The New Year is always a time of looking-- looking back over the shoulder, looking forward into the unknown. I do not make resolutions anymore, but I try to take up projects or ideas in small doses, giving attention to one thing at a time. Well, maybe two things. Never those long, impractical lists that are more wistful thinking than reasonable expectation.
One thing I have decided to explore this year is mark-making in all its aspects. We did a bit of this in FreeStyle last year, and I discovered how peaceful it is to take up some improvised tool and dip it into ink or paint and see what mark it will make on a piece of paper or fabric. The marks stretch into a rhythm that slows down my day, as if I am marking out a pool of quiet around me, a place to work and uncover ideas. And in the quiet, the ideas simply pour out.
After the mark-making, the needle and thread come out. If I were mute, I could explain myself to the world with that ancient medium, but the world would have to slow down to "hear" my answer. Slowing down, of course, is the key.
In the Ways To Slow Myself Down, I add this story: I fell onto the patio, via a metal chair, in early January. Since that time, everything in my little world has slowed, sometimes to a grinding halt. Stitches were put in and taken out (of me, for goodness' sake!), more doctors, the re-defining what is important . . . I am so grateful for stitches that held me together while my head healed. Grateful, also, for the stitches that kept my hands busy between the first accident in November until now. From that time of slowing down, I have this piece, which is a sort of poem to the winter.
Poems are ways of slowing down-- reading meaning in the spaces between words is not so different from finding meaning in the little spaces between stitches. Both words and stitches can be layered, thick with meaning. They can be frivolous or deeply serious. Terse or chatty. Fluid or choppy. What perfect complements they make!
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