking about artists we love, and I got to thinking – again – about Andy Goldsworthy, whose work haunts me. Do you know him? There’s a gorgeous film about him and his work called Rivers and Tides (streaming here on Netflix!), and no matter how many times I’ve watched it, I always want / need to watch it again. In fact, I think I’ll watch it again after I publish this post. Here’s the trailer:
Of the myriad reasons I love the film, one is that he just is an artist, it’s not what he does it’s who he is, and you really get a sense of what the world is like for him. Plus, his work is just so beautiful. And of course it’s all about time, and permanence (i.e., impermanence), and the world, and Everything.
I was going to plop in a few photos of his work but couldn’t even narrow it to a few “favorites” because I love them all. Here’s the Google Images page for him, you’ll get a quick overview. This is the ‘works’ page on his website for another quick overview. If you happen to live in my neck of the woods, generally speaking, you may know about Storm King Art Center; he has an installation there too. There are a number of books and other media about him and his work.
I love to share things with you – I hope his work makes you happy! (And on top of everything else, the tiny little cherry on the big gorgeous sundae, he has an adorable accent. )
check out the Haunted Library – my girl has a piece in the exhibition!
I don’t mean to brag, but check out this handmade book created by my daughter Marnie. If you’re in the Chicago area, you can see it in person at Ragdale, 1260 N Green Bay Rd in Lake Forest, where it is being exhibited in a show called “House, Dreaming.” Marnie’s piece is a lighthearted take on death and presidential history:
Happy Friday, y’all.
wow – linoleum block prints of gannets. who’d a thunk they’d be so amazing and special…
I knew Marnie was making her thank you cards for the wedding gifts she and Tom received. So I knew they’d be way cooler than anything I would’ve ever thought of. Sure enough, my card arrived today. And this concludes the wedding posts!
even the BACK of the envelope is cool
remember the papier mache gannets she hung from the tent rafters? here they are again.
lovely graceful words on the right, out of sight, but look at her drawings of the dress and the shawl. she's always done this.
She specializes in artist’s books, letterpress, and hand-carved woodblock and linoleum prints. Her favorite is the artist’s book, I think. But if you like her style, she has an etsy shop – MonkeyRope Press. There might be a little gift for anyone who gets the reference in her store’s name. I’m just saying. Support artists! I know I’m preaching to the choir, with this crowd, but still.
.
let me try to make you smile. come on…..
Three very different things that made me smile (I’m trying to start the day off on a positive note, since I still have my pissed-off author to deal with):
beautiful, beautiful marilyn
From the NYTimes: “There is a sublime silliness to Halsman’s images that can make you laugh or at least smile regardless of how often you see them. They may offer incontrovertible proof of Schiller’s claim that ‘all art is dedicated to joy.’ Evidently the simple act of getting off the ground requires giving in to something like joy. You have to let go. One of the purest examples of this joy is an image of Halsman himself, holding hands with a smiling Marilyn Monroe several feet off the ground. Facing his partner, he seems ecstatic, as if he cannot believe his luck.” Credit: The Estate of Philippe Halsman/Laurence Miller Gallery
Second: this line from Nabokov, which has haunted me since I read it yesterday. “The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.”
And third, one minkey down, one to go:
one minkey down, one to go!
And a bonus thing that made me smile and feel all sorts of things, courtesy of an email from Marnie:
“have you seen marina abramovic’s endurance performance “the artist is present,” where she sits in chair for the entire length of her retrospective. there is a chair opposite her, and visitors sit and look at her and she looks back. the flickr group is so compelling: about 1/4 of the people are in tears.”
Here’s to an interesting Wednesday.
poetry about creativity – including murder?
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
~~T.S. Eliot, from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
In placid hours well-pleased we dream
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
But form to lend, pulsed life create,
What unlike things must meet and mate:
A flame to melt—a wind to freeze;
Sad patience—joyous energies;
Humility—yet pride and scorn;
Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity—reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel—Art.
~~Herman Melville, Art
OK, it’s imperishable or a world as Will
& Idea, a Hindu illusion that our habits continuously
Create. Whatever I think, it
Keeps changing from bright to dark, from clear
To colored: Thus before I began to think and
So after I’ve stopped, as if it were real & I
Were its illusion
~~Philip Whalen, from The Same Old Jazz
Her pencil poised, she’s ready to create,
Then listens to her mind’s perverse debate
On whether what she does serves any use;
And that is all she needs for an excuse
To spend all afternoon and half the night
Enjoying poems other people write.
~~Leslie Monsour, The Education of a Poet
Flesh of the sky, child of the sky, the mind
Has been obligated from the beginning
To create an ordered universe
As the only possible proof of its own inheritance.
~~Pattiann Rogers, from The Origin of Order
is it aaaaart? or craft?
Back in the years when I was sewing all the time, making my and my kids’ clothes and sewing quilts, that’s what I said. I sew. Yeah, I sew. Now, apparently, I’d refer to myself as a sewist. The first time I read that online, it hit my ear so badly I couldn’t read further. I thought, “sewist? that’s dumb.” But what’s the alternative? Sewer? oops. You’d have to put a hyphen in there so people didn’t think you were describing yourself as a receptacle for human waste. Sew-er. But that just looks dumb.
It’s not dumb, finding a way to transfer something to an identity statement. For physical health, it represents an important psychologist shift to move from “I have diabetes” to “I am a diabetic.” The American Psychological Association requires researchers to name the participants in their experiments as “people with X” so as not to reduce them to a condition. So it’s not dumb! I get it!
But sewist?
And then this morning I read a post on whipup.net that described specific people as makers. “On the front cover appears the work of three makers…” Some of those featured are called stitchers, and of course there are quilters and knitters and artists. The word crafters has something of a shoddy reputation (maybe that’s just me, part of my generation, speaking to glue guns and large plastic canvas stitched with gaudy acrylic yarn fashioned into kleenex box holders hello my dear former mother-in-law).
Which then, inexorably, leads to the debate between art and craft. And by craft, I mean very fine craft, not the plastic canvas craft. Craft as in American Craft. Craft that overlaps quite heavily with art. One of my pet phrases seems to be “overlapping Venn diagrams” — I’ve noticed I say it at least a few times a week, for one reason or another. There is clearly a category of handwork that stays on the crafty side of craft, whose practitioners like to shop at Hobby Lobby or Michael’s, and who undoubtedly get so much pleasure from their handwork….and that’s the point! And there is another clear category of work that stays on the art side of art – work that’s about expressing an idea, presenting a project. Work that can’t exist without highly skilled specific talents, but that is much more about expressing an idea. I adore that category. (And have you seen Art:21 on PBS? YOU SHOULD! Right! Away! You can watch it online, too, for free. I just stumbled upon it last night on streaming Netflix, already in its 5th season.)
And then there’s the larger category of the muddy middle. I adore that category too. The category of breathtaking skill and care. The category that encompasses very fine handwork in quilts, woodworking, needlework, glass, metalwork, printmaking. The category that would include Kellie Wulfsohn‘s quilts:
amazing - double-click to see the detail
The category that would include handmade chairs and tables made with the most incredible attention to detail – I’m blanking on the name of a man who recently died, one of the very best there was. Dang it. Getting old is the pits. The category also includes this: a toilet made of horse dung:
created by Virginia Gardiner
It’s not accidental that she uses poop to make a toilet – it’s part of her project. Is it art? No, but it sure isn’t craft(y) either.
Anyway. Names matter, even if they represent very slippery and porous categories. I have a daughter who is an artist – I’m not an artist. I aspire to Craft. BUT p.s., I am not a sewist. I sew.
To close on a different and hilarious note, this ad from the 1950s:
double-click to see it full size
Here’s what it says in the copy:
Does any man really understand you?
Who knows you as you really are? Does he?
Who knows the secret hopes that warm your heart?
Who knows the dreams you dream, the words you’ve left unspoken?
Who knows the black-lace thoughts you think while shopping in a gingham frock?
Who knows you sometimes long to sleep in pure-silk sheets?
Who knows you’d love to meet a man who’d hold your hand and listen … while you say nothing at all?
Who knows there was a morning when your orange juice sparkled like champagne? [what?]
Who knows the secret, siren side of you that’s female as a silken cat?
WOWIE.
amen, brutha. amen.
[via the essential man]
I am among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy (and obviously therefore richer than 75% of the world); I am more blessed than a million people this week; and I am more fortunate than 3 billion people in the world. Lucky much, me?
EDIT: I followed all the retweeting, retumbling, etc., and think I found the originator of the poster, here. She said she didn’t write the piece, she just created the poster. Check her out via the link.
If you met me, you’d see a tall 53-year old woman with a big smile and bad posture. You’d hear my deep Texas accent, which people up here in NYC describe as a “cute southern accent.” (oh.no.it’s.not!) You’d also hear about the people I love, my husband and kids: my husband goes unnamed here to respect his privacy, but he’s there in everything I do; my oldest daughter Katie and her husband Trey, who live in Austin; my 2nd daughter Marnie and her husband Tom, who live in Chicago; my son Will, who lives here in Manhattan and who is a dashing man about town; and my stepdaughter Anna, who is a college junior at a fancy school far away. You’d hear about social psychology, since I have a PhD in the subject and until very recently, acquired books in social psychology for a famous university press, the one that published the very first book. Now, I am a writer and editorial consultant.
Continue Reading–71 words totally
knitting in croatia
If you met me, you’d see a tall 53-year old woman with a big smile and bad posture. You’d hear my deep Texas accent, which people up here in NYC describe as a “cute southern accent.” (oh.no.it’s.not!) You’d also hear about the people I love, my husband and kids: my husband goes unnamed here to respect his privacy, but he’s there in everything I do; my oldest daughter Katie and her husband Trey, who live in Austin; my 2nd daughter Marnie and her husband Tom, who live in Chicago; my son Will, who lives here in Manhattan and who is a dashing man about town; and my stepdaughter Anna, who is a college junior at a fancy school far away. You’d hear about social psychology, since I have a PhD in the subject and until very recently, acquired books in social psychology for a famous university press, the one that published the very first book. Now, I am a writer and editorial consultant.
Obviously, you’d have to listen to me prattle on and on about knitting, and other handwork. My Aunt Meecie taught me to crochet when I was 5 or so, and I specialized in skein-long chains of acrylic yarn. I took up embroidering pillowcases in kindergarten, and generally made shit throughout my growing-up years. I took up knitting when I was 23, followed by spinning and weaving, quilting, bobbin-lace making, sewing and smocking. And woodworking. I’ve never met a type of handwork I didn’t love. Yet.
And now, me by the bullets:
- I’ve been to 612 cities in 20 countries (that number is constantly getting bigger).
- I’m 5’10″ (that number is consistently getting smaller).
- I have 2 graduate degrees (that number won’t be changing, though I do periodically toy with the idea of going back for a 2nd PhD [philosophy] or taking creative writing classes).
- I’ve moved 80 times. I’m done now.
- I have more than 15 tattoos (changing? perhaps).
- (I love parenthetical comments; also, semi-colons.)
- I love Cap’n Crunch and Pop-Tarts.
- I am a social psychologist. Before I started college, I thought it was just like 13th grade or something. My family did not have any education.
- Inside, I’m poor white trash. Outside, I’m fancy. Kinda.
- I am a photographer.
- I love odd-ball instruments like the accordion, banjo, and bagpipes.
- I’m pretty cool if you get to know me.
- I’ve suffered. A lot.
- Places I’ve lived: [texas] Graham, Tyler, Kilgore, Abilene, Austin (back and forth lotsa times), San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Richardson, Irving, Wichita Falls; [connecticut] New Britain; [virginia] Fredericksburg; [alabama] Huntsville; [arkansas] Fayetteville; [new jersey] Ramsey; [new york] Rochester, Manhattan.
- Cinnamon toast makes me happy.
- I started college at age 36, and grad school at age 40. NOT EASY, when you have 3 little kids.
- I didn’t get out of Texas until I was 29 years old. (Mexico doesn’t count, when you’re a Texan.)
- I am a baker.
- Learning new things makes me happy.
- I have an intriguing relationship with light.
- I used to think of book ideas and find people to write them.
- I am a jealous person, and it makes me suffer terribly. I wish I could not be jealous. Ideas?
- I love clouds and big skies, they make me feel like I can breathe.
- My favorite places in the world are Manhattan, Santa Fe, New Orleans, Paris, Hanoi, Cusco, Arequipa, Vancouver, Luang Prabang, Phnom Penh, and San Francisco. That list is not in order of favoriteness.
- Annie Lennox is my favorite singer and songwriter, and so is Lyle Lovett.
- I love live theater and modern art.
- Singing and dancing make me so happy I cry.
- I love to sing, but only do it privately these days. I used to be that girl with a guitar in a bar.
- I’m an 8th generation Texan. You read that right. My kids are 9th. My grandkids (some of them, anyway) will be 10th.
- I have a sweet tooth. Duh, given the food faves above. I love Easter because of Peeps. (PEEPS!)
- I am writing a memoir of my father.
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