This late winter/early spring I created 10 pieces that including salvaged pieces of wood- wither Wormy Chestnut or from old pallets. They have all left my studio and are in Wisconsin, Michigan, and here in Baltimore. As of this moment, far as I know, two have already found permanent homes. I had decided though at one point that I wanted to keep one for myself and this is the one that I decided had to stay with me and I have it right above my desk in my studio.
This crow image was taken at a park in Chicago near Lake Michigan on a day that I won’t ever forget because of things that were happening in my life at the time. The wood pieces are from old wood pallets. and the twig and lichen and moss were a gift sent to me from an artist friend who lives deep in the woods of Maine. She sent me a small box of birch bark and twigs one year. This little bit was pulled from that box.
This morning these questions came to me as I have been thinking a lot about how to deal with the Overwhelm of these days we’re living in. I can often get caught in a cloud of despair when I read up on the news. And while it’s important for me to stay on top of what is happening, I need to find a way for it not to affect me so negatively. Not surprisingly, I am pretty sensitive and when things feel too much, I tend to have flareups of my autoimmune issues. Here are some thoughts I had and thought I’d write them and share here:
+ Who are you listening to?
+ What has your attention?
Of course where your attention lands upon is what will be attended to. There are some big things happening in my personal life that I have had to turn my attention to and I am finding that because of this, I need to focus more on what is in front of me.
I started thinking about my worms in my compost bin. And most people would be like, ewwwww. And I get that. But what the worms do is such an amazing thing: they take the rotting discarded vegetable and fruit scraps, spent coffee ground and their filters, broken egg shells, and even hard avocado pits and break them down. Just by being worms and doing worm things they turn garbage into beautiful healthy compost that will give life back into the earth when I return it to my garden beds.
What am I going on about? Well, is it possible to be and do and live in a way that takes in the craziness of the world, but then compost it into something that nurtures a future rather than destroys?
Instead of getting overwhelmed, taking action in whatever way one can, big or small, is the antidote. I am thinking of doing another fundraising effort to send money to the ACLU with the sale of these postcards. I’ll announce it in my newsletter when I get ready to do that.
(If you’re curious about what kind of worm bin I use, it’s called Can O’Worms. When we moved into our first home in Seattle, the previous homeowners had it. I had never heard of people doing this sort of thing so I had no idea what it was. But she had left a pamphlet in the kitchen drawer probably in hopes that the new owners would continue with the worms. It took me a while to get going with it, but ever since those Seattle days, I have always had worms.)