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i read the prompt very early.   There's a 3 hour time difference,  right?   and it was still dark and i put the kettle on for tea water and read it again and  well…..i felt uhhh,  sad.   I felt blank when thinking of the term care package.   when thinking about wants and needs that care packages have to do with.   and i realized how all my sense of what i might want and or need in this world today has been altered so radically by things so far beyond my sense of ,  of what?   beyond my sense of….anything i ever might have imagined.   I realized how i live now with a great BLANK SPOT  out in front of me.  How i don't even go there anymore.  How it's been easy to not live in the future because my sense of future has been stolen and crushed.   I felt very sad.  I thought that i wouldn't do this one,   at least not now,  maybe not ever.   

but then….i trust Acey.

so after listening to two This American Life podcasts while i worked at creating a pot of chicken soup without garlic because i forgot to get some,  and with only thighs,   adding a ton on onion,   making the sleeping bed go away,   feeding all who rely on me for feeding,  sweeping the floor,   rearranging the overfull compost thingy,  pulling my hair back and into the barrette,   i cleaned the Everything Table and read the prompt again.   and Again.  3  times.   Nothing had improved.   So i just got the baggie of scraps,  the folders of images and began the ritual of Looking Through.   Maybe's off to the side.  No's in a pile.   I had zero idea if anything would come.  And then There.   The central image of the Two of Them that are the Same but Other….how i'd looked at that many times now but this morning felt a flood of love for this image.  And it went Easy from there.  

i don't have words for this.  I DO have Deep Feeling.   Who is Who and does it matter?   What's happening here?  What has already happened?   I really don't WANT words for it.   I just want this.   and i Really just WANT THIS.    I've looked at it off and on through the day and i can imagine looking at it off and on through Many Days,  like Many.   Maybe there will be more articulated Story.  But if not,   just this.   Just This is good.   This is very very Good.

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15 responses to “selves, care, here/there to/from THIS MUCH.”

  1. Acey Avatar

    yes. there are often such beautiful things on the other side of sadness. Now once we are through it – but what lives on the other side of its flipped coin.

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  2. grace Forrest Avatar

    i am not through it yet. I’m here. still here. But i have this image.

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  3. Acey Avatar

    it’s extremely powerful. It holds its own space quite effectively. and I meant to say noT when we’re through it rather than now. Sadness is … stretchy that way, at least for me.

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  4. ² Avatar
    ²

    Who is who , for who ?

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  5. Michelle Slater Avatar

    The Image is so appealing. One woman holding a bird, the other holds a tree. For me they are the saviors and supporters of these and they are having a warm and serious conversation about values. You may have been sad, but the collage is not sad. That’s the way artists lift themselves when confronting problems (there are always problems), they/we devise means to illustrate them, and by the gestures of restraint, of leaning in to listen to each other and their calm, the problem is solved. That’s how I see it.

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  6. jude Avatar

    it might be a strange thing to notice, but sadness seems more present in your paper work. while it translates into something more like yearning in your cloth work. You, like me, often use collage as a method for both, but they seem like different channels for you.

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  7. jude Avatar

    I think different materials , the the physical nature of them, their limitations and possibilities change so much in terms of the paths to form and feeling. This has interested me for so long. I worked with paper first, which gave me the path to ragged edge applique and the glue stitch. I am on my way back to paper but I spend more time thinking about it so far. How it might happen. What might spring forth.

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  8. Tina Avatar
    Tina

    Grace this is fantastic .. the balance of it. The colors and combinations .. wowza!!
    This journey you’re on is looking wonderful.

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  9. dee Avatar

    Jude’s insight seems right on. It makes sense that different materials evoke different feelings/thoughts. Need to be with that some more. What moves me most here was not the collage, though I like it, but the description of your process. It is mesmerizing. I can see you making the soup, using extra onion to compensate for the forgotten garlic, sweeping the floor and I can feel you being transformed by those activities.
    Two other things: because Acey’s prompts ask that we reach deep inside, I find I have to read them over and over, too. I can’t keep them in my head. And also: the concept of a care package brought me to my knees. Because one of the things I want is for this world to have a future.

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  10. Acey Avatar

    feel like the longer you’re there with these particular trees the more chance there is you will be drawn to work with fallen bark. Almost ten years here and the pull is becoming truly magnetized.

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  11. grace Forrest Avatar

    Michelle…thank you beyond thank you for these words…
    leaning in to listen
    the gestures of restraint
    o….Thank You
    Such Big Love

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  12. grace Forrest Avatar

    more present…? does it?
    I will think of the shades of difference between
    sadness and yearning

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  13. grace Forrest Avatar

    i credit the woman that created this Art

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  14. grace Forrest Avatar

    yes…care package. What do we have to offer

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