the barefoot heart

Feb

today i worked more on the scrying cloth, and as the needle moved steadily, rhythmically – quieting my brain chatter to the point i could hear myself feel – i pondered knots. like most fluent needleworkers, i was taught that the best and finest pieces don’t have knots, that the most skilled and talented needleworkers don’t even knot the end of their thread.

but most of the time now,
i knot the end of my thread,
simply covering my knots from view
with another piece of cloth
when the piece is finished
because the way i see it: knots are inevitable,
and sometimes necessary.

there was a time when
i did macrame,
tying knots to create
pocketbooks,
and plant holders,
and even a headboard.

there are knots we create as anchors
to grab onto when we feel
about to slip over the edge of the cliff.

there are knots that
hold skin pieces of skin together
so they can merge and heal.
and there are knots that indicate
the desired swelling after a spill or a fall,
letting us know that the body is healing itself.

there are knots that create fishing nets,
attach ski ropes to boats,
and the proverbial knots
that indicate two people’s commitment to each other.

scouts learn to tie knots to pass certain proficiencies,
and i’m here to tell you that
knowing how to tie those knots
is something you never forget
and one of the most valuable things to remember.

then there are the knots felt in the stomach
indicating there’s something needs attention,
that something that needs to be righted and resolved
to untie the knots.

and there are the seemingly inevitable knots
that form in relationships.
knots that aren’t as easy to untangle
as knots in necklaces
because these knots require
two people working together
to remove the knot,
and sometimes one person
yanks hard on their end of the rope,
making the knot tight and firm,
wanting the knot to provide separation
- at least for a while.
and until both people are ready,
the knot remains.

Category: autoquiltography, cloth, enigma, planet jeanne, ruminations, scrying cloth, stitchspeak, togetherness 15 chairs

Feb

it’s scrying time again

wholly jeanne

we’re snowed in, living on a diet of popcorn and oreos. oops – scratch that. husband just finished the last oreo. looks like it might be another 2 days before we can get out of the driveway, or so says my husband who looks forward to being snowed in, but is quite susceptible to early-onset cabin fever.

i am seldom without my computer
and never without a pen, paper,
and all the bits of cloth and thread
i can get in a quart-size zip-loc bag.

for a change of pace,

i picked up thread and cloth.
the in and out,
the over and under
creates a soothing rhythm,
a salve for my soul.
it grounds me in my matriarchal lineage,
it is the calamine lotion to my inarticulate itch.

here on planet jeanne,
the beginning of a cloth piece
strangely resembles
the beginning of a word piece.

first: the itch
followed closely by: the yearning,
an unnamed longing.
then comes the pondering and circling;
then, finally
finally: the starting.
beginning with only the vaguest notion of what i am trying to create,
the barest whisper of what i am going to say.

Category: autoquiltography, cloth, enigma, muddy, planet jeanne, ruminations, stitchspeak 8 chairs

Feb

costume jewelry

wholly jeanne

she flew all the way across country
to see her son star in a show.
on the way to the theatre, they stopped for a pre-show dinner
in the famous los angeles eating establishment called
subway.

she ordered a 6” turkey on white.

~~~

the man who wheeled everything he owned
in the grocery store cart
came just inside the door
and called out
“hey,” flailing his arm in her direction
ambling towards her table.

~~~

the boy had gone to get some tea
at the self-serve drink machine
in the back of the restaurant.

~~~

the scraggly stranger
beckoned louder as he approached.
and when she could no longer make him invisible,
she looked up
to find her boy standing between
her and the stranger.
“you want something?” the boy asked,
making himself as large as possible.

~~~

“i just wanted to tell her something,”
the man said
looking around the boy
and speaking to her as though nobody else existed.
“i like your necklace,” he said.
“what?” she asked, stunned.
“i think that’s a very pretty necklace – I like it – and I just wanted you to know.”
then he was gone,
pushing his world
through parking lots and along sidewalks,
near large plate glass windows,
lingering on small, seemingly inconsequential things,
taking the time to let a stranger know
she’d been seen.

Category: planet jeanne, postcards, ruminations, seeing 21 chairs

Jan

untitled because i have no idea what to call this

wholly jeanne

i’ve been offline for far too long, tending to things that simply have to be done.
well, guess what: writing has to be done, too.
writing is my life raft,
my ticket to worlds beyond where i shop for groceries,
my train to discoveries and quarries and ores.

i think better when i write.

keep my fingers away from the keyboard for too long, and my thoughts become fuzzy, uncertain, timid.
let my fingers romp regularly, and i’m confident, clear, (more) courageous.
let my fingers languish too long, and i slouch.
let my fingers dance with words daily, and i smile more – inside and out – and stand taller, too.

away = small.
write here = abundance.

away = alone.
write here = connections.

away = shallow panting.
write here = slow, deep breathing.

when i’m away from writing, my to do list that grows more than it wanes.
when i’m write here, i’m actually (and strangely) more productive.

when i don’t write, my brain chases its tail, going faster and faster and faster.
when i take the time to write, my soul has time to exhale and take a look around,
turn over rocks,
and roll down hills without worrying about grass stains.

when i don’t write, 2 + 2 = 4.
when i do write, i am quick to note that i just say 2 + 2 = 4
because that’s what most people are comfortable with,
all the while rubik-cubing ways that 2 + 2 = all sorts of different answers.

when i don’t write, the world is reduced to faded primary colors.
when i do write, there are at least 64,000 different colors – and it’s not the least bit overwhelming.

i don’t write, i get cranky.
i do write, and well, okay: i sometimes still get cranky.

i don’t write, and it becomes harder to write.

i don’t write, and it becomes harder to think of something to write about.

so why don’t i write daily?

the readily available and easy answer is: there’s not enough time.
but we both know that i have the same amount of time that everybody else has,
i just choose to spend it differently.
i mean, if i had diabetes,
i’d make time to check my blood glucose levels and take insulin, right?

perhaps the common answer is fear.
afraid that my writing sucks,
that i’ll be rejected,
that i’ll just have to go eat worms.

but truth be known,
there’s something else:
a little something we like to call guilt.
for more years than i care to think about,
my adorable husband
has trekked off to a job he never wanted
and doesn’t much like.
so why should i get to do something i enjoy?
i mean, really, what makes me so damned special?
if he’s miserable, it seems only fair that i should be miserable, too, right?
isn’t that why we learned equations in high school?

so merrily we roll along.

this time writing hasn’t solved anything, but
i’ve clarified it,
sat it on the table,
and that counts.

Category: essential, fine lines, planet jeanne, ruminations, writing 19 chairs

Jan

haiti: ways to help

wholly jeanne

people never cease to amaze me in their generosity and willingness to help those in need. what happened in haiti is beyond the scope of my imagination, and the myriad of ways people are offering assistance to haitians is near-overwhelming. small businesses, entrepreneurs, individuals, corporations, and non-profit organizations are stepping-up to help, and they need your donations. as you go through your day, pay close attention. do you wear glasses? there are people in haiti who need glasses. when you put your shoes on, think about all the people in haiti who are without shoes. when you get a drink of water, remember that haitians get thirsty, too. diabetes, heart conditions, developmentally-delayed people, children, and the elderly are segments of the population holding parts of my heart. what are the things you and those you love need to survive daily? there are people in haiti who need the same things – things they are not able to get right now. this is by no means an exhaustive list*, but if you’re looking for ways to help, here are some opportunities you might want to check out.**

there are small businesses and entrepreneurs who are giving of themselves:

kelly diels, the crackerjack writer of the blog called cleavage organized and motivated the twitter troops to donate what they have. read how you can join the cause and/or scroll on down to go shopping from the vast buffet of people who’ve donated their goods and services and help yourself while you help others.
aidan donnelly rowley is donating $2 for every comment left on her blog. (this from danielle la porte, author of the blog called whitehottruth.com. and just so you know, danielle donated the proceeds from one of her fire starter session. no small thing – the donation or her work.)
my friend, lindsey, is donating $2 for every comment on her blog, a design so vast left between now and monday morning, january 18.
update: another creative, multi-talented friend, kate is donating the proceeds from an herbal consultation.
update: and congratulations are in order for our alana who’s pregnant! she’s researching how to respond to the call for breast milk.
update: for a limited time, artist bryce widom is donating $15 from every purchase of The Return or Liberation prints.

to donate much-needed medical supplies, visit:

hospital albert schweitzer haiti (via brian andreas)
haitian health foundation
partners in health
americares
hope for haiti

to provide assistance specifically for haitian children:

special needs youth: a friend’s sister is the stateside administrator for a religious organization that provides assistance for haitian youth with disabilities. if special needs youth are dear to your heart, visit their web site and see how you can help.
hope for haiti’s children
haiti children
save the children

if basic needs (food, water, shelter, sanitation) is your thing, here are some options:

perhaps you’d like to help with shelter – transitional shelter, permanent shelter, and/or community shelter:

they need clothes in haiti:

shoes: everybody needs shoes, and if shoes are you think, here’s where you need to go.
alana reports that sports chalet is collecting shoes through january 31. they’re asking for gently-worn shoes that they’ll ferry over to soles 4 souls, but if you can’t bear to part with your shoes that are already broken-in, buy some to donate.

non-profit organizations are collecting and delivering various items of need:

the american red cross helps in a variety of ways. to donate to the red cross via cell phone, send a text message to 90999 with the message, “HAITI,” and donate $10.
if you have hilton hhonors® points just laying around, maybe you’d like to donate those. for every 10,000 points you donate, hilton donates $25 to the international federation of red cross and red crescent societies
unicef

other compilations of donation options:

on his blog, guy kawasaki lists 20 ways to help. (via my whipsmart friend, amanda at violetminded.com.) (just so you know, i was already working on this list when i learned of guy’s list. there may be overlap, but i didn’t copy off his paper.)

* i have no firsthand knowledge or experience with these organizations, so check them out and use your own good sense before contributing. i am receiving nothing in return for mentioning them here except the knowledge that i am doing what i can to help people who cannot help themselves right now.

** if you know of other outreach opportunities, let me know and i’ll add them to the list. i will be updating as needed.

Technorati Tags:
haiti, donations, assistance

Category: outreach 13 chairs

Jan

contagion

wholly jeanne

last week, three people i hold dear (though i’ve only know them for a scant few weeks) wrote posts that opened doors in my heart that have been long closed. their conviction and courage, their honesty, their willingness to outright own vulnerability because silence is no longer an option is nothing short of inspiring. these women have enkindled conversations that are long overdue, conversations i hope will continue and spread and take on a life of their own – a full, rich life that will change the world.

though this poem was written by a man who wrote of political and social upheavals, it is the one that has kept me company the past several days, and it is the one that i am sending – in spite of the near-oppressive notion that i’ll get red ink comments from my english teachers noting my usual erroneous interpretation – as a salute to my three guests of honor, women i am proud to call friend . . .

bonnie of windshieldthinking.com

emily of pleasurenotes.com

julie of unabashedlyfemale.com

p.s. yes, i changed the two masculine pronouns to feminine, so sharpen your red pencils and deduct points at will.

Emerging

A woman says yes without knowing
how to decide even what the question is,
and is caught up, and then is carried along
and never again escapes from her own cocoon;
and that’s how we are, forever falling
into the deep well of other beings;
and one thread wraps itself around our necks,
another entwines a foot, and then it is impossible,
impossible to move except in the well –
nobody can rescue us from other people.

It seems as if we don’t know how to speak;
it seems as if there are words which escape,
which are missing, which have gone away and left us
to ourselves, tangled up in snares and threads.

And all at once, that’s it; we no longer know
what it’s all about, but we are deep inside it,
and now we will never see with the same eyes
as once we did when we were children playing.
Now these eyes are closed to us,
Now our hands emerge from different arms.

And therefore when you sleep, you are alone in your dreaming,
and running freely through the corridors
of one dream only, which belongs to you.
Oh never let them come to steal our dreams,
never let them entwine us in our bed.
Let us hold on to the shadows
to see if, from our own obscurity,
we emerge and grope along the walls,
lie in wait for the light, to capture it,
till, once and for all time,
it becomes our own, the sun of every day.

Technorati Tags:
#mindfullist

Category: essential, grow, mindfullist, planet jeanne, ruminations, seeing, togetherness 21 chairs

Jan

snow

wholly jeanne

it snowed here last night.

just a dusting, really.

not enough for even one bowl of snow ice cream

but enough to cause the roads to be icy

and treacherous.

we spent most of the morning

with our noses to the window

taking in the beauty of the freshly-articulated trees

wondering if we can make it up and down the hills

on our daily walk.

i love the quiet stillness

the snow brings

and the blue air.

there are those who will explain

the hue and stillness

with great authority

using numbers and

formulas

and studies.

but they’re only theories, really.

educated guesses, really, that make some feel better about the world and themselves

but

sometimes we don’t need to know why

we just need to enjoy and revel in

what is

while it is.

Category: be, here, mindfullist, nature, now, postcards, ruminations, seeing 29 chairs

Jan

who’d'a thunk it

wholly jeanne

creation of the collage started on shaky ground – real shaky ground – and for a while it seemed that i would go through 2010 red-faced and collageless. i left my journal at home, see, the one i wanted to shelter the collage, and to make matters worse, my only magazines themed around fiber arts and pottery (not an oprah magazine in sight) (and how can a worthy collage be created without images and words from a staff who knows me. i mean, they really know me.) (which is odd, given that i am not a subscriber.) (or a regular reader, for that matter.)

but then i put on my martyr pants and got busy ripping, and before we got to the end of the 2nd season of lost dvd’s (the television show, i mean), i’d ripped past thoughtfully weighing the pros and cons of every. single. image. i’d ripped my way past looking for words and fonts. i’d ripped my way past justification and rationalization and a whole lotta’ other stuff that i can’t quite name.

now remember: i still didn’t have my journal

so i just ~~crammed~~ tucked the ripped images into my bag, figuring la-te-da i could throw it all away at home just as easily as i could fill the trashcan there, and i pretty much forgot about the whole thing until last night when i couldn’t sleep and couldn’t turn on the television without waking up the dog who would, in turn, wake up the husband who has to get up early so i try not to.

wake my husband up, i mean.

i tiptoed out of the bedroom, fished the ripped bits out of my bag, found my journal, got some glue, and sat down at the dining room table where i was immediately surprised by how many images i had. now you have to understand that spatial concepts is not my strongest intelligence by anybody’s measurement system, but any fool could see that all those images were not going to fit on a 2-page spread in my journal, and i didn’t feel like going downstairs in search of one of those big sheets of paper (and besides, where would i store it) (the collage, i mean), so i just started tearing off any superfluous paper, ripping it right on down to the quick.

to the essential image, i mean.

i eventually came to the last piece, and there i was: surprised again, this time by the hugeness of the discard pile (especially compared to the keypers). ~~coveting~~ wanting my little ole’ collage to be as pretty as emma james‘ vision board, i stuck my tongue out the side of my mouth and started laying the pieces out on the page. but then when i ~~bit my tongue~~ remembered that this is not about planning, i just started squirting glue and laying ‘em down, and before i knew it, i was done. finished. collaged.

well, almost.

there was this one image in the discard pile that kept jumping out on the way to the trashcan, and when it leapt out for the third time, i said okay, fine and took it back and glued it onto a page all by itself.

i’m calling it the annex.

and here’s the really super trooper amazing part: by the time i crawled back into bed around 5 a.m., all the keypers – i mean, every last one of ‘em – had found a home on the two-page spread in my journal.

and i even had a few spaces to boot.

just goes to show, doesn’t it . . .

Category: planet jeanne, ruminations 22 chairs

Jan

burn

wholly jeanne

i hate sunday nights. i love sunday nights.

sunday nights are a transition time for me. the end of the pause. the threshold of beginning.

i am ready for my husband to go back to work. i want him to call in sick tomorrow.

i want to watch another movie. i am ready to get up and move.

i do not want go to back to a life of to do lists. i long for the structure of plans and productivity.

i am a different person. i am the same person trying to be different.

i want to spill things onto the page. i don’t have a damn thing to say.

i love the way i’m beginning to drop down into some philosophical, reflective writing (except for yesterday – that piece was pretty blah). i am tired of being serious, longing to cut loose and romp.

i want to change my update on facebook. i want to drop facebook altogether.

i want to finish my collage. i want to rip up the ripped out bits and flush them.

i want to sing and dance. i want to go to bed and sleep in the fetal position.

i want to twitter. i want to tuck in.

i want to get something done tonight so i’ll be ahead of the game tomorrow. i don’t even want to think about doing anything tonight.

i want to find a book on the writing of lost. if i never see another book, it’ll be too soon.

etc.

~~~

Technorati Tags:
#mindfullist

Category: mindfullist, planet jeanne 19 chairs

Jan

leap

wholly jeanne

today i leapt.

and i leapt with deliberation and thoughtfulness.

in the fiber arts community there’s a movement called slow cloth – just the name calms me. to live a life of calmness and space and rapt attention, that has been my dream, and today i am closer to that desired lifestyle . . .

gwen bell has developed a year’s worth of brief daily prompts intended to help cultivate a mindfulness lifestyle, and i am onboard. i am so onboard. today’s prompt: “Take time today to update your passwords. Make them bells of mindfulness, action-oriented words,” and so today finds me updating my passwords with verbs (and making sure everything is saved in 1password, the handiest software for mac users. it’s like having my own vault on the computer and on the iphone).

i also leapt into shuttersisters today. signed myself right up, committing to take and post a photo every day this year. i’m setting up a tumblr blog for the shuttersisters photos – i’ll let you know when it’s up and running, though i hasten to add that i am just a woman who enjoys photos, not a woman who would ever be confused with a photographer who knows what she’s doing.

january’s photo theme is create, and i’ve selected a photo of black-eyed peas, a southern staple – especially on new year’s day. thewordwire got me thinking about it yesterday, with her tweets about the southern delectables she was cooking up in her vegas kitchen. new years day is one of the rare days when i cook a full, resplendent meal, something my mother does frequently, and her mother did three times a day. i didn’t inherit the cooking gene – i don’t even collect cookbooks, though i’ve written a few from recipe collections of grandmothers.

my mother has an entire closet filled with plates and glasses and bowls. she sincerely enjoys entertaining, judging your love of her by how many times you go back for refills. she knows how to make people comfortable at her table. it is her native language.

her mother entered cake contests – and won a few, too. in the summer, she’d plant a huge garden, and every day would find her gathering items from the garden and cooking a big lunch (with biscuits made from scratch 3 times a day, i want you to know). the afternoons were spent shelling and shucking in the glider on the front porch then going inside for canning, freezing, and pickling.

these women that form the fabric of my matriarchal lineage created food that nourished and a table that welcomed.

Technorati Tags:
#mindfullist

Category: mindfullist, togetherness 16 chairs