Wednesday, June 12, 2013

 when i stumble through my thoughts, grabbing at words to tell the story, i'm so often lacking.  i have a friend who calls these posts of mine, 'tone poems'.  i just think of them as little moments.  but the words, the work, the genius of one word choice has been awing me these past few weeks.  i get lost in the beauty of the words and i continue to sew the words of genius poets into my quilts.  the poetry quilts are swinging between great literary moments, and the lyrics of a song you danced to with your high school boyfriend.  and they all equally jarring with their loveliness.  i'm making personal custom pieces for people who feel connected to a clump of words they have sung or listened to over and over again throughout their lifetime.  i love looping the sewing machine into these words.  i love the happiness they bring the people who take them home.  and how these words that have been a memory for them for so many years can now wrap around them, warm them, look at them.  it's all quite satisfying and lovely for me.

 
and i continue to make the ones that i find beautiful and important and lovely.  the ones that speak to me and that speak to a universal me as well.  today i did another rilke poem.  'childhood'.  simple and momentous at the same time...i'll include the poem and a selection of my quilted version.  

Childhood

It would be good to give much thought, before
you try to find words for something so lost,
for those long childhood afternoons you knew
that vanished so completely -and why?

We're still reminded-: sometimes by a rain,
but we can no longer say what it means;
life was never again so filled with meeting,
with reunion and with passing on

as back then, when nothing happened to us
except what happens to things and creatures:
we lived their world as something human,
and became filled to the brim with figures.

And became as lonely as a sheperd
and as overburdened by vast distances,
and summoned and stirred as from far away,
and slowly, like a long new thread,
introduced into that picture-sequence
where now having to go on bewilders us.

Rainer Maria Rilke
 
 

2 comments:

  1. There is a contentment in the gaps between each stitch I see. It's so special, and so sacred to see your works and hear your inner monologue. I cannot imagine a world without words... they are my gemstones.To have them weaved into a medium that brings warmth and comfort too... well that's heaven! ♥♥♥

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  2. I had no such idea about quilts with words in their reverses. How lovely and how happy moments you have creating your sewing poems.
    Romantic and practical.

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