Writing Up A Storm

Traveling Companions

"Travelling Companions," Augustus Egg (1816-1863)

I've been holding this painting in the palm of my hand, wanting to write about it, waiting for the right time. And then Jude of Spirit Cloth wrote a post titled "the inevitable" about her realization that a piece of art she has been working on is going to be a lifetime project. Jude said:

"i am on the slow road home. i hope you will join me while i find my way.  i have developed a soft spot for traveling companions."

I thought of the painting above immediately. Jude's words and this painting have taken me down a meandering path, a lifetime path of my own.

The painting shows two women on a train, and because the two ladies are virtually identical, any number of interpretations have surrounded this 1862 painting by Augustus Egg. I think the artist might be saying that we are our own best traveling companion. Certainly, we must start with ourselves upon the journey of our life. Those of us who don't mind being alone know that we can get along fairly well with our own company.

But Jude's words take the next step, for we really do not want to always be alone with our own self.

One of the women on the train is reading a book, and it is in books that many of us find our first traveling companions. I know that I have. I've kept company with Louisa May Alcott and Frances Hodgson Burnett and Emily Dickinson and Willa Cather and Virginia Woolfe for years and years. They've been the most faithful friends to me!

When I am in my darkest hours, these writers are always there, and their words comfort me. Words written by others can be very powerful medicine. I found these words below by chance, and was utterly stunned by the power in them:

"There is a brokenness out of which comes the unbroken, a shatteredness out of which blooms the unshatterable. There is a sorrow beyond grief which leads to joy and a fragility out of whose depths emerges strength. There is a hollow space too vast for words through which we pass with each loss, out of whose darkness we are sanctioned into being. There is a cry deeper than all sound whose serrated edges cut the heart as we break open to the place inside which is unbreakable and whole, while learning to sing."

Rashani Réa

What an unshatterable and powerful beauty lies in these words! And while we can hold onto words like these, still, we need to find friends who will hear both our deep cry and our song. Most of us are very lucky if we can find two or three such friends in our lifetime. I have found mine in both expected and in very unexpected places, the dearest people whom I love with all my heart.

These are the traveling companions who bear witness to our lives. They are the ones who actually hold our hands, the ones who want our hopes and dreams to come true. And sometimes they come in the shape of furry creatures!

So, in thinking about this post, I made a traveling companion for my paper girl. And while I was tearing my little rabbit out of paper, and then arranging the girl and the rabbit for a photo, I thought about the surprising new traveling companions whom I have found in this blogging world, the ones that Jude is talking about.

When I started my blog, barely ten months ago, I had no idea I would find real friends in this world of the cloud.

I've been calling this incredible company of women "the sisterhood of the cloud." I've been so amazed at how many women are blogging about their art, and reaching out to perfect strangers to comment, to encourage, to offer suggestions, to teach, to share.

A silhouette of Louisa May Alcott by Steve Moyle on a notecard

I used to write long hand-written or typed letters. But I rarely write a real letter any more. Maybe that is why I love replying to comments so much, for it is like writing a little mini-letter to each person who has taken the time to drop by and leave a note for me.

Every comment gives me something new to think about, and, as I compose my reply, I will find myself seeing something new, too. And I love finding ways to play upon words, or to take someone's words and mirror them back in a different way.

Note: If you are new to blogs and commenting, I might add here that you are always welcome to reply to someone's comment, too. Just select "Reply" under any comment and leave your own response for the commenter. Or you can reply to my reply, too. Or you can go straight to the larger comment box and leave your own comment. I love how TypePad makes this kind of conversation possible. And I love hearing from you!

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And so, somewhat more than midway upon the journey of my life, I find myself in a dark wood where there is a net and a cloud and a sisterhood that calls to me to come traveling with them. I don't know where I am going or what I am doing, but I feel that same sense of enchantment and adventure that I have always felt in the middle of a dark wood.

I cannot say it better than Jude said it, so I will end with her words again:

"i am on the slow road home. i hope you will join me while i find my way.  i have developed a soft spot for traveling companions."

And now I really really must write a real letter to my two college roommates, for, alas, I am the one who is behind in the real-letter-writing!

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Linnea in Monet's Garden

I recently discovered a wildly lovely blog, The Wild Magnolia, whose musings on paintings, poetry, literature, goddesses, and rabbits, among other things, have captured my own imagination. The Wild Magnolia did a wonderful post here about Monet. Her post is titled "I'm Moving to Giverny, France, to Live in Monet's Home." I thought I might latch onto her coattails and offer you today this wonderful children's book: Linnea in Monet's Garden.

Linnea in Monet's Garden was written by Christina Bjork, illustrated by Lena Anderson, and translated by Joan Sandin. And it is available in a simply wonderful adaptation as a children's video, in both VHS and DVD formats. Plus, Linnea so touched the hearts of children that she is available as a doll as well.

The book is a beautiful blend of fiction and non-fiction, of paintings, drawings, labels, and photographs.

I love how the cover lets you know that the content inside is going to be this mixture of fiction and non-fiction by placing both Linnea and Monet on that bridge, the railing so seamlessly reaching across the photo of Monet into the imaginary world of Linnea.

The cover also hints at another wonderful aspect of this book: it is laid out in a kind of scrapbook format. For example, one page has photos of flowers mixed in with illustrations of Linnea taking photos of flowers. Very cleverly done!

And inside there is a discussion of impressionism, and also a conversation about how a closeup look at Monet's painted lilies shows that the "lilies were nothing but blobs and blotches of paint."  Linnea wants to know how Monet could know that those blobs of paint would look like water lilies from a distance.

The story involves a loving friendship between a little girl and her elderly neighbor. Linnea tells the story, and she begins this way:

    "Just think – I've been in a famous artist's garden! And I've been in Paris! My friend Mr. Bloom was with me. In fact, the whole thing was actually his idea. But maybe I should begin at the beginning."

    "I love flowers (I'm even named after a flower), and I'm interested in everything that grows. That's just the way I am."

    And that's how Mr. Bloom is, too. He's my upstairs neighbor."

I love that: Mr. Bloom! And I love a little girl saying: "That's just the way I am."

Linnea and Mr. Bloom go to France to see Monet's house and garden. You will get to find a hotel in Paris and go on a train to Giverny, buy "a long thin loaf of bread called a baguette," find rows of flower beds, wander around inside Monet's house, find a boat in the lily pond, have a picnic, and learn about Monet's family through photos of them with little labels written underneath.

When Linnea is home again, she sits on her bed with all her mementos of her trip to Monet's garden: postcards, the tickets, a pigeon feather, a nightcap, a hundred meters of pink satin ribbon, a red book of city maps, a doll pencil case, a kaleidoscope.

I think this a treasure of a book. I could not tell if it is currently in print, but there are ten copies in the Austin library, so I feel sure it would be easy to find. The Austin library catalog number is J 759.4 BJ. I don't know if these numbers are universal. Perhaps some kind reader will enlighten me!

This is certainly the perfect season to read this little book. It will make you want to go out into the world and look at all the flowers in bloom. It will make you think about gardening. Or painting. Or moving to Giverny . . .

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Walking Into the World

If my paper girl is to go out into the world, I felt she needed to be outfitted with boots and a backpack and the light of the moon. A shadow intruded, like a cloud, in the lower left-hand corner, something I might think about making happen intentionally sometimes, for I like the effect here. She seems to be lifted above the dangers of dark clouds.

"Outfitters" is such a wonderful word, with all its hints and promises of hiking and canoeing and mountaineering. And this makes me think of a Latin proverb that I found somewhere:

"Solvitur ambulando."
or
"The problem is solved by walking around."

I often find this to be true. I always long for the winter months in Austin so that I may walk in order to think more clearly about one thing or another, but the truth is, it is often just cold enough to make long problem-solving walks a little uncomfortable. I find myself hurrying home instead.

But these first days of spring are calling to me to put my boots on, grab my backpack, and take to the avenues (in lieu of the mountains).

So, to encourage long walks, I gave my paper girl a walking stick, too. This one is modeled after the walking stick my mother-in-law Oleta gave me, a very wonderful gnarled old stick which served for years as a favorite prop during story time. (I must take a photo of it!) 

I love the walking stick in Enchanted April and how it got planted into the earth at the end, and sprouted roots, and grew and grew.  (Enchanted April is a gem of a novel by Elizabeth von Arnim, and a gem of a movie, too. I have read and watched both many times.)

And I'm quite sure there is a little notebook inside that backpack, for my paper girl will want to take notes. Hmmmmm. Little notebook and pencil. Going on my to-do list this very minute.

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The Journey

Instead of spring cleaning, I have been spring dreaming, spring musing, and spring worrying, which is how I pretty much spend my days any time of year, I'm afraid, dreaming, musing, and worrying. And I've been dwelling on the word "journey" and wondering how it fits into my own life now, for I don't really intend upon setting foot outside my door, with suitcase in hand, to go on a journey anymore, and yet, every day I travel so far afield in my thoughts that I am very sleepy by the time the sun goes down.

I've also been reading a wondrous blog called The Hermitage, in which Rima's travels in a caravan in Scotland and the beginnings of her new life in a 16th century cottage have taken me back to my own flower-child days of wandering about in a Volkswagen camper and of leaving that life and starting over again. This all got me to thinking about how do I continue my own journey now? How, some thirty and forty years later, do I go on "the journey" without setting a foot outside?

And, curiously, I lit upon these piano keys.

I suddenly went from thoughts of nomadic lives to piano keys to Dante to windows to a paper-cut girl to Mary Oliver. It happened so quickly, like dominoes falling, one after the other. It took me by surprise.

If you will bear with me, I would like to tell you how it happened.

"Musical keyboard with 3 octaves," Tobias R, 2006, Wikipedia

These past weeks I've been very worried about where I am going with my art, and even more worried about the lack of any art taking place at all. I keep finding myself lost midway in the journey of my life, walking around in circles.

I've been asking myself:  Should I try to illustrate one of my stories on my blog?

And then I started asking: How can I illustrate my day-to-day life on my blog?

This seems like the more all-encompassing question.

And then, for some unknown reason, this black and white illustration of piano keys suddenly came to my mind. And even though I don't play a piano and I don't own a piano, I thought that I could make those keys out of strips of fabric. Black fabric for the black keys, and colored fabrics for the white keys, with the colors insisting on being arranged from infra-red to ultra-violet.

Hence the fabric piano keys above.

And no sooner had I made these keys than the colored fabric strips let me know that they wanted to hang down like long deep-forest vines. And so I let them, and ~ poof! ~ this enchanted forest dangled itself before my eyes. And there I was, brought full circle to Dante's Divine Comedy again:

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

The translation of these words, translator unknown, that I like the best is this: 

"Midway upon the journey of my life
I found myself in a dark wood,
where the right way was lost."

Look here to consider other translations of Dante's first tercet. I didn't see the one above, and I don't remember where I found this version, but I have been circling around these words for years now.

I would say it's been a good twenty-five years since I entered the mid-point of my life's journey. So far, I've been quite lost in this very enchanted and dark wood the whole time, but not really minding it that much. 

Here the piano-key woods began to tangle up, and to dance and prance around a little.

Here a great wind has begun to blow. It's been very windy here today, the kind of wind that howls and prowls and growls around houses at any time of year where I live.

I think it was the wind blowing these fabric strips sideways like this that made me think about windows.

I wondered if I could make a window out of paper, and it seems that I could, although it needs some work on its frame and its sill. It's the little window latch that lets you know it's a window. Something as small as a window latch can give meaning to five otherwise meaningless strips of paper.

And when I had the window in hand (it measures about 12 x 9 inches), I felt as if I had turned a metaphorical corner and could see a path in the woods that I couldn't see before.

Often, when I sit in my boxroom inside the fragile walls of this old house that I live in, I imagine that I am in some faraway forest fastness. The world outside becomes pathless, mountainous, aerial. If I should peek out my window, I feel that I might see the tangled forest of the hundred-years' spell, or the clouds that surround a monastic dwelling perched upon a lonely mountainside.

If I looked outside, I might see another world.

The piano keys became the vines, and the vines became the curtains, and the curtains fit so perfectly upon this window into other worlds. It happened so quickly.

Once I had this larger tableau to work with, the girl below just walked right into the setting, as if it had been created just for her.

She's about 5 and 1/2 inches tall. She comes from thousands of pages of stories that I have written. She's somewhere between nine and twelve years old, and her name is Lolly, Lilka, Ivy, Evangeline, Yulie, Kit, Sukie, Rusalka. This one might be Rusalka, for Rusalka means "wood sprite," and she does seem to have walked right out of the woods.

I like how the camera picked up the shadows of her fingers and toes, for I could not get her to stand still for her picture.

Here she is, grabbing hold of the curtains, and getting ready to plunge into the world between those long floating strips of fabric. I feel as if nothing can stop her.

And this is where I find my own self plunging into "The Journey" by Mary Oliver:

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 your 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 that you could save.

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And my little paper girl is suddenly older than I thought, or maybe ageless. And I, too, seem to be neither old nor young, just a woman on a journey. I don't know what any of this will lead to, but this is what I did instead of cleaning during my spring-cleaning break.

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P.S. It was very strange to be gone from the blogging world for so long. It felt a little lonely, as if I were cut off from the whole world, the way you feel when your electricity is out, and you have to light candles in the dark.

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Spark 7 Old Woman, Old Woman

"Old Woman, Old Woman," illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright

The Real Mother Goose, 1916.

Another nursery rhyme today in lieu of Thursday's children's picture book:

There was an old woman tossed in a basket,
Seventeen times as high as the moon;
But where she was going no mortal could tell,
For under her arm she carried a broom.

"Old woman, old woman, old woman," said I,
"Whither, oh whither, oh whither so high?"
"To sweep the cobwebs from the sky;
And I'll be with you by-and-by."

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Spring Break Progress Report: This is what comes of cleaning ceiling fans, for the next thing you know you are on the roof, and the roof is way too close to the sky. And I will be with you by-and-by!

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Spark 6 The Blue Cup

"The Blue Cup," Joseph de Camp (1858–1923)

Spring Break Progress Report: I am in the kitchen today, holding things up to the light, and looking. I really should start cleaning . . .

And I really do hope to be back with a regular post next week.  I want to write about what it means to go on a journey without stepping one footstep out of your very own house. The kind of journey that takes you into a blue cup and miles and miles beyond . . .

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Spark 5 "O Waken, Waken, Burd Isbel"

"O Waken, Waken, Burd Isbel," 1919, illustrated by Arthur Rackham

This is Child Ballad 53, from The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, which were collected by Francis James Child in the late nineteenth century, and are now called the Child Ballads.

Spring Break Progress Report: All four ceiling fans have been dusted in between much dreaming. But I wonder if I really should get up today if a little man all dressed in red with two little horns comes to summon me like this?? Maybe not. Not quite yet.

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Spark 4 Nancy Dawson

"Nancy Dawson," illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright
The Real Mother Goose, 1916.

I am "sparking" for a couple of weeks, so I will give you a nursery rhyme today, in lieu of a children's picture book.

Nancy Dawson was so fine
She wouldn't get up to serve the swine;
She lies in bed till eight or nine . . .

Spring Break Progress Report: As you can see I have moved from the armchair to the bed, so there's been a significant decrease in the spring-cleaning going on, but a wonderful increase in the spring-dreaming . . .

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Spark 3 Fond Memories

"Fond Memories" by Raimundo Madrazo (1841–1920)

This might be the place to start my spring break, remembering, in my armchair. Here is a poem by Eliza Cook (1818-1889) to go with this painting:

I love it, I love it,
And who shall dare
To chide me for loving
That old armchair?

I'm quite sure this lovely lady is just about to jump up and begin her spring cleaning, which, of course, is exactly what I plan on doing (ahem!) in just a moment, too. I won't be posting or visiting blogs for a week, or two, but I will be sparking from time to time, just to let you know how the spring cleaning is coming along, or if I am camping out in my very own backyard instead, or if, perhaps, I am still sitting in my old armchair, revisiting fond memories . . .

I hope you are spring-breaking, too!!

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Spring Break

Someone once told me the name of these trees but I don't remember now. They flower very early every spring, beautiful pink lotus-like blossoms, and if I am not careful, I will miss this great extravagance.

There are three of these trees along the curb in front of this brick home, and there are only a handful of days when this glory of pink sits among the bare branches. Soon green leaves will mix with pink petals, and then the petals will all fall. They are already falling, as you can see.

But on the years when I am lucky, I will turn down this street rather than another street, and there will be this great burst of pink Spring to greet me!

I find it mind-boggling beyond words that while we are entering spring, the southern hemisphere is entering autumn. I would probably love spring as much as I love autumn if spring did not mean the long hot summer was drawing way too close. But I may have found a way to have both spring and autumn together, by peeking as often as possible into a lovely New Zealand blog:

Songs of Light

Kerri of Songs of Light will entrance you with her exquisite photography, her beautiful bird silhouettes, and all the lovely bits and pieces of poetry that she puts here and there in her posts. And, sometimes, she lets us have a glimpse of the fantastical layers of clothing that she wears out and about in the world. She is a walking poem in her twirly skirts and lacy petticoats and wonderful leggings and boots.

As for all things pink, if you are ever in need of pink, or if you ever need a hug, you should really hurry yourself right over to:

Pom Pom's Ponderings

Pom Pom makes me almost wish I were back in junior high again so I could be in her class. Almost, for I fear all the king's horses and all the king's men could not drag me back to junior high, but if I were to ever find myself there again, I would want Pom Pom for my teacher. The next best thing is to curl up inside her blog as if it were a cozy armchair.

I think I started thinking about Songs of Light when I left the lotus-tree house and headed for home and saw this lovely chair art, for Kerri does wonderful things both photographically and artistically with chairs. And because she loves birds so much, there is definitely a lot of taking off into flight in her blog.

And here is a chair lifting off ~ on a wall.

This little scene above is typical of The Avenues where I live. I love to walk up and down these streets, for I never know what I will find next.

Not far from the chair, a window has appeared with a little bit of the "music of the spheres" sprouting from it. There is something about a window that hangs where a window should not really be that jump-starts my imagination into all kinds of flights of fancy.

I love the unexpected, especially when it makes me laugh.

And then as I was turning home with spring so very much surrounding me, I remembered the sad state of my spring-cleaning. Wasn't it just a very few weeks ago I took a whole week off to do my income tax and spring clean? The terrible truth is that not much has gotten done.

As a matter of fact we have plunged to a new low with regard to housekeeping. If we have a visitor, for example, either myself or my husband will hurry, hurry, throughout the house to make sure that all the ceiling fans are ON, because the terrible grime along the edges of the blades will not show if the blades are whirling. Yes, yes, it's that bad. 

And the venetian blinds! Each and every single one needs to be scrubbed within an inch of its little life. I sit here with a properly bowed head, doing nothing about it.

Oh my! I want to be outside all of a sudden. Kneeling before spring. This little beauty is a volunteer peach tree that took root from the ancient peach tree by our back gate, and just this year for the very first time has bloomed. 

(At least, we think it's a peach tree!)

All of this is to say that there might be more Sparks than posts here for just a little bit, while I bounce back and forth between spring outside and the fan blades inside.

Truly, I'm not one for ever putting Housework before Art, Writing, Reading, Weather, or Seasons, but there comes a time when . . .

Here is one of the first good photos we have ever managed to get of our cat Boo. Normally, he is a streak of black lightning, as he rushes inside to outside, outside to in, and from hiding place to hiding place.

The only reason we were able to capture him for this photo is because a new girl-kitty, a little seven-month-old named Peppers, has just moved into the neighborhood. She has fallen in love with Boo and is trying to make friends with him. She bounces. She cavorts. She beseeches. He is thirteen years old, he is three times as big as she is, and he is terrified of her.

He is sitting at our front door above, petrified, with a tiny glazed-over look in his eyes, trying to decide if it is safe to go outside. But how sweetly he has his front two paws together! Such a kingly pose . . .

Spring love!

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Edited to add: I think I misspoke when I wrote that our volunteer peach tree "took root from the ancient peach tree," for probably new trees come from pits rather than roots, but, alas, my education is sadly lacking in all such things!
xo Kari

Edited to add: The trees in the top photo are magnolias. Thank you to all the readers who dropped in to let me know!

Dia's Story Cloth

Some people come to America by way of war and terrors that most of us cannot imagine. This book is a true story about a girl named Dia who was born in Laos, who fled with her family to Thailand, who spent four years in a refugee camp, who finally came to the United States.

Dia's Story Cloth is not really a children's book, but it is a very powerful picture book story told by the stitched vignettes that Dia's aunt and uncle embroidered into a story cloth. You might want to wait until your children are in middle school to introduce them to Dia's story, and to be there with them to talk about what some peoples on this earth have endured in their journey to freedom.

Dia's Story Cloth: The Hmong People's Journey of Freedom is written by Dia Cha, and stitched by Chue and Nhia Thao Cha. It is published by Lee and Low Books in cooperation with the Denver Museum of Natural History. The following is from the introduction:

"This story cloth shows the journey of my people. We are called Hmong, which means "free people." Our journey begins long ago in China, and continues to Laos and then the refugee camps in Thailand. For over 125,000 Hmong people, the journey ends in the United States."

As you peer into the embroideries, you find all the pieces of this long journey, from its beginnings in the pastoral settings of a rural life, with flowers, ducks, chickens, rivers and ponds and the surround of mountains.

 

The journey is long and complicated and when you peek into one small part, it seems as if you might be able to put your finger on this one step of the journey, and almost be there, just for a moment.

But when you draw back and see the immensity of all of these vignettes, all of these footsteps, this terrible and long journey, it falls into that realm of human experience that makes us all say, "Why?" A million times, "Why?"

It is a question that we must all try to answer, together.

Here is a long line of refugees, and the refugee camps, and the great unknown that awaits these people. Not everyone is allowed to leave these camps, and some families are torn apart here, with some leaving and some staying behind.

There is no poetry, nor any rhyme nor reason, to what the Hmong people have had to endure, but, even so, their journey has been transformed into poetry in this embroidered story cloth.

For art has the power to transform and to redeem.

Here are planes and cars and helicopters, all the trappings of the modern world, waiting to carry the Hmong people to somewhere else. To begin again. And again.

At the back of this incredible book, there is compendium which tells us more about the Hmong people including the pronunciation, which is "Mong."

Included in a deeper look into the history of these people is a collection of their art. I picked out just a few items to show you here, with the descriptions that are underneath each one in the compendium:

"A baby girl's collar with curled 'snail house' motifs in appliqué and embroidery."

"A pocket purse with 'lightning' toward the center, in appliqué and embroidery."

"A boy's jacket with 'hearts' on the sleeves and 'bird's wings' down the front."

"'Rooster combs' (or 'dragon's tails') in reverse appliqué and couching stitch on a contemporary sampler made for sale."

Please note, from the copyright page:

"The story cloth and all objects pictured in the compendium are from the Hmong Collection, Laos and Thailand, Denver Museum of Natural History. The actual story cloth measures 66 inches high and 103 inches wide."

"A portion of the proceeds from this book will benefit the Hmong Women's Education Association of Colorado, Denver, CO."

This particular book will eventually be donated to the Austin Public Library so that many children and their parents and grandparents can learn from its story and its beauty.

This is a book which tells us how important the word "embrace" really is. That there are people living somewhere near us who have come from too far away, whose stories are unfathomable, whose lives are precious. I want to put my arms around Dia and her story cloth. In lieu of that, I have her book in my arms, and I can almost put my fingers on the beautiful and bright embroidery threads that have stitched her people's journey all the way from China to us.

I hope you will embrace and be embraced this weekend in some unexpected and miraculous way!

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Spark 2 Looking in a Cabinet

"Interieur mit geöffneter Vitrine," by Paul Barthel (1862–1933)

The translation is "Interior with an Open Glass Cabinet."  Additional information reads: "Hausfrau bzw. Dienstmädchen sucht nach einer Tischdecke," which (I think) translates to: "Housewife or maid is looking for a Tablecloth."

Maybe she is looking for memories.

I will have to revisit this painting, for I find I want to talk about it, but for today, I will offer it as a silent contemplation only.

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The Embrace

This is an illustration I began about ten years ago, and by "ten years ago," I usually mean any time between 1990 and now. I've decided that my inability to put things in their proper place on a time line is not a memory problem, it's because events in my mind are not organized in sequence, instead they are disorganized in some other way. But I think my memories are still all in tact, they're just waiting to be found when I open the right drawer, peek into the right cookie jar, peer into the right wishing well, lift the right shingle, or leaf, or log.

I found this illustration thumbtacked into a very far corner of my boxroom, half-hidden by a bookcase and a curtain and a stash of cardboard. It has been gathering dust, literally, for about ten years. I blew on it, and waved it around a little, and smoothed it out, and pressed the feet back down.

And I've been thinking about it.

It might be where I want to go. I've been calling it "The Embrace," for lack of another name, and it occurred to me as I write this that there really is no other name so perfect for it.

It's embracing me a little, or perhaps trying to brace me for putting on my boots and heading out into the big wild world, perchance to have a little walk and talk with the wolves, or the owls, or the moon. 

The silhouettes are black art paper, and the dresses are calico prints. I really do love to pair paper and fabric like this, especially when I am trying to illustrate an idea that is originally in words. This one came about when trying to illustrate the greeting between an aunt and a niece who love one another. But it might be a mother and daughter, or a teacher and student.

Which reminds me why I loved teaching the little ones, for I find that educating and embracing go together in the most wonderful way.

In other news, The Great 2010 Austin Snowfall took place this past week, and I have a photo to prove it. And as this photo arrived on site here, I was so surprised to see how it matched "The Embrace" ~ the red dress and green dress and white background so perfectly match the red and green and white of "Snowflakes Among the Nandina Bushes."

Those of you from the colder climes would have laughed at our antics over this tiny little handful of snow. For three hours my husband and I were running back and forth, calling out to each other:

"Come quick! Look! Hurry!"
"Omigosh, it's snowing!"
"It's stopped!"
"It's started again!"
"It's still snowing!"
"It's really really snowing!"

We went walking in it. We went twirling in it. We held up our arms to the snow god. Sometimes the flakes were huge, and we could track them falling from the clouds. And then, by dusk, it was all over. A short and sweet embrace.

And I've been thinking about how quickly an embrace can fulfill a longing. Or erase a separation, a misunderstanding, a lonely heart. How much peace, I wonder, can one embrace leave behind? And just think what the whole world can do by embracing all who are in need . . .

So, okay, I think I'll start with "The Embrace" and see where it takes me.

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