Thinking continuously about Vayla.    Vayla,  the girl in Wendy's EssayTelling.  How she knows.

"I could not figure out why I liked textiles sewn with spaces in them.  Why I like the way this woman sewed her cloth, leaving me a way to see the sun through the cloth,  I think of why someone would stitch cloth that has spaces. "

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the center of this,  i think,  will be Cut Out.   Making a Space.  I have no idea what might come into that cut out space but i feel good,  really good,  thinking about a cut out space.  I began the kantha that will rim the circle.  I already know how that's going to feel,  the substance that cloth acquires with kantha stitches.   Am anticipating that,  how it feels.  And then after that's done,  the center will be cut out and become very Light.  What will go there?

And at On Being,  there is a conversation with a composer of Movie Music…musical scores,  i forgot to write down his name but you can go look.  He talks about Spaces in music.   Spaces.  Maybe we need spaces so things can fully be what they Are.  Not all of Us,  but some of Us.  and What if we are of the Some of Us Clan?  that need space.  Lots of it.  Vayla needs space for her work.  I need space for mine.  Different Work,  but our WORK.    So we NEED it.  Not to just Indulge in,  but NEED it.

At some point today the thought came….i am going to Take as much time as i possibly CAN to do what i NEED to do.  Whether or not it makes sense to any other person,  I am going to TAKE as much time as i possibly can.    I think this is the work of the Protection  Cloth.    It kind of feels like

stealing time

and ok, then.  i will steal it.  I can try to explain myself till i'm blue in the face about what matters to me as a human being and people might kind of nod and listen but they have no idea.  So i'm left with a possibility of stealing time.  As much as i can.   Would this make me a Thief?  

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Places of Spaces on the Magic Diaries Cloth

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which is now folded,  quiet,  on the back of the futon.  I will do it slow.  One space at a time.  There is no hurry.

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I am letting myself learn that cloth doesn't have to be FLAT.  it can be,  stitched and Be,  in it's  form as it falls of it's own accord.  This is ok.   How stuff seems to Want to Be is ok.,  follow it.

and then,  i think of the small boy at the end of Wendy's Telling.   Who arrived with a teacher's note and a Mother who was his ally,  who brought a boom box so he could do what he NEEDED to do,  so he could hear both Sam and Valarianna at the same time.  How he knew he needed this.  Both.  He needed both at the same time and because he needed it,  it happened.   So, him too.  Teachers.  This boy,  Vayla.   I am learning.

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17 responses to “Spaces”

  1. Liz Avatar

    I will be forever learning … to listen, to understand, to get whatever it is I’m supposed to get … and I think that’s the journey we’re meant to be on, if we’re paying attention
    You help me with that … with your thoughtful reading and re-reading of your books, your cloth, your life … your thought-full-ness … your pictures that so perfectly illustrate the very things you are writing about …
    And I recalled something I saw yesterday … a spider web woven between two trees that were impossibly far apart … as fragile and ephemeral (thanks Mo) as any fugitive dye or handstitched cloth … and every bit as beautiful … you would have loved it

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  2. grace Forrest Avatar

    forever learning
    how much i love these words, forever learning
    and you help me too.
    Everything Helps Us, yes? in the foreverlearning
    fragile
    ephemeral
    fugitive
    are these BeautyFull words? that allow us to have BeautyFull mind image?
    fragile
    ephemeral
    fugitive

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  3. Mo Crow Avatar

    love all the photos of the details in the cloths today, y’know I am starting, just beginning (even after seeing you do it here for years now) to understand the reasoning for kantha stitching,
    you’re words-
    “to feel, the substance that cloth acquires with kantha stitches”
    it’s the tactile, the subtle things we learn through our fingertips that can’t be seen or said in words
    ah as Liz says forever learning…
    Judy Martin has photos of Itchikato Kabuto’s kantha stitched kimonos on her post about the Textile Conference inthe Netherlands
    http://judys-journal.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/european-textile-network-conference.html
    these are the magic days!

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  4. Michelle in NYC Avatar

    Social situations and casual conversations:
    To the question “What do you do?”, I usually answer smiling “As little as possible.” It sets the friendly, humorous tone I like and, more often than not, seems to put the newly met other at ease.
    As, and IF the opportunity for details emerges, I describe what I’ve done in life in decades, short-handing a rough outline…”About twenty years as an actor, twenty in film video, and twenty as a gardener.”
    I may also offer that “I’ve been an artist of one sort or another from the start of my time on the planet, perhaps throw in that “I draw, paint, sometimes sew, write flash fiction and occasional poems, have been a domestic animal caretaker to scores of dogs, cats, and birds, that I’m a Yoga practitioner, Sanskrit mantra chanter, Zen sitter, and one who meditates.
    If it comes up, I’ll say that nothing I’ve done has ever been economically ‘successful’, and let them know that, though this is sometimes trying, I’m happy enough and consider myself fortunate.
    Seems to me our WORK in the world is all we do, have done and will do. The moment to moment ‘moments’ you show and tell here, and all the commenters that also show and tell is invaluable nourishment. It’s the sort of ‘conversation’ that extends far beyond ‘casual’ to the depth of intimacy, even at this virtual distance.
    The cloth work you’re featuring today is delightful. How I love the idea that the egg shaped circle will have space at it’s center to show what lies beneath, whatever that might be.

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  5. Michelle in NYC Avatar

    PS–About ‘stealing’–If you take time to do what you are doing, from whom or what do you take it? It’s YOUR time, right? Can you steal from yourself?

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  6. Marti Avatar
    Marti

    Every time I see your Magic Dairies cloth, something inside of me just expands; whenever you stitch grasses, I fall in love over and over again…this latest cloth, the space cloth, how it begins a deep conversation of what matters, how we fill our time.
    For me, these past five years of continual learning to dye cloth with the gifts of the land and slowly embracing my fear of stitching, continually teaches me, not just about the aspects of what I do with cloth but has opened up a whole world of sharing and respect for the many women who teach the rest of us from their lives, their art, their very being…and so I come back to your open space cloth grace, a circle that is space and we each see what we need to see and we all learn from each other and we move on, opening and expanding and always trying a little bit more and so it goes and it is life long learning and so affirming.

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  7. jude Avatar

    that’s all there is really. learning. i don;t know who started the myth about knowing.

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  8. Mo Crow Avatar

    & hmmm… love Michelle’s thoughts about “stealing time”…
    we make time by taking our own sweet time with the making, that’s not stealing that’s honouring the process

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  9. Martine Bos Avatar

    Learning, always………..forever……

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  10. grace Avatar

    kantha days. days of substance.

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  11. grace Avatar

    intimacy.
    i think of this.
    intimacy.

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  12. grace Avatar

    well, really, TIME is just time. Belonging to no one.
    it’s just from where ever we set a clock to mark the hours we
    uhhhh, use? Like Mo uses hours that i sleep through. like that.
    so…Time, Time is just time.
    i actually, for whatever reason, kinda LIKE the idea of
    stealing time. Being a time thief. Taking some here, some from
    there, piling it up into a chunk.

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  13. grace Avatar

    “we each see what we need to see”…yes. This is Beauty Full and
    Critical.

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  14. grace Avatar

    …………myth…………….

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  15. grace Avatar

    maybe stealing is also honoring

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  16. grace Avatar

    yes. always and forever. aren’t those Beauty Full words?, always and forever?

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  17. Mo Crow Avatar

    as Michelle said above… “Can you steal from yourself?”
    I have a lot of problems with the concept of “steal like an artist” I don’t have that sort of time for that kind of thing I just have to get the dreams out & made into something I can hold in my hands and offer to the world in this lifetime.
    Here’s another poem that feels relevant via Whiskey River
    Future Tense
    All things in the end are bittersweet –
    An empty gaze,
    a little way-station just beyond silence.
    If you can’t delight in the everyday, you have no future here.
    And if you can, no future either.
    And time, black dog, will sniff you out,
    and lick your lean cheeks,
    And lie down beside you – warm, real close – and will not move.
    – Charles Wright
    http://whiskeyriver.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/future-tense-all-things-in-end-are.html

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