"Nevertheless...

 she persisted...."

Two years and three months ago, as a new member of the Book Club, I got it into my head that you aren't a legitimate bookbinder unless you can do the coptic stitch.  I watched the same video over and over, after creating my signatures, signature covers, and book cover, and I could. not. get. it.

I slowed the speed down so that a kindergartener should be able to follow.

I watched the seasoned members show off their beautifully bound books.  

And I decided, after a couple of months of frustration, that this stitch would forever be an enigma to me. 

Why waste monthly membership if I was going to be the only one in this worldwide club of members to fail close to the starting line? I asked myself.  

So I did what quitters do.  I quit.

A few months ago, the voice in my head wouldn't shut up.  I was--an am, increasingly--fascinated by folding and stitching and gluing beautiful papers together to make a book.  And I hadn't scratched the surface in the archive of tutorials.  So with resolve, and not even looking at that damned coptic stitch, I rejoined, intent on doing easier structures.

But the voice in my head taunted me and I began to watch coptic stitch videos on You Tube--but only after successfully completing some almost-equally difficult stitched books

I stumbled across a teacher who explained it in a way that made more sense to me.  All I needed was to grasp the logic of it, I thought, and I'd be on my way.

I took out the original pages I'd made two years and three months ago.  The holes were ragged from multiple needle pokes.  But tonight, I refused to stop until I got it all together.  Even though it was doomed to be imperfect, it began to hold together and feel like a real book!

A crooked wonky little book.  A treasure.  I'm happy. 

Stoneflowers

We probably all have a story or two that we've never forgotten.   

Mine is called "Stoneflowers" and it came to me freshman year of college from my creative writing professor,  the late John Igo.  Decades after I shared my version with countless students, I called John Igo to check the accuracy of the tale.  My version bore little resemblance to his!  By then, I'd searched online and found no mention of it. I even searched for my creative writing class notes--and nada! (Some of my college students liked the story so much they created a poetry anthology and named it Stoneflowers,  dedicated to me) 

I still prefer my version: 

A man sets out for the village for a wedding or festival or some sort.  On the way he spots the most beautiful flower he's ever seen.  He wants to pick it to put in a vase in his cottage, but he's already late, so he hurries on.  He'll pick it on the way home.

On the way home, he looks desperately for the flower, and all he sees are stones.  He reckons that the flower has turned into a stone.

What I remember is the professor's interpretation of the story: if we see something we want, and if we delay acting on our desire, it won't be there later.  A stone flower, he said, is a symbol of ephemerality.  When we love something, or someone, or some place, we should act on it because nothing lasts forever.

I've encountered stone flowers on road trips.  If someone else is driving and I don't want to ask the driver to stop so I can take a picture, I resolve to take it later, when I'm driving.  I can't count the number of roads not taken again to capture a photo.  And even if I had, the light would be different.  But most importantly, the scene (or row of trees, or children playing, or clothes dancing on a line) is ephemeral. 

I've encountered them on walks--I see a beautiful leaf on the ground; I'll pick it up on my way back.  

Thomas Wolfe's novel, You Can't Go Home Again, tells the story of a writer who writes about his hometown; when he goes "home," the people are so outraged that he's no longer welcome there.

At the time of first meeting these two stories, I was newly married, living in San Antonio, far from my home state.  The stories dovetailed with my awareness  that this was my new life and that I'd only go "home" to visit.  

Someone once said, "We don't just read books, books read us."  This is true of poems, essays, fiction, even quotations that speak to us one way when we're twelve, another when we're 30, another as we continue to age.  Our perspectives are shaped by lines of writing.  The world gets bigger as we engage with imaginative writing.  And maybe--as I did with Stoneflowers--we reshape a story to describe what we're already experiencing but have not yet put into words. 

Four Weekend Snapshots

1. 

Driving into the Container Store parking lot yesterday, I saw the most remarkable traveling trio.  A man in a wheel chair was riding through the parking lot from  busy San Pedro. 

That, alone, would have been noteworthy.

But he was being led by one dog and followed by the other--no leashes anywhere.  

Once parked, I stopped to talk to him.  A recent amputee named Joe, he was happy to talk about his dogs, Dusty and Doo Dah.  Dusty was a beautiful sleek black dachshund and Doo Dah, with his copper and white coat,  could have been a relative of Luci--except that he had a scary bark on him.  

Luci was attracted to the quiet little Dusty and not particularly interested in the barker who was giving her a noisy what-for.

"He's scared shitless of everybody," Joe said.  "He just barks because he's scared.  It don't mean nothing."

I was curious.  How did they navigate traffic?  How did he keep two dogs so close to him without leashes?

He shrugged.  "They's no other way.  If I want to go someplace they go."  Dusty, his human engaged in conversation, wandered a few feet away to sniff some tires.  But all Joe had to do was say "Come on back here, Dusty" and he came right back. 

2. 

I got home with my new shelves in time for my excellent new handyman to install them.  

He showed me a picture on his phone--a project he did for one of his clients.

After he built her wall of tables, look what she did with it! 

3.

Elena's big catch--from pics sent by her dad of their weekend fishing trip, a girl after her daddy's (and her granddaddy's) heart! 

4.

The Learys at the Cherry Blossom Festival this weekend in D.C. 

Here is Day's accompanying text: 

"It was amaaaazing. There were these teams who flew kites to music and coordination with each other!  It made me cry because there was all this joy all over the entire mall even though there’s shitty politics. No one cared about anything but the wind and the beautiful kites."

I want to go there next year! 

Love-ability

As a teacher, I just-about always found lots of lovable in the students in my classes. Teaching is a profession that attracts all kinds of people, especially mama types like me--especially in public school education.  

On the first day of class, I sat them in a circle and we got to know each other, pretty sure an activity of less appeal to my math and biology colleagues. In that first hour together,  I sat back and soaked them up, taking note of what interested them, memorizing their names, knowing that to proceed we had to stumble upon common bonds to proceed with a semester--or in the case of middle and high school students, an entire year.

Over the course of our time together, there were favorites I still remember.  With a few, intimacies shared in their writing touched me and made them memorable. I loved a lot of kids along the way.

Some called teaching a profession with way more "psychic income" than monetary rewards. For mama types, fair enough at the time.  Whetting students' appetites for words, observing progress in their ability to connect them into sentences and paragraphs was rewarding.  But without partners with larger paychecks, most of us couldn't have survived on our pathetic salaries.  I often mused that the university spent more on a couple of flower beds than on the salaries of freshman comp. teachers.

Years after teaching middle school, I got a Christmas call from a former student, by then in the Navy, stationed somewhere overseas.  "I ain't never had a teacher as good as you," he said--no testament to my teaching of grammar, but when he elaborated on that point, it was clear that he remembered that I laughed at his jokes and cared about him. 

A recent episode of "Unsung Heroes" (NPR) summed up my philosophy about people back then: 

After 9/11, the speaker found that she was terrified of flying for years.  She was suspicious of strangers and terrorism and airplanes. 

One day, she had to fly somewhere.  Even before take-off, she was wringing her hands, her breathing shallow.  When the stranger sitting beside her struck up a conversation, she told him why she was so afraid. That conversation changed her life, she said. 

It was just four words, really, that changed her life: "Most people," he said, "are good."

This man probably has no memory of speaking those words, yet she said it changed her outlook and the way she parented her children.  Now, instead of fearing the terrible, she looks for the good. 

I still want to agree with Anne Frank--that "most people are basically good. But I don't rock-solid believe it anymore.  That half of our voters would elect Donald Trump, not once but twice, has shaken so many foundations that my brain probably looks like rubble in a war zone. 

I won't elaborate, or we'd be here all day.

When I'm trying to feel generous of spirit or wiser than I am, I try to imagine Donald Trump as somebody's first grader.  I try to think of him as somebody's little boy, maybe a trouble maker or a bully but reachable at least. Surely, I tell my former-teacher self, there is something to like about him. I could take him aside during lunch and we could talk about empathy and manners maybe? 

I'm not that wise or generous of spirit.  

Sunday, March 23

Getting old is filled with life lessons. My curriculum includes recognizing and appreciating pain-free moments. I plan my days around them:  

Whatever time I wake up I start my morning ritual: meds, then a lie-down until the pain in my back, legs, and feet subsides enough to walk Luci around the block.  At 11:00, like clockwork, repeat. Phone off.  Six days out of the past seven the pain has been straight-up excruciating. 

I see an excellent chiropractor twice a week and get a massage about once a week. The results are impressive for a few hours. During the breaks in pain I juggle errands and phone calls and book making.  A single hour of cutting, painting, stitching, and sorting is bliss. 

But most of my hours include lying down, watching Handmade Book Club videos and movies and sleeping.  I've watched all 12 episodes of The Pitt, four episodes of the mini series of Adolescence--both outstanding. I've watched The Miracle Club, The Year of the Dog, and Twisters.  And I've folded eight signatures for a book it will take me weeks to finish. 

I know instantly when it's time to stop standing and start reclining with ice packs, meds, and feet up.  The clues are unmistakable--a burning in the feet, heat and pain in the lower back, the whole right leg on fire.

These rituals have taught me to appreciate every moment of creativity, to regard them as vital to my sanity and joy.  Pain is a humbling teacher. 

Trump 101 in the public school

A public school teacher in Idaho made a poster saying, "Everyone is welcome."

Below the words were ten hands with hearts on them.

The teacher was ordered to take it down.  Why?  Each hand was a different skin tone.  How dare she suggest that students of all colors were welcome in her classroom?

At first, the young history teacher obeyed, but she was very unsettled by it and a few days later taped it back on the door.

She has been ordered to take it down by the end of the school year of face disciplinary action, possibly termination, due to her "insubordination." 

Home Again after Ten Days in Georgia and Virginia

It was a perfect  trip--half of it with Day and Carlene in Athens, then the other half with the Learys in Virginia.  

One of the Georgia highlights was a day trip to Madison, we three plus Luci, where we saw one shop in which every window was filled with enormous papers flowers on green covered stalks.  Note to self and Day--make some of those flowers ourselves.

One of the Virginia highlights was that Marcus, Jackson and Deanna drove from Richmond to share the weekend, Marcus on a five day trip to do sports announcing!  Day's dream is a backyard studio and we all spent Sunday afternoon measuring it out with string, 20' x 12'.  

The Leary dog, Tucker,  finding a sunny spot on the kitchen floor on a cold day. 

Day making sour dough bread

Day and Jackson by the trampoline which they are getting rid of.

Marcus measuring with string

Tom practicing a golf swing
with a studio-measuring stake 

Day and Tom in their third decade together, happy as ever! 

Jackson, Deanna, Marcus and Scout 

Before driving me to the airport yesterday, Marcus and I had lunch at Nando's. 

Nana and Day at Presbyterian Village 

My beautiful mama and I in her room. 

Jackson is winding into the last two months of his graduate program and he gets his Masters Degree in April.

Marcus--whose goal is sports-casting--is getting jobs already in his sophomore year at VCU! 

Deanna (Jackson's girlfriend) is awaiting news on her own graduate school admission, and she's working with children with autism. 

"I''ll have what she's having!"

       If you don't know Meg Ryan's most famous scene, where were you in 1989? 

      You can Google it if you like, just search for "diner scene in When Harry Met Sally"--as I just did.  The best spoken line in the scene was delivered by an older woman at the nest table: "I'll have what she's having!"

      When I feel that way, when I most want what another person is having, it's when I see artists at work in their studios, or the products of that work.  

       Growing up in a small town in Georgia, we didn't have art supplies to speak of--maybe a yellow box of Crayolas, Magic Markers, and poster paper for school projects.  No art shows or classes, and no art supply stores, unless you stretch the definition to include the fabric section of McConnell's Dime Store--which, having spent countless hours there as I child, I do.

       Nor did our small town have book or record stores or car dealerships selling suspect "foreign cars." We did have the messiest everything store called Jazzbo's where, if you were lucky, you could find the latest 45 records or a random 59-cent Nancy Drew mystery.  

       I can remember my mama coming home with a bag of fabric and patterns and pins, but I find it unimaginable that she, or any other mama, would come home with non-utilitarian "art supplies."  Mamas didn't buy such frivolous things, and if they had wanted a canvas or a pad of watercolor paper, say, they'd have to get it in Atlanta. 

       In the 70s here in San Antonio, the scrapbook industry set up shops all over town and in the aisles of the big box stores, selling stencils, paints, gel pens, rubber stamps, etc. 

       I made a few scrapbooks, a legitimate frivolity because it led to documenting the family's history,  with flourishes and decorative borders.

       It didn't take long for us to find other applications for all those art supplies.  Scrapbooking, per se, seems to have gone the way of counted cross stitch, but those art supplies stayed around.  

       I was sad to see yesterday that Jo Ann's is filling bankruptcy and closing half its stores.  Luci and I will miss our  field trips there and I'll miss having so many fabric and paints under one roof. With the brutal competition of Amazonians, so many brick and mortar stores have folded. 

       But Jo Ann's? Really?  

       Online shopping provides specialty niches for artists and craftspeople, but I'll miss being greeted by clerks with "Hey, Luci!" --reminiscent of the Cheers theme song--"Sometimes you want to go. where everybody knows your name." 

Sunday, February 9

Yesterday, in a poetry/collage class, we were asked to pick a line at random from a book the class had published.  The line we picked was to be the first line of our timed writing.

This is the line that jumped off the page;

"I hesitate to call myself an artist."  

 I hesitate to call myself an artist. Not only do I have no art degree, but I married a man who had already appropriated that domain for himself. 

 I was 18, new to San Antonio.  He was seven years older with an MFA degree, teaching kids my age at San Antonio College--where I took algebra, English,  creative writing and philosophy.

One day he came home with a stack of colorful artwork from his students, geometric shapes glued onto paper. They blew me away--to borrow a 1967 cliche.

What are those? I asked, curious, intrigued, itching to know more.

"Collages," he said stuffing them into his bag out of view as if he'd been caught red-handed with pornography,

"Collage???" 

I made a mental note to look for books on the subject. As I skimmed through books in the S.A.C. library, I thought, That's what I'd have majored in if I'd known it was a thing.

 "You're a writer," he said.  "Stick to that."

 Throughout our marriage, the lines only got thicker.  Home design and decor were his domain.   "Serious artists"--I came to understand--knew Important Things that I wasn't privy to. They had degrees, credentials, exhibition aspirations.

 Those not in the high society of "real" artists  were Sunday painters, dabblers and dilettantes. 

After decades of staying in my lane, then divorcing and putting a toe in the art world,  I learned that not all artists hold what they know so close to the vest.  My artist friends are generous and share freely what they know. 

 I'm thinking of Joy, Nellie, Lyn, Victoria, and Barbel, all successful artists. They invite novices, like me,  to hop on The Art Train and go for it!

I've learned from them--as well as those who teach collage and book-making online.  The joy of making art is contagious.  

There's plenty  to go around. 

Oh, the Possibilities!

 I dwell in Possibility – (466)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

I dwell in Possibility –

A fairer House than Prose –

More numerous of Windows –

Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –

Impregnable of eye –

And for an everlasting Roof

The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –

For Occupation – This –

The spreading wide my narrow Hands

To gather Paradise –

*******

Today when I was looking at my art supplies, I was reminded of this poem by Emily Dickinson

Oh, how I relate to these words!  

I used to think that I was the odd one, loving to arrange my beautiful art supplies as much as making things with them.  Little bottles of ink, a row of threads for book-binding, gorgeous artisan and handmade papers, colorful stamp pads, an array of pens and brushes--all bespeak Possibilities! 

But no.  I have met many odd souls like me in the past few years. It's its own kind of house with way more windows and doors than we may ever see in actual houses or pictures of houses.  In an actual room, the eye stops at the ceiling, but Imagination is limitless as the sky!