October

…and the shedding of skins

I’m sitting on my porch swing quietly witnessing daylight slipping away taking with it last glimpses of what summer was. I’m at the age when i don’t have favorite season anymore - they’re all favorite, each treasured for its own special things. Summer memories already blurring in my mind, series of soft fireworks - flowerworks perhaps? - and October is treating me to blue-orange sunset and few maple branches on a table next to me blazing colors that only happen third week of October in Midwest.

It wasn’t an easy summer - a lot of started and discarded work, a lot of doubt, a lot of feeling my way in a dark. Change doesn’t come softly - it grabs your throat, raises its flag and declares you an occupied territory. It’s up to you to decide how to live further. The answer comes to me in a dream:  surrender.

And I do, and I can breathe again. There are no previous standards to hold myself to, the slate wiped clean again. I tack a stretch of velvet to my antique embroidery stand. Every time, I begin again. The only way to learn is by doing it.

Sometimes I still wish for a teacher, for guidance. The problem with teachers is that they can only teach what they know. I’m after the knowledge of my own, my own truths, however small and insignificant they may appear to the rest of the world.

Which brings me full circle to another set of worries - longevity of my art. Oh, my pieces will certainly outlive me - they made to last, I don’t cut corners, my work is honest. But will someone long time from now - will they still feel little flutter of the heart when encountering my work for the first time? Second time? Many times? Will they hear a distant whisper, a siren song? I don’t assume that what it will tell them would have the same meaning Im putting into my stitches now - but will it say anything? Will it whisper a story about how we lived? how we destroyed things and built them back up? How we looked inside ourselves and feeling our way through the dark we searched for hope? How we burned bridges and  learned to swim to the other side? And how current we were told to fight against brought us exactly where we needed to be. And the old clothes became too tight for our wings, and the old places were suffocating, and old makeup smelled of mould and dust, and we looked at each other and knew we were all parts of one piece, and we shone bright in that dark for others to find the way, and they did.