Jelisava

Need to be at ease

The ease of the backyard garden and the deep brilliance of spring blooms / New Jersey / May 2009

When you're at the top of your game, it's because you've surrounded yourself with stimuli that make you feel peaceful and comfortable. Other people may work well under pressure and accomplish most when they're driven by stress, but you usually need to be at ease in order to access your deep brilliance.

~ Rob Brezsney puts me at ease by describing me

The pattern of my life

Notorious Non-cooperative Knitting / bag before felting / Feb. 2006

“After a dead serious consideration of the effects of this committee's work and of my relation to it, I find that for the following reasons I must refuse to cooperate with this body.

... as a poet I must refuse to cooperate with the committee on what I can only call esthetic* grounds. The view of life which we receive through the great works of art is a privileged one — it is a view of life according to probability or necessity, not subject to the chance and accident of our real world and therefore in a sense truer than the life we see lived all around us. I believe that one of the things required of us is to try to give life an esthetic ground, to give it some of the pattern and beauty of art. I have tried as best I can to do this with my own life, and while I do not claim any very great success, it would be anti-climactic, destructive of the pattern of my life, if I were to cooperate with the committee. Then too, poets have been notorious non-cooperators where committees of this sort are concerned. As a traditionalist, I would prefer to take my stand with Marvell, Blake, Shelley and Garcia Lorca rather than with innovators like Mr. Jackson. I do not wish to bring dishonor upon my tribe.”

~ Thomas McGrath's Statement to the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC)

* esthetic: a philosophical theory as to what is beautiful

Throw open the storm door

Fabric panels on my front door provide an ever-changing art gallery / New Jersey / Jan. 2009

“A genius is the one most like himself.”

~ jazz musician Thelonious Monk

There's something really wise and powerful in that statement and I'm trying to live it.

Salvoes of good wishes

Hand-made Christmas presents from old jeans, fabric scraps, bells / Dec. 2008

"And we danced and sang and larked, until we could no more. And finally we chanted a song of ceremony, and separated; ending the day as we had commenced it, with salvoes of good wishes."

~ The Feast of St. Friend

Merry Christmas!

Flip-Folded

Fabric Flip-Fold / New Jersey / Oct. 2008

My old leather card wallet finally came apart. I liked it because it fit in my pocket (it was approximately 2.5 x 3.5 inches) and held the necessary papers of our times: driver's license, credit card, library card, business cards, stash-of-cash (and a few inspirational words tucked in, too). In the spirit of the times — re-use/re-cycle/re-store — I fashioned a new one out of fabric and ribbon scraps. It took just a few hours to put together, sewing by hand, and holds my “personal effects” in style. If you want to make one, the directions are here:

Download fabric_flipfold_102108.pdf

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Practice being kind

Mosaic mixture of a Mexican tile, bowl fragments, blue tile, Italian flower pot fragments, and leftover bits of white subway tile with terracotta-colored grout (mixing orange and red paint into antique white grout) / New Jersey / Sept. 2008

I heard a man on the radio say this: we should practice being kind. What a beautiful idea. We practice so may things to "better" ourselves. Why isn't kindness taught in schools the way reading and math are? Acts of kindness can make us better people and impact all the people we touch. Let's resolve to practice being kind.

* kind  1. gentle, considerate, and friendly in nature or behavior; 2. proceeding from or characterized by good-heartedness.

The world is changing

Silhouettes on the boards / Wildwood, NJ / June 2008

How to be Creative (a few excerpts from Hugh MacLeod's illustrated-with-cartoons list):

11. Don't try to stand out from the crowd;
     avoid crowds altogether.
13. Never compare your inside with
     somebody else's outside.
16. The world is changing.
19. Sing in your own voice.
36. Start blogging.

Smells of parsley and chives

Summer Project #4: Simplicity 2892 handsewn in black and white batik fabric; how quickly the summer has moved and here we have fallen into the month of August / New Jersey / July 2008

“See, a hand sweeps stars
    from the August sky,
as if my mother swept off the supper crumbs from the table at home.
Her apron, slipping now and then, smells of parsley
     and chives—
The sweet scent of her long-gone garden
     sending me to sleep beside you tonight again.”

~ August Evening by Hungarian poet Sandor Csoori (translated by Len Roberts)

Making unlikely connections

A summer project with the girls / New Jersey / July 2008

Some attributes of creativity:
Challenging assumptions
Being receptive to new ideas
Recognizing similarities or differences
Making unlikely connections
Taking risks
Building on ideas in new ways
Looking at things in new ways
Taking advantage of the unexpected
Taking chances

(Source: The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher)

The knowing is always emerging

Summer Project #3: Another variation on a peasant blouse (Butterick B4685) with a ruffled neckline and small sleeves / New Jersey / July 2008

“The imagination offers revelation. It never blasts us with information or numbs us with description. It coaxes us into a new situation. As the scene unfolds, we find ourselves engaged in its questions and possibilities, and new revelation dawns. Such revelation is never a one-off hit at the mind. The knowing is always emerging. The imaginative form of knowing is graced with gradualness.”

~ John O'Donohue, from Beauty The Invisible Embrace