It’s cold, or maybe just lonely. Distances are shrinking. She strings lights from star to star, pegging down heaven to the immense yawn of prairie. Possibly she imagines a rainbow, somewhere.
Garland Garland
Nook nook
Starfish Angel
Back from your ban-
ishment to the bottom of the o-
cean’s darkest tide, you lug buck-
ets of pearls back with you. Salt-
white and tear-stained all-
over, you’re small, still, but
ferocious. Play
blazes in you, an entire sea-
side of carnivals aflame.
Your several hands unravel re-
growing to grasp ever-
y stray particle of the un-
known and known universes
hung in so much sky
about your ears like a cawl.
Your yearning yawns and splits
the present day wide open. I am here
for you. My arms are wide
enough, unraveling to receive
you back, to wear
you like a living suit of
embers. I would fan
with your wings.
You are truly
not doused. Come, skin,
step into me,
pour your pearls into my
voice and we will sing
aloud with a single,
singeing cry.
The Nields
I {heart} Nerissa and Katryna Nields.
Been a longtime fan of their music and somehow, in the odd connectedness of Facebook, I wound up, utterly charmed, reading Katryna’s daily doings with gutters and kids and whatnot posted to “friends” for a little while there (I think she’s reined it back a bit in that forum, or closed down who gets to read her patter, fair enough).
Not long ago the Northampton, MA-based duo visited Chicago for a kids’ show literally a 15 minute walk from my apartment at Old Town School of Folk– and I was gonna go, I really was. Had it emblazoned with smileyfaces and stars and exclamation points on the calendar. And I don’t know what happened. Blame it on the lurking agoraphobia I’m prone to, but somehow I just ended up staying home that Sunday morning– and I missed it. Just kills me. I missed it, and they don’t get back this way to play very often. Blah and blah and blah.
Anyway– color me all the happier to discover the sisters’ collaborative blog:
So, so good.
And here’s a nice, thoughtfully reflective interview with Nerissa in our local rag:
Individuality and the Art of Endurance: An Interview with Nerissa Nields
Lifestyle as art
In a giddy post-Euchre conversation I recently heard the words resonate in a cognitive echo from my own mouth: lifetyle art.
Even as my friend asked me to elaborate, I was already considering what in fact I did intend by such a hifalutin phrase.
Chris and I had spent the first half of the day driving through the November rain-grey boots of Michigan, swooping a pass across the shoulder of Ohio, traversing the rural clavicle of Indiana to our heartland destination.
In all the flurry of holiday feasting and travel to see family we’d neglected to bring a bottle of wine. Remembering belatedly my horror of arriving emptyhanded, we stopped in the last neighboring town to our friends’ farm to try to pick up something— unlikely as the venue may have looked.
Unfortunately we’d forgotten about Indiana’s Sunday Blue law ban on alcohol sales, and Chris garnered the actual comment from smoky bar patrons, “You’re not from around here, are you?”
Meanwhile I sat in the car deciphering road warrior bumper stickers on the motorcycle parked out front.
Happily for us, our hosts were of the most congenial and forgiving sort, toasting our collective wellbeing in generous style with bright and delicate cider and beer home brews, all the while sharing absorbing and poetic how-to insights about the brewing process, even contributing a fortuitously-named bottle of wine to accompany the lovely meal of fresh-picked garden greens, ruby beets and fragrant garlic.
I’ll admit to being a bit in awe of these two, visual artists both, who’ve seemed to manage gracefully and seemingly effortlessly the sorts of homesteading compensations that fill gaps of ready availability that come with rural living.
Present in each element of their existence is a foundational intentionality toward creative living which extends from the handmade art on the walls to the ingeniously engineered fixtures casting light to the homemade laundry soap Janet instructed me how to whip up for mere pennies*.
Eliot refers only partly in jest to his wife as The Laundry Soap Evangelist. In point of fact she nurtures a bright vision of sharing homearts secrets with a wider audience and is in fact positioned well to spread the word, characteristically interwoven as she is, nexus and tax-preparer to a wide circle of creative folks.
The art of lifestyle here seems to me both indelible and resonant where every gesture of existence becomes infused with a spirit of ingenuity and downhome resourcefulness shaped by an intuitive eye for gracious elegance.
Seated at their table, immersed to the ears and eyes in this ethos, I found it a little difficult to point out one factor distinct from another to articulate my point to those who exuded it– but for all that knew myself to be partaking with each inhalation in the gift of my friends’ lifestyle art.
* Homemade Laundry Soap recipe:
Grate 1/2 bar Fels Naptha soap into 6 cups water. Heat until dissolved, then add 1/2 cup Washing Soda and 1/2 cup Borax. Stir until dissolved. Pour into 5 gallon bucket and add 6 cups hot water, then 1 gallon cold water. Add 20 drops of essential oil of choice for scent. Stir and let stand for 24 hours. Soap will gel. Ladle into leftover plastic pint dairy bottles. Use 1/2 to 1 cup per load of laundry (about 4 loads per bottle).
(Not for front loading washers)
Paying it forward
finish what you have promised.
It stares at me from the desk shelf at eye-level, a self-inflicted reminder against malingering lassitude.
Back in the first month of this year, one January 2011, amidst throes of energetic and wafting new year intention, I made a promise on Facebook to send handmade items out to the first some whatever number of people who responded with a like commitment in the comments. A neat creative energizing bump, right? A rev of the collective positive energy engine as it were.
I have, I fear, lagged some in point of actual follow through… but wait! The year has not run out yet, o ye foes and o ye friends– there’s still time to make good.
And so I’ve been doing, packaging up packages of small fulfillment, addressing them to envisioned endearing recipients, readying them for flight into the holiday winds.
Unfortunately, I now face the part of the project that presents the toughest hurdle for me: writing the enclosure notes.
(Weird, right? Remember when we wrote letters all the time? I’d write pages and pages at a sitting– now the prospect of a postcard sets me quaking. Still–)
Tally-ho!
Thanksgiving
My mother has a lovely hand-painted floral on blue glass bowl that would have perfectly complemented the Cranberry Relish I made… Unfortunately for documentation purposes, I got so caught up in the festivities prep that I did little process photography.
Regardless, it all went swimmingly, and we enjoyed a warm and bright holiday with the feller’s family chez nous this year, both an honor and a treat.
Good Witch
human comic strip vol. 6043
What I do here is uncomfortably near.
I’m a virtual close-talker. It’s a little embarrassing.
Still, can you fault a girl for trying on the odd pair of clown shoes in a bored and desperate old world?
..
Please be assured: in an ongoing effort to provide ever-congenial and family-friendly entertainment, all human comic strip characters are subjected to conscientious and regular brushing…
While we’re at it, irregular, as well, both cross-hatch and crosswise scouring of every pixel grit bit of human tedium in dearest hopes of uncovering underlying truths both vivid and substantive.
Piecemeal maybe. Maybe a vain, vainglorious, or spindleveined effort. Sometimes, granted, naught to show but hide shamed pink with dint of one’s own rigors.
..
Consider influences: starched familial roots, pantomimes of petty tragedy, classical themes etched across a suburban stage. The ranks of narcissists and pedophiles teaching piano-playing and bicycle riding: tools for flight, ultimately.
There are, if one will both recall and imagine, legion looming secondary Art Masters and Mistresses whose roles are granted to deem fledgling sketchers unworthy by self portrait. Weakly articulated chins? Excessively fixed regards? What, expressly, need never be spelled out as such. Only implied, just something– watch those blossoms wither on the vine.
..
For my part, verbally: overblown, overripe, verbose, voluptuous, purple, floral, obtuse, obscure, confusing. Yea verily. And visually? Doubtless the equivalent.
These days I choose to wear it bright and flabby-stripey, tho it’s true, twice shy, I seldom parade it outside the tent.
..
In the quiet tick-tock of the settling glade one gathers onward the twigs surrounding, weaves what may, casting homely spells in passing, holds a single breath just that extra moment–
Then lets it go and goes on to the next.
My Guy(s)
just a moment of appreciation is all.
Night Walking
