bee creative

not just about

Up early this morning, reading Orwell's Roses.  I am almost finished.

It is not just about roses or about George Orwell. 

The chapters read this morning consider beauty. 

That led me to listening to Jane Hirshfield (On Being).

More layers of paper mache on the cat and boat I am making while listening. 

This boat will not be big enough for the cat to fit in, maybe that's another project to come. 

Now I am watching the sun rise high enough to come in through the windows, glad that I can stay home today.

something to do when it's hot

Spent most of yesterday sitting on the front porch stitching and reading Orwell's Roses.  

The brown material (walnut) and blue (fresh indigo) thread I dyed.  The blue and brown was done by someone my mom knows. 

Drank lots of water with lemon and mint.

unseasonable

The weather report said unseasonable highs for this weekend. Yesterday was 82 F, today and tomorrow heading for upper 80's.

At 4:30 AM, with windows and door open to cool the house, I am cooking new potatoes for salad and carrots for a cold soup and dreaming of the strawberry milkshake I made on Friday with a few precious strawberries from the garden.  There might be a few more today.

I will weed for a few hours while it's cooler this morning and then read, set up a few dye experiments, make some solar prints and sew. 

Just finished The Electricity of Every Living Thing by Katherine May and am now reading Orwell's Roses by Rebecca Solnit. 

There will probably be a nap.

things fall down

Widget as the instigator.

And ironic that the book she would choose to paw at would be The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman.

So of course I go back and read again.

 

 

just playing

Morning stitching.

Spring cleaning means the freezer too.

Roasted grapes in olive oil + oatmeal + maple syrup + walnuts.

Practice, practice, practice... 

Something to consider for the day:

"It's so much easier to blame the grownups than to be one."

Ursula K. Le Guin

 

nourishing

Even before the "thread incident" Gibson was my "needy" one.  Widget (since the arrival of the kittens) and Timber are way more independent, just wanting to be close when they are in the mood and occasionally held or on me.

This morning went something like this. First there was the snuggle in while I was reading.  Then there was the need to supervise scone making from my shoulder. Timber arrived shortly after...on the counter where he isn't supposed to be.  Of course my hands are covered in dough. I angled my body so that he couldn't stick his nose in the bowl until I could move him.  Yes, Gibson was still on my shoulder....

And now as I type, Gibson is back insisting that he be on my lap.  Timber right beside us asking for just a little love please.  Widget is hiding somewhere upstairs. 

Still reading essays by Ursula Le Guin.  One of my favorite sentences:  "The whole thing is like a giant cauldron of ever-replenished food you can dive your fork into and come out with whatever you need most to nourish you just then.  But next time it may taste quite different." 

She is referring to the Mahabharata.

I am imagining this.

Yesterday I stirred the walnut vat, it's happily fermenting away on the back porch. 

Today I will heat some of it up and dye a pair of pants I made a couple months ago.

It's 28 F at the moment, almost daylight and it's supposed to be partly sunny today (yesterday was glorious).

After it warms up a bit I'll be out to finish pruning the quince.  Some of the branches will be used for another dye vat.

Will I get pink?

 

 

some thoughts

This morning I finished reading The Overstory.

For me it's the kind of book that is savored slowly. Read a bit and then put down.  And then as always happens at a certain point, a rush of reading until the end. And then that kind of hollow feeling when you don't know what to do next.

It made me cry a little bit (I cry easily when it comes to sad parts in books and movies). And I thought, the stories that feel most true hurt at least a little bit. This is not a book that would be classified as "entertainment."

I started thinking about the ability that exists to create worlds so real that we become a part of them, absorb into them. The connection of language and imagination, how our brains function to make worlds created from words or images become real, at least for a little bit.  The ability to create.

I paused as I read this book a little more than usual.  There are sentences that just need to be sat with for awhile. Like this one, "Civilized yards are all alike.  Every wild yard is wild in its own way."  And another one, "When you cut down a tree, what you make from it should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down." 

Some pauses were more personal. 

What do we feel so passionately about that we will protest a stand taken by someone else, and to what degree? 

Thinking about family history and "family trees."

The simplest description I would give of The Overstory is that it is about whether we are a part of the natural world or whether the natural world provides resources for us to use.

I am wondering, what will someone 50 years from now think reading this book?

 

back to the blues (not the sad kind)

It's still about an hour before sunrise.

Stitching in the dark...

Two more hearts added to the Peace and Plenty blanket.

Imagining them in the dark.

More playing with clay resist and the indigo vat this weekend.

More ideas.

More experiments.

And hopefully a walk down by the bay.

It's been awhile.

Parting at Morning

Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,

And the sun looked over the mountains rim;

And straight was a path of gold for him,

And the need of a world of men for me.

Robert Browning

 

time spent

Not sleeping again, this morning listening to Ezra Klein interview Ruth Ozeki.  There were so many ideas that were intriguing but this especially, Ozeki describes books as being a rhizomatic network, meaning that they talk to each other.  This is something I believe, something I know.  No thinking required.  So many things do this...including the things we make.

A few days ago, the podcast of choice was Jerry Colonna and Krista Tippet, On Being:

There’s this notion of Carl Jung, the psychiatrist — ”I am not what has happened to me; I am what I choose to become.” And the focus of your energy and your vocation is how that manifests in leadership and at work. I think it’s really important that you acknowledge that — that work gives us means to create the safety upon which our lives depend; that it feeds and shelters us and those we love; that work can give meaning, but work can also be a means of our suffering. And in fact, without self-knowledge, work — which most of us struggle with; it’s not like that’s ever complete — that work is a place that we play out and replay what has happened to us…. Krista Tippet

I now have two more books checked out, two on hold, and two more on my wish list.

This is why I never catch up with my reading.

"Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one precious life?" Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

The Gibson Moon, he sleeps just fine.

60 minutes: listening

Sometimes I listen to podcasts while working on a project, like when I am trying to make yarn with coffee filters.

(Not going well, need the cats to take a nap.)

Other times, like this morning, I listen after waking up very early and am just not ready to start doing something.

"On Being" remains a favorite and funnily enough this week's interview was with an author, Oliver Burkeman, who has written about time management.

One of my favorite parts

"Every new, extraordinary thing that a small child does is the end of the time before that time. But it occurs in everything, all through the day and all through one’s work, all through everything, that to do anything is to forgo all sorts of other things. And this isn’t some recipe for making the pain go away, but I experience a sort of amazing drop of my shoulders and all the rest of that whenever I can recall that this is just built in. This is like, how it is."

Another podcast I've found recently and have been really enjoying is "The Ezra Klein Show."  I've listened to several episodes from the archives now and am thinking about much of what I listened to.  One interview was with Richard Powers, author of The Overstory.  I am about half way through the book and am loving it.  A favorite passage,

"It feels good, like a root must feel, when it finds, after centuries, another root to pleach to underground.  There are a hundred thousand species of love, separately invented, each more ingenious than the last, and every one of them keeps making things."

Last week's walk through the park.

Always time well spent.