31.12.08

... and a very good new year!










"Die Zeit bringt alles. Möge mir Zeit
gegönnt sein."

Time brings everything. May I be
granted with time.


(Thomas Mann, Silvester 1937)

22.12.08

Have peaceful days...!














"If you think you´re enlightened -
go home for the holidays..."

(Ram Dass)

21.12.08

So vorbeigeweht......











"Wenn ich allein bin, ist das Zimmer tot.
Die Bilder sehn mich an wie fremde Wesen.
Da stehn die Bücher, die ich längst gelesen,
Drei welke Nelken und das Abendbrot.

Grau ist der Abend. Meine Wirtin tobt.
Ich werde irgendwo ins Kino gehen.
- Mit Ellen konnte ich mich gut verstehen.
Doch vorgen Sonntag hat sie sich verlobt.

...Das letzte Jahr ist so vorbeigeweht.
Mitunter faßt mich eine schale Leere.
Der Doktor sagt, daß dies neurotisch wäre.
Ob das wohl andern Leuten ähnlich geht.

Ich träume manchmal, daß der Flieder blüht.
(Ich kann zuweilen ziemlich kitschig träumen.)
Erwacht man morgens dann in seinen Räumen,
Spürt man erst recht, wie es von draußen zieht.

Dann pflückt man statt der blauen Blümelein
Die ewig-weißen Blätter vom Kalender
Und packt die noch zu frühen Sommerbänder
Und seine Sehnsucht leise wieder ein.

Vorm Fenster friert der nackte Baum noch immer,
Und staubgeschwärzter Schnee taut auf den Beeten.
Der Ofen raucht. Und mein möbliertes Zimmer
Schreit schon seit Herbst nach helleren Tapeten.

Mein bester Freund ist nach Stettin gezogen.
Der Vogel Jonas blieb mir auch nicht treu.
Die Winterlaube hat der Sturm verbogen.
- Nun sitz ich da und warte auf den Mai..."

(Mascha Kaléko: Möblierte Melancholie)


Mascha who?
Mehr über M.K. hier und hier
(deutsch) - and here (english)

19.12.08

Bright lights, big city









Added, for good measure, a
bright lights big city border
to this spirit cloth-style
border experiment from Nov. 4













It´ll be a present, hence the
somewhat extended colour range...


"The experience of leaving
one category for another,
of smooth being colder
than rough and of
that December I suffer
as the experience of leaving
one category for another,
using life that way
that opens and stops
moving, done,
furtively waving
as with one month
that opens and stops
among the others,
waiting and waking
in a place which seems filled
with restrained abilities
that experience that
has never seemed to me
to arrive before night
except as the need
to want to live
and want to be dead,
using a life that way,
face first, name gone,
and coming to
among a rival's things"

(Geoffrey G. O´Brien: Mixed Mode)

17.12.08

Finished (sort of...)

The basket full of unfinished things
got too paralysing at last, so I had
a determined go at the ex-summer quilt...











backside









handstitching some more details
by and by

For the lyrics of the day, go
visit Whiskeyriver, where today´s
poem is about DAYS like these - but
"cold and bright, heavy with snow and
the thick masonry of ice" - not as
Berlin days are: grey, gloomy, lolling
about irresolutely at +5...

14.12.08

Paper and cloth

Started making a series of mixed media
collages, based on (randomly selected)
pages from a Walt Whitman volume









I: "...sewing or washing"
II: "There was a child went forth..."









detail from I











details from II


"The messages of great poets to each man and
woman are, Come to us on equal terms, only then
can you understand us, we are no better than you,
what we inclose you inclose, what we enjoy
you may enjoy."
(Walt Whitman: Preface to Leaves of Grass)

10.12.08

Circumstance (2)

Added some writing to this tablecloth-
turned-wallhanging piece









It´s from a poem by Marianne Boruch
which I quoted here on Nov. 23:
"Where a finger should be and should
be sewing, every thought I ever thunk..."









Wrote it with textile paint pen, and
started following the lines with thin
thread, so the writing stays visible beside
the stitching...









There´s some more at the bottom:
"Just this word/thunk. Never used.
It lands, noisy/metal in a bucket..."


"It was one of those mornings the earth seemed
not to have had any rest at all, her face dour
and unrefreshed, no particular place-- subway,
park-- expressed sufficient interest in present circumstances
though flowers popped up and tokens
dropped down, deep in the turnstiles. And from
the dovecots nothing was released or killed.
No one seemed to mind, though everyone noticed.
If the alphabet died-- even the o collapsing, the l
a lance in its groin-- what of it? The question
'krispies, flakes or loops?'-- always an indicator of
attention-- took a turn for the worse, though crumpets
could still be successfully toasted: machines worked,
the idiom death warmed over was in use. By noon,
postage stamps were half their width and worth
but no one stopped licking. Neutrinos passed,
undetected. Corpulent clouds formed in the sky.
Tea was served at four. When the wind blew off a shingle
or two, like hairs, and the scalp of the house began
to howl, not a roofer nailed it down. That was that.
When the moon came out and glowed like a night light
loose in its socket, no one was captious, cautious or wise,
though the toes of a few behaved strangely in bed--
they peeped out of the blankets like insects' antennae,
then turned into periscopes scouting to see
if the daze that was morning had actually managed to doze."

(Mary Ruefle: The Daze)

9.12.08

Hier und jetzt...









a pouch I made...









...as a birthday present









...and one for myself...


"Was, wenn der Blick immer früher zurückkehrt,
das brave Tier / Dem nichts Menschliches fremd ist?
Alles Neue macht es nur müde./ Überschaubar geworden,
illustriert, fällt es leicht durch den Schlitz/
Der entzündeten Lider: dies protzige Jetzt,
dies verstiegene Hier (...)"

(Durs Grünbein: Hier und Jetzt)

7.12.08

How long the year(s) grow(s)












"Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that's what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves."

(Naomi Shihab Nye: Two Countries)

5.12.08

Feeling felty

Pleasant to look at felt in grey
weather, isn´t it?








new face...









old bag, back in favour recently
(don´t even want to touch them in summer)...


Yesterday, Slowprogress showed wonderful
felted animals by Victor Dubrovsky - which made
we want to look for more.
So, if you feel felty too, maybe you´d
like to see Natasha Fadeevas stuffed goat
with watering can, Andrea Grahams felted
vessels and encased sticks, Sieglinde
Ludes
´ rather scary objects, Stephanie
Metz
´ Venus (no weightwatching in feltland...)
and Beate Bosserts homely stones...

3.12.08

Sleet and creative spaces









A good day for staying indoors - and
visit some writers in their rooms...
Go here at BBC to see an inspiring series
of Writer´s Rooms photographs by Eamon
McCabe, who took "pictures of
people who are not there".

1.12.08

Circumstance

Got sidetracked by the idea that I
needed a tablecloth (heaven knows what
for - never needed one till now),
so I made this:











Soon after birth, though, it said
it doesn´t want to be a tablecloth, it
wants to become a wallhanging...
What a maze.


"I am what time, circumstance, history
have made of me, certainly, but I am also
much more than that. So are we all."

(James Baldwin, died Dec. 1, 1987)