What Was I Thinking?

Clearly having four different blogs was not working. I'm archiving this (such as it was in its brief glory) and if you come here, please keep looking for me at my new (only) blog: A Twirly Life. 

Whew.

Knitting and Art and Pinterest

So, there is just too much. Blogs. Facebook. Pinterest. Tumbler. It is impossible.

But this is so gorgeous! Needle Arts in Art, a Pinterest page, described by Louise James (the pinner) this way:

"Once when I was visiting my Father in his assisted living faciity, I was knitting while we spent some time together. He said, "I love watching you while you knit; it reminds me of Granny Jackson" (his grandmother). He was 101 and would not last another year. It's a fond memory and the pictures on this Board call back to phantom memories of other women who passed their time in similar pursuit."

I aspire to this level of time and dedication. But now I have to work. 

"The Annunciation" by Jay DeFeo

Yesterday I discovered an artist I did not know. Jay DeFeo. SF MOMA is hosting a remarkable retrospective. Highly recommended.

My favorite painting was "The Annunciation" -- shown here is miserable resolution. Painted in 1957, it takes over an entire wall. I was spellbound. The notes from the exhibit said each brush stroke was a feather, the large wings come from a solar plexus, and she painted it in response to other angels she say on a trip to Florence. For me, the painting is about the moment when a woman discovers that she has been visited by the holy spirit, or whatever you will call the energy and life force that creates the impulse for a new life inside her body. I don't see only the angle, I see the explosion of life and the eruption of the sacred in flesh. It's be a long time since I responded so powerfully to a painting. On my daughter's birthday, I was allowed a glimpse again of that divinity a woman can embody.

Courage and Fear (Anne Lamott)

I am a fan fan fan of Anne Lamott's. She is using Facebook a lot these days, for her musings, and as such I cannot post a link directly to a particular entry that I like. I am taking the liberty of quoting at length from her, but you can find her FB action here and her regular website action here.

Thursday, December 27, she said this, as part of her FB entry:

"Beside my FB community, which was huge technical help, I also remembered something Carolyn Myss said years ago--that we are elegant spirits, and so to ACT like like one. I wrote ES on my wrist to remind myself that I am an elegant spirit even when it comes to chairlifts, and show-offy little 4 year olds zipping past my adorable and elegant Nana self on little Roadrunners on skateboards.

 Another thing that helped was to be constantly in Help Thanks Wow. Help me get up! Thanks for the sweet young men at both ends of the chairlifts, who fell in love with me because of my courage and joy, and affirmed me in my efforts. Wow, look on the light on the mountains. And look at me, mostly upright. Wow! Thanks.

Courage is fear that has said its prayers

Also, I realized how much skiing is like writing--no one is making you do it, and no one cares if you do it. So YOU have to. You show off, like Woody Allen used to say before I turned on him--that 80% of life is showing up. You do it badly at first, shitty first drafts, but you get better. You make short assignments, and constantly remember that expectations are resentments under construction--you only write as much as you can see through a one-inch picture frame; and on a tough slope that is maybe EVER so slightly above your pay grade, you only go from one side of the bank to the other, slowly, bravely, somehow both ineptly and majestically. Plus, with skiing and writing, you get to ask for a lot of help--and people want and love to help others.

I think my parents accidentally forgot to mention this to me when I was growing up--I grew up believing that you should always be doing things that were too hard, with feelings of metallic isolation; and figure it out by yourself, But again, "figure it out" is a bad slogan, and thankyouthankyouthankyou, the long form of thanks ."

The part that resonates for me is the idea of each of us being an elegant spirit. I also like the idea that we need to remind ourselves daily to act like one. I've been thinking of getting a line of poetry tattooed on my wrist, but maybe just ES would do it. In a elegant spirit kind of font.

I also love the idea that there was information we needed that our parents accidentally forgot to mention to us. My parents were wonderful in so many ways, but dangit, I have had to learn an awful lot on my own. I wonder what my children will still have to learn after I've stopped grousing at (I mean teaching) them. So I concede that it is endless, the learning.

Anne Lamott's book Help, Thanks, Wow is a sweet little book. It's a little small to be as filled with her funky talk as it is; I wanted every morsel to be tight and brilliant and dear with wisdom. But that's my stuff, isn't it, as my therapist would say.

"Snow" by Anne Sexton

Snow

Snow,
blessed snow,
comes out of the sky
like bleached flies.
The ground is no longer naked.
The ground has on its clothes.
The trees poke out of sheets
and each branch wears the sock of God.

There is hope.
There is hope everywhere.
I bite it.
Someone once said:
Don’t bite till you know
if it’s bread or stone.
What I bite is all bread,
rising, yeasty as a cloud.

There is hope.
There is hope everywhere.
Today God gives milk
and I have the pail.

Anne Sexton