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My home studio feels stale. Piles are accumulating and the piles aren’t shrinking or growing. It’s like when the altar gets dusty, a stagnant altar can’t reach god as quickly as a tidy one.
I have these tupperwares, the ones from target with the nice light tone tops. They are filled with chords, loose ends, notes to myself, stickers, a projector I never figured out how to make work.
These are parts of a practice, the left behind boxes of things you were sure you needed. Today they stare at me while I sit on the couch, hunched over wondering why I didn’t buy an actual desk chair.
There is a big speaker in the middle of my desk right now. It does not belong there but I wanted the music coming out of my computer to be louder so I put it there. Now it’s hard to get to my sewing machine.
By “hard to get to” I mean I would have to take 13 seconds to lift it up and put it on the ground and move my sewing machine towards the front of the desk.
The speaker doesn’t go there and that is the biggest problem. The next biggest problem is the wifi that keeps going out every 15 minutes. It makes it hard to focus on my television program. It makes it hard to do my job or plan the next class. The only sticky note on the computer right now says CALL ATT but there is something about where the speaker is that is making that harder for me
I do not feel helped either dear reader, yet I do. Not of my own accord, there but for the grace of god go I. The small studio corner stares back at me in my attempts to relax and in my attempts to rest I can’t comprehend picking up the fabric. Why do I so desperately think it is time to pick up the fabric?
Turning towards myself suddenly feels like such a breeze. Katie told me to write a poem about why I was sad I think it’s what opened the channel. A poem that will never see the light of the day and I cried and cried and cried. The compound grief of what was and what was and what was and what was.
One thing about being single is you get to float in between the soothing rhythm of self and the creative wondering of who might be next. The growing comfort of being alone on the hill matched with the curiosity of who will spin the spindle, surrendered to the timeline.
Someone to match my mind
Someone to make sounds like what I see
Courage to Change sits next to the speaker, a reminder of this daily reprieve. Instead of praying for my studio practice to flood back I’ll pray for acceptance that my attention is in a different frame.
May the frame of your attention be toward the spiral
May the frame of your attention be immaculately focused
May your focus be inconceivable
May you keep nothing to yourself
May you keep everything a secret
May your practice be ever changing
In the background of my studio you can see the book Women's Work: From Feminine Arts to Feminist Art by Ferren Gipson - It is really beautiful
This song
The yard deer have replaced the yard swan. The swan felt gentler. The deer seem to come to say : hurry along now you have a book to write.
I enjoyed the documentary Keep Sweet : Pray and Obey and my friend Kevin’s song was in it and I liked that too
I had a dream that LeBron James and Martha Stewart both lived here in Northport and were best friends. Martha taught a popular pottery class and LeBron hosted Sunday potlucks. We were all at LeBron’s house one Sunday and Martha was telling me how important making clay pots is and how it was my time to start my own television show.
When you can’t create, you can work - Henry Miller
The Only Rule is Work - Sister Corita Kent
My wifi keeps kicking me off but this is the place I wanted to link SOS by Abba
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