traveling, interlude

 on my way to melbourne

but the plane had already left before i got there

here

 so i had a day to pass in an hotel

with a courtyard

 so after a long sleep,

a late breakfast,

i spent a couple of hours

in the courtyard.

 strange seed pods in the trees

 and this delightful fountain

 all a facade, but i really enjoyed it.

 these are from the book i'm relishing

a different kind of luxury

japanese lessons in simple living and inner abundance

by andy couturier

that jean blogged about.

a fine book.

thanks

to all of you 

who have sent wendy good health wishes

thank you

and the get over the cold 

wishes for me, i appreciate

it seems that the finger, menopause, teaching, the cold

and more rain

have been challenging.

i apologize

i continue to wait to see what happens

in the mill. 

i have val's okra soaking, making mucilage, formation aid,

for papermaking. just not today.

not much

field note: two ruffed grouse, budding

on tooley pond road

eating birch catkins

not much of interest happening here.

 so i have been quiet. 

i drive and look and look and see fields bleached ochre. 

they will race to green quickly, 

so this calm is fine. 

cold enough to sleep with the window shut.

productivity

i am so unproductive as an artist during the school year. sometimes this causes me huge angst, othertimes i shrug and say, that's the way of it. i always am working away on little projects, dye samples, shifu bits, snippets of words and phrases that haunt, books, of course, all of that.  


at school reading crow and weasel is an odd experience, mostly because barry lopez uses a rather formal language, which my students don't much like. but they do like tom pohrt's  illustrations. and they like the idea of vision quest, though most of them are very fearful about such a thing. their ambivalence has been somewhat mitigated by the introduction of my asking them to search for an animal spirit or totem that somehow represents themselves to themselves. they've thought about it, written in their journals about it, and today i gave them their introduction to soapstone, from which each of them will birth their animal. i use the zuni fetish as a sculpture guide, because i have a little collection of them, and because i know when i was a girl how i loved little animals. (and still do)

these are tough but hurt teenagers, not city kids, but nevertheless pretty battered by life and circumstances. and they just took off, touching the stone, drawing sketches, making connections. it is my belief that we sit at the table together as learners, so i am carving as well. i tell them about my way of working, and invite them to do so, but mine is different. i let the stone tell me what it wants to be, and i joke that otherwise all i would ever make is horses! as we move more into this project i will tell them about sourcing this soapstone, harvested from quebec, our neighbor just north. 

when i first harvested local plants for papermaking, i found milkweed everywhere. see the little fibers coming off the stem? they are bits of bast. (you can also see seed fiber) i harvest handfuls everytime i walk in my overgrown meadow. now, after much winter, the bast is field retted, bleached white, almost luminous. i will take home pocket after pocketful and in spring i will make milkweed paper. i must remember when i am anxious about non-productivity, that i am gestating many things, paper, books, and a tiny sculpture. the thinking of young minds, too. and it will, in time, become something meaningful.