so, i have been writing this post in my head for a couple days now.    pages and pages, but as it seems to go anymore,   in the end,  not much.  and things keep circling around.   i am more clear about why these images suddenly needed to go up on the wall the other day

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having all to do with the urge to Claim my life in yet another way.  To go back around to seeing it all as an Experiment.  and in keeping with the coming of Jude's  What If,  try it that way. 

and looking at these two pieces of ART i have bought this year

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here is Saskia's   Air Tree.   before it finally arrived here from the Netherlands, from her studio,  where i have begun to feel familiar,  i thought i knew where it would rest here.   but it has remained close.  right here, on the table with all the things i use every day.  the little table next to the morning chair.  and throughout the days, every day, i gaze upon it,  into it.   it Glows and Pulses.

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Cindy's shawl.  wool she carded, spun, knitted.  the warmth and beauty of it,  more than i had imagined when i asked if she would make it for me.

so…both these.   and part of why i love them is that they were created by two women i have come to know and through buying what they created,  i could participate in their lives, their Livlihood  as atrisans.   this has great importance to me.

and quoting the same passage as did Deb G.   from Joanna Macy's book  World as Lover  World as Self……….."We can watch time's rhythm in the breathing of the moment, and sense how its very passage connects us with the past and future moments.  They become to us like unseen guides and companions as we once again reinhabit time."

When i left my old life, my old self in Michigan years ago,  i was driven by the words   "living hand to mouth".   So, i see this coming back around now.  and  see it again as claiming my days even more.  However it can work.  To fully inhabit time.  Time meaning moments, days,   the experience of being alive.  a life.  To fully inhabit being.

 

 

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24 responses to “hand to mouth”

  1. Mo Crow Avatar

    Hi Grace do you have a Paypal account? If not it’s easy, then make a Donate Here button for Goat food on your blog page so I can transfer a few dollars into your account, it will help and ’tis the season for giving and all that OK? Oh and I don’t want anything in return I just want to help the goat family get through the winter

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  2. Valerianna Avatar

    Lovely that you supported two women/artists… such a GOOD feeling. Both beautiful pieces. I’d like to see Air Tree more closely sometime! Peace and inspiration in your ongoing Experiment, Grace, its a good theory your working with!!

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  3. Valerianna Avatar

    How sweet, Mo Crow!

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  4. grace Avatar

    DEAR DEAR DEAR Mo…..you already just DID give. by
    having such a big heart….but no….that skips a vital
    part of all of it…the Hand
    there is no urgency here, we are ok. it’s how to
    Continue i’m looking at. Do i keep spliting my life
    or do i remember about relying on my Hand and staying
    home. You know what they say…home is where the heart is… and the other truth is that when i get it together here, the Goats can support themselves. but again,
    that will happen best and soonest if i am
    Home.
    so…LOVE to you and that Raven who lives over the ditch bank just swooped past…it seems as if the decision has already been made.

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  5. grace Avatar

    well…the supporting their work really was very secondary
    to living with these two Works of their hands. Yes.
    i will post a better photograph of Air Tree. i have to
    ask Saskia first.
    and yes. i feel very very good about it all. and
    as always…it’s about circling back, that Spiral, which
    You know so intimately.
    xoxo

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  6. Mo Crow Avatar

    well Ok if you’re sure you will have enough lucerne to get the crew comfortably through the winter… want to sell me a raven feather?

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  7. jude Avatar

    however it can work. this is what i am thinking too.

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  8. mimmin dove Avatar
    mimmin dove

    Hello grace, I think your post answers your question about if you should try to sell your cloths. I have been pondering this for a while. Your cloths are beautiful and would give the person who buys them so much pleasure, as you gain pleasure from the Air Tree and shawl. Sharing the story of their making and the story of their maker is a part of them, so perhaps selling linked to your blog would be good. $50 does not seem a lot. Some I think you should keep, not because they are too personal but because they are part of you. I am not sure if this makes sense. xxx

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  9. grace Avatar

    however it can work.
    yes.
    and it will weave back and forth from one thing to
    another, totally What if.

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  10. grace Avatar

    oh hey…and yes…it’s also in the story of their making.
    I tried to think of what these “non~personal but personal”
    cloths might be and what kept coming was that they are
    like Love Letters. funny, huh. but love letters about
    and to a moment of time, just short…not a Life time,
    OR maybe something of a lifetime in a brief flash of
    seeing?
    anyway…this first one now has a sleeve with a salt
    cedar stick through it. a string. it’s ready to go.
    and no…i didn’t make it shorter. for whatever reason,
    it’s Space, it’s Place of Happening needs to be that
    big.
    it’s been a really good and interesting day.
    Thank you, mimmin, for giving me these words…love,

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  11. Deb G Avatar

    I’ve been sitting here for awhile with this (knitting circles) and what comes to mind is that life is global and local, has to be both. And thinking about how living hand to mouth is about living with enough. About how security can be such a false thing. About risk and creativity. Around and around all those thoughts go…

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  12. grace Avatar

    Deb..yes. those words. Hand to Mouth. i love thinking
    of you knitting your thoughts into your knitting…and
    i think maybe that is really what knitting IS, tho i don’t
    know because i don’t know how, but it’s more than meets
    the eye?
    and how and when did that phrase Living hand to mouth
    take on a Certain conotation? as in a
    hardship
    of some sort?
    something to be avoided.
    for Forever, hand to mouth was life and was Goodness.
    wasn’t it?????? i think so????????
    i don’t know what i’m thinking, but it’s “comin on”.
    i received an email today reminding me of Talking Heads.
    so i utubed Talking Heads and watched over an hour of
    David Byrne et al in the movie Stop Making Sense
    and i sang along with the back up girls and repeated their
    moves, the dogs ran in and out the dog door, all wondering,
    and i remembered part of me that i forgot
    how i was SO in love with David Byrne, how that album
    woke up my kids in the mornings, LOUD,
    and i thought, as i watched him and his band play about
    how hand to mouth can be many different things, for sure,
    musicians

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  13. Deb G Avatar

    Had to laugh because several times today I have been thinking about how my current sweater is going to be full of thoughts and ideas. I’ve been completely addicted to On Being…listened to several interviews today as I knit. So yes, knitting certainly holds ideas. I think too experience, socks will always be connected with riding the bus for me. For what that choice means to me. I also think of knitting as meditation, sometimes a way to empty out my thoughts and just do. Or that I have to pay so much attention that I am very present in the moment. I think that most ways and types of making hold this type of process? Or at least the repetitive parts of making. I’m remembering someone asking me once how I could do the same thing over and over again and I think part of it is that it never is the same.
    Hand to mouth, I’ll be thinking about that for awhile.
    And startling the dogs…I did that the other day dancing and singing along with the B-52’s love shack. One of my favorites to listen to as loud as it will go. 🙂 But as for hand to mouth and musicians, I was just listening to another favorite album. Don’t know if you are familiar with this one…Shawn Mullins “Twin Rocks Oregon.” Not my favorite song on the album but it seems so appropriate.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iBEsXMkxcc

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  14. Sandy Avatar

    the phrase hand to mouth for me is paycheck to paycheck. Probably a lot different, but maybe not. This has been one of the most challenging years financially, and it was by far the best. I found ways to give to strangers, I was able to recycle things and trade for other things. It wasnt at all about money this year- it was about creative solutions to money perhaps, it was about family, it was about sharing, it was about giving. My goal is to take this forward. My job does not bring me joy, it truly is a paycheck. I am finding acceptance in that for now. It pays my basic living expenses. I make the rest happen, and am so excited to climb out from under the rock I lived (lol) and trusted there was another way.
    xoxoxo Sandy

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  15. Chris Linton Avatar

    Yes Deb I think all “making” activities are like meditation; once you get in the zone the world around you just flows over you and around you.

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  16. Nancy Avatar

    Sandy~ I could have written this exact comment. I’m glad we are out from under rocks. You in your homeplace and me in mine 🙂

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  17. Sandy Avatar

    Amen sister- welcome to the light!

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  18. Mo Crow Avatar

    Hi again Grace, I have been thinking a lot about your idea of hand to mouth and self sufficiency. I loved living in the bush for ten years growing all my own food, milking goats on one farm, a cow at another, looking after the chickens & horses, making tiffany lampshades, crocheted dancing shoes & hats & feather earrings for pin money and it was a good life! The days were full looking after everything and I loved the nights spent embroidering by 12 candle light & here I am embroidering again in the middle of the night following that thread, seeing where it takes me, ah… the spiral of life, “we get many lives in this one life time” as Anne Dybka my beautiful glass engraving teacher said so well all those years ago.

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  19. grace Forrest Avatar

    i think we all at certain points in our lives have Jobs,
    i did. all the time my kids were younger and i was
    responsible for them. but when you reach that point of
    beginning to be Old, and getting social security becomes
    an option, i found it unimaginable to continue selling
    my life that way. i think you are young, like Deb G and
    i think it’s good to look all along at options that
    can change things incrementally as you go along. I’m
    really happy to read your words about how this year went
    and how you feel energized by it. Thank you for
    sharing that. love,

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  20. grace Forrest Avatar

    yes. it’s true, multiple lives. when i think of all
    the things i’ve done and tried,
    but now, what i dislike most is “hurry”. whenever i am
    trying to fit my own sense of things into and around
    leaving here to GO elsewhere to make money, i feel
    hurried.
    i actually work more, especially in the warmer months, than i ever have. i am actually more physically able, really, than i ever was because i’ve learned how to pace
    myself. and i guess my bottom line is as Jude said,
    just reaching a point of wanting to do what i love doing.
    There’s something about giving one’s own self Permission
    to try that to the fullest. and what works works and
    what doesn’t, change it.

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  21. Nancy Avatar

    There is a lot of light these days! Even in the workplace 🙂 It’s a beautiful thing!

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  22. handstories Avatar

    i came to look at this again, at how happy it makes me to see the shawl in your space, and see that in all my visits to this photo, I didn’t comment! so finally… what it meant to be asked and trusted by you, and then to trust myself enough to say yes….all so good. i am a baby step person to change, and see this as one of the first, and most treasured memories of the beginning, i hope.

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  23. grace Forrest Avatar

    Cindy…i need to take a self pic in it. there is such
    love involved when i put it on my shoulders, or sometimes
    across my lap when i am here at the computer so early in
    the morning freeze. and then as it just drapes like
    a magic being over the back of the Morning Chair and i
    admire over and over it’s soft subtle beauty.
    your happiness is equal to mine then. and i HOPE too.
    Hope must be a seed.

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  24. handstories Avatar

    I wasn’t going to say anything, but, yes, i do want you to take that photo!
    xox

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