Search Results for: thinking big

I thought it was supposed to be a Delicata squash, but it grew much bigger than the ones I’ve bought in the market. So now I’m not sure what kind of squash this is.  I picked it thinking it was too big, but it’s obviously not ripe yet. I have another one growing that’s even bigger.   I’ll leave that one to see what happens.  I also have one that looks like the right size of a Delicata but isn’t ripe yet.

And the pepper, it’s so pretty, but I don’t remember what kind it is either.  It looks like the chili peppers you see drying in bunches in the southwest.  Maybe that’s what it is.

I think my garden got away from me this year.

I took the sheep into the back pasture to graze this afternoon.  I haven’t been back there in a week or so.  Because it’s been raining so much there’s plenty of grass for the sheep and donkeys in the side pastures.

Seeing the way the wildflowers are growing in the in back pasture made me think of Chloe.

That’s another reason there’s plenty of grass this year.  Chloe ate a lot.

A few days ago a friend asked me if I ever missed Chloe.

I told her I did.  Chloe has such a big personality, she’s hard not to miss.   She filled a very special place in my heart.  And when she left, that space inside of me remained intact.

I feel more of a whole person having lived with Chloe for those few years.  I have no doubt she healed something inside of me.  Being able to take good care of an animal that big, including knowing when it was time to let her go and finding her a good home, gave me a sense of confidence I’ve never felt before.

And now, whenever I go to the hardware store in town and see Donna, I hear stories about Chloe.  How she walked right through the portable electrified fence.  How she gives pony rides to Donna and Treasure’s children and grandchildren.  How she loves the other horses at her new home.  And I when Donna tells me these stories, I can see in her face, and hear in her voice how much she loves Chloe’s big spirit.

The back pasture has a wild almost abandoned feel to it now.   I wade through the flowers,  Yarrow, Bergamot, Wild Oregano, Bedstraw,  all kinds of Clover, and  so many more  I can’t identify, the insects a constant hum.

It’s hard to believe that one pony could make such a big difference.

“…I’m finding it fascinating what you are doing with this. But for the life of me, I don’t understand the big red boot (Cinderella’s shoe)…how did this idea come to you, and in red??…”

Sandy  left this comment on my blog and I told her I was just thinking about the same thing myself.  And Jon’s  blog post Portraits of Creativity. Writing Class. Portraits of the Soul  is one of the things that got me thinking about it.   In it Jon writes “unconscious forces announce themselves through words, they reveal the nature of our existence.”   This applies not just to words but to any form of self expression such as the images that I use.

I don’t plan what I’m going to do when I begin working on a piece like Wedding Ring Quilt.  What I do is hang the quilt and see what comes to me.  The image of a boot was the first thing I saw.  I had no idea why or what it meant, but I trusted it.   First I filled it in with pink and orange fabric.  But when I looked at it, it wasn’t right.  Right for what?  I still had no idea, I just knew it was the wrong color.  So I made it the “right” color.  And red boots have shown up in a lot of my work.  They’re part of my visual vocabulary.   I think the idea is a combination of Dorothy’s red shoes, my  own red shoes and the red boots that one of the women (I don’t remember her name) wears in one of the stories in Alice Hoffman’s Blackbird House.  They’re partly about defying the norm. 

But the question of  where did the idea come from is just what Jon is writing about.  Why did I see the boot, why did I think of paper dolls and want to incorporate that idea into the piece.  They came from  inside my unconscious.  And to keep this unconscious flow going,while I’m working on the piece I don’t want to think of it too much.  I don’t want my conscious mind forcing it into a direction it’s own direction.   When I look at the piece it’s going to tell me what it’s about.  I’m not going to dictate that to it.

So when Jon writes “unconscious forces announce themselves through words, they reveal the nature of our existence.”  This is exactly what is happening.  This piece is telling me about myself.  Once I bring the images into the physical world I can look at them and delve deeper into understanding their meaning.   And it’s not always easy to do this.  Sometimes what comes up is disturbing, not something that’s easy for me to admit about myself.  But I know understanding and dealing with these things is the only way to grow and move on.  And I don’t want to live in the dark anymore.

And when it works, I’m not just talking to myself.  What my unconscious has released and what I’ve brought  into the light, has the potential to connect to a hidden part in someone else.  So when I read a Mary Olive poem and cry, but don’t understand why I’m crying, that ‘s  just what’s happened.  And if I think about it, if I can figure it out, I bring that unconscious part of myself into the light.  And something about me is revealed.  And I know myself a little bit better.

These pieces that I make are not linear narratives.  They’re circular stories that connect and bounce off each other.  It turns out that this Wedding Ring Quilt, which is traditionally about the union of a woman and a man, in my hands has changed it’s meaning.  And I’m still not completely sure where it’s going, but since I started working on it I’ve been trying to break down the pattern of those intertwined rings.  And as much of my work is about, it speaks of women standing on their own and having a voice.   Cinderella can cover a lot more ground in a pair of red boots than she can in a pair of glass slippers.

Jon wrote “Only that which can be submitted to the magic of words can be brought to the daylight of conscious thinking “ .  Word or images, music, dance, mathematics,  whatever your medium.  It’s our voice and the way we connect with each other on a deeper level.  And get to know our true selves.

I always wanted a dog.   When I was a kid, my Auntie Vee got a poodle.  He was small and brown and his name was Pepe.  It wouldn’t have been my choice for a dog, but at that point, Pepe  was as close as I came to having my own dog.  When I walked past my aunt’s house on the way home from school and Pepe was  in the yard I would lean over the cyclone fence and pet him.  He would follow me from one end of the fence to the other, then watch me as I walked away towards home.  When Auntie Vee took him to the Vet she always asked me to come with her.  The Vet made her nervous, so I would sit in the front seat with Pepe on my lap and hold him when he go his shots.

I kinda forgot about Pepe, until about a year ago I started to think that I’d like to have a Standard Poodle.  I’m not sure why, I think it has something to do with them being big and soft.  And the few Standard Poodles I’ve known were friendly, and smart and gentle (as well as big and soft).  I can’t really picture a poodle on the farm, but they herding dogs. Although watching a poodle herd seems like it would be like watching a sheep herd sheep.

Anyway, when I first opened up Laura Israel’s box of fabric and found all those poodle appliques, I didn’t think much of it.  But when I sorted through them and saw how many there really  were, I became curious.  Was this a sign?  Did Laura have a thing for poodles too?  I emailed Lindsay, who sent me the fabric on behalf of her friend Michael, Laura’s son.  Neither of them knew why Laura had so many poodle appliques, she was into Siamese Cats if anything.

I’m not planning on getting another dog anytime soon, so maybe the appliques are  omens, or maybe they are just what all my poodle thinking has conjured up.  Like Pepe, not exactly what I had in mind, but good enough for now.

Poodle Dreams is sold.