Month: September 2018

I’ve been in an interesting and suspended era of contrast: the final push of dissolution of any old remaining structures of separation in my being, and the seemingly inert pulse of pure presence in my living.  The more things empty out of me, the more I fill with Me.  So it’s hard to talk in terms of action-oriented creativity, because everything that’s been going on has been so sublime and not easily related through language.

I’ve continued to consider layers of depth from my last post, Symbolic Thinking, and I’ve imagined a sun-catcher project that I’ll start as soon as I finish the latest quilt I’m working on (I’m almost ready to do the binding, so only a few days more.)  Years ago, I read about how our brain works when we remember things.  Here’s an article about the science. When we remember something, our brain only follows the pathway back to the last time we remembered it.  So our experiences, our memories, are not fixed points in our brains that we reach into with each remembrance, but are more like free-floating and evolving experiences that tweak every time we go back to them, and depend on what we have to filter them from our current point of view. The sun catcher project involves layers of memory and points of illumination.

A recent experience I had, that was such a high when I was in it, but has already emptied of very much meaning, involves turtles.  I meant to create a blog post about it when I got home that day, but forgot.  And then as days passed, I kept forgetting.  Now that I’m here,  and focused on posting, my memories of what felt so alive about this are faded.  But I’ll still include it because I remember it was an exciting experience, and I have photos!

I was at a park I like and crossed paths with a little boy and his mom.  They had a small plastic container and were looking for frogs and baby turtles.  It seemed like an exciting project to me, and they came well-prepared.  I searched the creek with them for a few minutes, hoping to find a frog, but doubting about the turtles because it’s late in the summer for that (or so I thought.)  I wished them well and continued my walk.  About 15 minutes later I crossed paths with them again and the boy had found 3 baby snapping turtles!  He said they were crossing the parking lot, fresh-hatched and bee-lining for the pond a far distance away.  I asked to hold one, and the boy let me hold one for about a minute, then he took it back.

I was so amazed!  And a little jealous, because he had found exactly what he was looking for.  And a little resentful, because I didn’t get to hold the turtle very long.  And a little concerned, because these turtles are meant to be wild and how qualified was he to care for them?  And a little jaded, because I had doubted in his quest all along.  So after asking what he was going to do with them (keep them for a night and bring them back tomorrow) and what he was going to feed them (mealworms) I wished him and especially the turtles good luck and continued on to my car to leave.

And that’s where I saw them.  Four of them.  Fresh-hatched baby snapping turtles crossing the parking lot towards the pond.  And feeling a lot super-blessed and elevated and transformed and returned-to-innocence, I scooped up those four and we went to the pond and spent time together.  As much time as I wanted, (and with great consideration that the turtles probably wanted to get into the water and eat something.)  I spent about 30 minutes herding and guarding and enjoying the turtles.  Four teenage boys rode up, they had crossed paths with the little boy too, and were in search of turtles.  So I invited them over and we all sat on the stones by the edge of the pond and held turtles and eventually watched them scoot into the water to finally start some unharassed living.

It’s good I took photos.  They help me get back into those moments.  It already feels like a lifetime ago.  But it was last week.  What will this week bring?

I love symbolic thinking for the way it opens the depths of any given experience.  The smallest of things can become epic journeys of discovery and revelation if you’re able to dive into the symbolic aspects of it.  Yet also, I get very aggravated with symbolic thinking because it can quickly overcomplicate and distract from an experience.  It can easily knock one out of a Now moment and cloud the heart of what a moment has to offer.

My example:  Last night around dusk I went to a favorite spot along the Fox River and as I enjoyed sitting along the rock edge, I noticed a monarch butterfly floating on the surface of the water.  I decided I wanted its corpse to do something with, as I have with others in the past.  So I got a stick and lifted the little guy out of the water.  But he wasn’t dead!  He clung instantly to the stick, and so I rested it on the rocks beside me.  We sat there together as he dried off and I wondered if he could fly again.

When I was ready to go home, he was still there and clinging heartily so he (on the branch) came home with me.  The night was cool, I knew between the temperature and wetness, his movements were limited so I nestled the stick with him on it into my flowers on my patio.  He was hidden for the night.  That’s when my thoughts started to dissect things.  I’ve been in a long era of transformation, one that has been especially exhausting this summer.  Butterflies are a symbol of transformation, specifically the end result of its stages.  I was excited to find this whole butterfly (realized catharsis) buoyed by the depths of emotion and the feminine (the river waters).  But as the butterfly was alive, my doubts set in: I wanted his corpse, not intending to ‘save’ him, so was he now my responsibility?  Did he know the end was near and so made the choice for a quick and easy death (by drowning) and did I steal that away from him?  Was I being cruel in having him live only to starve and never fly again?  Was he there as a symbol for the end of my own transformative process, and was I to just bear witness to whatever that process was, without reaction or responsibility?  Should I put him in the freezer and end it quickly?  Should I keep him through his death, because his body was meant to be with me?  There were many other smaller details of thought, but you get the idea.

He was still there this morning, and willingly rested on my hand and fingers for a long while.  As part of my inner debate I decided if he ate, it would let me know if he was trying to live or not, so I placed sugar water on my fingers so see if he would eat.  He didn’t, so I decided to return him to the park, and placed him on flowers that other butterflies were on.  I watched closely and he didn’t eat there either.  I eventually got him back on my hand and we sat on a bench and wondered at things.  Should I leave him there so nature could re-embrace him?  Since this whole thing started out with me wanting a dead butterfly, should I wait it out till the bitter end, to get that corpse?  What does that say about me and how I approach life?  How do I feel about myself, when I ‘save’ something, only to abandon it later?  Why would I assume the butterfly was suffering, whether because I thwarted its annihilation plans or simply because it couldn’t eat or fly anymore?  Is it self-aware enough for that?  When I held it up and looked in its eye, who was looking back at me, what were those eyes saying?

As we sat together, it tried flying a few times and failed.  He let me pick him up each time.  At one point, his head actually pivoted, then his body aligned with it, in the direction of a flowering plant I had been thinking of setting him in and leaving him there.  So I used that as a sign, his change of direction towards one of the places my thoughts were in, and I set him in the plant and left.  Maybe a bird will get him, maybe he will fall peacefully from the plant into the fen and once more be nourishment in a cycle.  Did I gain anything from this experience?  I thought I was getting something interesting to incorporate into an art piece, but I got something interesting to inspire an art piece instead.  If this is what launches me back into feeling creative, it will become the next project I share.

In the meantime, I have been practical and have finished two more quilts that had been pieced any laying around for awhile.  I’m pleased with the results.

This one is smaller and is made with a set of 2.5 inch Liberty of London fabric squares, supplemented with old vintage neutrals I had and my favorite color, orchid.  I designed the pattern myself, and am pleased with the outcome.

Here I pulled together panels of children’s literature favorites: Dr. Seuss, Curious George, Eric Carle, Goodnight Moon and Snoopy. I used dozens of free-motion patterns in this one, and it made for excellent practice.