yesterday i was sewing and thinking and reading Jude's Post and Dee's forum post in Jude's Spirit Diaries and suddenly there was a little box, top middle of screen with my son's name and i think it said hey ma

and as i have learned to do, i clicked it and yes.  it was him.  like the old Instant Message thing i used to call the Blue Guy,  but this was new somehow and i have no idea how it got there, top middle of my screen, but anyway, the conversation went along, line by line as he linked me to i think 4 Utubes of his heros.  they are called Jazz and FlyFishing.  Scandanavian jazz band who mostly love fly fishing.   my son loves fly fishing.  so we watched, seperately, he in Colorado and me here with a sentence or two inbetween.  he just got snowshoes so he can go into the mountains to fish this winter.  and i asked if he had a cool little sport coat like these guys wear.  he didn't answer me.  but i'm thinking i'll find him one at the Thrift Shop.  a Good wool one and customize it for him.  like boro it.  make him some kind of special fly holder inside breast pocket.  something like that.  he  might or might not wear it, but it's the thought that counts, no?  and once again we vowed to go together someday. fly fishing.

Back to sewing,  looking at Spirit Diaries.

and the day ended with an email exchange that left me hanging and i  guess i felt more crabby than usual and said that.  something like  "you went away…"      And i woke off and on all night and felt really bad about it.  saying that.  you never know why someone leaves their screen.  could be a million things. 

And i woke this morning thinking about Talking without Sound.  Talking with Never a Voice.  how strange.  almost all "talking" i do is voiceless.  none of those interruptions mid sentence to add or clarify, no face with eyebrows going up and squnching up,  no breaths or sighs.  and how if you say things this way,  they just sit there forever, As Is.  understood or mis~understood or i think mostly half understood.  It has been bothering me lately.

and thinking of those guys making the flyfishing Utubes, i'm wondering what it would take to make little movies instead of little black words on a screen?

anyway,  i've been sewing in the Morning Chair lately using the ironing board for a table.  and  thinking about all the above, i'd begun playing with the scraps.  some are my own dye but most are pieces of DebLacativa that i was going through yesterday to make changes in the Things in the Hair cloth.  and as the morning sun traveled across the room, across them,  i became totally mesmerized and studied them this way and that and then saw how moving the little white fragment around could change everything.  and how the two very very small red dots on the teal could so easily be missed entirely

001f

006f

005f

007f

008f

then, here are the changes…i don't know if you can see them,  they're not huge, but they ARE important.   but i'm not sure about any of them yet

009f

 

 

 

 

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31 responses to “talking without sound”

  1. ;uie Avatar
    ;uie

    My eye just hangs on the cloth strand that flies up to Deb’s moon piece at almost the center of the cloth. At first I thought it was a lizard but the closeup reveals a strand with fringe and I see a comet, not a blazing one but a quiet one because directly below gazing up is the old woman. My gaze travels up and back down to her and across, looking deeper and I notice that there is no longer a wisp of cloth crossing the sun and the cloth feels warmer, quietly pulsing in a way that is more tangible to me.

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  2. deb Avatar

    wait until monday or tuesday when the mail arrives

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  3. Vicky Avatar

    i love the red spots…i look for those sorts of bits in all the handdyes when i use them….i make paths around them.

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  4. Nancy Avatar

    OH I so agree with all that have stated in your reflection of talk. I recently sent an email to one of my longest, dearest friends. I used ‘bullet’ points so I could keep track of and not forget things I wanted to include. She wrote back that she was ‘offended’ that the bullet points were ‘cold’…that was certainly not my intent, had never even occurred to me. Typing is like that. If you have gmail…you can use ‘chat’ to talk to other gmailers. I’ve only used it twice, once with my sister & once with my son -where he walked his computer around his new place to show me where he was living. What a difference having a point of reference is! And there is skype…which I have yet to use!
    These pictures are glorious so full of light and depth and texture and bridges (I LOVE those). The self portrait cloth is magical anyway you move it, change it…it remains so you and I love that.
    This post made me feel good for some reason. Thanks.

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  5. patricia Avatar
    patricia

    fun figuring out what the changes were w/o referencing the original. kinda like that game–spot the 9 things different in this picture. tells you how much i’ve studied it in the past! and also loved the image in my mind of your son fly fishing in boro cloth. it’s such a graceful, poetic activity–could only be enhanced with a magic garmet–and what better than one made by the momma?

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  6. grace Avatar

    a strand with fringe…yes….it ripped with that looong
    tail of threads that i am HOPING i can couch down.
    Like HOPING. it’s really beautiful, those loose threads…
    and yes…i changed the storm…maybe….
    and down in the lower right, Marti…the two kind of
    triangles…the house of the heart.
    Love,

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  7. grace Avatar

    eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

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  8. grace Avatar

    VICKY!!!!!!!!!!OH hey!!!!!
    PATHS…, yes, your paths!
    these are SOOOO tiny, like pinpoints

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  9. grace Avatar

    AMBIVILENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    silence is golden,,,,,
    I’m glad. glad it made you feel good. i felt good putting
    it.

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  10. grace Avatar

    he would love it for sure, but i don’t know if it would
    work for him. i think i’ll do it anyway. The Scandanavian
    guys have such flair in theirs…and they ARE his heros…
    and i asked you in the goat post…would you have kept
    your goats if not the move to city? did you milk them?
    what kind were they?

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  11. patricia Avatar
    patricia

    figured out the posting glitch. yes, we would have kept the goats. i loved them so much–the whole dance–milking, breeding, birthing especially. we raised saanens and alpines. wonderful milk and cheese. lovely, gentle souls–and FUN. but now that i’ve said that, i remember the dis-budding and the castration and oh, it was really always almost too much and i would think, i can’t do this again but i did–and then now i don’t. i did notice that the goat people i talked to in WV were much more pragmatic about things than i ever could be. guess that what it takes. but that wasn’t me.

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  12. grace Avatar

    well…we’ll see if it’s Me…?…?
    in the three years daughter had the goats, only 3 were bred then
    milking at a time. and the gender was always on the doeling side.
    she was linked to a good group and always did well selling them,
    even the wethers. she worked so hard on this herd. i’d like to
    keep it going for her. thanks for telling me, it’s good to
    know someone knows.

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  13. elizabeth fortes Avatar
    elizabeth fortes

    Dear Grace: on the lower left side of your beautiful cloth ( with great additions!) there is a head: there it is, an amazing “beast” ! It is fully manifesting there, rhinoceros-like, with eyes, horns of all kinds and very fierce! When I use the magnifier and see it amplified so clearly….I get scared!
    Check it out! Perhaps you’ve placed it there purposely…. I’m just wondering if “something” is being said from that location……… Much love to you and to the beautiful beast! e.

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  14. Michelle in NYC Avatar

    It made me feel good too at 1:48AM on Saturday the 20th–reading that you had this shared time with your son was richly rewarding to sit in on–and then the cloth work and the movement of the morning sun accentuating your attention to details–that was like being there with you in a way. Oh, and I know the words on a page without the facial language of give and take is sometimes so dangerous. We just never know where the other is being encountered at the moment we write…what emotional shape, what response to form. I think we who take our chances with this sort of communication are brave, and I also think we get better at it with practice, and the back and forth exchanges.
    Lastly, I think if you check the settings on your camera, you might find a video option…what camera is it? If you do find it, just so you know…I suggest a brief (thirty seconds) and static (not moving) test or two. It takes forever to download. Do you have a photo file on your computer? I download all my photos to mine, then after, when I call them up and click on the video ones, I’m given the option to edit the film. Even if I cut nothing, it makes it easier to then transfer to blogger, but I can’t email them via g-mail cause the file is too big on each one. i can email photographs.

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  15. Michelle in NYC Avatar

    Oh don’t want to forget to say how wonderful this cloth, an all the detail elements you were considering. I blew the post up super large and took three close up photos to email to you. I adore the thread piece with it’s long tail, and the surprised spirit face the red dots seem to complete, and I do see the rhinoceros Elizabeth sees, but I’m seeing a sleeping one that doesn’t scare me at all.

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  16. ali Avatar

    your white thread looked to me, at first glance, like a long lizard in motion, scurrying across the desert. I know well the dropped call/text/instant message feeling that leads to the you went away restless night. Fantastic colors.

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  17. dee Avatar

    well so much to respond to here… the voice part has turned out to be one of the attractions, for me, of Jude’s class… it makes such a difference to hear HOW she says things… and even though prior to THIS post of yours, I would have said that I have such a ‘sense’ of you and your style of expression, I now realize how amazing/lovely/enriching it would be to hear YOUR voice as well.
    as someone who can barely call even my closest friends b/c I have an aversion to telephones, email and now, texting, are godsends. I ran a committee a few years back by email… if I had to do that by phone I never would have stepped up to the role. So, even though text-on-screen is tone deaf and there are so many moments (many more than I want to count, actually) where I can stew about what is meant… the fact that I can communicate with others this way is of real value to me.
    and then the CLOTH. my eye went right to the POLKa DOt roof! Then I saw the pin and felt like I used to feel in the dentist’s office as a girl finding the difference in the two nearly-identical pictures in Highlight magazine – smart, snappy!
    I am often struck, not just by light moving across works-in-progress – but SHADOWS… because we have mullioned windows and both southern and western exposures, most places I would audition a quilt will at some point have dramatic shadows intersecting across the surface. This really gets the juices going.
    But, these photos of the cloth are amazing – just for fabric-junkies like us? I don’t think so… the threads, the color variations, the little heaps with dimension – I, too, could spend chunks of mornings moving little scraps around.
    And the white tail is intriguing…; can’t wait to see what you do…
    please keep talking. family, goats, threads, mountain-chrones, lizards….

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  18. yvette Avatar

    you know it all

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  19. grace Avatar

    no, but i live in the midst of What does

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  20. grace Avatar

    yes. the colors. the inside of Deb Lacativa’s head/heart.

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  21. grace Avatar

    i always get IDEAS and then realize things. truth is
    that this OLD computer couldn’t do it even if the
    camera can. and i’m not in any Position right now
    to fool with it.

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  22. grace Avatar

    it’s a Mark that the plants made. to me, it’s this
    land of desert and mountain, a place where a Grande
    river once flowed and over flowed. a flood plain, it was.
    and so, if it’s any kind of Beast, it’s an Earth Beast
    of it’s own form and i do hope it is Fierce

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  23. grace Avatar

    i am still mesmerized

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  24. grace Avatar

    i am saving Responding to these words of yours till later.
    am off to the wild life refuge this morning. maybe i’ll
    get Lost there?

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  25. Vicky Avatar

    so a teeny tiny path around them…maybe one only you and the red dots will know about….and maybe me.

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  26. Mo Crow Avatar

    & you listen so very well to all that Whatness

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  27. grace Avatar

    the Crows were there today.

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  28. Linda Avatar

    i am off to work and don’t have time to read all the conversation above.. but the thoughts of talking without sound will stay with me all day. i think sometimes that is the most meaningful. especially after having a really ugly day talking with sound.
    quiet is to be cherished right now. i think of you

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  29. grace Avatar

    yes. you too

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  30. grace Avatar

    i am so ambivilent about sound/no sound. and like you,
    have a deep aversion to telephone. i find that i just
    say a lot and finally, if the conversation goes on long
    enough, at the very end, say something i really wanted to
    communicate. so most often i really appreciate the typing. i need to be specific and use as few words as possible to say what i want to say.
    i used to have a movie camera…what were they called?
    camcorder and i would wander around with it. it had a
    very subtle “purring” whir sound. and thinking back,
    i said very little, most often nothing at all. so maybe this urge for voice is very fleeting.
    and yes…the heap.
    oh to just stitch down that Pile…as is. but then it
    wouldn’t be a heap. it’s heapness is what i love.
    with this one, though, for some reason, i am seeing something that i don’t know about yet. so am still looking. it’s still on the ironingboardworktable…3 days now. still looking.
    thank you for caring about all the Stuff in my life
    xo

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  31. grace Avatar

    i hope your day at work was peace full. just doing what
    you do there would be enough.
    love

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