cashio

I’m excited because I’m getting ready for three months of travel, but I’m also mourning because I haven’t been able to work on assemblages lately, and I won’t be able to bring those materials on the road. I will be restricted to working on pieces like this one (which I do love creating), plus a few fiber projects which pack easily. It’s frustrating to want to be making things and not be able to get my hands on the bits and pieces, but at least I will be finding more in the four countries I’ll be travelling through to visit my family.

There are a few things I’m sharing from the garden before I leave – raspberries, boysenberries, figs, pads for nopales (with lentils, yum!), and this lone avocado, very buttery. When I get back there may be a few strawberry and pineapple guavas left, then there will be pomegranates. I’ll miss the peaches – heavenly when they’re ripe and the skin slides off in your fingers, also the ripening of the manzana bananas and thimbleberries. My stubborn pineapples think they are just for show, all the other bromeliads bloom while they just sit there, but I am very happy because an ancient cycad that was damaged and seemed to die three years ago just produced a beautiful crown of leaves.

I love traveling, although I will miss a lot of close friends – three months is a long time between visits, but I will be staying with family and friends, some of whom I only see every few years, and there will be a new bébé when I get back.

tulip rete

Whenever I pass by I admire a beautiful astrolabe in the clock repair shop around the corner. There are many lovely things in the window, but I’ve always been especially fond of these instruments. The Museo di Storia della Scienza has a great collection, and the British Musem has this – a rare ‘pocket’ version found some years back.

weggehen

I was thinking about the process of art – I love how poet Hilde Domin talks about being deeply immersed in her writing, then stepping back. From a poem of hers:

Man muß weggehen können
und doch sein wie ein Baum:
als bliebe die Wurzel im Boden,
als zöge die Landschaft und wir ständen fest

(my not-very-poetic translation:
One must be able to go away
and yet be like a tree:
as if the roots remained in the ground,
as if the landscape moved and we stood fast)