Skillets and Things in Everyday Ramblings

Our main public square Thursday morning. I was trying to get a shot that included the star on top fully but a man behind me started to talk to me just as I was framing the shot, and I didn’t realize until later I didn’t get the complete picture I wanted. Oh well. You get the feel.

I had walked downtown to the bus connection I take out to the place where I meet with the guys. I realized a couple of months ago that I could walk down there instead of taking a bus to make the connection. I need to leave a little earlier but I get steps in and settle my mind after class to transition to something different.

What was odd about Thursday was how friendly a number of people were. It was raining but everyone out and about was making eye contact and a lot of them were smiling or at least interested in connection. I find it fascinating when the vibe out there sometimes is unpredictable. Also, I am used to not being seen, you know as an older woman. I am getting age spots, slowly but surely.

In my quest to use less plastic I ordered a couple of beautiful cast iron skillets, but I didn’t think much about what size skillets I was ordering. They came last week and now I have this handsome but very large heavy skillet that I do not think I will ever use. Unless I find myself having to cook for a bunch of people. I would like to give it to someone who has a big family and cooks a lot.

I can manage with the one that is not small but is smaller than the big one. My oldest sister used a cast iron skillet every day when I was a teenager and young woman. Having this one reminds me of her.

This year I am basically not doing anything for Christmas. I am okay with that. I took a week off in late summer and then a couple of days a few weeks back so the only class I am canceling is the one on Christmas morning. I am going down to have lunch with Kes and Most Honorable a few days later.

We had an Open Road board meeting this week. It was significantly less formal than our League board meetings. One of the things that came up was The Open Road Press, which published Walt’s book earlier this year. This is basically a collaborative self-publishing venture. Walt did hire an editor, and we paid for that.

He contacted me a few weeks ago, just before I left for Seattle and said he wanted to get together with me to talk about having the second book we publish be a book of my poetry. I said sure, fine, not really thinking about it, even though I had been sort of thinking about it in the background all year when my name was on the short list of authors to publish.

On Thursday the board approved this idea.

Their support on this is a Christmas present of sorts.

I am not going to stress about this. It has been a whole year of stress, maybe two. The relocation, the League budget and financial reporting. The taxes that still aren’t done. Losing Diego, family stuff, world events. It goes on and on.

This I am not going to stress about. Getting published used to be so important to me. Now, not so much. The fact that I share other people’s poems every weekday morning with my class is a big thing. It keeps me connected to the art form.

We had a moving conversation about the thing that is art inside us also on Thursday in the regular meeting that was inspired by one of the gifted painters in the group telling us he had a kind of a breakthrough or epiphany last week about going to dark places. He said he thought he needed to go there because that is where the there was. He talked about how all of a sudden, he was letting light in.

Through erasure in older drawings, through moonlight in newer ones. I can’t capture the depth and beauty of what he said here and what a joy it was to see him come out of what has clearly been a deep and abiding depression these last few years.

I shared this poem with both groups this week by the recently departed Nikki Giovanni. I stumbled upon it while looking for something different. I suspect you might like it too. She was amazing…

Quilts
Nikki Giovanni
for Sally Sellers

Like a fading piece of cloth
I am a failure

No longer do I cover tables filled with food and laughter
My seams are frayed my hems falling my strength no longer able
To hold the hot and cold

I wish for those first days
When just woven I could keep water
From seeping through
Repelled stains with the tightness of my weave
Dazzled the sunlight with my
Reflection

I grow old though pleased with my memories
The tasks I can no longer complete
Are balanced by the love of the tasks gone past

I offer no apology only
this plea:

When I am frayed and strained and drizzle at the end
Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt
That I might keep some child warm

And some old person with no one else to talk to
Will hear my whispers

And cuddle
near