Pink Air

It's happening. 
The air is starting to change.  
Fresh paint this week 
of how it seems to me.

A bit from Mary Oliver-

It was what I was born

for-

to look and listen,

to lose myself

inside this soft world-

to instruct myself

over and over

in joy.

Goodbye Kit

Nice to be back to say hello. I lost a dear cousin a week ago to cancer. Katherine Vinal, or Kit, was my oldest cousin and my Aunt Willa and Uncle Lester's first of eight children. She was magnificent both inside and out. Kit was fearless, compassionate, funny, street smart (she proved it possible for someone from Maine), defender of the underdog, could calm a nervous horse, explain how an owl's digestion track worked, our clan leader, and seemed more goddess than human to us younger cousins trailing behind her. For the last 30 years she lived with her husband Dale, in Fort Fairfield Maine on their sheep farm. She managed a veterinary practice for a doctor where they tended mostly farm animals and many lost and wounded wild animal. Any homeless creature within 60 miles of Kit would somehow find their way to her. Two weeks before she died, barely able to walk she was baking bread. I will miss her wicked sense of humor, compassionate strength and being able to start a conversation right where we left off, years before. When I got the news, I went and told my chickens. This Mary Oliver poem has always seemed to me, to be written for Kit. The image is one of my pastel paintings to see more you can go here.

Making the House Ready for the Lord

-Mary Oliver
Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but
   Still nothing is as shining as it should be
for you.  Under the sink, for example, is an
  uproar of mice—it is the season of their
many children.  What shall I do?  And under the eaves
   and through the walls the squirrels
have gnawed their ragged entrances—but it is the season
   when they need shelter, so what shall I do?  And
the raccoon limps into the kitchen and opens the cupboard
   while the dog snores, the cat hugs the pillow;
what shall I do?  Beautiful is the new snow falling
   in the yard and the fox who is staring boldly
up the path, to the door.  And still I believe you will
   come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox
the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea-goose, know
   that really I am speaking to you whenever I say,
as I do all morning and afternoon:  Come in, Come in.

Hi again friend

O.K. It's been awhile. And I'm back. In the last month my show went up and came down,  Paul and I built a magical set and did a lovely video shoot in an antique barn, I finished the design for packaging and web for Mole Hollow Candles, the AS220 signage project is underway (Arley and I found some one to paint much of the design in gold leaf on storefronts!) and now I'm in the middle of a 64 page jewelry catalogue that I can't wait to show you. I'm not complaining just amazed that so many wonderful projects have made their way to and out my door in the last month. But I have missed you.

Here's a little amazement from Mary Oliver-

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Poem for Monday

I had a wonderful start to today. And Monday's don't usually feel so good. Most of today was the river I've been trying to stay on. Letting it all come to me, receiving what I'm given. Early evening has been a different story. When anxiety starts I know Mary Oliver is the right person to listen to. This is what I found in her collection entitled Dream Work. Thank you Mary. You manage to start such peaceful revolutions in me. And of course Paul's image of the Providence Police Station demolition fits so beautifully.

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

~ Mary Oliver ~

Photo by Paul Clancy

"Just perfect"
-Marth Stewart
The "P" word. It has followed me all my life and here's the big confession- I really thought into my late 20's, somewhere down deep, it should be sought after and could possibly be obtained. I'm a graphic designer and my work is about moving things tiny itty moves to left or right. So it's a hard one to let go of "being right" personally when professionally I spend so much time making things "look right" Then about 10 years ago I decide to take it out of my vocabulary completely. I found if I don't say it it is less likely I'll strive for it. But what replaces it? "Oh that looks so... complete on you?" "Wow that is the most whole color with your eyes". "I found the most incredibly beautiful on the planet art today on etsy?" Makes you stop and think doesn't it? Perfection is hard to replace isn't it? I love that Japan elevates the mending of broken ceramics to an art form called kintsugi. Cracks in broken pottery are carefully mended with lacquer and fine gold powder. The tea-ceremony embraces the beauty of imperfection. I picked up a book about Wabi Sabi 10 years ago and fell in love with the concept but when I went to describe it to friends it was hard to find the right words to give it justice. Got lost in Americano world. I'm getting better.  Barbara Bloom's show on being broken helped. Mary Oliver helps with her poem Wild Geese. Any poem that starts with- "You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees" makes me stop. So rather than resolutions for the year I like the idea of observing my relationship with a word. A word I can include in my daily conversations and thinking more often. The "I" word. Imperfection. "That looks just so... imperfect on you".