Category Archives: creativity

the project of the pink hat

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I don’t like to wear hats. It’s more than not wanting to get “hat head.” It’s more the fact that I must have the roundest face in the world and hats make my head look like a pumpkin.

So, I’m not exactly sure why I had the urge to crochet a hat out of strips of fabric. I think it’s because, like “the mountain,” the idea was there and so I had to master it.

The color didn’t matter, so when I found the end of a bolt of sheer pink cotton for $1.50 a yard, I figured why not.

I didn’t have a pattern, but I know how to crochet a circle, and I’ve made hats out of regular yarn before. Used to sell them, back when ideas seemed to automatically turn into energy.

So, I spent one day ripping fabric into 1.5 inch strips and another crocheting a hat that turned out to be too big. I threw it in washer and dryer on “hot,” thinking it would shrink, being cotton and all.

Nope. It stretched

So I undid all of that crocheting and and started over — smaller hook, fewer stitches.

And now I have this pink hat crocheted out of fabric strips, which doesn’t necessarily make my face look less like a pumpkin, but I guess I can wear it when we go to Maine for a late-June vacation. It’s always windy near the ocean, and maybe the big sunglasses will make me look like an aging celebrity. Betty White?

I napped all afternoon today, waking up intermittently during thunderstorms to ponder why I launch myself into pointless projects like the pink hat, why it matters to me that my face is round and sagging, why I am obsessed with my hair, why I don’t write much any more, why am I here?

But here I am, anyway, pink hat, big sunglasses, wattle, and all.

Here I am.

Betty rules the age; Dixie dies too soon.

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At 88 years of age, Betty White still rocks and rules, and she demonstrated on Craig Ferguson’s Late Late Show the other night. I hope I can be a sharp as she is in another 18 years.

At exactly my age, Dixie Carter succumbed to cancer earlier this week. I never missed a performance of her Julia Sugarbaker on Designing Women.

Dixie Carter and Julia Sugarbaker. Gone but not forgotten.

how not to be eaten by a crocodile

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TGB led me to the Cheerful Monk, where I also found these statements and the inspiration to try to finish the beautiful Spring sweater I’m working on.

The people of the tribe believed that when they died they would be called before their god Isis and be asked two questions: “Have you found joy in life? Have you brought joy to others?” If they could answer yes to both questions, they would be rewarded with eternal bliss. If they had to answer no to either question, they would be eaten by a crocodile.

and

Stay curious and open to life. No matter what happens keep learning and growing. Find what you love to do and find a way to share it with others.

So, today, a nice early Spring day, I will take a walk in the sunshine, play with my grandson, and finish my sweater. All with joy. After all, I don’t want to be eaten by a crocodile.

so, I won this book

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book

The book, which contains free verse and reprints of prayers and bits of prose, features lots of Corita’s collage art, which contains lots of cut-up words from ads and headlines, sometimes reconfigured, sometimes not.

The description above is from a post on the site from which I won the book — Killing the Buddha. It’s a site that I find always stimulating.

I never win anything. I mean it. I think that this is the first thing I every won. Well, I came in second in a Swing Dance contest once. Even got a trophy. Usually I don’t even make an effort to enter any kind of contest. Never play the lottery. Because I never win anything.

But this time I did. And I did because I remember the 60s. I didn’t remember Sister Corita, who created the book, published in 1967. But I did remember the Berrigan Brothers, and I remembered that Daniel Berrigan was a Jesuit.

I recently read online somewhere (can’t find it again) that the story was that Daniel Berrigan kept a photo of Sister Corita in his shower with a note that said “no one should shower alone.”

Thinking of Berrigan, I am remembering another activist ex-priest who was a good friend at one point in my life. He has grown immensely as an artist in those past 25 years, although he was good even back then. His paintings, as he is, are larger than life. I just love his new stuff.

I have been fortunate in my life to have had some closeness with some truly unique men, who have inspired me and moved on and left me with the kinds of memories that will keep me smiling someday as I retire to a rocking chair in the sun.

(And I’ve been just as fortunate to continue to have a group of close women friends whose constancy and candor, humor and heart, help to keep me smiling — well, most of the time.)

So, now I wait for my prize, a book by a creative woman, to arrive.

It’s a good day.

Delilah of Sunhats and Swans

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It starts out the way a horror story might: a stormy night, an unscratchable itch in the middle of an odd young man’s head. Something is going to happen.

But it’s not a horror story, and something does happen. Or rather “someone.”

It’s a story about a sense of family forged, not by nature, but by nurture; about a young woman – only a girl, really — dropped into a still town like a pebble into a still pond.

And things begin to happen.

It’s my daughter’s debut novel, and you can read more about it and also buy it here:

Alice Fulton, poet, professor, and Guggenheim Fellow offers this back-cover description:

Delilah of Sunhats and Swans, Volker’s first novel, combines the insouciance of youth with the tragedy of experience. It tells the bittersweet story of one young woman’s transformative effect upon the lives of others. Delilah is a seeker — a pilgrim and a stranger. She also is a charmer, a being blessed with charisma as mysterious as it is luminous. Haunted by her past, Delilah somehow manages to make the most of the present. You won’t soon forget her.

little altars everywhere

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Yes, I know that’s the name of a book by the Ya-Ya writer, Rebecca Wells.

But in this case, I’m referring to this slide show of “altars” that people submitted to a request for “What’s on Your Shelf” from the blog on Killing the Buddha.

I’m not sure how I found that site — probably just surfing around, looking for something to think about, care about. Not that there isn’t plenty out there: homeless, bankruptcy, greed, war, fraud, despair. Oh, yes, plenty to think about and care about. Too much, as a matter of fact. Too much for my tired brain, tired heart.


If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him is one of my favorite non-fiction books. Maybe by only favorite non-fiction book. So, it’s not surprising that when I ran across the Killing the Buddha website, I was intrigued.

I used to have an altar of sorts — that’s when I had room for a surface to put it on. Now I have a wall

wallaltar
that includes a witch’s broom, my old power stick, a quilted shield especially designed and constructed for me by my good quilter friend, my new walking stick, Acuaba, and a photoshopped picture of “witches at tea” using the faces of my women friends. As powerful and meaningful as any shelved altar, I would think.

My shelves themselves are stacked with books, craft patterns, and assorted other things of significance. For example:

shelf

You might notice the Tarot deck, the icons, the empty box from my 3G iphone, a mini cast iron cauldron. What you don’t see in the shelves below are my collections of beads and jewelry findings that I’m trying to find time to play with/work on.

As I hurry along to get ready for Christmas (yes, I do still call it Christmas; why not?), I think about the cocoon in which I have wrapped myself during this time of world wide insanity to escape from the fundamentalists, the radical atheists, the war mongers and warring sufferers, indeed, the sufferers of all kinds.

I surround myself with resident family and Bully Hill Seasons wine and Chocolate Mint kisses, with quilting dreams and knitting crafts, with escapist suspense novels on ipod and paper, with the snores of my old and much loved cat.

I wish there were, indeed, little altars everywhere like mine — eclectic and inclusive and affirming.

I wish there were an altar somewhere on which if could feel prayers for my suffering mother would be answered.mom

accepting adjustments

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I’m beginning to realize that this part of my life is going to be require a constant acceptance of adjustments. These days I’m making adjustments to articles of clothing that I made, specifically this, which originally blogged about here
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JACKET.jpg
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I need to add pieces down the front so that I can button in. I’ve gotten a little wider. Heh. And I am almost finished lining it so that the ugly yellow sweatshirt-base inside is hidden, finally.

There are other adjustments too — medications and expectations. I just don’t have the energy and stamina to do what I used to do. That’s the downside of aging, unless you are wealthy enough to afford massages and personal trainers and hot tubs.

And now I have to adjust my budget to adjust to the fact that I’ve spent whatever cushion I’ve had for fun stuff for me and my family. Many college classmates of mine, as well as relatives my age, have homes both here in the Northeast and in the South, and they enjoy the best of both worlds with plenty of resources to spare. I’m envious. But then again, there are college classmates and relatives of mine who are no longer alive.

I guess I fall somewhere in the middle, and that has to be OK; I will keep adjusting to a simpler life.

Although if we add a puppy to this family, life will not be that simple for a while — but it will be more fun and more work. My grandson, an only and often lonely child, needs a dog who will be more than a pet — more like another sibling.

I like the idea of having a dog. Maybe she (I want to get a female) will encourage me to get out and walk more.

writngs from a workshop

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Having strayed so far from my poetic roots, I am taking a brief writing workshop based on the Amherst Writers and Artists Method. Blogging has given me plenty of practice with the first person essay; but it’s poetry where my heart is. I need some help getting my brain to follow.

The writing “prompt” for the exercise was the word “breathe.”

She does not swim –
afraid to breathe against
the weight of water, afraid
of those breathless wet depths.

But she goes to a sweat lodge
where steamy smoke rises —
thick breath steadily blinding
a clear winter sky.

She lets herself be led into the wet
dark already slick with steam
and sweat, cool water hissing,
smoking stones.

Thoughtless with dread
she stumbles out into the cold,
blinded by water and smoke
and a clutch of fear that sends
breath into memory:

— a child’s cry for breath stunted by fever
lungs rattling beneath a tent of steam
thick as smoke, heavy as a depth of sea.

Well, its a start.