Puzzle Pieces

The best pieces are the ones you don’t expect. Pieces lost, maybe, in the spirit world before birth, or saved by the gods as surprise gifts, meant to be found bit by bit as you go along your way. Maybe you only see them when you’ve grown enough to do so, when you can see how well they fit you.

But you still love the other pieces, they still evoke tenderness and longing in you. They gave you shape, after all, when all you had of “something more” was faith that it must exist.

This is about beauty, and completion (maybe), and feeling whole.

This is about landscape. Maybe:

The scent of eucalyptus and coastal sage, and the way the fog blows in from the ocean to cloak the hills; the way the wind shapes the Monterey cypresses like a giant bonsai master.

But you still love the lushness of the other pieces, the way a mountain is automatically something covered with trees, the way rain drips off branches on old city streets. The way you smell rain coming.

But the pieces are all yours; it’s not about choosing.

Maybe it’s about being brave enough to change the shape of things, when it means losing an already beautiful contour.

And maybe there’s nothing outside of the puzzle—no loss, none of the completion you imagined, nothing other than loving the pieces you love and constantly being brave enough to shift them around. The picture was so pretty, but everything breaks or changes. The moment you think you can see just how it’s supposed to look, another of your pieces turns up, and your landscape rotates with the earth on its axis, and you’re dazzled all over again.

•friend crush•

"Mommy, what's that in your mouth?"
Broccoli.
(Read: chocolate, muenster cheese, or wine.)
I don't like lying to my kid, but I'm not above it. Especially when he's liable to take said mouthful by force, if I admit to it.

My husband recently admitted something along the lines of chocolate/muenster cheese/wine to me, whilst talking about an acquaintance. (I'll call him Paul.) "Paul," quoth my husband. "Who I secretly want to be my friend..." I fairly whooped. A chink in my husband's armor? Could it be... he *likes* someone? I took this and ran. My husband--a real person, as it turns out--has friend-crushes, too! A friend-crush is when you really like someone (in a completely platonic way) but in a waaaaaay beyond-the-playground kinda way: You want to get to know them. Their history. Their favorite movies. Their... hair products.

I've rocked some successful friend-crushes in the past. Estelle, the breezy Brit from Brussels, with her screaming 3-month-old and her lust for liquor. Jen, my classmate from Childbirth Ed., with her unbelievable curls, poise, and verbal smack-downs. The three of us, as it turns out, were fast friends, pioneering a 'mom's night out' for our stroller derby and kvetching about all things sleep deficit.

Friend-crushes. What could be more fun and delightful? My relationship with a certain Co-Blogger started in this very way (in the dairy aisle of the Co-op, no less), and spiraled into random offerings of pumpkin bread and Sunday night writer's group, back-scratching, tea drop-ins, and beyond. We should all be so lucky. Maybe we are.

I raise my glass to "Paul" and to my husband, and to my dear Jen and Estelle, and to the many shockingly beautiful friends I have (and have yet to make). What a wonderful world we live in, if only we choose to pursue it. xox

Tuna Picnic

Annie, relaxing over a nice cuppa.

Cats are not the only critters who like a little tuna juice snicky-snack now and then.

"What? What's wrong with fishy breath kisses?"

•bake, little cheesecake, bake•

When I was in college, I frequented this little cake shop in the southside of Pittsburgh. Called "Grecianland," it was a marvel of various unusual spellings (a round eclair-type thing was called a "kok", and I'm pretty sure there was both a small version and a "big kok"). Almost without exception, the cakes in the expansive cold-case were "yogurt" cakes. Raspberry Yogurt Cake. Orange Yogurt Cake. Tiramisu Yogurt Cake. Chocolate Yogurt Cake. They looked like creamy cheesecakes. They were fancy, with filigree and dips, curls and fruit. One by one, my friends and I tried them all. Blackberry, espresso, mango. Double vanilla.

This was before I could bake. Before I could put together a box of macaroni and cheese without checking the instructions (six times). A nice meal was a can of Progresso French Onion Soup with toast and cheese. The cakes at Grecianland were otherworldly, and I depended on them. It never occurred to me they would cease to be, and it certainly never occurred to me that it would be difficult to find even a trace of their cultured existence, ten years on.

I return to Pittsburgh at least once a year. The yogurt cakes are gone. Baklava and cheesecakes fill today's Grecianland, and I'm not interested. The proper pronunciation of "kok" (coke) is posted. Every once in a while, I troll the internet, plugging in various word combos. Hoping someone's blogged the answer. Not even an online menu from the current restaurant.

So I'm baking an attempt. And drinking, to dull the let-down. 6 minutes to go. xox

Voices

The self portrait class. Will I ever post about anything else? Are you bored yet? Well, I'm not, and this here's my blog! (Well, and Lis's blog too, of course...Lis, are you bored yet?)

I'm kind of joking. But kind of obsessed! These classes are just pushing my thinking buttons so hard. And that's nice. I like a well-engaged thinking button.

ANYWAY. The work for this week (and for life as an artist, no?) is to start thinking about our visual voices. Visual voice. It turns out, I have one. What I can see so far is that, in part, it has kind of a dreamy, Romantic, nature vibe to it. Which, when I think about my jewelry designs, doesn't seem that odd. (It also has a goofy vibe, which also is not surprising.)

One of my classmates is a novelist, and she and I started a casual sort of exchange about how/whether our visual voices line up with our writing voices. I think my voices line up pretty directly in some ways, and inspired by Johanna's self portraits, which often incorporate words, I decided to play with a photo I would have written off, except that it made a perfect backdrop for a prose poem (or lyrical fragment, as I generally prefer to call them) I wrote a while back. I had several people in mind when I wrote this, but mostly, it was for my dad. And now I realize it makes a pretty good note to self as well.

I don't love the technical execution of this photo/writing conglomeration. It still feels more conglomeratory than composed, but partly that's because editing photos on Picnik has some technical limitations (possibly operator-generated technical limitations, but still). Also, I do not love that this experiment resulted in line breaks--there was no getting around it, so I just tried to break the lines in ways that suggest they were not meant to be poetically chosen line breaks. The original piece is very much a block of text, and I much prefer that. Oh well. The goal here wasn't finalized, perfect art, anyway, but rather exploration and discovery. (If you can't read the words, you can click on the photo to enlarge it.)

•i don't knit•

I also don't read. (Amy does both, though, so at least we've got the bases half-covered.) I have knit before, and I suppose it could be argued I read now, since I consume all of your blogs (yes, you!) with vigor and delight. But you know what I mean. I used to read, I used to knit, before




I'm on sabbatical. Hiatus. And there are plenty of other people out there, getting the knitting of the world done. What better time than now, for me to hang back and rest on my cat-hat laurels? (Note: the above brown cat-hat had to be renamed "bat hat," in order for a certain small person to wear it for these snap-shots. Alas, Batman has come into our lives.) xox

p.s. Lest you think I was ever truly industrious, these lovely scarves were created by Rae Gouirand. I only ever managed a few hats, back in my knitting hay day...

•heart•

xox

Blossom

You never know what you'll find or where your finds will lead you. Yesterday, on a walk with a friend, I found an enormous number of these branches, in a huge pile by the curb, ready to be picked up by the town's yard waste removal program. The buds, at that point, were tight, and mostly green, but clearly ready to burst open. Mostly, I was attracted to them because I can never quite resist the thought of recreating interesting branches in silver. But I also thought it would be lovely to put the branches in water and force the blossoms. I wasn't certain it would work, because I've only ever heard of people forcing a small subset of blossomy branches--forsythia, flowering quince--but it seemed logical that all flowering trees would function on the same basic principle. Within hours of getting them home, it was clear they were very pleased with the jar of water I gave them.

I have this negative reaction to the word "force" in this context. It seems somehow cruel. But really, trees and bushes like to be pruned--they grow better for it. And what better to do with the clippings than provide them with what they need to shine? A jar of water, some warmth. It's not much as far as structure goes, but administered at the right time, that's all it takes for a branch to explode with flowers.

* * * * *

I am constantly amazed at how desperately I need to be creating something--writing, jewelry, pottery, photographs, sewn projects, knit projects. It almost doesn't matter, because even when I'm working on something that isn't in one of my primary creative categories, as long as I'm really engaged by the work, it's a sure bet that it will eventually bleed right into working on something that carries more weight for me.

But it's not easy for me to keep that sort of creative momentum going on my own, and that's dangerous, because when I don't keep it going, I become depressed. More than any of the other things I do to combat my depression (and they are multitude), creative activity is the most important, the most consistently reliable. It's no exaggeration to say that an afternoon spent writing or throwing pots has a drug-like effect on me.

Over the last couple of years, I've come to believe that having some sort of creative community is almost imperative for me in order to continue or deepen my creative practices. I never called myself a writer until I had a community of writers with whom to share my work--people to whom I was responsible for getting some writing done, people who considered me a creative peer. Beyond my writing practice itself, having that community transformed me into a writer. If nothing else, I felt the structure of my responsibility to them--when it was my night to workshop, I really felt that positive pressure. That forcing. They wanted blossoms from me, and so I blossomed.

The last couple of months--since the beginning of this year--I've found one external prompt and creative community after another. First, A River of Stones, and the community that went with it, and then the Wading In class and that community. And now I'm starting the next of Vivienne's photography classes, You Are Your Own Muse, and I expect that class and its community to be every bit as wonderful as the last one. One reason I decided to take it is that I love just knowing that there are people with whom I'm responsible for building creative community--people who are both out there doing their own work and also excited to witness the work that I'm doing. It's totally inspiring. It's just the sort of gentle, casual structure I need, apparently, to force myself in the right direction, to be consistently happy; to explode with flowers.

•can't blog it: open season•

OK, here's a good one. Blogger walks into a bar... and runs right into something she can't write about online. Certain People Might Be Reading.

I know, I know-- ridiculous! But it has happened. A thing has happened, and I guess it must be essay-worthy, because I'm certainly not hashing it out here. So! I hereby turn this over to you, dear readers. What have *you* wanted to write about, but been unable to post? Please share. Here at HaMama, you have the floor. Chances are, your Certain People aren't following you around the blogosphere. (small voice) I mean, at least not all the way into the comments of this unpost. xox

•yay or nay?•

Kiwi Rose Champagne Cocktail. With organic kiwi, ginger simple syrup, and Bulgarian rose water. Would you order it? xox