work
husband, children.

  

people, house.

little house

with big plans

 

They come, pretending the rain is not here. The rain hits the roof, and when you close the door, that is the sound you listen to.

I am a bird and these are my feathers

(they come to the windows now).

I am a small person. 

morning

From yesterday.

later nighttime

six crows, all done, still on the board. More importantly, Little Owl calls out, 11:02 pm, twice. Wish working to do.

nighttime

A few things I consider:

     the fortune, from a fortune cookie, and why it is taped to the refrigerator
     a secret written on a scrap of paper and hidden in a rock wall
     pennies, sunk and making copper bottoms of our fountain pools
     dandelions
     stars
     while stopping at rest stops or truck stops, how much money I have given to the
                  scales which provide your true weight accompanied with a fortune
     Euler
     crossed fingers
     the difference between plans and wishes
     the difference between wishes and dreams
     whether the difference is something worth considering
     curses
     escape velocity
     snowflakes
     the emotions of broken umbrellas, or how dead umbrellas affect us
     the ESA's Rosetta project
     stars again
     my little pine cone song, and therefore, little pine cones.

     
     
     

    







I ask Min to throw the wishes out the window. She is busy, and I interrupt her day. I see her smiling when she throws, so maybe my asking is not so much an intrusion; I can only hope. I do not ask her if she likes to throw wishes out the window.

They fall. I throw them over my daughter, also. She spreads her arms wide and stands smiling. I see she likes the feeling of these light things, hiding secrets from her, falling near her. She calls it magical. She asks me to throw them again and again and again.

Sunday, she was in the playhouse with me while I threw the wish objects on the shelves. She immediately ran to a pile of them and touched them all, trying to understand what they were hiding. She stomped on the ones on the ground. Surprised at her destruction, I asked why. She said, quite honestly and plainly, that there is something inside, and she needs to find out what.

I walk under the full moon. I see Min looking for the moon, too. The clouds want to hide it from us, but we have seen it already. The big house gathers us. I feel like a wish discarded, and then taken back, again and again and again.

Six Crows: A Fable, by children's author Leo Lionni (1910-1999), is the basis of the drawing six crows. It is a story in which the settlement of an argument is reached through compromise. A farmer is irritated by six noisy crows who steal from his wheat farm, and so he builds a scarecrow. In retaliation, the crows build a frightening kite bird to scare the farmer. The farmer builds an even more harrowing scarecrow, and the birds reciprocate with an even bigger, more horrible kite. The two parties suffer; the crows go hungry as the farmer hides in his house, shutters locked, neglecting his fields.

With the intervention of the wise owl, eventually the crows and the farmer reach an understanding gained through civil discourse, casting aside their violent or aggressive tactics.

six crows, in progress

 afternoon

morning

I cannot keep, I told her. She had asked. and so I answered. She asked me to talk about keeping.

The answer took days. I could not find the words to answer at the time of the question. I sat on the floor, dumb.

Finally, I can answer. I cannot keep. I cannot keep anything. I cannot keep the time from passing, and so everything within that broad realm slips through my fingers. Like water. I can keep something just as I can keep water cupped in my hands; the water eventually just slips through my fingers. I cannot keep my children small and wide eyed and new and the things that make a three year old different than a twelve year old. I cannot keep home. I find bits and pieces, and then home morphs, twists, moves. I get taken away, or the actual structure breaks. I cannot find a home that fits. I cannot keep from growing older, just like my children. My eyesight worsens, my time disappears.

I cannot keep. Objects can be kept, but for how long? These things are separate; they house themselves. They don't care. Clothes rot, glass breaks. Stability of the object is just temporary comfort. That goes away, too.

I asked her, can you keep anything?

She was quiet for a small time, and then said, I guess I can just keep my breath.

I said,

No, you cannot.

You cannot keep your breath. That is why you take another, and another, and another. You cannot keep your own breath. You cannot keep anything.

I try, I said. I try, because that is how we live. I try to keep, because that is what we do. I cannot keep, and so I make pictures.

I gather treasure, sew it up, hold on to the energy as long as I can. I am happy it is not mine. Simultaneously, a profound longing exists because it is not mine to control or ingest. It is not mine to manipulate or maintain. Although balance cannot be attained, it is perpetually sought. Rocks falling, thoughts escaping, ideas vanishing, houses waiting, all become parts of a language describing the inability to keep a breath.

nighttime

 

midday
 

Min Kim and I coax the birds to come to our windows. No luck yet. I think our seeds are too big. The better bag of seed was 6 Fr, and the bag I bought was only 2. Guess I should have been a bigtimer.

morning

The stationmaster's house, coming along:

This drawing is doing its good job. I am learning from my sketch what my objects need to be.

It could work if I made thousands. They could move around by themselves, helped by the shuffling feet of strangers. Not strangers, really, because everyone is the same. Everyone has stories. Everyone seeks a home; comfort within themselves at least. Everyone has wishing character.

Some fly and circle, hoping to win some kind of game, like a keep away game. I think of a small child running between two bigger kids, trying to catch the ball the two throw back and forth. The small child wants that ball. Very badly. I think of a piece of paper, fallen from my wallet or pocket or bag on a windy day. I try to catch it, chasing it across a parking lot. I need to retrieve it.

Some are dark, like shadows, but they are harder. They have grown thick skins in their waiting and they are hungry.
 
 The path in making an idea manifest often throws curves. I have to reconsider my shape, although I am enamored still by the little objects I sew in the attic. The byproduct of my little shape, however, has the weight which I think this piece will need. I like the way the cuttings float on the floor.

Oh, but my little wishes have treasure! I look for treasure. I hunt for it. I put it in my pocket. I keep it, sometimes with someone's name on it, and then I sew it safe. I capture a wish. I keep a thought. I make hope tangible. I make spells.
 
When I sew, I keep thinking of wishing. At a place in my life where I am surrounded by children, I am relieved and also surprised at the constant and incredibly unselfish gift giving that takes place. Leaving school, my daughter sees a father of a friend who has broken his arm, and she immediately finds (what some might call trash) a twist tie on the floor of the car."This is for my friend," she says earnestly. The father thanks her graciously, telling her he will give it to his son as soon as he sees him. Everything, anything can be treasure, and thus a gift. The gift, then, is a wish of love or kindness or however you choose to define it. The gift would be the same, the wish would be the same, if the treasure were diamonds or a candy wrapper.


The treasure, or at least the essence of the treasure, inside the sewn shape is therefore important. It has the same magic as a rock in a child's pocket. Here, we find something, we put it in our pocket. We make a wish. Perhaps someone gets a gift.

The very first thing I do upon waking up is look outside. Rain turned to snow this morning, and so the world was quiet and smiling and pure and all of those things that snow is and does. Snow is one wish granted.

A third sewn drawing is taped on the wall. Here is another drawing of a child, in the ether, on water, in a wave, in the world. She creates her atmosphere; her thoughts and wishes so thick they surround her like snow, quiet and pure and powerful. She is everything and everything is her, and she is home wherever she walks. She holds up her sky.

My studio mate is South Korean artist Min Kim (www.min-kim.com). I walked early, before she awoke, and then returned for coffee, eager for her to see the snow. Her love for the snow is more articulate than mine. No matter, she said it is for me. I know it is for all of us. Smiling, smiling, smiling, we hope it never stops.