new year, new (tree of) life

Well, better late than never! I just finished this set of quilted “Tree of Life” pillows as a wedding gift for my sister and her new husband, who actually got married last summer (!yes! i'm a little behind!). I started them several months ago, and then my sewing machine got all wonky and I had to put it aside for a while. I even borrowed another sister’s sewing machine, to which I promptly gave bad juju; hers started wonking up also. Feh!

Today I got my sewing machine out, twiddled with the knobs a bit and Voila! It works. I don’t know how or why and hardly care. But the Tree of Life pillows are done for New Year’s, which is fitting since in many cultures the Tree of Life motif is associated with new year celebrations. In Russia and in Turkey, for example, when Christmas trees were banned due to their religious affiliations, people loopholed the beloved custom into their culture by calling them New Year’s trees. In Vietnam, where the new year is rung in in the spring, the New Year tree or cây nêu is planted as part of the festivities. Or so says Wikipedia. Which totally means it must be true. ;-)

Probably the best-known of the Tree of Life symbologies is the Celtic version. The ancient Celts believed all living things were spiritual, mystical beings, not simply “natural resources” to be used for our own profit. In particular, the Celts believed trees were a source of great wisdom and that aligning oneself with the trees would allow you to walk between worlds -- the upper and lower worlds, that is. Trees, they believed, brought blessings from the gods. The imagery of the Tree of Life is often depicted as intertwined with its surroundings; and indeed the tree is perhaps the best symbol of this interconnectedness of all things; the roots reach far down into the earth for sustenance, and bring it up into “this world” to provide sustenance to other beings – oxygen for us to breathe, leaves and fruit for us and other beings. The leaves returning to the earth provide sustenance once again. With the image of the tree we are reminded of our own mortality, and interconnectedness with others.

With this, I wish you a very happy married life together, Brenda and Jeff. May your years together be happy and fruitful, may you always remember your interconnectedness with each other and your families.

May you grow together, always.

__________________________________

ps. another set of "Tree of Life" pillows is available in my Etsy shop: click here!

dear santa

a visit with jack gilbert

A friend shared a link to this great piece about the poet Jack Gilbert who, at past 80 years of age, recently won the National Book Critics Circle Award for his newest collection Refusing Heaven.

photo by Kate Davidson, NPR

You can visit the NPR website by clicking here and while there, be sure to click on the links provided to hear the inspiring interview with this reclusive poet who has spent most of his life outside the usual literary circles, stages, and spotlights, and whose poems speak poignantly to the two sides of the love and grief coin. Also included are clickable links that will allow you to listen to Gilbert reading several of his most lovely poems, "Infidelity," "Refusing Heaven," "By Small and Small," and "Getting Away With It."

I love Gilbert for his unabashed refusal to play the literary "game" (in the interview, he asserts that he is not a "professional poet," he's a "real poet"). I love Gilbert for saying there are just things about this life he doesn't like ("I don't like that my hair is thinning. I don't like that two of the women I loved died.") I love Gilbert for talking about how he is fond of making lists, including lists of things that he loves and wants to accomplish - a kindred spirit! I make lists too -- lists of things I love, things I want to do. Sometimes I have made a list of things I'd already done, just so I could cross something off of a to-do list. I am sure that Jack Gilbert (a man who once listed "to be in love before I die" on a list of things to do), would understand.

gifts from a dark night

icebound trees at the edge of my yard. 12/14/08

"If you are like most people, you have gone through several dark nights of the soul. You may be in the middle of one now. You may be in a difficult marriage, have a child in trouble, or find yourself caught in a tenacious and terrible mood. You may be grieving the loss of a spouse or parent. You may have been betrayed by a lover or a business partner or going through a divorce. For some people, these situations are problems to be solved, but for others they are the source of deep despair. A true dark night of the soul is not a surface challenge but a development that takes you away from the joy of your ordinary life. An external event or an internal mood strikes you at the core of your existence. This is not just a feeling but a rupture in your very being, and it may take a long while to get through to the other end of it."

(excerpted from Dark Nights of the Soul, Thomas Moore)

"Care rather than cure. Organize your life to support the process. You are incubating your soul, not living a heroic adventure. Arrange your life accordingly. Tone it down. Get what comforts you can, but don't move against the process. Concentrate, reflect, think, and talk about your situation seriously with trusted friends."

(Thomas Moore, in Dark Nights of the Soul)

"Every human life is made up of the light and the dark, the happy and the sad, the vital and the deadening. How you think about this rhythm of moods makes all the difference. Are you going to hide out in self-delusion and distracting entertainments? Are you going to become cynical and depressed? Or are you going to open your heart to a mystery that is as natural as the sun and the moon, day and night, and summer and winter?"

~ Thomas Moore ~

"Don't be afraid to suffer,
give the heaviness back
to the weight of the earth;
mountains are heavy,
seas are heavy."

~ Rainer Marie Rilke ~

"Imagine a black sun at your core, a dark luminosity
that is less innocent and more interesting
than naïve sunshine. This is one of the gifts
a dark night has to offer you."

~ Thomas Moore ~

ice storm december 2008

shiny road to the magic cottage

enough light to read by

all the babies are staying warm *

Me: "You guys are my heroes!"
CMP Guy: "Of course we are!"



icy leaves clinking like coins as they fall

(Posting from my satellite office as there is still no electricity
or phone at my place as of this posting Sat. pm 12/12)

Thank you to my gracious host for putting up me and el perro. :-)

ADDENDUM: power finally restored Tuesday 12/16 am after five and a half days.

* ADDENDUM: except for Pinky. The tail-less wonderfish.
R.I.P. Pinky. You were a good fish. Your calming,
unassuming presence will be missed.

santa's short list

nothing else matters

Composed by Metallica, covered by Apocalyptica.

Tucker's fave spot, 12/08

I'm making a list anyway.
You never know.

the wheel turns

Wheel of the Year.



Wheel of Life.

Medicine Wheel.

Big Wheel

It's all the same.

Tommy Corn: [after being hit in the face with a rubber ball] Awesome! Can we do the ball thing everyday?

Caterine Vauban: Don't call it the ball thing. Call it pure being.

Tommy Corn: Okay... so can we do the pure being ball thing everyday?

Like we have any choice.

like water

“There are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret, Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ~

"If grief could burn out
Like a sunken coal,
The heart would rest quiet...."

~ Philip Larkin ~

eternal sunshine

"The heart has its own reasons,
which reason knows nothing of."
~ Blaise Pascal ~

gratitude altar

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! The kids and I had dinner with family and then had some petsitting stops to make (petsitters are busy on holidays. :-) on the way home. And then we started a new tradition. We sat down and had hot chocolate with marshmallows, and made gratitude lists. There has been a lot of anxiety in the house of late, and a great sense of loss, and a friend suggested that to clear out that energy we make a gratitude altar to honor those things that are in our lives.

I won't make the kids' lists public, but I will share with you a little of mine. I am infinitely grateful for my beloved children. I am grateful for my family - all of them. Even the ones no longer with us; I'm so grateful that I had the time with them that I did. I'm so grateful for my wonderful, supportive friends. I'm grateful for the opportunity to work, and to attend a graduate program (at least for now). I am grateful for the roof over our heads; for this warm and cozy place we call home.

And I am grateful for lessons learned over the past year. Even, -- or perhaps most importantly --the most painful lessons; as these are the ones that most helped me to clarify what is most important to me, and what i want in my life.

out of the well, into the sunshine

AEDM collages for 11/22 & 11/23
in no particular order


"Afraid to Look" c. '08 miz annie
7.5" x 10.5" mixed media collage
on recycled pasteboard

"Who has not sat before his own heart's curtain?
It lifts, and the scenery is falling apart."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

"Fine Line" c. '08 miz annie
7.5" x 10.5" mixed media collage
on recycled pasteboard


"There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight."
~ Vaclav Havel ~

on grief

"you met me" c. '08 annie farnsworth
7.5" x 10.5" mixed media collage on recycled pasteboard.

I wanted to say again tonight how much I appreciate my friends. They've been there for me the whole time and willing to help but I've resisted opening up. I think it is hard to remember that true friends care about all of it, your whole experience, not just your sunny days. They want to be there for you in tough times too, but they can't if you never let them see that you're having one. And when you come right down to it, not letting them is a little like only wanting people to see you on a good hair day; it's dishonest and more than a little vain. I think it is hard, particularly, for people who are in the "helping professions" to show weakness or ask for help. We like to think we are here to help other people and that we can't do that if our own shit is falling apart. I had a great "talk" with a friend about the Shadow sides to personality; how if you do not acknowledge or allow them to be integrated into your life, they will come out and bite you in the ass when you're not expecting it.

My "Shadow" could be this whiny, weak, schoolgirl part of me with the unrequited love, who just wants to cry and listen to Fiona Apple and say "what if...?" and "if only I..." Let's just go ahead and call her "Baby." If I had acknowledged her earlier, let my truth show, weeks, even months ago... this process might not have been so difficult.

But maybe Baby isn't my "Shadow" at all. Maybe she's just a very honest part of my human experience, the part that feels those very human (but in some circles, unattractive) feelings like sadness and fear and rejection and jealousy and needing attention. Aren't those all very real parts of the human experience? Why do I fight so hard to keep her out of sight? I'm starting to realize that my Shadow is actually more like a Feelings-Nazi, who doesn't like Baby and is always telling her to suck it up. She walks around with a clipboard and checks things off, and dislikes weaknesses in others as much as she dislikes them in herself. Her main job is to prevent us from letting those weaknesses show. She wants us to be superwoman, to always keep it "together," to always be philosophical about everything. She is always practical and analytical and is afraid of being used or taken advantage of. She puts up walls, pushes people away. She is the part of me who thought things would be okay, and she was wrong and I am really pissed off at her right now. So I'm sorry if i seem a little whiny right now; if it seems like all i do with paper is make fires and hurricanes. Clipboard Lady can stuff it. It's Baby's turn right now.



"...there is no way around grief.
Can’t climb over it,
can’t crawl under it and,
as clever as I’ve tried to be,
no way to sneak around it.
The only way out of grief is through it."
~ Betty Ann Ruttledge ~

not real good at getting gone

"Damn the Doppler" c. '08 annie farnsworth
7.5" x 10" mixed media collage on recycled pasteboard
AEDM for 11/18/08

"Sometimes you get what you want,
sometimes you get what need,
and sometimes,
you just get what you get."

~anon~

blue monday

"While Waiting" c. '08 annie farnsworth
6" x 6" mixed media collage on
recycled cardboard.
AEDM for 11/17/08