wowza

I’m focused today; feeling a bit behind. I have caught up on all of my shipping, this is nothing to sneeze at.

Several of Dustin’s cones have gone home with Debi Nicholson of Beads Of Colour in Ontario; she was inspired to design a piece that hopefully she will finish in time to make the book. Her idea is genius.

photo by Kyle Cassidy

Jean Power continues to show some of her stunning shots from the Kyle shoot on her blog. Despite the fact that she hypothesized that I am part-gnome, I still love her.

Gabriella van Diepen, what a vision you are. It’s overwhelming, going through and laying out all of the photos we have to choose from. What a gorgeous book this is going to be…

Photo by Jean Power

sunshine is what happy is made of

And thank God it’s very, very sunny. What a strange morning. I’ve received a not-quite-nice demand for studio safety information from a pregnant person (good luck, use common sense, and also, kiss my ass) done laundry, shipping, bill-paying, and I’ve received (and in some cases answered) a raft of emails about crazy shizz I do not think about- ships, strings, and sealing waxes… I feel like I am on Dream Jeopardy and Alex Trebec is on vacation and instead the guest host is Michelle Bachmann and the category is Things Unrelated To My Existence, for a payout of zero dollars. WTF, People of Earth?

I fix my mind on the upcoming joy of living in a tree in my yard, where zero dollars go a great way toward happiness, and reading in a hammock is a sensible way to spend an afternoon.

There is a mockingbird chatting me up from a branch in the tangerine, and later there will be a curved-billed thrasher singing his beautiful song from the orange tree or the oleander. Perhaps even later there will be a red cardinal bouncing on the red beach ball; it’s been warm enough that there are lizards emerging and blinking sleepily on walls. Hummingbirds zip, and a few bees rumble around the jasmine, which just started blooming yesterday.

Their company is welcome.

catch up with Jean Power

Jean Power wrote another couple of blog entries on her last trip to Tucson, including our photoshoot with Kyle Cassidy, Gabriella van Diepen, Jeroen Medema and Emma Bull at the base of Sabino Canyon.

Her take on Americans is hilarious.

In this shot, she was photographing the stop-sign, which is admittedly an absurd thing to see on a road in the middle of nowhere in the Wild West.

Happily she got a nice bird on a cactus as well. I can’t quite see what it is, but I think I’d like it to be a cactus wren.

Arizona, Jean Power, cactus, cactus wrens, stop signs, I love you.

glorious

Above, the tail end of one of the two Cooper’s Hawks that flew over the house as the sun was setting. It was another day of soft warmth and amazing beauty.

I rescued a big black bumblebee from the pool; I saw a sleepy lizard that I think the cats woke up. I tucked him into the Creeping Fig on the ground, so he could get his bearings, or just fall asleep again, whatever worked for him.

There still doesn’t seem to be as many people in town as there should be.

I hope people’s shows are busy.

There is so much going on here I can hardly remember it all, much less get it written down. I’m falling behind a bit on my work, and need to be more disciplined tomorrow. It’s hard to stay buckled down with so many friends around…

Jean Power started writing up her last trip here- you can catch up on the entries here- just click “Next Post” to move toward the present.

Framework

I’m beginning to bead in the forged frame for the Digital Cuff. It’s exciting. It’s been a popular piece, which makes me happy. Pix of the frame installed later.

assassins and con men

I have had several laments about the condensation of the blog in the Feed. I regret them. I am not trying to lose connections. I’ll give you my soul, but you have to look me in the eye to get it. It’s not that big a deal to click and let the blog load in background. Anyway, if you only read the Feed, you miss half of what gets posted, you rarely get the truth, and you have a permanent record in your email of every one of my mistakes. Fuck that shit. I’m not doing it. Take it or leave it.

Life rockets on; I fail in many ways to remain current. I am both hyper-aware of what is Going On and also completely out of the loop, because I experience only what I deliberately engineer or accidentally bump into. I have no normal rat-track in which I encounter The Usual, as so many do. I don’t go to a job, I don’t ride a train, I don’t carpool or have a shop or belong to a club. I work in several fields, some of which are staffed with freaks. I am rarely in one place for more than a few weeks. I do not have a predictable course or routine; this is highly unusual. Even my airplane tickets are open-ended; no one really knows when I will arrive or depart; I like it that way. It makes me feel… fantastic. Like James Bond. I can kick you in the head; when threatened my instinct is to fight like a ninja. Which is funny as hell, but also very badass.

I’ve somehow ended up in a bin with assassins, jobbing journalists and con men. Even oil riggers, smoke jumpers and Doctors Without Borders have teams that they travel and work with; I do not.

I like it, but my desire to travel and work alone is not an antisocial impulse. It just clears my head, and puts me into the fortunate position of being able to find the amazing people on this Earth. I am rarely distracted by the kind of agonizingly annoying conversations I hear droning on all mindlessly and nasally all around me, I do not complain that I am bored and I am not afraid to die; I have no fear that I will evaporate. I’m attempting in my own odd way to be a good wife and mother and assemble a body of work before I lose this life; that is all that I am up to. I struggle to communicate, to pare down my sensations, to perceive patterns, to ask the right questions. I have no ambitions; there is nothing I have ever wanted or dreamed of that I do not have. I want to live in a tiny fort made of old wooden windows in my back yard, alone, like a brave and clever child.

While I do tend to miss things (you know, they simply happen and I am not there) I have to say that I have heard so many people say so many discouraging things about the ruts they are stuck in lately that I am ever more grateful to be the type of soul I am, feeling for my own edges, tied to nothing but love and warmth.

miscellany

Some random updates: I couldn’t match up everyone’s schedules for a Beady Day here at my place, so I’ll simply hope to see you here or there in Tucson.

RSS Feed readers: Yep, I went back to Summary Only for the Feed. I often don’t know what I think until I see it in print, and for some reason, previewing a post doesn’t flick the switch in my head that absorbs content, it just puts me in text-edit mode. And I feel silly having my first draft shot all over Creation.

I had a lovely day soaking in the sunshine. I guess I didn’t get a huge amount done, but I had a really wonderful warm and toasty day and at least two stellar ideas. And I must have kissed Miss Fish at least a hundred times. I’m looking forward to seeing Gail and Dave and Debi tonight, and that’s pretty great, especially considering we are dining at Hub downtown, and they make their own ice cream. With bourbon.

Honk if you remember Lenny. Click to enlarge.

sun-soaked

The sun is on my head, and it feels lovely. I can feel it spilling down onto the muscles of my shoulders, gently warming me, opening my spine. It feels like my back porch doors have been thrown open; I could do anything, anything at all. I could sit in the sunshine and bead. I could prepare packages for shipping. I could walk down to the To Bead True Blue Show. I could stare into space, or make beautiful metalwork, or I could work on organizing photos for Jeroen and for the book. I could catch up on my email. I could watch Law & Order with Miss Fish (she’s addicted) or I could take a lovely hot bath. I could drive to the airport and fly to Venice; I could climb into a tree and build a treehouse. (And soon enough I will.)

these are not my beautiful fish; I took the photo at the Govindas buffet on the day that one of my sons took a bite of something, did not like it, and threw it back into the buffet food. God.

I could think about the paradoxes of my life and the way that I love, I could squeeze grapefruit, or run an errand for a friend. I could find my daughter, or call my lover and commune with him. I could focus like a laser on what I hope to engage our collaborators on.

But it’s really very lovely out here, and life is really very short. I’m not sure how much responsibility I really need to take today, especially on the things that are about other people. Instead of dealing with anyone or anything, or getting in a car and driving, I could just take this moment out of time, and let the day wash over me, soft and gentle and warm, and listen to the sounds of airplanes lumbering into town, heavy with glass and Thai silver, the bark of my neighbor’s dog Mocha, watch the way Miss Fish is rolling delightedly in the tiny palo verde leaves in the B40.

The little hummer Hen is still on her nest in the front pine tree, sitting quietly on however many tiny little Anna’s eggs. They probably look like coconut jelly beans. Her tail and beak stick out over the edges of her nest, which she has obviously worked on since I left- previously I could see loose fiber; she’s neatened and tightened it with spiderweb, I think. I leave the old webs in one of the side bedroom windows, just for the hummer ladies to use in their nests.

While she sits and watches the street go by from her cozy perch on top of a pine cone, I’m sitting in the B40, admiring the many Broadbills and Anna’s hummers buzzing up to drink, thinking about everything and nothing at all.

a whole other world

I’ve stepped into another world. This morning, I was sliding on black ice in a pre-dawn parking lot and this afternoon, I soaked in sunshine in the soft dry air of the desert. The city is filled with friends and beads. I showed Gail Moore and Susan Blessinger some of our beadwork, and they loved it, and that made me happy.

I’m hoping to engage each of them in a project- they both really loved the Digital Cuff, so hopefully there will be some exploration of that idea.

Wait until you see the pieces that Gabriella made. She played on the tiny horn motif in the DC and made a couple of matte cuffs that took our breath away. I am still absorbing their beauty and their genius. They are one of the things that we are saving for the book, so we haven’t shown photos of them yet.

I keep thinking what a privilege it is to render these shapes; they are not ours any more than mountains or ridges or stamens or stars are ours, but when they grow under our fingers, and then live as pieces, we feel a sense of birthing, or sculpting. And the sculpting feels more like revealing than coaxing; it’s simply a visual, dimensional expression of some mathematical pattern. The pattern is always there, and we simply choose to reveal it by cloaking it in matter. In this case, the matter itself is astonishing- a woven fabric of tiny tubes of glass, which was once sand.

By the way, did you see Jereon’s great shot of Kyle Cassidy photographing Doriot Lair? The series of shots of her coming down the street with the jumper cables (blue dress) or the big iron pry bar (red dress) are part of a series for Yet Another Project, more to be revealed Later.

Doriot is wearing the Snow Queen crown here, but you can’t really see it.

The only thing left that hurts on me now is an elbow, and maybe a toe or two. My hands feel limber and floaty; I could play piano, I could build a folly, I could open a jar. I wish I knew how much of my creaking immobility was psychosomatic and how much was real. I suspect it of reality, as when it first happened to me (after two years of living in the Monterey area) I had no idea what was going on. I thought I was just getting OLD. Gradually, I lost the use of my hands and simply stopped working.

Moving home to Tucson solved the problem- in a week I was back to normal, feeling like a kid again, working again. I am one of those people who would have been sent to Arizona for their health if I hadn’t already been lucky enough to grow up here.

Miss Fish has stuck to me since I arrived this noon, and we spent a lovely hour napping, with her completely curved into my body, her little paws around my neck. It reminded me  of the sweetness of holding a little child. Bill has been nostalgic for our babies recently, and it’s rubbed off on me.

I find myself staring stupidly at my tall sons, remembering holding them, kissing their soft little heads, dressing them in little fluffy sleepers.

ahhh

I came into a beautiful sunny day in Tucson. The city doesn’t seem so full of people; perhaps they are all on their way.

I’m strangely exhausted, but my body is already busy rebuilding. I can no longer feel the long bones of my arms and my elbows aching; they have once again melted into the oblivion of simply being.

There has been much kissing of Miss Fish, and now I am starting to look for my friends. Japanese food tonight, maybe.