crafts and public displays of emotion

random juxtaposition. on several levels…

along with repairs and alterations to various garments, i made myself a ring from one of my favourite buttons…

this bear, who i think might have been called Edward, belonged to my mother. he’s a little threadbare. i meant to repair him when my neice was born but 2 and a half year’s on, he’s still waiting. my parentals head to Ontario to visit with her and my nephew this coming week. so today’s job is to get him ready for the journey and a new home with the next generation…

having picked up the idea from threadbanger on youtube, i recycled some found wooden picture frames, gave them a slap of leftover paint and turned them into changeable displays with string and clothes pegs…

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two contrasting faces of celebrity mental health that caught my eye and ear:

the latest cover of OK! magazine, snapped in the queue at the supermarket yesterday, which i’ll readily admit caused some rather curious looks from fellow shoppers…

and,

“…i realise the apocalyptic is inside of me. and the reality is what heals and puts us all together again. this sort of terrifying bleak loneliness is nurtured and you just about get through. and also the winter landscape, which is also apocalyptic – it’s stripped – and at this time of year when everything recovers and mends: is what it is meant to be. this sense of, there is a sort of truth – an absolute, measurable truth that is visible and present, all around you.”

– self-confessed depressive and SAD sufferer, monty don, reflecting on the personal resonance of the themes in his 5 favourite books to mariella frostrup at the hey festival for bbc radio 4’s Open Book

right, better get on with teddy’s reconstructive surgery…

LB

same story

the screen-saver scoops up photographs and creates a mosaic. and as the images multiply, they combine to become yet another photograph – an image of my little nephew, minutes old. swirls of red paint i made last summer with my right hand colour his florid cheek, sylvia meets jonah charging in the bend of his arm… and a favourite moment of you, laughing with head thrown back, melts deep into the black of his eye…

Even if I were to stretch this letter out, God forbid, to a thousand pages, would I ever be able to convey my full story to you? I suspect the answer is no. I suspect that our stories in their fullness will always be hidden from each other and that all those whiskered old men and bonneted old women looking out at us from their photographs in the family album will always remain mysteries to us even if, like me, they happen to have written their memoirs. And yet I believe that all is not lost. Maybe we can never know each other’s stories in their fullness, but I believe we can know them in their depth for the reason that in their depth we all have the same story.

Whether we’re rich or poor, male or female, a nineteenth-century Swiss jeweler like Isaac Golay in his oversized frock coat, or a twentieth-century American clergyman like me with a penchant for writing books, or a young squirt celebrating his twenty-first birthday in the twenty-first century like you, our stories are all stories of searching. We search for a good self to be and for good work to do. We search to become human in a world that tempts us always to be less than human or looks to us to be more. We search to love and be loved. And in a world where it is often hard to believe in much of anything, we search to beleive in something holy and beautiful and life-transcending that will give meaning and purpose to the lives we live.

– from letter to benjamin, by frederick buechner, in the longing for home (1996)

all witnesses to one another’s becoming… it was never your destination i cared about, just as i’ve long since forgotten the punchline. your laughter made the air vibrate…
i watch you in the transformation…

LB

from a tea break

it’s all about interesting conversations at the moment. well, that’s one of the bigger themes.
the day-to-day this week is all about emptying shelves and packing my life up into boxes but that’s dull as dishwater in my book. the unpacking and subsequent turning of a blank magnolia slate of an apartment into a suitably me-zone is the only carrot to tempt me to keep up the pace. still, at least i’m not having to do this relocation while my heart is in free fall, like the move to here last May. if i needed proof that there’s some strength in me, that i survived that fucking horrible month is a contender. but thankfully that is the past and today is today and if i find myself bored rather than weeping while i pack, then i know i’m doing better.

so. anyways. interesting conversations… oh. yes:

my dear brother highly recommended this interview from ffm 09. his praise was not unwarranted. not that it ever is. so i knew whatever this turned out to be it’d be good.
cornel west talks with lupe fiasco. i’d never heard of mr fiasco but this conversation contains some great stuff from both of them. it’s been running in the backround as i pack to stave off the boredom and on each listen i hear something new.

i get to go to tuesday group tonight. which is cause for joy and gratitude.

LB