Wishful Thinking

I get to milestones and they don’t register. Or they don’t register correctly. You finished a step in making a quilt! Cool! Yup. Not feeling it. It’s almost worse getting a step done…because then I think, wow, you don’t feel any better, any different. You are still sad, depressed, slogging through the days, taking the next step and the next one, waiting for something to make a difference, to make your heart show up, to make the feelings get out of the sad realm. But they don’t. It’s just the same.

I ironed today.

Every tree needs lightning bolts.

In the long run, it doesn’t really matter that I ironed today. I also helped the boychild with his college apps; we got through the worst of it (well, he still has to write essays and ask for recommendations, so that might be the worst of it, and I have to pay for all of it, which also could be painful). I cleaned a bathroom. I grocery-shopped. I wrote a quilt statement. I did a bunch of stuff that needed doing. I worked out. I added a new bunch of exercises to my regimen, because if I’m going to be an antisocial, lonely old lady, I might as well be a strong, buff, antisocial, lonely old lady who does not have osteoporosis. None of that really mattered. I don’t know what matters.

I found the eyelid, after I had cut another one. That whole pile is pieces that I’ve found after I cut another one, or pieces I had cut out twice, or pieces that were totally the wrong color. I don’t know what to do with them. It seems mean to throw them out simply because I fucked up when I cut them out.

I’ve found that most TV shows right now rub me the wrong way. People are so shitty to each other in relationships that I can’t handle it; it makes me feel sick. So I’m watching X-Files. Mulder is kind of a jerk sometimes, but he’s well-meaning. I can handle shows from the 90s. Great. And Masterpiece Theater Mystery. That’s about it.

I didn’t start ironing until after 9, I think. I don’t know where the day went. It just went.

Once I got it all ironed together, I pulled it off the ironing sheets and rolled it up while I got the background ready to go, ironed it flat and laid it out on the floor.

I laid out the base first…the tree is easier to put down once the main section is ironed flat.

That’s most of it…missing two toenails, a fingernail, some drops of blood, a question mark, some dots over i’s, and a plug. I did get those on too, but didn’t manage a photo of that. You’ll see it again, once it’s stitched down. I’m hoping to do that tomorrow. It’s about 40″ wide x 50″ high. Something like that. She’s not happy, is she. I drew this back in June…before my life fell into a crack in the earth. I guess she knew what was coming. But she’s not crying…

I have to admit to a new emotion that’s showing up in meditation. Why do I have to admit to it? Because it’s scary. Admitting to it will hopefully make it less so. What emotion? Fear. Straight up. I’m scared of my future (or lack thereof), I’m scared of not feeling safe and comfortable…like…almost…ever. I’m just plain scared. I thought I had the future figured out. I knew shit would happen…it always does…but I thought I could handle it. I didn’t know then that everything that made me feel safe would just be gone. Without any input from me, without any chance to have a say or work on things…just gone. And I know that’s what happens when you put trust in other people, which we have to do to be in this world. OK, some people don’t…it’s true…but I don’t want to be one of those people…I’m already a bit of a hermit, and I know I could go further along that road, and I may very well wander down there for a good long time. It’s quiet, there are very few people, and I don’t have to deal with other people’s stupid shit affecting me.

But I don’t like being scared. No one does. We rush around when we’re anxious and scared and we try to control everything so we feel better, safer, and it doesn’t really work. It’s inside us and we have to work on the part inside us that reacts to things; that’s what causes the fear. It’s not the other people, the things…it’s us. So if I see scared in meditation and I feel scared in meditation (and elsewhere), I just have to face it and figure out how to make it feel safer INSIDE me. Because that’s where it lives.

Tonight’s meditation kept talking about my mental state…and I kept thinking, “like California?” A state as in a physical place with a flag and a state flower and state bird and state motto, “In nothing we trust,” and a state tree. A state of mind. A state of being. A state of matter. And then Mr. Meditation started talking about the blue sky, and that’s when I lost it…my state? The theory is that the blue sky is always there. It may be obstructed by clouds, sometimes light and feathery and easy to push through, and sometimes big and black and dark and thick…but if you just push through, you can see the blue sky. I don’t know how thick the layer of big black clouds is, but I can’t see the sky. I know it’s there, though, and that makes me sad…knowing it exists and I can’t see it, I can’t figure out how to get high enough to see the blue. It’s there though.

So yeah, that makes me cry. I’m fucking hopeless some days.

And during the 20 seconds when we’re meant to let the brain just do what it needs to do, and we sit back and observe and “note”…it’s screaming…full on screaming its head off…and I’m crying. That’s not stepping back. That’s not noting. That’s responding. That’s watching the movie and feeling it in your gut, your heart, where your heart used to be but where there’s a giant sucking hole now. That place.

Boychild sent me this link to the DSM-5 reviewed as a dystopian novel. It’s actually fairly amusing, especially when you know you’re experiencing a few of the things in there. I should just think of my life as a fucked-up dystopian novel, write it as a book, and make a couple million (someone’s debut novel just made them that amount…seriously? What am I doing wrong? Oh yeah. I’m not writing a book.).

I realized today that I had meant to ink the Earth Stories quilt, but then I forgot. Or something. My brain not being itself and all. So it’s photographed for the catalog already, but I didn’t ink it. So I was thinking…should I ink or should I not? It doesn’t ship until March or April of next year. I have time. How the fuck did I forget the inking? I don’t know. I wasn’t there. My brain, it wanders off and does things without telling me, and I don’t find out for days or weeks after. I could just leave it alone (the quilt, not my brain…my brain needs me to pay attention to it). Fuck. I don’t know. Does it matter if it’s different than the catalog? It probably won’t be hugely noticeable? I don’t know. I will have to keep thinking about it. Maybe I could think about that instead of all the angst my brain currently dwells upon.

Wishful thinking.

Hard

Today’s blog post is brought to you by R.E.M.

Every time I watch this video, listen to this song, it just kills me. Even if I’m in the best mood in the world, this song makes me cry. For some reason, I’m listening to R.E.M. today. Mood music. Maybe not the best choice…but it’s my choice.

Yeah, I know I’m getting better. It doesn’t feel better really, but I can feel shifting in something. Whatever that something is. That said, today was a throwback. I had an hour or so intermission in the evening with art and food and wine with a good friend, but it was sandwiched by Crying Act I And Crying Acts II and III. I don’t even know why. It’s not like I can pinpoint an event or a thought that warranted all those tears…they just happened.

The art was good, by the way…the new exhibit at Visions Art Museum is recent purchases by Del Thomas, a big collector in the art quilt world, and it is definitely worth seeing. There was a good variety of quilts, some truly beautiful works of art. It’s there through January 19. You can see some of the work on Del’s blog (link above in her name). I enjoyed seeing Charlotte Bird and Cathy Denton’s works about words that start with C as well. The intermission was appreciated.

Mr. Meditation tells me today to step away from the feeling as I identify with it. I step away from some pretty fucking overwhelming sadness and fall into the hole behind me of deep dark weeping. Nice. You could have warned me, man. Seriously. What am I aware of? Did you just ask me that? I’m aware of feeling like shit right now, Mr. Meditation. I’m sure there will be a positive outcome from the meditation in the long run, but today? Not so much. Today it is just sad.

I had goals today…I wanted to get grades done (it’s the end of the Trimester), so I would have the rest of the weekend free. I had to be up at 4:40 AM to take the girlchild somewhere, and when I got home, I went back to sleep. I was going to be all gung ho and go to the gym, but when I realized they weren’t even open, I was much more cavalier about the day. It’s not like I really had to BE anywhere. No one was waiting on me to be done with my stuff and be free. So I went back to sleep and Kitten tried to head butt me awake, but I put the pillow over my head, and then Calli (the dog) was whining, but I didn’t get up until she started farting…because that’s never a good sign.

It took me about 4 hours to get through all the grades, but I did it. Then I finally packed up the two quilts that are going to Poway…which should have been shipped already, but whatever…they’re not late yet.

Dehair, label on one of them, cut a dowel and put in eyescrews, pack it all up, print labels, tape it up. Shipped it before I went to the gym. Then home and showered (the cold-water faucet is stripped…makes showers very exciting at the moment…plumber can’t come until Monday)…and off to VAM. I cried all the way there. Don’t know why. Really don’t. It just happened. I got it under control about 4 times, the last time while walking across the street to go in to the museum. Good thing…I know a lot of people in there.

Babygirl witnessed the grading…

by sitting on the gradebook. It’s either there or she sits behind my neck on the chair, like an overly heavy scarf…with claws. That’s where she is now. It explains the crick in my neck.

When I got home from food and drink, which was a pleasant experience…it was nice…I ironed for a while. I really want this thing stitched down by the end of the weekend.

I don’t know if that’s really possible, but I can try. I don’t have anything else important to do, well, except shopping and lesson planning and dealing with plumbing and pet food and kids and helping the boychild with college apps and probably saving the world if I get around to it. Did I mention housecleaning? No I did not. Someone still owes me a year of housecleaning. This would be a good time to have that. In the above picture, I’m ironing the eye and the face separate from the rest of the body. I actually lost the eyelid. It’s a big piece. Usually I lose small pieces. Who knows where it disappeared to.

Once I had all the pieces ready, I ironed the head onto the body.

This piece is holding together pretty well as a single, large ironed piece, which means I keep having to move it around on the ironing sheets…they’re not big enough for the whole quilt. I finally pulled off the whole body so I could do the top part with the tree and the hair…

Here’s the already-ironed bits (from the back).

They look a bit different. And there it is with the body ironed to the hair and the tree…

With the body hanging off the edge of the ironing board. The roots that belong on the neck are sitting to the left, waiting to be ironed on.

All I have left is everything in the tree…which is about 130 pieces…not too bad, but not getting done tonight. Too tired. I’m almost 5 hours into the ironing. At least a couple of hours to go, if you count ironing down to the background.

It was after the ironing that I hit Crying Part III. That was meditation’s fault. Sigh. Obviously there’s a reason for all of it…I’m just not allowed to know what it is right now, except if you watch this TED video…

TED Talk Ash Beckham

There is no competition for who has it harder. There is just HARD. Coming out of any closet. I guess I’m out of the depression/grief closet. Sort of…because I do close the door again sometimes when I can’t deal any more, keep hiding in the closet. It’s easier to be on here and write about it than to talk about it in person. It’s easier to draw how I feel than to talk about it. I don’t know what that means in the long run, whether it will take me longer to get through the grief than it would someone who shares more than I do in person. I can’t really do anything but what I am doing, though, so it will take as long as it takes…and while it’s taking its time, it will be hard.

Not in Focus

My camera was taking blurry pictures earlier this evening. Seems my fingerprint was smeared across the lens. I feel that way all the time, blurry, not in focus. Trying to stay sharp, keep the important stuff in the front part of my mind (or on my electronic calendars, so I have some chance of remembering). Trying to get a hold on a new life, a new existence? Also fuzzy, unfocused. Can’t grab on to anything. If I’m not already doing it, it’s not getting done. Even as simple as changing up my exercise routine, per my health coach…sheesh…I think I need to write down the routines (type them on my phone, duh)…because it’s just too easy to keep doing the same thing. I don’t have the brain power to be creative at the gym. I’m all used up.

I’ll get there. I guess. I only have 5 more health-coach meetings. That’s OK. I think they’ve served their purpose. I’m trying to pick her brain as much as possible before then, though…types of exercise that are more useful, how many reps, what helps build muscle mass. Fun stuff. Something to focus on besides my lack of focus.

I had my monthly stitching meeting tonight. Nice people. Distracting. Good thing. Needed some. Distraction.

Noticed as I left that they all have uncolored hair…they all are naturally gray/white…unlike my work cohorts, who are all coloring their hair (if they’re old enough to think they need to). I fit in with the first crew…it’s going white and crazy all by itself (my hair, not the crew).

I finally finished this…

Now I have to frame it…it’s a gift. I’ve only taken about 4 years to get it done (started in June 2010…maybe May…so 3 1/2 years). Seriously. It means I’ll have to pick something new for the next meeting. Not a problem. I have no shortage of things in my stash, many already started. It’s more about the process than the product, obviously. I made a ton of mistakes on it, stopped reading the instructions a year ago. Oh well. No one but the designer would know.

I also finally pulled this thing out from under the cat the other night…

It was almost done…I had decided it needed another flower and leaf, so tonight I sewed some of that on. I’ll need to finish sewing on and do the embellishment…then I can sandwich and quilt this one. Probably not a huge priority, that part of it. It’s last year’s Block of the Month from Sue Spargo. I was so close to finishing. Oh well. The world’s not ending soon. I have time.

I managed to only feel sort of like shit on the way to and from the meeting…this has been a difficult drive for the last few months…too many memories. I can’t handle memories of good stuff, because it hurts too much to think about it being gone. There’s nothing replacing it. I’m not forgetful enough to disremember looking forward to the evening of stitching and what came after. I remember and my gut gets torn open. At least I could relax a little during the meeting itself. Forget a little. Much as I ever can.

Thought I would get some useful stuff done when I got home…not. I exercised and meditated (necessary), but my tired brain is telling me to go to bed, so I will do that soon.

Calli this morning…

She really didn’t want me to put her outside. Please mommy. I could just sleep HERE all day.

This is what you do with your leftover spiderweb stuff after Halloween…

Because he needed hair, that’s why. I also did the Can Can with a student. What’s funny is he went along with it. Sometimes I wonder…about them as much as me.

The reason I pulled that wool quilt out is because Babygirl was sleeping on it the other night…

So I gave her the boychild’s baby quilt instead. She seemed OK with that, but that’s what reminded me that I needed to finish the wool quilt. I guess that’s a good reminder.

The wonder of teaching middle school: I always tell the kids, “If the fat old lady can do it, then so can you,” especially when talking about exercise and homework and stuff like that. Today, one of my kids says, “Ms. Nida, who’s the fat old lady?” I answered, “Me.” He said, “You’re not fat.” “But I’m old?” He smiled. Sweet kid. I laughed. I guess I don’t qualify as fat any more. Nice to know (but I’m still old).

Bed time. Still not focused. Walking through fog. Slowly. Quietly.

My Unruly Mind

Brain fuzzy. Forgot, completely, totally, to eat breakfast this morning. Didn’t even cross my mind. Don’t know what I was thinking about instead, but I’m sure it wasn’t good. Remembered at about 10 AM, when I tripped over a step and thought, “Why am I feeling so spacey?” Oh yeah. Food. Hmn. Diabetics need to eat. I do keep food at school (and plenty of other people do as well), but I hate that feeling that I’m so disconnected from my brain sometimes that I forget the stupidest (and most essential) things.

Food wasn’t good today…lunch…yuck. I just didn’t do well until nighttime. I don’t know why. I rarely know why. My unruly mind, as Mr. Meditation calls it. I need to be kind to my unruly mind. Sigh. I just need it to show up, check in once in a while…make me believe that it’s paying attention. Someone should.

Tiring day at school…cardiovascular lab where we exercise (by dancing crazily around the room, if you’re a teacher trying to motivate 7th-graders to actually MOVE) and then determine recovery rate. It’s kind of a fun lab, although frustrating when the kids are being lazy. I always tell them that if the Old Lady (me) can do it 5 times (5 periods), then they can do it once. I turn on music and we dance. No biggie. Exhausting by the end of the day though to manage the lab and the kids AND exercise every 50 minutes.

Boychild had Academic League after school, so I stopped by to hear him answer a bunch of questions about math, dance (!), and other stuff. I’m realizing how soon he will be leaving for college…it’s scary. I wonder if he will ever call or email…he’s not the most social beast. I will miss him.

I did grade a little. Mostly I sat and stared at the computer for about an hour…I was so tired…and I realized I haven’t been reading blogs hardly at all. I don’t know why. Easier to read fiction than reality? I’m not really spending a lot of time just sitting at the computer…except to write this each night. Maybe that’s where the blog-reading time went…from passively reading other people’s stuff to writing my own crap out. Who needs NaNoWriMo? I’ve been doing it since July. I’m averaging about 1200 words a day…that means I’m up to about 135,000 words. Wow. It’s not really a novel, though…just the story of my unruly mind, my wandering intellect, my moody and emotional mental midget, trauma, disrepair, dissolution. Sigh. I wonder when I will not have to think like this any more. I wonder when I will stop having long conversations with my mind about holding it together and not losing it in the car or the gym or the grocery store…when life will seem real again. Fuzz. Fog. Mud.

With a mood like that, I needed to make art…especially after not doing it last night. Three and a half hours in. About 300 pieces ironed together. Still missing a fingernail piece and two toenails…of all things (they’re small…they’re easy to disappear). Either I’ll find them in the last box or I’ll cut new ones…and then weeks from now, I’ll find them somewhere…and be unable to throw them out, because that’s how I roll.

But the cat is done. Hi Kitten…

I managed the torso and upper arms…

Next is the head and the crazy heart tree above it…

Still got 200 pieces to go, but I’m past the halfway mark. I might actually get this ironed down to the background this weekend (grades due…aargh)…stitching down next week maybe? It could happen…like if I don’t look at the calendar and all the stupid meetings and crap I need to go to. OK. Some of it’s not stupid. Some of it is actually social, or at least as social as I get these days…like three people I know really really well who won’t freak out on me. I can do that. Or complete and total strangers that I can tell nothing to. I can do that. I can make art. I can do that.

Fucking slog.

I like this song. I don’t like the video. Or I do. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just too old for it.

And then I watch it again and it reminds me of those old paintings of groups of philosophers and scholars…like this one…

School of Athens by Raphael. OK…is that a weird comparison? Artist brain. I don’t know why they’re linked up there, but they are.

And this video…yeah…totally (except not flowers)…

Tattoos in a New Light

I would do that. Reminds me…followup mammogram number three for this year is coming up. May my breasts survive the experience. When she starts to tear up…I do that a lot…and I don’t even have cancer. But that’s how close everything is to the surface. I’m not sure I could get a tattoo that someone else had drawn. And if I were to do one of my own, I would just keep adding details until it turned into a 70-hour extravaganza. Not sure that’s a good use of time or money. Will think good thoughts though. My followup is unlikely to be a problem…he’s just being overly cautious. Deep breaths. Don’t think about bad stuff. Don’t think about the future (you don’t have one at the moment…it’s just more of the same). Don’t think? That’s harder.

I’m in that fuzzy place…not the good fuzzy, but the blurry fuzzy, the muffled mess that seems like a psychiatric hospital, the crazy ward, the mental ward, the strait-jacket and smells-like-disinfectant ward. Not a good thing. Need a remedy for that.

Holding on…

I’m feeling lost in today’s space. Meditation is focusing on, as he puts it, becoming friendly with our emotions so we can live more peacefully. I think I’m a little TOO friendly with them sometimes, but it doesn’t seem to give me peace. Tuesdays are always difficult for me…stupid anniversaries of painful shit. I tried really hard to modulate emotion today…successful for part of the day, but the end was…the end…and I cried on the way home from school. Tired is part of it, I know. Sleep has not been great with the time change. I wake up way too early so completely tense that even with meditative breathing and pure exhaustion breathing down my neck, there’s no way I’m falling back to sleep. So that doesn’t help. Plus grades are due soon, and that’s additional stress.

I made it to the gym tonight after a meeting at school and then a bunch of paperwork and management stuff I needed to do here. The gym…I wasn’t all in my head…I don’t know where I was. It wasn’t anywhere good. I did read. Then I came home and finished the book and remembered to eat. Didn’t want to eat. Wish I could just get an injection once a day and never deal with food at all.

Before you freak out about two posts in an hour, the Houston one was half-written this morning.

The book I finished was The Fifth Wave by Rick Yancey…

Yeah, more dystopia, with aliens! It was well-written, actually. I enjoyed it. It’s the first book in a series, so there will be more. I’m having a hard time keeping track of all the series I’m reading at the moment.

I should have drawn tonight or ironed fabric, but no, I graded papers. So now I’m sad. Depressed. I can say that word, can’t I? I am depressed…and not the one-day phenomenon when you got an F on your test or when you didn’t get into a show you wanted to get into, but the depressed that goes on for weeks with no end in sight. I know it’s better than it was, but…a friend today asked me about Houston, about whether I enjoyed myself. ENJOY. What does that mean? I think I got through the days there just like I get through the days here, one step at a time. I had a couple good conversations. I had one good night’s sleep. I read a lot. I saw some quilts I liked. It’s probably no different than a day here when I might read, get some sleep, and iron a quilt together. I probably get more of a sense of achievement out of putting the quilt together. But the trip was planned long before all this crap happened…so I can’t really read a lot into the experience, except to think that maybe planning trips for depressed people isn’t so helpful.

Who knows. We probably need to get out of the house occasionally, but who knows if that’s what will tip the boat, toss me into the water of real life again. Doubtful. I think it will just take time, and lots of it. Time to put pieces back together and figure out the huge knotted mess in my head that all used to make sense…what I thought about love and my future and where I’d be in five years. That’s all trash at the moment. Thinking more than 24 hours in the future is dangerous these days.

Not so for Babygirl…she’s trying to clean herself up, get herself ready to sit on my lap again. Little does she know that I’m going to bed early tonight. No really, I am. It will probably backfire on me and I’ll be awake at 3 AM for an hour or so, but at least I will have tried.

I try all the time to be normal in one way or another…not too normal, because that’s not how I roll, but normal for me. Who am I now? I don’t really know. Kathy the artist. That’s all I can hold on to today.

A Slow and Sloppy Process

I didn’t think I would have the energy (mental or physical) to make art tonight, but my post-meditation mood was so dim and dreary that I knew I just had to push through that and do it. It’s the same stubborn streak that had me running cross country with multiple stress fractures in high school. Some people might call it driven, some might call it just plain stupid. I don’t know what it is, but I know I feel better with some art under my belt every night, so I just need to do it…just like I need to exercise, meditate, and apparently eat food (I’m not keen on the last one, but my body seems to require it).

So at 10 PM, I got my butt off the couch, wiped my face…multiple times, because I couldn’t stop crying for a while there post-meditation…and turned on the iron. Part of why I was apprehensive about starting so late is that the next section was hands…fingers…complicated little buggers…

But I decided to iron the arms off to the side and then put them on top of the legs, which worked pretty damn well. An hour later, I had both arms down about halfway up the biceps…

I’m about 200 pieces in, about 2 1/2 hours done. I like how it looks. More tomorrow.

While the pieces are laid out, I have to protect them from a cat lying on them, so I use the bins with sorted pieces to cover up all the other pieces…

Progress. Deep sigh. It really does feel better to do that. I need to write that down somewhere so I can remember. It seems like a duh moment, but some days, I really have a hard time remembering to do the things that make me feel better, push the misery off my shoulders and into the trash. Not that it will stay there, but it’s the thought that counts.

Midnight has been guarding my stuff…

Not really. She threw up on the Wonder Under and she leaves dirt everywhere…need to change her flea meds. I did clean up the light table, though, figuring I won’t be tracing Wonder Under for a while…need to finish these two quilts before the next one is due. Deadlines first, I guess…although there are two or three drawings from the last three months that are clamoring to be quilts. We’ll see…after December, when I get these two done.

I didn’t get much stitching done on the trip to Houston…I was more into reading, I guess.

But I did get some done…the backgrounds for the orange birds and getting the green birds sewn down…now they just need all their parts. I have another post to write about the vendors and shopping at IQF and some other stuff…like the apparent milk shortage in Houston.

Today, I had my students study these…

Sheep hearts (reasons why science teachers need cutting boards, hot water, gloves, and big knives). MMM MMM Good. Not really. Lots of squealing and some stupid behavior. It gets them ready for the eyeballs, which are way more gross and gooey and squirty. Two more labs this week…exhausting, lots of cleaning up after students. They will survive. I might too. Who knows?

I finished a couple of books on the trip…Elizabeth George’s new book Just One Evil Act…

This was a bit weird…it had some issues…but I love me some Elizabeth George, so I enjoyed it. Barbara Havers is such a messed-up character and Lynley is such a good guy (well, he can be a mess too, honestly)…definitely worth reading.

And then I read Michael Scott’s 4th book in the series about Nicholas Flamel, The Necromancer…

still loving this series. I need to wait a while to read the next one, though, because two more real live books (as opposed to the electronic ones) just showed up at the library, and they’ll be due in a few weeks. Plus one is for a book club (yes, I’m trying to do that again…we’ll see if I survive)…so I’ll have to finish it sooner rather than later.

I also finally finished this book, Broken Open, by Elizabeth Lesser, which made me cry every time I read it (hence the length of time it took me to finish it)…

Every time I read it, tears. Not sure why. There didn’t seem to be any one thing that did it, and sometimes I just found her incredibly irritating, plus I’m not really a God person and he kept showing up there. It was recommended by a friend who had read it and benefited from it. She wasn’t wrong.

I have quotes from the book…”For a while I just went off the edge of the world.”

“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kiss the ground.” Rumi (this is my excuse for making art every day and blowing off the grading…I shouldn’t say that…I graded for an hour and a half tonight, so I’m not blowing off ANYTHING. But making more time for art is never a bad thing.)

“Our culture favors the fast-food model of mourning–get over it quick and get back to work; affix the bandage of ‘closure’ and move on. I am not a big fan of ‘closure.’ It sounds so abrupt, so tidy, so final. I prefer old-fashioned words like mourning, lamentation, and grief. They suggest a slow and sloppy process–one that involves emotional upheaval, interrupted activity, and dark nights of the soul.” I don’t have closure. Apparently closure should have taken me a whopping 51 minutes or so…well fuck that shit. I don’t even know that closure makes sense…I think our emotional existence is a constantly changing landscape and you don’t get to close off one part of it and lock it away, and if people are doing that, I don’t actually think that’s healthy. We need to process through it, wade through the shit and mud and have it cling to your shoes and clothes for a while until you can get it all cleaned off, and even then, it will rise up and slap you around every once in a while. It’s possible that my existence is somewhat messy in general, though…so I’ve had to learn to deal with that. Where do the drawings come from? Well…there…not locked up…but vomiting all over the paper. I wanted to draw tonight, but didn’t have time, speaking of vomiting over the paper.

“Our tears, and the calm hands of grief that follow, are not signs of some tragic and evil reality…Grief is the proof of our love, a demonstration of how deeply we have allowed another to touch us.” I’ve said this before, that my grief is a sign of how deeply I was committed…and I shouldn’t feel like that was wrong…I should keep my eyes on working through the shit, but I’m not wrong for the level of grief I’m experiencing…it’s related to the level of emotion I hold (held?) inside me. There’s nothing wrong with that. Without that depth of emotion, I probably wouldn’t be the artist that I am.

“Grief is often confused with depression or self-pity. While one can certainly go into a woeful tailspin during the grieving process, in the long term, grief is not the same as depression. If we gloss over our grief, we might become depressed. Unfelt feelings and unexpressed grief have a way of dulling life. It is as if with every grief we do not feel, we stuff another handful of our vitality underground, until we are numb or sick or embittered.” Yeah. That. I might feel dulled at the moment, but I’m really not…I’m feeling all of it.

For some reason, when I’m going through piles of emotional shit, I save quotes. I have notes on the phone and the iPad of quotes from books I’ve been reading. I have quotes taped to my office door from the post-divorce reading frenzy. They seem to help me focus. I don’t know why.

Toenail revisited: I managed to half rip my big toenail off on Friday night…it wouldn’t come all the way off though (yes, I tried), so I had to bandage it back down and let the ooze and blood restick the nail to my toe…goddamn, I wish it would just fall off. Sigh. What a pain. Sometimes I dream of a cleaver and my toe. Not good.

The most useful and exciting thing I’ve done in the last week? I managed to successfully pair my old bluetooth earpiece and the new phone. This was not as easy as you would think it would be, and required many bizarre maneuvers and clicking on and off in a particular order. But I was successful! I know. Simple pleasures. It took me a long time to get it done.

So. Mood all over the map today. Whatever. At least I was aware of all its wanderings…and I managed them. There’s nothing wrong with crying. It’s all getting me somewhere…Montana? Not happy yet. Mr. Meditation wants me to be happy. Content. Double sigh. I think Mr. Meditation has a simpler life than I do.

Make art. Save lives.

Deep Breaths

I don’t even know if I can put a coherent post together tonight. Long conversation helped my mind settle…realizing that when I make art, whether it’s the drawing, tracing, cutting, ironing, or sewing, that one of the reasons I feel peace then is that I am in the moment right then…I’m not worried about the future or diving into the past and hurt and regrets…I am just right there, right then…and that is the closest to normal (Kathy normal, not your normal) that I have been in months.

So it makes sense that I should do more of it, right?

Things I took away from the quilt festival today:

Quilters help well. They like to gather forces together and fix things that need it. Case in Point: Libby Lehman suffered a stroke some months ago and paying for her treatment has been an issue. You can read updates here on her Caring Bridge Libby Lehman site. I like to think of most quilters as people who share information (and fabric and thread), but they do also seem to take care…whether it’s taking care of their own, or homeless animals, or what’s for dinner.

The Japanese: does the Japanese countryside look like that? I’ll have to post that picture later…but much of their work seems so Americanized that it makes me wonder what Japan is really like. I think I will have to go back there some day (last time I was there was when I was 9 months old…don’t remember much).

I apparently have a crazy brain, but not in a bad way (more than one person told me this after either hearing me talk or seeing my quilts). I do not consider this a problem. I tried to have mom record my little talk, but technology beat her and we have no video. We should have practiced more. Apparently the app is not intuitive. Enough.

Waiting at the end of every aisle. Mom is like an errant bug, illogically traveling based on some unseen pheromones that drag her here and there. I stand in one place, waiting for her, and people keep wanting me to move around and get out of their way. I am like a post, an immovable column. I lose her multiple times. She is not following directions.

My view of Houston from the gym…

My view of the Convention Center from the gym…

My view of life from the gym? Cannot contain in photo.

Fabric…the only thing I bought…or was gonna buy, until mom jumped in…

All hand dyed stuff by Frieda Anderson and Laura Wasilowski.
The iron set up by the window (for the view)…

And messing with sewing on the floor (a logical place to sew, if you ask me)…

Writing this post…

Home tomorrow. Hope to bring back some of the wisdom and peace that came from tonight’s conversation, but know my brain will do what it does…even when I try to remind it what’s best, it does not always listen. But I will get there eventually. Deep breaths.

Tensity Tense Tense

The Dad taxi is picking me up in 5 hours and 20 minutes. I really should be in bed…but it’s so freakin’ early (for me) that I don’t think I can fall asleep. So I’m meditating first and then writing quickly, because it helps me leave the day and all its stupid-ass emotions behind, in here, on the screen (apparently out in the world, but I usually forget about that part). Mr. Meditation keeps talking about letting the emotions go, but I must absolutely suck at that. They’re all still here, dammit. He also says I will become more aware of others’ emotions…holy crap! I don’t need MORE of that. I’m already way too in tune with that, probably more than the person actually having the feeling, which is thoroughly annoying.

Anyway. I’m tense. Tensity tense tense. Hate traveling. I have books, food, sketchbook…I spent about an hour this afternoon trying to organize the last three months’ worth of Sue Spargo’s crazy birds, because it was all just a giant mess…I hadn’t been keeping up (shockingly) and I needed to get it under control because I find it really relaxing to stitch on the plane…plus the high-school soccer season is coming up, and I can’t grade at night in the stands (but apparently I can embroider…don’t question it). So I prepped the last three months and organized all the patterns and embellishing threads and found all the wool bits and pieces and cut out about 50 1/4″ circles of wool (with a hole punch…I’m not totally insane…just mostly so). I’m ready! OK, I’m so not ready. But I have stitching!

Once that was done and I’d ferried the girlchild here, there, and everywhere…ferrying her these days means I sit in the passenger seat and try not to squeal too loudly when she brakes later than I think she should…she doesn’t have her license YET…and pulled the dinner out of the crockpot (rejected by boychild for containing THIGHS, which reminds me of the THIGH GAP, which holy crap! I did not even know existed until today and am now thoroughly horrified, yet again, by the world I live in)…I had a choice…I could grade papers (thumbs down) or cut out the last bits of the Love quilt (thumbs up). So I did that and finally finished, after almost 6 hours. Started September 19, then blew it off until October 17…then finished up this week. Then I spent 20 minutes sorting them…

(there are only 505 of them…this one is kind of an easy quilt for me), so when I get back from Houston, I can start ironing them together. Three and a half weeks to Thanksgiving Break, and I would like this at least ready for stitching down, if not ready for quilting. I can hope. Let’s not think about grades being due or the end of the trimester or any of that other silly work stuff that just bogs me down. Or the boychild’s soccer tournament, which might mean driving to the OC at 5 AM later this month. Shoot me now.

Yesterday I was trying to clean out my photo files, sort at least the month of October into the appropriate files for various quilts, kid stuff, etc…but got completely bogged down and sideswiped by October pictures from LAST year that still weren’t handled. Fucking balls. I can’t even handle photos. So many things to avoid or to tread carefully around…because I’m so damn in tune with my freakin’ emotions, I guess. But I can’t let them go.

Anyway. I tried. I will try again later…looking only for the 2013 photos maybe. Perhaps in 2020 I will be able to handle previous years or months. Fragility sucks.

Finally, after a million years of dealing with an ancient beast, we got new teacher computers at school…

It’s so pretty. But we can’t use it yet, because it doesn’t work with our daily broadcast. Of course. Oh well. I’ve never trusted my school computer enough to store stuff on it anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.

Stupid tenseness. Is tensity a word? TENSION. Duh. Brain is completely melting down at this point. Might have something to do with the purring clawbeast on my lap. Or the lateness of the hour. Or the TENSION.

Deep breaths (all day it’s been deep breaths). Girlchild was almost having a nervous breakdown. Someone thought it would be a good idea for her to be Treasurer of Key Club and organization is not her strong point, but I think we got it under control…and then Girl. Teen. Drama. Yikes. Major shit going down. I may have to call someone’s mother. I leave all that in the trusty hands of my exhusband (who looked terrified as I explained the situation). I’m sure he will handle things just fine…plus she might text me 700 times. Oh well. It’s nice to know I’m needed.

Emotional life is pushed out of the way by stress, tense belly, gut. I hear it…yelling in the distance…but it will stay away. It knows I’m on the edge and need a break. I’m hoping to maybe even enjoy the quilt show. What a concept. Enjoyment. Walking around and looking at quilts and fabric and not having to be at school on Halloween or the day after, when the average blood sugar level of a middle-school student hits dangerous levels. I’m OK with not being there. Although I’m a little antsy about starting the ironing on this quilt. I think it’s going to look good…but it will make me sad too. Sigh. What’s new.

OK. Wish me luck. Short sleep. Planes. People. Not my strong points.

Something the Darkness Couldn’t Take

Hi. Do you see me? I’m that person crawling into a hole. Do you see me? I’m crawling into the hole and pulling all the dirt in after me? Can you see me? I’m crawling and pulling it after me.

I’ve been hearing this in my head all evening. I don’t know why. It’s just repeating. Like a whisper. Do you see me?

Sometimes the stupidest things hurt me right now, things I would have found funny or even cute before the tidal wave hit, they hurt…and not a little…the hurt I feel in my gut when I meditate, the hurt that feels like aliens climbing out, or is it zombies climbing in? Doesn’t matter. Either way, it’s pain, pain caused by others…but it’s also my reaction. I can’t disconnect…I can’t harness enough anger to disconnect. The anger is there, but so often I direct it at myself, even though I know I shouldn’t, that the fault is not there. Girlchild rails at me, speaks of vengeance, tries to understand how 9-plus years of connections are harder to break, to escape, to destroy…well, for me they are. She is so angry too…and I didn’t do that. I understand her anger. I would be angry too if I were her. She is my Mama Bear at the moment, because I can’t be. She’s protective, standing out in front of me, fists half-cocked, ready to go at someone on my behalf.

I made it through the gym. I don’t even remember working out. I was only half there. My muscles were there. Enough of my brain was there to go through the workout, and not in a half-ass manner…full throttle. And that part of my brain got me home and dealt with prepping for school and prepping dinner for the slow cooker and dealing with kids and getting in the car and going to pick up my passenger and driving all the way to Oceanside and holding my own in conversations and then driving back. It fractured in between, at the meeting, but I kept cutting out little bits of fabric and kept it under control.

But by the time I finished meditation, which was all about labeling feelings, and I realized that my brain was screaming at me, “FEELING! UNPLEASANT! FEELING! UNPLEASANT!” (the choices for labeling your feelings were ‘pleasant,’ ‘unpleasant,’ and ‘neutral’), I was already grabbing the sketchbook, even before meditation officially ended. He told me to open my eyes and have a stretch, and I stretched right over and picked up the book and opened to the first blank page (I say that so many times a day at school, I can’t tell you, in answer to “what page?”) and took the pen and it was moving across that blank expanse of white toothy beautiful page before I could even wipe all the tears from my face and neck and down onto my chest, where they fall when they reach the end.

When I reach the end.

I thought I was going to finish tracing Wonder Under tonight, but no. My brain had a different plan. I did try grading earlier, but I could tell my brain was fighting it…fighting the mundane, the work, the drag-you-down-further-into-the-fucking-muck feeling I was getting, the one I’ve been fighting all week, since last Monday. It gets worse and then better but never very good.

B. B for be? B for broken. B for bamboozled. B for bad. B for breaking. B for bastard. B for bearing…bearing it. I was thinking The Scarlett Letter…or a branding.

I’ve always put symbols in my work…the symbols are changing. Some of them.

So I am a bit more at peace, now that I’ve drawn. It’s not a happy peace. Just a distancing peace. That’s what labeling the feelings is supposed to do…to help me distance myself from the emotion and not wallow in it or make it worse, but maybe, at some point, to just let it wash over me while I be, and then maybe I won’t have to be that emotion any more. I’m not very good at the distance. Or maybe I am…because if I really wasn’t very good at it, I would be crying all the time, no matter where I was, and I do seem to hold it together for hours at a time when necessary.

At the meeting, I saw this out the window…

I think everyone else was socializing and eating and being friendly and I was staring out a window at a foggy grey sky and watching this beautiful bird and trying to just Be in the moment even though I wasn’t connecting to the moment at all.

Birds are often in my work. I need to draw more types of birds. I usually just make them up.

I’ve told you that both kids worry about me because of my braindeadness…my uncharacteristic mindlessness at times, my loss of memory, my inattention to detail.

Girlchild pointed out that I didn’t need to buy more ground mustard, that I must have just bought some in the last few weeks. I didn’t remember. She thinks we will never use it up…so now I have to come up with all-mustard recipes from now until we use it up. Just to prove her wrong. I really only have two recipes that use ground mustard, and neither in large quantities. We’re fucked. I’m going to die and have ground mustard left over.

Speaking of dying, I finished World War Z today…

It was OK…a little on the dry side. A little truncated. Not really a story, per se, but an interesting take on a story. I guess I could watch the movie now, if I wanted to. Do I want to? I don’t know. I’m currently immersed in all the PBS Mystery shows I have archived on Tivo. I’ve been watching Wallander and Endeavour…I like Endeavour better. He is more caring, less of an asshole. Wallander cares, but he’s an asshole. I don’t need more assholes right now.

I wrote this down from Endeavour tonight: “You go home and put your music on, and with every note, you remember that’s something that the darkness couldn’t take from you.” DI Fred Thursday

Yeah. That. That’s why I draw. That’s why I make art. That’s why I get out of bed in the morning. That’s why I don’t just give up. That’s why I’m writing every day. Almost every day. Because of that.

At the meeting (yes, I realize my brain is jumping all over the place, hence the multiple mustards), I cut out pieces for the Love quilt. I need a plan. I can get it cut out this week, and when I get back from Houston, I can start ironing it. If I can get it ironed and maybe even stitched down (that might take more mental energy than I have at the moment), then maybe I can quilt it over Thanksgiving. Maybe. Then at the same time, I can be cutting out the Wonder Under for the Celebrating Silver quilt, aiming to pick fabrics for it either over Thanksgiving or the first few weeks of December. Either way, it’s a plan. I need plans at the moment, even if I keep fucking them up.

So I cut out lots…

because it kept my brain from wandering off into the mists…

Someone please do something about the cat that is trying to be a scarf around my neck. Please. It’s literally perched up there between the back of my head and the back of the chair and trying to hold on. The stuff in the bag is all the scraps. I save them until the quilt is ironed down, because occasionally I toss a piece in there instead of into the bin. The way my brain’s working, though, I’ll probably forget I have them and I’ll just recut another piece. Or I’ll toss all the good pieces in the trash by accident.

Whatever. It’s progress. Movement anyway. No one knows in what direction. Taking my headache to bed right now. Hopefully it will let me sleep. Unless it’s an asshole. Don’t need more assholes.

Tag: quilt art