breathing

I realized some time ago that when my family has time off to play, I tend to work the hardest. Breaks from school are not breaks for me. So I planned for a day I would have all to myself. Last Friday was the day.

Since I would not be going to work the next day, I was not at all stressed when the track meet lasted until 10:30 Thursday night. It made no difference that I didn't get to bed until midnight. I even let Ariel sleep in instead of getting him up at the crack of dawn so he could go to school with his teacher daddy. I decided to drive him to school figuring I may as well run the dog at the park while I was going to be in the neighborhood.  hough the dog was in desperate need of a good run, I was in greater need. The woods beckoned. The smell of the trees, the sunlight filtering through the leaves, and the beauty of it all began to cure me of all that ailed me.

Returning home I was aware of laundry and dishes and though I made some basic attempts to bring some order to the chaos, I decided to fix myself breakfast. I usually don't bother to make something just for me but on this day I really wanted an egg, over easy, placed over potatoes and covered with a little cheese and salsa. I sat down and ate without rushing. It seemed almost more like a ritual than a meal. I needed to do each step in a way that would only bring peace to my soul. I would take more time to pray and focus on what was going on in my heart. Giving myself permission to take each moment as it came lightened my burden. Having a good cry during a chick flick certainly didn't hurt either.    

Being given time to work without interruption is a rare gift. It is as important as breathing. I am fortunate that the sewing I do to create fiber art to sell is also what I do to relax. I have found that it is a type of meditation for me all its own. The needle coming up through the cloth is like breathing in, and as the needle goes back down it is like breathing out. Stitch by stitch I find my rhythm. I cannot be creative when I am in a hurry. Inspiration means breathing. I am beginning to understand.

late to the party

An inability to keep up with current technology just makes a person of a certain age seem that much older. Growing up six miles from a town of 2,000 did not help since fads took about five years to reach us and our choices for culture were extremely limited. On good days we could tune in to WOKY in Milwaukee for oldies rock and roll music or WLS in Chicago for the same. Other than that I could always listen to the country station my dad had piped into the milking parlor for the cows to supposedly increase their milk production to. For more sophistication we relied on Lawrence Welk on a Saturday night. We had to drive at least thirty miles for any stores of size, movie theaters and even a McDonald's but such was the life of a country girl. Our ability to keep up with the wider world depended upon newspapers, magazines and television. We knew we were behind the times but there wasn't much we could do about it.

Being late to a party has its drawbacks as I would discover later in college when at the very last minute I decided to show up to a party well underway. I did not have the advantage of knowing exactly what went into the trash can that served as a punch bowl containing a beverage referred to as "agent orange." This should have been a sign. However blurry the events of that night are, the one thing I can remember is standing with a group of people in the middle of a street counting down  New-Year's-Eve-style to Groundhog's Day. I would never think of Punxsutawney Phil in quite the same way again.

Maybe some people are just more inclined to investigate the latest gadgets and cannot help but develop an air of superiority when their skills to master new technology start to define their lives. Even so, I did not want to be completely left out so against my better judgment, I finally gave in to joining Facebook. I continue to wonder where this will lead as I've already been taken on some rather interesting adventures. I have received an apology for something that happened in high school by someone I never knew was involved; was contacted by a former bus driver for unknown reasons; and most recently by a man I went to grade school with who is not sure he knows me because of failing memory, eyesight and is possibly in his final days of life. It seems that the question is no longer "why contact someone" but "why not?" Technology has in essence transported me back to the 1970s! What has promised to update me and carry me into this brave new world has instead caused me to remember all kinds of past events and people who shaped my childhood.

So instead of listening to the Beatles on the radio waves across Lake Michigan, I can listen to them on Spotify as I sit here in Greensboro. I can remember the sound of real telephones and the clicking keys of typewriters--a sound that has all but gone extinct in this modern world--by tuning into Mad Men that I can watch through Netflix on my computer. Old pictures can be scanned and shared with classmates who are all over the world. And though I haven't seen or heard from some of the people I went to high school with in several decades, we all seem to be showing up at this online party, late or otherwise.

run amok

To run amok is to behave in a wild or unruly manner, and I am not one to fit that description. Though I may seem completely normal, at least for me, my mind has been on overload lately trying to come up with new items for my next arts and crafts show. It isn't that I don't have any ideas. It is that I don't have the time to create them all!

What happens is that I conceptualize a project and then start to run through it step by step in my head. I eventually gather supplies and begin. I soon find that what I thought would work, doesn't. What I imagined would be easy, isn't. And my self-imposed deadlines are extended again and again. I find myself thinking about my art when I'm supposed to be doing other things. I become distracted as my mind keeps wanting to take up where it left off in the creative process. I wake up thinking about what I can do differently today. I bide my time, trying to engage in meaningful conversations as if I have nothing else on my mind, and go about my business pretending that all is well, but all the while my mind is trying to solve the issues that present themselves in this project I want to create.

I've always been a daydreamer, doodling on my paper in school when I was supposed to be learning math; looking out the window at the trees when I was supposed to be listening to a lecture. I've been accused of doing nothing while staring out the window. I may appear to be half asleep but it is at times like these when I am most awake! Most of my writing is done in my head before I ever sit down to write. My projects are like that as well, forming themselves in my thoughts before ever manifesting themselves in real materials.

I then get the chance to work on my project and I fail. I try something different and it too falls short. I know that I need to stop for today. I also know that as soon as I walk out of this room that I will continue to think about what I can do to make it better. It isn't as though I'm working on a cure for cancer or solving world hunger. I'm not inventing something to better our human condition or even worrying about what is for dinner. I'm only trying to come up with something that may bring a little joy into someone's life when that person gives or receives this thing that I've been inspired to create. I would like to think that it will make someone's day a bit brighter. And that is enough for me.

playing with tools

Here's something you may not know about me. I like to play with tools. Not big, manly tools like power saws, but daintier tools like power drills and hammers. Today I spent at least a half hour looking for my exacto knife. I've been trying to figure out how to combine the bolt of leather I found at the Salvation Army, the really cool paper I just bought at the AC Moore store that is going out of business, and a short prayer I wrote last summer into a small art book I can sell at the Farmers' Market. I was also able to purchase a nifty heavy duty punch that promises to punch through all sorts of things. I can hardly wait to try it out!

Not sure what it is that excites me so much about doing this sort of thing since I spend most of my time sewing or writing but I think it is all part of the creative process. And as I'm getting more used to the idea of being an artist, ideas just materialize and I start turning one thing into another. I have already turned two separate bed springs into a display rack and a "tree" to hang my items on. Now that I'm working on creating small birds I'm thinking of having birds perched on the wires. I want to string button garlands through the springs and have these tiny books taking their place on this evolving artwork. I can see the end result and I like it!

Time has been suspended while I've been working in here. I am shocked to find that entire hours have gone by in what I thought was minutes. I now have to re-enter regular time for awhile, but as soon as I can, I will come back to play.

a toast

When I was a student at Michigan State, I had a friend named Arch who used to tease me by saying that I was only there to get my MRS. degree and if I ever did land a job he hoped I knew how to make coffee because that is what I would be doing. Though it would be several years after college before I would accomplish the first part of his prediction, I was in charge of making the coffee at my first job out of school as an executive assistant at a very small mortgage lending company in Denver.

The other thing Arch used to tell me was that someday I should write a column, call it "melba toast" since my nickname at the time was "Melba" and simply write about what happened on any given day. Since Arch lived in my co-ed dorm, he was one of the people I could tell my tales to over dinner or somewhere on the brother floor where I had been made an honorary member. It was a real conversation starter to show up and say, "You will never believe what just happened to me" and continue on with the telling of another strange set of circumstances. My life would be played out in vivid detail as the storytelling went on, allowing others to be entertained in spite of misfortune.

Although melba toast in its flat, dry and tasteless form is not anything to talk about, my life tends to be a bit more interesting. So here's to you, Arch, wherever you are.