Panning for Gold: Part II

I may have lied a couple of posts ago or at least need to explain.  When I said           “I have no words,”  I didn’t then, and for a good month beyond.  But I wasn’t referring to single, free-standing nouns…words that creep into my mind as I sit and stitch on projects and then capture on paper…single words that nip at a sense or the emotion of a moment, another word, word-waiting…

The words I’m referring to “not having”  are the cohesive strings that coast on the promise of knowing, that fill me with purpose and reinforce my belief system.

This dichotomy of language happened, as expected, when I returned from a workshop this summer, where permission was given to wander capriciously behind imagination without having to explain or name…just do, freely.

Not that I returned to my studio idea-less. I felt quiet and calm but thoughts were messy, like junk in a pile and a month passed before I could arrange them into collections.  Emotion and heart had disconnected from logic and concept, and strings of words that make good “blog” were absent.

Enter gold.  Third Thursday.  Roy-G-Biv.  And one single, shiny appelation began the untangling.  I presented my only gold photo,  the image of a shard of broken beach glass and a thought…
Gold is not the treasure I hunt.

I consider myself an explorer of the ordinary. I covet shells etched by sand and time, a rare round stone, but mostly the imperfect ones.  A feather no longer necessary to one bird’s flight or a rusty nail, its neck at breaking point from holding its head against old wood and weather for a hundred years.  These objects lavish my imagination with honest tales that stir my memories on a journey of stitches.

Stories rich with energy, memory, triumph and trauma.

I’m a survivor, like the old nail.  And generally positive, so I have been stitching until now on the high end of my stories, the outcomes, the triumphs, the half-full lessons.  But without planning too much, I left my “homeland,” dug a garden, set to grow something worthwhile.  I slowed a bit, embraced solitude and because I can,  I’m following the root way down.   

Then, I cut deeply into the center of my onion skin-bundled cotton like I was tending a wound.