Another Week of Observing

Posted on by Sandy Webster

It is turning colder. I got out my felted blanket from Bridgett in Hobart, Tasmania. Both cats love to curl up on it together.  I have to gently move them over to get under it. Lovely feel and memories of down under. Sadie is always first to be on it.

I have been getting my drawings a day done on time with the haiku. Here are the latest ones that are in my newly made journals.

A magical tool

can cleverly carve the light

on all our edges.

and

More tools are needed

for carving and printing some

white line Christmas cards.

I have about fifteen printed so far. I can do this upstairs on the dining room table. Funny how I thought ALL printmaking must take place in the studio. Times change.

And more drawings a day.

An apple a day

is supposed to do something.

Mine doesn’t want to.

 

The dark chocolates

are said to be good for you.

I am listening.

 

The only plant here

sits in the kitchen window

hoping I notice.

 

Why do we hold on

to the dried up remains of

brittle memories?

When I finish up here I will go back upstairs and work on today’s drawing and print more Christmas cards. Not that many more to go now.

I went over to Andy’s house today just to see how it was doing and tell it that he was not coming back. It was hard seeing shoes he had just stepped out of, his bike all ready for a go around these hills, the table laid out with mats and napkins ready for company coming to have one of his wonderful meals….. I opened the glasses cupboard just to touch a wine glass that for so many years I drank from, even before Andy took the house over from his mother, Barbara.

She and I shared so many white wines in that house. We thought we were having the best of the best (reasonably priced) white wines from Australia. She shared my love for the country and we would buy any bottle that had a kangaroo on the label. Later ones with penguins. Really all it had to say was “Australia” somewhere on the label and we would give it a go. One of our favorites back then was Alice White. Silhouette of a lone kangaroo against a bright background. That was the front. On the back was the sad travails of poor Alice, who was suffering with amnesia and found herself in the company of Nick. Each year was a continuation of their saga. The last label that I remember about Alice was something like this, Nick had been attacked by a giant crocodile and Alice knew how to patch his wounds…..”could I have been a nurse in my previous life?”, she asks herself. Good marketing to say the least. 19 Crimes can market even better and I think their wine is better than Alice White. It certainly cost more if that is any indication.

I think I would like some of my ashes placed near Barbara’s and a bottle of 19 Crimes Sauvignon Block dug in nearby. She didn’t live long enough to try any of those wines and would have loved the adventure.

Anyway a cleaning lady will come and take care of what needs to be done in the house and a yard man will blow the leaves off the driveway. Andy’s lawyer has been in touch and I am to forward expenses that I will handle on to him.  Andy’s love and partner will arrive when she can bear to return to his magical place so full of memories. I might dig that bottle of white in while she is here so Barbara can start without me.

I saw this at the feed store and wonder about cowboys. Recently I bought the series Deadwood just to have some cowboys around. I miss the western movies that are not made any more. A recent series called, Yellowstone, with Kevin Costner has a supporting cast of not so much cowboys as former druggies on horseback. It is simply bad casting. They should have checked out Deadwood if they wanted actors that can look and act the part. But here is what I saw at the feed store and it made me wonder if cowboys are drawn to the Bible if it is an easy read version.

We used to have a church near here…a storefront actually….that was called the Cowboy Church. Lots of black painted plywood ranch hand silhouettes leaning against the outside walls and hitching posts. And on the marquee out front it said, “Rounding Up Souls for Jesus”. There were actually cars in the lot on Sundays. Maybe these were left over bibles from there. A man we knew that came from Europe and rented our apartment when he took classes locally went there once and reported back that all they did was rant and rave against gay people. That was all before the wrenchingly sad tale by Annie Proulx called, Brokeback Mountain. After the cowboys left and took the plywood characters with them, it became another church and then a perpetual flea market of nasty things left in the rain.

Speaking of cowboys our neighbor’s dog came over on Halloween with his costume of a bucking cowboy hanging on for dear life.

Cute. Extra treats for staying still long enough to get this picture.

More later.

This Is A Good News Blog

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Halloween is coming. Today is our fifty-second anniversary. I finished my six-way book. This fun card came yesterday from the one member of the Art Group that stays in touch. Love it. Our doctor came for dinner last night and had some suggestions.

So I left off talking about the pages for the six way book. Then it went together under the supervision of Gian Frontini. Here are the stages.

The two larger books facing opposite directions and I added running stitches to the spines of each to give more texture to match the fore edges.

The top view.

Four smaller books glued to the stabilizing boards on each back of larger books.

Gian shaping the spine edges of the four cover pieces.

And sanding them.

While I picked out cover material and made six clasps and cords.

Gian recessed vellum loops for clasps into the covers.

 

Nice fit.

Bit of fiddling to get the right length of cord to close the book…put in press and done!

Front.

Back.

Here is Gian’s leather book that works the same way.

Gian is much more the traditionalist than I am. He would never hammer the edges of the covers to make the book look and feel more comfortable in the hand. I like doing that. Makes me want to pick a book up and hold it.

So now what to do with my book.  The thought came after an old friend called me after she read my novella, Kind Gestures. At first she thought it was a group of short essays on seven different women and had just read the first part. Then she copied the whole thing off and read the story. She told me to keep writing because she loved it. It reminded her of a favorite book of hers titled, The Road to St. Ives, now out of print. BUT she was so kind to call back a bit later to tell me she found one on Amazon used books and it is on the way to me. Isn’t that kind?  I decided that since I have been wanting to return to Oliver, NC where the fictional account takes place and revisit some of those women, I will use this six way book to write about some of them. Just phrases to get me back to writing, to getting into their heads. And more importantly getting me out of my own head! And I really like that each of them has their own personal diary that latches their thinking in secret places.

So that is how I will use my book. Will I ever make another? Doubtful. Tedious work and especially since it was originally designed for six separate prayers that I would be hard put to come up with, I am satisfied with this one off.

And speaking of writing, the haiku has continued. A friend in Australia told us about haiga, the Japanese practice of writing haiku and doing small related illustrations.  Which is what the six of us are doing with our Drawing A Day and Haiku.

Here is the latest of mine.

How can you claim that

“They are light as a feather,”

when some are grounded?

and

They march across time

and distance only to be

trapped in my journal.

We believe we see

ourselves in most everything

that crosses our path.

The stones are dressed up

waiting to be told where to

push their weight around.

The pens and pencils

wait in the company of

a blank paper pad.

Three restless chickens

wandered off to the sea shore.

They came back impressed.

Cooking starts with a

mirepoix of onions, carrots

and some celery.

 

And yesterday….

 

A book that opens

six ways can inspire me for

several stories.

 

Now I am off to bake more of those Second Best Malted Cookies I Ever Ate and do another drawing….maybe the cookies.

Tomorrow someone from the doctor’s office will call about being a rent-a-friend. Just a couple times a week for a couple of hours would be so helpful right now for both of us.

More later. But thanks Gwen for the encouragement on writing more, and Dick for keeping us smiling.

 

Waiting for Enlightenment

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I took this picture at the dam yesterday. Doesn’t it have the look of something wonderful about to happen?  Well I am still waiting.

There is nothing so wrenching as the sounds of sobbing through a call from thousands of miles away.  And then you struggle so hard not to join in as they tell you that someone you cared deeply about is gone.  After you hang up there is the steady flow of tears that make you think, “I can get this over with if I just keep at it for a bit longer.”

I actually was able to collect a few….and that is not easy to do when you are guessing which part of your face the next one is heading for. I am using a very thin plastic vial with a screw on top. Isn’t that funny to say how to catch tears. I know it sounds a bit nuts but looking at the tiny amount seems a victory of some sort. I have physical proof of a feeling!

Yesterday I did my drawing a day with haiku for our friend, Andy. I used the green earth pigment he had bought in Italy and gave me the last time he was in town.

Our need for brightness

is often beyond what the

sunflower can give.

His partner told me that she was using my small editioned poetry book, Distance Matters, to help her get through these past weeks of caring for Andy. She said she was going to settle on one to always remember. I think this one would be a good one for her and us too.

Inner Navigations

We do not plan

the journey 

of our interiors,

but 

hold steady, go slow

and ride the tide

into harbors

of memory.

S. Webster

 

And I received this message from a friend asking about my wanting to make donuts like I used to have at cider mills in Michigan…..what I tried from her recipe did not taste anything like I wanted them to and she said this,

……..but I got thinking about fond memories….if we were able to revisit, would they be as we remembered them or as we recreated them over the years?….would we be disappointed? Or are they better just left alone ….to remember as we want?

I am leaving those donuts alone. Now the failed ones are in the freezer waiting to be reincarnated as something delicious with poached egg and cheese with bacon. A new memory that may or may not be a good one…..depending on the taste.

And I am keeping Andy in a safe harbor to revisit many times. For now he is helping me fill a vial of evidence that he mattered very much.

Here is a picture I took this morning. I looked at all these variations of earth pigments and remembered how I used to not hesitate to scramble down to places like this and carefully put them in other containers. Evidence again of collecting and having been something that mattered…..in this case, a place.

I should have kept my collecting to these small vials of tears and places. Instead I now am trying to find ways to rid myself of too many things. A simple apothecary cupboard would have been so much better.

And I am learning to unpack my suitcases full of plans that made so much sense a few months ago but now are weighing me down with their expectations. I will let you know how that goes.

Here is a final tip on collecting your tears. Keep two vials, one upstairs where life goes on and the other down stairs where you can completely lose yourself to sadness for just the briefest of time as you try to write about it.

Gotta go, Lee is back overhead so his wandering the yard must have come to a close.

Til later.

 

Lee’s Birthday

Posted on by Sandy Webster

This is a present Lee got from a friend for his birthday…..a growler of very strong local porter. Now he is napping.

We went to the Fall Festival at the Folk School this morning.

We got there before the opening and left an hour or so later. The traffic was horrific when we left.

We saw some old friends there and bought some Christmas presents. Crowds are not our thing and since country music is not something we care for that much, we left before many banjos got unpacked and feet starting stomping.

This morning very early I gave Lee his monthly haircut…..fifty some years of cutting his hair. I love the rhythm of the clippers running over my fingers that set the length of hair. And seeing small tufts of grey drift down to his lap and floor. The fine electric cutters come out to finish off what he calls his werewolf hairs around and in the ears. He then heads for the shower and I sweep up what seems to be less and less each month. And “less” for Lee usually means “more” for me….but not when cutting hair. That has stayed the same for just over fifty-two years.

Our herb and garlic salt mix dried and is now in a jar. We might make more of just rosemary and basil. It is something to do.

I thought of adding more to the list I started the other day but anything new pretty much fits into one of the twelve listed.

Earlier this week my case of wine arrived at the grocery. While putting it in cool places I found two of the original Cabernet Sauvignon. These were the earlier ones before the descendants took offense and a new convict had to take his place.

Very nice flavor and weight to these. They won’t last long.

I keep up with the Drawing a Day with Haiku. Here is the fourth of October.

The abandoned house

is hopelessly tethered to

the sign Jesus Saves.

I had to correct it in the drawing because of too many syllables.  And I am not sure how much Jesus is helping out….just an observation.

Now I am headed back upstairs to check on Lee and do the drawing for today.

I did notice today when seeing old acquaintances that some of them are aging well. I put effort into looking my best. We got some hugs. We smiled a lot. We are glad we went for the first time in years.

I hear Lee creaking the floor boards overhead so til later.