Taken 12/26/09 in Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Just out of the frame is Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Friday, December 25, 2009
Merry Christmas!
And to get things started, here's a Van Hornian's holiday decorations. Notice the floor lamp?
Purpose
Margaret asked me about purpose in life. It surprised me that such a question could be answered right away.
I used to feel I was born to stitch, to use the hand to reveal in a tiny fashion, a small truth: personal memory, sentiment, political commentary. It was a passion, sitting there for hours and hours often still in pjamas at the end of the day, immersed in a world often as small as a square inch. It was a quest to create something perfect, a struggle, a challenge, and in a life where I felt very little control, my hyperfocus could at least control the space held within an embroidery hoop.
The work of the hand felt a part of a family legacy, of stitchers, knitters, carvers, and cooks, and a legacy that felt right for me to follow. There is a grace to using the hand to create, a nobility. It rails against the virtual world, a defense of the beauty of antiquated ways.
It helped me know myself better, the meditative rhythm of the stitch could work out issues long before I processed them consciously. I'd start a piece thinking it was about one thing, and then much later see it was really about something else. My hand lead me to the truth about my profession, health and relationships.
Stitching brought me life-changing friendships and experiences, enriching my life beyond imagination. I taught at Arrowmont twice, the place I first seriously studied my craft. I got to sit in residency at Anderson Center and at Ragdale, elite refuges for writers and artists. Their cozy studios were the places I struggled on my strongest pieces, feeling a responsibility to the privilege and to the work.
But things change.
I am not a sit-on-my-butt kind of girl anymore. There is no doubt I am healthier and happier running and hiking and cycling, and hopefully, working to make our communities better. The long ago humiliations of the weakest girl in school have been buried by the endorphins of the Senior Games athlete. In the nick of time, before the body is lost to age, I'm learning to listen to myself in a new way, challenging the limits of my determination and courage, and challenging my entire body, not just the delicately beautiful muscles of the hand.
I feel no need to create or control a tiny perfect world. Perhaps stitching gave me the gift of working through that need, to leave me with the faith that the world will be what it is: complex, difficult, beautiful.
Stitching is harder now. I'm restless to move; I want to go, go, go. My old eyes don't see the delicate possibilities of the tiny stitch as easily as they used to.
And so in all the months I have not stitched, I've felt I've ignored a sweetheart, a true love. I've wrestled with whether I should declare I've left it for good, giving us both the dignity of a true breakup. Fortunately, stitching's patience will allow it to sit on a shelf, waiting for me to come back to it someday guilt-free.
Purpose still comes in yearning spirits, but not solely my own.
I see the yearning in the faces of folks in Dallas and Houston, tired of their lives of offices and traffic and not enough blue sky. They are searching for a place where they feel young and free, if not forever, then long enough to go back and face the lives they've built in the city. They may find it in the mountains of Texas, as I did.
I remember finding my grandmother's Hawaii travel journal among her papers when she died. There was a bounce, a youth in her words, though she was well into her 60s when she'd traveled there. Hawaii was--for an unassuming woman with a very quiet life--sunlight.
As a girl, I could see cars pass by on old Route 66 from my seat at the dining room table. They were going somewhere out "there," a place unformed in my imagination, but certainly a place of excitement or adventure or long-sought peace. A place with meaning, or if not a place...then they were finding "meaning" itself.
My solo hike in Scotland, across quaking bogs, over waterfalls, through snow guided only by topo map took more courage than am willing to take at home. It proved me to me.
Our guides, Paul and Pauline, built me a step-up-to-the-plate "Scotland" and my folks a safe and happy "Scotland." Their photos, where they seem so young, show faces lit with joy. We got the time of our lives in one trip. There is no nobler work than that.
And so, it is with this purpose I wake every morning, excited for the new day. Travel brought me here, and without a doubt this is a harder place than I've ever lived, but a place possessing the power and beauty to strengthen and transform. Travel not only made me young again, it has given me the time of my life. If the thousands of hours I spent, head bowed over small bits of fabric and thread, helped to bring me to this place that I try to share with others, I am profoundly grateful.
I used to feel I was born to stitch, to use the hand to reveal in a tiny fashion, a small truth: personal memory, sentiment, political commentary. It was a passion, sitting there for hours and hours often still in pjamas at the end of the day, immersed in a world often as small as a square inch. It was a quest to create something perfect, a struggle, a challenge, and in a life where I felt very little control, my hyperfocus could at least control the space held within an embroidery hoop.
The work of the hand felt a part of a family legacy, of stitchers, knitters, carvers, and cooks, and a legacy that felt right for me to follow. There is a grace to using the hand to create, a nobility. It rails against the virtual world, a defense of the beauty of antiquated ways.
It helped me know myself better, the meditative rhythm of the stitch could work out issues long before I processed them consciously. I'd start a piece thinking it was about one thing, and then much later see it was really about something else. My hand lead me to the truth about my profession, health and relationships.
Stitching brought me life-changing friendships and experiences, enriching my life beyond imagination. I taught at Arrowmont twice, the place I first seriously studied my craft. I got to sit in residency at Anderson Center and at Ragdale, elite refuges for writers and artists. Their cozy studios were the places I struggled on my strongest pieces, feeling a responsibility to the privilege and to the work.
But things change.
I am not a sit-on-my-butt kind of girl anymore. There is no doubt I am healthier and happier running and hiking and cycling, and hopefully, working to make our communities better. The long ago humiliations of the weakest girl in school have been buried by the endorphins of the Senior Games athlete. In the nick of time, before the body is lost to age, I'm learning to listen to myself in a new way, challenging the limits of my determination and courage, and challenging my entire body, not just the delicately beautiful muscles of the hand.
I feel no need to create or control a tiny perfect world. Perhaps stitching gave me the gift of working through that need, to leave me with the faith that the world will be what it is: complex, difficult, beautiful.
Stitching is harder now. I'm restless to move; I want to go, go, go. My old eyes don't see the delicate possibilities of the tiny stitch as easily as they used to.
And so in all the months I have not stitched, I've felt I've ignored a sweetheart, a true love. I've wrestled with whether I should declare I've left it for good, giving us both the dignity of a true breakup. Fortunately, stitching's patience will allow it to sit on a shelf, waiting for me to come back to it someday guilt-free.
Purpose still comes in yearning spirits, but not solely my own.
I see the yearning in the faces of folks in Dallas and Houston, tired of their lives of offices and traffic and not enough blue sky. They are searching for a place where they feel young and free, if not forever, then long enough to go back and face the lives they've built in the city. They may find it in the mountains of Texas, as I did.
I remember finding my grandmother's Hawaii travel journal among her papers when she died. There was a bounce, a youth in her words, though she was well into her 60s when she'd traveled there. Hawaii was--for an unassuming woman with a very quiet life--sunlight.
As a girl, I could see cars pass by on old Route 66 from my seat at the dining room table. They were going somewhere out "there," a place unformed in my imagination, but certainly a place of excitement or adventure or long-sought peace. A place with meaning, or if not a place...then they were finding "meaning" itself.
My solo hike in Scotland, across quaking bogs, over waterfalls, through snow guided only by topo map took more courage than am willing to take at home. It proved me to me.
Our guides, Paul and Pauline, built me a step-up-to-the-plate "Scotland" and my folks a safe and happy "Scotland." Their photos, where they seem so young, show faces lit with joy. We got the time of our lives in one trip. There is no nobler work than that.
And so, it is with this purpose I wake every morning, excited for the new day. Travel brought me here, and without a doubt this is a harder place than I've ever lived, but a place possessing the power and beauty to strengthen and transform. Travel not only made me young again, it has given me the time of my life. If the thousands of hours I spent, head bowed over small bits of fabric and thread, helped to bring me to this place that I try to share with others, I am profoundly grateful.
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