yesterday, today, and tomorrow
(before I lost the ability to do that walk)
last winter and spring I was making a piece about the importance for me of my daily walk on our country road
every day that I did that walk, I placed a square of white cloth into a basket
it grows along the beach and we consider it a weed
it smells so beautiful
it is as tall as me
the smell increases as the plant dries
it connects high-low, human-earth
it connects what we understand and what we don't
for ourselves and for others
it gave me time and solitude
I didn't go anywhere for two months except to hospital or dr. appointment
I stayed on one level
I started going up and down (just 5) stairs on July 20, seven weeks after I broke that left leg
I stepped backwards into more space and less worry
it is to acknowledge that presence of death in life.
not a binary opposite but
enfolded at its very centre. penina barnett
they close us down
art opens us up again
we need art as much as we need food and shelter
about loss
about my body
about healing
bundled, wrapped, bandaged
step step step
11 comments:
Do you suppose the clover will leave it's mark on the cloth? something that cannot be washed away?
ah yes (((Judy)) a dance with mortality brings the space to go deep and rediscover what is truly important & you do as Mary Oliver wrote so well
The Summer Day
Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
You make my heart sing every time. I sent this to Grace a minute ago, now to you:
Sending love from me and from Mary Oliver:
Morning Poem
Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange
sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again
and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands
of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails
for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it
the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---
there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---
each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,
whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.
sweet secret packages ....
(lovely poems by Mary Oliver ;-) ...)
I too am loving the poetry that you are sending me. Thank you.
Vicky, I am not making bundles for colour - rather I am wrapping live pieces of nature as some kind of metaphor. I try not to think about it too much actually - just follow my hands.
xo
the news that your leg is healing is good. the bundles, also good. may it all continue, with new understanding. you always invite me to think, stand out of my own way and think. thank you.
Judy I didnt' think they were for color...just a 'what if' thought. What if someone in the future unwraps it?
Oh OK Vicky. What if? Thank you for that.
xo
Hello Judy
Just spoke to Julia re next week.
Love the bundles, intuitive textile response to place.
Cheers Jan.
So evocative, the ways your hands mark time in all its contractions and expansions, ebbs and flows. Good to hear that you're beginning to take stairs again. Don't rush it, tho.
yes, cloth as shelter.
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