Identity - warning...gory reference from news

Identity in our modern world is a tricky thing. Our financial identity is vulnerable to theft with all the trails we leave behind via social security number and driver's license. And yet it can be so specific with DNA maps and all the scientific/medical indicators. I was aghast at recent news reports of a beautiful model's murder in the pacific northwest that told of her body having been butchered by her murderer removing her hands and teeth so that fingerprints and dental records would not identify her. One report said her ID was made based on her breast implants!

When our moderator/guide/leader, Robyn, posted the prompt for Chapter 2 of this week's The Artist's Way book group, right away I had a mental image of an object illustrative of my identity, but it's so hopelessly vintage/out of date/passe I couldn't even FIND an image on Yahoo Search to share with my written post. I guess it's too far back in time for a jpg file to exist, even in a nostalgic old-timer type website. So I guess I'll have to paint a word picture and still some of you young'uns won't even get it.

Soda pop used to come in bottles, real glass ones instead of those plastic bubbles ranging 16, 20 and 24 ounces and 1 or 2 liters or 12 ounce cans or now those short little squatty versions. There were vending machines for them in hardware and drug stores and outside gas stations and in the laundrymat with glass doors that you could view the bottles lying side by side by side, their tin caps with their product logos pointing at you as you approached. For a child it was fascinating to watch the bottles roll on their perfectly engineered tilt to replace themselves when one was pulled from it's dispenser slot behind the door. Always on the floor next to the vending machine would be 2 stacks of wooden cases - one for empties and one for refilling the machine - with 24 little squares separating the bottles to keep them from clanging together and chipping or breaking as they rode on the trucks that would transport them to all those machines. Usually the uppermost case would be a random mix of cola, diet cola, root beer, red pop, orange pop, creme soda, lemon lime, and maybe grape. That uppermost restock case is the very image of my identity...with its random mix of bottle shapes, colors and flavors.

I am part child, daughter, grand daughter, sister, niece, aunt, grandmother, friend, student, co-worker, team player, fan, performer, woman, wife, mother, writer, quilter, lover, housekeeper, gardener, empty nester, philanthropist, care giver, teacher, builder, citizen, cook, leader, follower, activist, seeker, believer, home body, wanderer and wonderer. 31 flavors - plus! (Oh, if only you could see the big self-righteous smirky grin that puts on my face to say. My ex once actually said I was merely 'vanilla'. How little did HE know!)

My afterthought images representing my identity have been my grandmother's old button box tin full of every color and size and shape buttons I could imagine and I remember just loving to dip my hands in and lift handfuls of them and just let them 'rain' back into the tin and equally randomly colorful and amazing was another tin full of embroidery flosses...neither of which do I have photos of except in my head. : (

I think I'll be playing Carole King's "TAPESTRY" in the studio today...

TA-DA! Tuesday #4

It's Tuesday again and that means TA-DA! Tuesday here in Studio Lakeside - a place to celebrate big and small steps in creative activity and expression in the past week.

Me? I'm pretty dry this week, honestly, unless you count ideas and inspirations being entertained amid and through distractions. I'm really looking forward to celebrating YOU and your progress and accomplishments today.

I have meditated and pondered spent my Monday attempting to rearrange furniture in my studio space and longingly wishing it were already done and I could just sit down and work - have fabrics and threads in hand, manipulating them with my fingers to find the combinations of color and shape that would SING. That in itself was a TA-DA of sorts because I hadn't felt that genuine desire in some time - where I could see colors and patterns rotating on the screen inside my head like colored glass falling kaleidoscopically into images of brilliance almost hypnotically. Like getting my mojo back. It was sobering to see dust thick on my fabric storage units, tools and books as I moved them about and wiped them off with a white terry cloth rag. I uncovered works in progress I'm ashamed to say I forgot and were abandoned for nearly two years. Simple projects with little to be done to have finished them...glad to have found them but debating with myself whether to finish or pursue the new inspirations bubbling up now.

How do you decide when you SHOULD abandon a project or are you so disciplined you keep at it 'til it's done?

A Spring Wallhanging

A Log Cabin Table Topper

A Fall Table Runner

...and a little touch of patriotism.

Cause and Effect

The sun is shining and it will likely be another quite hot day here in the Sierra Foothills but for now the interior of the house still has a chill from the night air and my world is peaceful. Neighbors atop the adjoining hill are doing something noisy and though I don't see them when I sit outside the back slider door sipping my mug of coffee I hear the clang of metal tools I suppose being dropped as they strike the concrete of the driveway that surrounds the front and this side of their house. I can't help thinking without their concrete surround of driveway and parking space how much less noise there'd be and wondering why the city folk who move out to the country feel the need to carpet the outdoors with cement. I wonder sometimes if the propensity for earthquakes in this part of the country hasn't arisen simply because humans have cemented so much of the earth and sealed air holes where the earth just can't breathe anymore and thus builds up gases from inability to exhale and eventually erupts in tremors and shaking in an attempt to simply survive like someone with a pillow being held to their face would struggle to avoid suffocation.

My mind has been taking thought trips pondering all manner of such cause and effect. I've also wondered, for instance, if the seeming abundance of folks suffering disabling pain from fibromyalgia in our generation isn't in part caused by rapid changes in communication and the preponderance of cell phone use and satellite television and radio - if the wireless communication age with constant and consistent transmissions through air waves isn't penetrating bodies of sensitive humans and rattling nerves and cells and causing otherwise inexplicable pain and trauma. And if somehow that were able to be proven to be the case - would we stop using our conveniences to alleviate another's pain? I know that may sound crazy to some but I've thought about and considered X-rays and CAT scan technology and how researchers have been able to stimulate muscle and nerve response in those with paralysis with electrical stimulation. Many attempt to limit exposure to chemicals via diet with organics and so called pure diet and I'm certain that is beneficial, but consider for a moment the harm is that pervasive and simply floating through air we breathe and water and not something we can filter. Or perhaps we've unleashed spirit energy that is assaulting rather than nourishing us. Hmmmmm...

I'm stunned sometimes at the number of people I hear express inability to sleep when sleep ought to come easily just by virtue of the fact they've drained their bodies mental and physical energy for a day. Physically, logically they should naturally slumber peacefully and yet the trigger for restful, restorative unconsciousness won't fire. I, myself, have no trouble with THAT one - in fact find myself often slipping into unwanted 'naps' just by becoming still - as if there were unseen and unfelt IV injections permeating by osmosis or something in certain chair seats I come into contact with. It's aggravating to awaken and find time having thus slipped unproductively away from me.

It's almost impossible to ignore the refreshing feeling when I'm someplace where aromatherapy scents permeate though I have to admit having had thoughts judging their use as being self indulgent and a bit wacky in the past - like a fragrance can alter reality or lift and transorm a mood - yeah, right. Lately though I wonder if it's not genious to attempt to overide ill effects of other molecular and ionic components of the environment thusly. It's on my 'check it out' agenda to research for myself, today.

Over this past week I've been getting news from my family back home in Ohio regarding my mother and alarming changes in her condition that put her first in the hospital and then subsequently over the weekend in a nursing home. It's a tangled mess to try to sort out who needs attention. Mom has pneumonia, COPD, & carbon monoxide poisoning but is somewhere she can and will get care and have needs met but my bi-polar younger sister had just come 'home' to Mom's from a mental health facility having been weaned from poorly serving meds and transferred to some they hope will be in better balance and amid her 'recovery' our two brothers as well as Mom have been communicating to Sis that Mom's detoriation is Sis's 'fault' for stressing Mom's nerves and Sis feels like she's a burden and a drain and like some crap everyone's stepped into and just wants to wipe off their shoes. Sis called last Saturday in tears begging me to come be with her, support her. It breaks my heart and wrenches my soul to hear my little sister cry. She's gotten 'better' through the week but is overwhelmed by the prospect of preparing the house for Mom to come 'home'.

My mom has been a hoarder for years and the house is not negotiable to move through for anyone really, never mind potentially for someone coming back to it on oxygyen and needing a wheelchair for mobility. I'll be going to help get the house ready for Mom to come home and for a bit after she does, I hope and I gave my sister an idea/plan for preparing space for Mom's return - one she resisted at first but then after consideration agreed would be practical. What's shocking is last night she told me when I called to check on her that she'd run it by Mom as my 'plan' and Mom said it sounded like a good one. If I hadn't been sitting I would have fallen to the floor! I had to chuckle - Sis said Mom said we can do whatever she and I think would be an improvement but we can't paint her cabinets. ROFLOL Never let it be said she's got dementia too, I tell you! I couldn't believe she brought THAT one up - it's been YEARS since I once suggested to her that her kitchen could be 'perked up' by painting those cabinets! And I'd never have thought of attempting doing THAT on this trip home - but since she brought it up...

A Sense of Safety

This week officially begins the 12 week journey of a group of bloggers I recently stumbled upon through book "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron. I had bought the book at the beginning of the year when purchasing another creativity guide and read much of it only without actually DOING the work of it. Somehow I'm thinking/hoping group participation will encourage follow through and commitment.

The first week's prompt from group leader, Miss Robyn, asks the question "What object represents a sense of safety to you?" I pondered that after reading her sentimentally moving tale of stars all day long today. Everything that came to mind for most of the day was rejected as truly representative after mulling for a time due to dual associations in my mind of the necessity of reliance or looking to the pondered object to signify safety strongly implying a lack of feeling safe and secure. Finally I hit upon lighthouses with their flashing beam signalling to boaters a clear path through the tides to safe harbor. Those structures housing beacons of light to steer by are a symbol that speaks of safety, but not being a sailor or navigator nor living somewhere coastal it seemed to lack authenticity to claim as my symbol of safety...so I thought some more.

Following Robyn's lead I went back further and further in my life experience to find something that has always said 'safe' to me and finally found in my oldest memories from early childhood, hands. When I was just in kindergarten we walked to and from school everyday (yes, I'm that old) and our school had a 'Safe Hands' program that prominently displayed an upraised hand poster in windows and on doors of homes along the walkers' route signifying to any child passing a place to run to where someone would always be home for help if they were being bullied or feared an approaching stranger or even if one felt lost or sick. I never had to make use of the shelter offered but it was a comfort to know it was available.

I remember feeling safe holding my parents' hands walking through big, crowded stores as a child. And holding my own kids' hands when crossing streets and walking through the BIG CITY in Chicago. The implication of protection of a date's hand at the small of my back entering a theater or restaurant. The anchor of a hand held negotiating slippery wet rocks through a stream while hiking.

When I first met my Dearest Darlin' he held my hand, clutched it actually, as if I were a helium balloon that might float away should he let go. He still holds my hand while driving, on the couch when we watch TV and I trust in my/our safety when I watch his hands on the steering wheel as we travel mountain roads.

When something's done by hand it's understood to be done with greater care and attention, safer - hand washed clothing, a hand washed car, hand painted, hand stamped at the post office. To leave something in someone else's hands is to bestow the greatest of trust and confidence.

I can't think of a thing that more aptly represents a sense of safety to me.