Two YEARS since I posted on this site. If coming back to it isn’t an emergence, I don’t know what is. Not that I have any revelations to share. Coming back is more random than that and more spontaneous. I suddenly feel the need for a place to store images again: The appearance of buds outside my January window. The “irruption” of snowy owls across the US. Ducks swimming underwater. My addiction to that now superfluous space at the start of every sentence. Grace Slick singing in my head after all these years. Bubbles in a glass of prosecco. It all needs a place to go, something small, like a jewelry box. Can one emerge into a small space? Why not. It feels so…what? I almost said cozy. Hate the word. I like small boxes, though miniature secrets waiting to emerge. Ahh, there we are, circularity! Even paper clip boxes, love them. The containing more important than the contained. Yes, that works for me, too.
emergence
Written by elisabeth on January 28th, 2012
Ironing
Written by elisabeth on June 7th, 2009I love to iron. Love the fragrance of laundered cotton, the smooth, polished feel of starched fabric, the hiss of steam from a hot iron. It’s a form of meditation never to be rushed. I always plan plenty of time to iron. Not that I do it often, but when I do I like to take my time.
Ironing soothes my nerves, especially if I’m working my way through white blouses and shirts. The movement from collar to yoke to sleeves, around the panels and hems of a garment, tracing hems and double seems has an almost Buddhist simplicity, a form of circumabulation around a white stupa without even moving my feet.
I iron more in the summer, white blouses, linen dresses and slacks. Wearing light clothing makes me feel lighter inside, no longer weighted down with denim and corduroy. The lightness of summer and iced tea.
I’m sure I learned to iron from my mother, but I always associate it with my grandmother, who, when she came to visit would dive into the huge wrinkled stack mom had accumulated and would transform it into orderly lines of clothing on hangers. She’d start by sprinkling each shirt or dress or pillow case with water and roll it up to be unfurled on the board one at a time for ironing. Magic.
My mother was a nurse and worked the graveyard shift. In the days before polyester, her uniforms, long sleeved shirtwaists, were a thick cotton that became dense, heavy as concrete, in their bath of water and starch. My grandmother ironed these, too. When she was done, the unifoms could practically stand on their own, white and perfect. When mom put one on, late at night, and attached her professional pins and ribbons, inserted her bandage scissors into her right pocket, and placed that winged cap on her head, she was a vision.
Ironing brings both women back to me, but mostly I iron for myself and the peace I find in white cotton, warm under my hands.
The Raw Shark Texts
Written by elisabeth on April 11th, 2009
OK, so I’m not exactly up to date with this book. It came out two years ago, and I didn’t know anything about it until I stumbled on it in the library a couple weeks ago. A new library, at that. One with info signs in Russian as well as English and Spanish. And a blonde librarian with high cheekbones and an accent that made me want to tango.
Resisting the urge to find out anything at all about Stephen Hall, I am confining myself to the delight I experienced reading his book. Reading should be fun, books should make us fall in love with reading all over again, make us feel young of brain, and clever. Check, check, checkcheck. Textured, thoughtful, grown-up fun.
It’s not the characters so much–postmodern, anxious, alienated, and pretty clueless about themselves (Ian, the cat, excepted)–or the situation: loss of memory, quest for self (though I am a bit of a sucker, especialy where language is concerned, the plumbless depths of words, etc.)–I’d have to say it’s the high seas adventure of it. No literal seas, although that could be argued. It’s more of a meme.
And when one feels lost, Hall will throw you a rope and haul you back in the boat. He’ll even paddle around waiting for you to catch up. I like feeling a little lost here and there, unless it’s Paul Auster, in which case I break out in hives and return the book to the library.
“Who Are You Really, And What Were You Before?” With a chapter title like that, you can just sit back and drift for a while before reading the chapter. Words in the shape of a shark, swimming toward you across successive pages, then opening its mouth–scaryfunny. There are so many facets tempting one to natter on and on. I may have to read it again, just to refresh the nattering.
Slow Art
Written by elisabeth on March 1st, 2009
I’m embroidering again. It’s been a while. Last project was a collaboration with Maia: she’d paint some canvas and I’d embroider into it (Easier said than done. ouch ouch ouch), then she’d paint some more, responding to what I’d done. It was fun to mail canvas back and forth to Philadelphia, waiting to see how it all came out. She has posted photos of the end results on facebook, which was gratifying. Also nostalgic. I’d missed seeing my handiwork.
This time, I’m embroidering for myself, hanging on to it. Embroidery is all about time, must be one of the slowest arts there is. It can’t be rushed. Each stitch is a meditation, a being present to the sound and movement of thread through fabric. It is pointillism in slow motion.
I learned to embroider from my grandmother, when I was 9 or thereabouts. I was fascinated by the hoop, the tautness of stretched fabric, the silken color of embroidery floss. She taught me three basic stitches–a running stitch, chain stitch, and French knots. (French knots are the devil.) You don’t really need much more than that.
What you do need is a boatload of patience, and the humility and knowhow to undo clumsy, tangled stitches. Both of my daughters have t-shirts that are fully embroidered, front and back. Mythologies of images, veritable tapestries for each of them. And I still have the jeans I embroidered back in the 70′s. I started in ’68 or ’69, but it took time to complete the dragon, waterfall, trees, hummingbirds and whathaveyou the run up and down the legs. I lost enough weight to fit into them a year or two back, but I don’t see that happening again, so I’m planning a new project.
Actually, it was Marc’s idea. He bought me a silvery gray pashmina shawl and suggested that I embroider it. Not all at once, but over time, like till I’m 80 or so. Of course, I said No Way. My default position is always no. But then I thought about it. What the hell. I’m almost finished with a blue heron in one of the corners, near the fringe. Embroidering is like looking into a tide pool. Life emerges in the looking, reveals its beauty in minute bits of color. I sit in a chair by the window and look up sometimes, savoring the light. My breath deepens, slows. I have no idea what is going on inside my head, but I am very very happy.
