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This early morning walk quickly turned into this!

This week I went to a wine tasting at the new wine shop in town. Unbelievable selections. Now I have even more bottles to find room for here at home.

I caught the moon early one morning. Sometimes it wakes me up to have a look.

Then it pulls up another morning.

I said last week I would post pictures of artworks based on poems. So what I found are three interpretations of the Owning Stones (Stone Stories) poem.

First this tiny book, only 1.75″ by 2″ sits in a bowl with other stones and the interpretations of this particular book form from fellow collaborators. They could make their little books be about whatever they chose. I only made enough blank books for each of us. I chose the inserted slot book where every other double page is slipped into a slit in the fold of the next. No stitching. No glue. You can see some of theirs in the stone bowl.

I love how the rough finish of this book feels in the hand…almost like picking up a stone.

Then the same words with small wood engravings I made of some of my own stones. This is the first of two boxed small editions.

The text of the poem is printed so as to fit into the spine of the folios where the engravings are printed.

I enjoyed figuring where text and images would appear as pages were turned. Then went on to do another small boxed edition smaller in size but using the same wood engravings to print the images. Here those images are fitted individually into slots with corners hidden between the folded pages.

Here is the closed box, followed by the opening.

The ribbon lifts the book out.

The book is a continuous concertina sized to have text printed on the right of every other page and then the engraved print fitted into slots on the facing blank page.

When stretched out and standing upright, you have the sense of placing the stones another time.  With the prints cut to the same size, they are easy to rearrange. And by having the prints separate, I did not have to worry about tossing out the whole book if a print did not turn out well. I loved doing these books several years ago, but my favorite is still the tiny one kept in the bowl with stones and other stories.

Next week I might feature another book that is bound according to the content of the text.

Of course next week the midterm elections will be over here in the US. This morning was a family call…the kind where we check in on each other. I told them of being in the grocery store when a local activist friend asked how I was doing in these difficult times. I said there was not a way to express the sadness, the grief, the hatred, the anger that I carry now. The closest is probably “bereft”. If I were younger, just by ten years, maybe I would not be so sunken into this feeling.

But I am not.  I am eighty-two.  And this is what fellow citizens willfully chose for our last years on this earth. When I was growing up and taking advantage of all the ways I could educate myself, opportunities to learn were everywhere you looked. I thought we are capable of knowing so much more…so much at our finger tips. I thought everyone was on board with knowing. No where did I see how much of their own ignorance needed to be supported by others who harbored the same fear of those who looked different, spoke different, lived different….and no way did I foresee how easily their fears could be manipulated to put the most despicable people into positions of power.

Hopefully the change so desperately needed will begin this next week and hit its full stride come January. Hopefully.

As for me, I will lose myself in drawing, writing and working on all those bottles of wine….one sip at a time.

Til later…

 

More days that start with such energy and possibilities. And then……Life. Age. Interest. Boredom. Anger. Frustration. And the day ends with a body anxious to simply lie down. This is “oldness”.

But sometimes with the sun out showing shadows and new angles on the familiar, things shift. The mind opens to another way of seeing. Here is this morning.

And oh, the company of cats!

And sometimes I just need to look at something that brings back a time when my mind would find solutions to having something stay with me. A memory of how I would hold onto a past that seemed so brimming with laughter and good company. These memories are like a bus ride backwards…then stepping off to look back still holding onto the bus door to keep it open. Open just long enough to watch a bit of the past before taking that first step back up and in where control of where to go next is up to someone else. And wherever we go, I can nod off in a comfortable seat with a smile on my face. Here is one of my favorite tickets for that very long bus ride.

The horrible wine in fish bottles no longer available. Hand too arthritic to manipulate baling wire. But stones still wait for me to move around into new positions of interest.

I saw instructions on how to make these stars and was pretty successful in my attempt. The acorns glued into honeycomb shapes were a reminder to not take on more than old hands can manipulate. These will be new additions to the Christmas trees covered with ornaments made from old books.

After having read what I wrote so far, I think I’ll spend the afternoon writing. And because I talked of stones, I will add my old poem on Owning Stones before I leave.

Stone Stories    S. Webster

I take the stones to own.

There is no thought

given that they are

 removed from

their home, their place.

Once in my hand they

are mine  and other

things I own

will be left behind

to accommodate

the stones’  passage back

to my home, my place.

Here they are arranged

to my liking…

sorted, stacked and circled.

Each offering to be held

 again and again as

 I make them into

my story.

Each bearing

 the marks of memory

from their own.

I wrote that poem several years ago. And did a limited edition of books illustrated with my wood engravings of some favorite stones kept in bowls around the house. Later, I did a tiny 2″ square book using the poem with small watercolors of stones in place around the yard. I should do a blog one day of poems that inspired artworks. Maybe next week. I need to act on my ideas with more urgency nowadays.

Last week at the library I started another story for the Letters book. This time a man finds himself boxing up his deceased mother’s library and finds a letter among the poetry books. The temptation is to go all romantic with this one. But no, that is not in me. Nor was it in the now dead mother. Might continue that one today. Or maybe the Stair Stories No. 2 about those tiny stairs in a dollhouse.

My mind has wandered a bit today. I think I have not stepped back on the bus yet.

Til later….

I was first in line at our local precinct for early voting. In this climate of hateful repressions, it is best to get your vote in as soon as possible.

To escape the mess our country is making of the world, I escape into drawing and writing. The Dancing Rat page is finished along with the poem to go with it.

The Dancing Rat

The Dancing Rat has come to town

  amid the leaves, all falling down.

Kicking up heels as he slides along,

  he waves his arms while singing a song.

Children come running soon as they hear

  to toss him some coins and loudly cheer.

The Dancing Rat collects what he can

  with his trusted tool shaped like a hand.

When all the money is safe in his sack                             

  he gives a low bow, then turns his back.

And travels on further down the road

  toward the Old Pub to lighten his load.

Probably will work on the poem some more to smooth it out, but you get the idea….

Earlier this week when Trump firmly turned his back on Ukraine, I went online to check out a charity called, White Stork. It furnishes first aid packages to soldiers on the front lines. I donated several hoping to save some of the bloodshed inflicted by Russia via the United States and Elon Musk. Our promises mean very little to the world now. Trust will come back slowly, if at all.

When I wake in the morning, I see this first thing on the night stand.

Then glancing up, this, questioning when I will move over to make room and say, “Good Morning.”

There is not much else new this week. Pretty much staying by myself. I need to get back to writing more pieces for the book about Letters. And in between some additional 100 word fiction pieces. The following one is the first in a series that will all be 100 words and have stairs be a main part of the story. I think dollhouse stairs will be next. Did I tell you that 100 word fiction pieces are called, “drabbles”? Isn’t that dumb! Why not simply “100 Word Story”? Anyway, I only brought this one dreamed up over Bloody Marys to life because I loved the three main characters almost as much as the dusty shelf of canned peaches. My lunch companion took all my words and extra characters to write her own version of what happens next. But this was enough of a story for me.

Stair Stories No. 1        S. Webster

The best hatreds take time and nurturing, then only seconds to let go.

A minute passed since George pulled his eyes away from the computer to watch his mother fall. With her arms flailing past the dust-covered shelves of canned peaches, she gasped her last breath. It was followed by the thud of her soft excessive weight landing not five feet from his chair.

Looking up from the twisted body, he saw Aunt Agnes at the top of the stairs.

Peering into the darkness she was saying, “Well now, that was a nasty fall.”

“Shouldn’t we call someone?”

“I already have.”

                                                                                                     the end

 

Well, that’s all I have for this week…and I can hear a sigh of relief coming through the internet. Next week will be better. At least let’s hope so.

Right now I am fighting a sudden urge to cut my hair with manicure scissors, pour a stiff drink before checking in the mirror, and drawing on eyebrows that have disappeared somewhere in the last ten years. Then I remember seeing someone recently who did that and is looking like a character out of a Stephen King story. I am talking about the eyebrows here. Not the odd haircut. And it is hard in an elderly neighborhood to tell who has had a stiff drink.

Obviously time to sign off.

Til later….

 

 

 

 

 

I finally had all the dead ferns and weeds removed from the pots and brought the birch sticks back out. I probably should just keep them there year round. Potted plants have expectations of receiving water at a quicker rate than I seem capable of thinking about it. I thought of buying more of these “birch twigs” from Amazon, but it seems even dead sticks have gone up in price.

No point in looking for dead branches in this neighborhood. Seems that any unsightly-ness is camouflaged, or attempted to be disguised at any rate. Note the latest attempt to cover a port-a-john on my morning walks around the block. I suppose covering the outhouse with plastic flowers is a distraction from all the other construction necessities surrounding it.

It has a bizarre resemblance to a woodsy wedding chapel…or confessional. Anyway, it makes me smile in it’s attempt to hide its function.

Needing some calm in what appears more and more like the fall of the “United” States, I have returned to my sketchbooks. First up is the Concertina Poetry Book. remember, I left off with the frog and his camel. Well now I having a dancing rat come to town. Writing the rhyming verse will be fun to do.

Since this last image I have added the town and the road going in. The pocket hand wrench clutching the rats money bag is interesting to me. Where did that idea come from? The toe sticking out of his shoe indicates that there is not much reward for dancing your way into town. I do get caught up in these drawings that beg for rhyming words and will blame the last audio book of the Harry Potter series. That voice of Jim Dale’s bringing the story by Rowling to life is fun to listen to. I love a story read to me. My mother would read all the classics that were illustrated by N C Wyeth to us…only so many chapters per night as I recall. She would be amused that nowadays I am listening to books on my telephone while getting 8,000 steps in per day.

Now it is way past lunchtime and I need to heat up the latest attempt at soup…a tasty concoction of onion, celery, carrots, black beans, chicken broth. and one bag of Mexican street corn flavored rice. Of course there are spices and herbs tossed in to give it that restaurant flavor that someone may have picked it up as a take out. I have to say that while at the store the other day, I bought a can of Campbells Tomato Soup. I wanted to add milk instead of water and then heat it up to go with a grilled cheese sandwich. I tossed the soup out! There was no tomato taste…but something more like the inside of a can was all I could distinguish. Whatever the flavor was, it was not bad enough to make you think you’d been poisoned, but only could be if you continued.

Better go. Lunch to eat and a poem to write.

Til Later…