Papier-Mache Art Bowls 11: Paper, Pencils, Fractals, Talismans

After drying the latest batch in the sun, and looking it over, I think this group is of mixed success. One or two experimental ideas produced lovely results, and one or two were acceptable if not first-rate. Not every experiment succeeds, after all: but the definition of an experiment, in both science and art, is that you learn as much from the failures as from the successes.



This particular experiment was of mixed quality. The idea was simple: I had recently purchased some beautiful hand-made marbled art paper at Wet Paint in St. Paul, a terrific art supply store that I visit every time I'm in the Twin Cities. When I lived in St. Paul, this was my primary source for all my art supplies. I purchased several sheets of beautiful hand-made papers, with the intention of using them for papier-maché projects, but perhaps also for hand-made books. Some of the sheets are sewable with thread, which sparks some interesting ideas combining multi-media, paper, and fiber art.

I made extensive photos of each of the sheets of art paper before filing them away, to be used for art projects.



I took a few of these art-paper photos and layered them in Photoshop, to make a more complex paper. I then printed that out as laser prints, and used the prints to make this bowl.



It's very pretty, visually, as it reflects the source material. The only thing lacking, I feel, is the texture of the hand-made papers. This is laser-printed photographs, which in many cases is terrific material for a papier-maché piece with a specific theme. I feel that some of my art bowls made from my prints have been like illustrations, in three-dimensional form rather than in book form. But this is pictures of paper, used as paper. So it's a bit "virtual," a bit removed from the original. As I said, visually it looks great; but tactilely it is a bit disappointing. Still, it might be a nice bowl to keep some other art supplies in, on my art desk.

So, an interesting experiment that almost works. What might work with this kind of collaged print paper in future is to use it as a background behind other papier-maché layered projects. For example, a tableau or vignette background framing photographs or illustrations; like a framed matte.

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This is my favorite piece from this session of making papier-maché. I really enjoy its whimsy and color. It looks good from any angle, and is bright and colorful in the sunlight.

The process of making this bowl began with an experiment with colored pencils. I made random areas of color on a fibrous, dense paper that I knew would tear easily, and be good for papier-maché. I filled the sheet with colored pencil shapes, mostly rough triangles, then tore the sheet into other random shapes with no regard for where the colors were placed. In other words, the patches of color were themselves broken up by being torn up without regard to their forms. Then I assembled the bowl in another random order with no regard for color placements. What results is a pleasing riot of randomized color shapes, all hand-sketched using pencils. So for me this bowl feels more organic, more like an actual drawing, more "purely artistic."

This art bowl a bit of an homage to Henri Matisse, whose late-in-life works made with colored paper and scissors I admire greatly. Matisse is one of my artistic heroes precisely because he never stopped exploring and experimenting; he rarely repeated something once he had mastered it, and continually looked to new materials for inspiration. Towards the end of his life, when illness confined him to a wheelchair, and he was unable to paint, he had an assistant cover sheets of paper with solid washes of gouache, then cut out shapes with scissors and assembled them to make art. His illustrated book Jazz is a masterpiece made in this manner. Both whimsical and grand, humorous and serious, Jazz set a high standard for hand-made art books to follow. (The complete book is available in scale reproduction as a book, from publisher George Braziller.)



The colored pencils used here are mostly water-proof, although some colors did run a little when they were still wet. I daubed up the excess with a paper towel, as I usually do, and when the bowl dried everything looked smooth and solid again. It's a denser paper, absorbent like water-color paper, thicker and rougher of texture. This bowl actually dried faster than any of the others, in the sunlight. I am very pleased with how the color shapes came out; I'll probably try this technique again later. I might also try it with water-soluble colored pencils, which when wetted in the papier-maché matrix might run and blur into interesting solid colors.

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This is a relatively large bowl made using paper prints of Photoshop pieces I had made a few years ago.

I have in the past designed gift-wrapping and other papers, patterns that could also be used for fabrics or wallpapers, based on fractal art generated from the Mandelbrot Set. I designed and collaged these forms in Photoshop, and printed sheets of paper via laser and inkjet printers. I have actually used these papers myself to wrap presents for family and friends.

This bowl was envisioned to use a colorful fractal pattern on the exterior, and a related fractal pattern on the interior, but in grayscale and B&W. The contrast between the almost painfully colorful exterior, and the serene, staid interior is intentional.



Fractals fascinate me, both for their elegant mathematical simplicity, and the beautiful, complex visual graphics that can be generated from those elegant mathematical formulae. I am certainly not the first artist to be fascinated by fractals—I have a special section on my bookshelves just for books on fractals and chaos theory, many of which are gorgeously illustrated—yet the infinite possibilities inherent in fractal-generated visual art make it possible for every artist to do something very different with the same materials.

My intent here was to make an illustrated art bowl using some of my fractal wrapping paper. I made a fairly large bowl, thinking it would interesting to use it as a container for other fractal-based art I might make later on. For now, it's just loud and fun to look at.

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Marigold Shamanic Healing Bowl

This bowl I made purely for myself, and was the reason I began this current session of making papier-maché. Prior to going in for surgery, I had made a piece of visual art for myself, to use an invocation for healing. I combined a photo I had made of a field of marigolds with the image of my most recent EKG. I made a print of this piece and took it with me during surgery, to place in my hospital room where I could look at it every day and remind myself to heal, to get better, and to overcome.



The day I made this current group of papier-maché pieces was the first day since I had returned home from the hospital that I had felt run down, tired, and upset, out-of-sorts, and just plain icky. I was feeling a lot of emotions from the surgery and the hospital stay, and my body was likewise complaining of the traumas it had been put through.

As I have said many times before, sometimes the best thing to do, on such dismal days, is make art. When I make art, as I've also said before, I forget about everything else, and think only about what I'm doing. So even though I felt fairly lousy that morning, I made these papier-maché pieces. This Healing Bowl, made entirely for myself, was the only art I intentionally set out to make that morning. I am pleased with the results on several levels. The bowl was made to be another reminder to continue my healing journey, evoking once again the many healing properties of marigolds, and it sits now on the table in my bedroom.

Marigolds were also a favorite flower from my childhood in India. They grow prolifically there, and are used in many rituals, from weddings to temple offerings, from funerals to bouquets offered to the person you love. Their fragrance is wonderful, they are edible, and they are used in many healing potions and as a cooking herb. I love marigolds in every shape and variety, and I grow them now in my own garden.



This bowl uses my marigold/EKG image on its exterior, for color and to evoke a restoration of perfect health. The interior of the bowl uses several repeated copies of a drawing I made of the Horned God last autumn, which I scanned into the computer, then manipulated in Photoshop.

For my recovery from this traumatic, high-risk major surgery, for my journey through to new health, for the next surgery and recovery that I must still endure—for all that and more, I will invoke every Power that I can think of, summon all the help I can get, and rely on my family and friends for their support, both practically and in terms of prayers, good thoughts, wishes for well-being, or anything else that is offered. I am going through a major life-changing experience here, and I'll take all the help I can get, in whatever form it's offered! And I am and will remain eternally grateful for all of it. Beyond the gratitude, also, is a new life, which remains still a Mystery to me for now, but which I do know will be worth going through all the pain and suffering I have been going through now, including the surgery and recovery. It's all worth it in the end.

I put all of these thoughts into this Healing Bowl as I made it, channelling my intentions and hopes and prayers into my art-making. A ritual of art-making, an intention for the art that is made. Therefore, I don't really care if someone thinks this bowl is not as aesthetically beautiful as some other art I've made before. That's not the point. The purpose here is to focus my thoughts on my own healing, to remind myself that this process is going to take some time, and to be patient with that—and I can be patient, knowing that everyone I love is thinking of me, and wishing me well.

And art is one way to help me stay focused on that, and one way to make it manifest.

So Mote It Be!

A New Year Every Day

On January 1, ostensibly New Year's Day, I didn't watch football on the TV, I didn't go out to any parties, I didn't celebrate with a tulip of champagne, I didn't do much of anything. I almost forgot about it, to be honest.

I didn't go out of the house, honestly, because I was freezing. On December 31st here, we'd had two days of warm thaw, it was well above freezing, and so I spent an hour in my garden planting iris, tulip, and lily bulbs for next spring. (I still have some more to plant; in some designated garden spots the ground was still frozen.) The following day, New Year's Day, it was well below freezing and windy again. No snow on the ground anymore because of the thaw, but bitter cold. I bundled in layers but was still cold all day.

After nightfall, I spent some time making art. I made some photographs of candles and the shadows they cast on my Indian bronze sculptures; rather mythic stuff. And I made some more papier-maché art bowls, including one out of origami paper. These are still drying in the sunlight this morning.

I made myself a nice dinner. I watched some of the Doctor Who and the NCIS marathons on TV, while I ate, instead of all the annual celebrations and sports events, which have come to seem hollow to me, the loudest being all the more bread-and-circuses. And I read and wrote in my journals. I did some file organization while half-watching TV, some sorting and filing. I did some chores around the house, including a couple of minor plumbing fixes, although there are more of those to do still.

I celebrate the new year and the turning of the Yearwheel at another time, on All Hallow's, which is an older, more traditionally agrarian New Year's celebration. So we're already two months into the new year as far as I'm concerned.

I don't do New Year's resolutions, and here's why:

1. Every day is a new day, the start of a new year. Every day is another chance to do your life differently. You don't have to save it up for one special day along with everybody else. Start right now. If you’re truly going to make a change in your life, why wait? Start any day, not only on a sanctioned day of ritual new beginnings.

2. Resolutions are a set-up for recycled self-hatred, because everybody always makes impossible resolutions that they can’t live up to—usually for lack of self-discipline—and when they inevitably fail, they have one more opportunity to beat themselves up. Resolutions are a trap. They’re actually rather masochistic, at their extreme edges. They become set-ups for failure and reprobation and self-hatred. Most people set themselves up to fail by choosing resolutions they know they won't be able to meet. Expectations are high, accomplishments are low. So it's another excuse to beat yourself up for failing, for being less than perfect, for demolishing your self-esteem.

Feel free, if you want to. But that's not for me.

I don't think it helps to save up changes you want to make for special days.

I know lots of people love ritual, and love to ritualize their celebrations and changes in their life—for example, bar mitzvahs, big wedding celebrations, graduations, etc.—and ritual is very important both socially and individually. We all make up little rituals to mark changes in our lives, and that's healthy. In fact, we don't really celebrate rites of passage enough in our culture, like the passage from childhood into adulthood; so rituals are usually a good thing.

But why save up personal changes, or rites or passage, to be made on a designated day of ritual new beginnings when you can start with them right now, today, right here? You don't have to wait till Sunday to pray, after all, so why should you have to wait till January 1 and the arbitrary calendar date change, in order to decide to lose those extra 20 pounds, or quit smoking, or whatever? Those can start any day. All it takes is a little self-discipline.

Calendars are arbitrary. New Year's Day has not always been celebrated on January 1, not even in European cultures, much less in other cultures such as ancient China or Japan. If you look at the history of Western civilization, specifically European historical timekeeping, and the various calendars that were in contention till standardization was imposed (historically quite late), you'll overcome the assumption that "there is only one official start to a new year," which is a false and ahistorical assumption. Just because January 1 is the agreed-upon date now and for the past few centuries, don't assume it's always been so. It hasn't. And that's the point: New Year's Day could be celebrated pn any day. It's arbitrary. Every tradition that we take for granted now as an eternal tradition—well, there are no eternal traditions, because everything was invented, at one time or another. Every tradition was made up, once.

So every day could be the New Year. So we might as well act as if it is. And start every day as a new day, a new year. A new chance.

Why should New Year's Day be something special? Unless it's New Year's Day every single day, and every day is special, setting aside one arbitrary day as special just means the rest aren't. Which I don't believe for a moment. Every day is a special day. Every new day is the start of a new year. Every day is a chance to get it right, to do it over, to make those changes, to finish something that you've been avoiding finishing.

So today is New Year's Day, too. And so is tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow. And June 23rd. And April 14th. And October 3rd. They all seem pretty special days to me.

Rose Shadows

Having completed the rose ritual of a year and a day, a ritual in remembrance of my parents, I was free to put the roses away. I took some photos before doing so. I haven't been able to bring myself to dispose of the roses themselves, and in truth I see no need to. So they're now in a storage cabinet along with some other family goods and decorative items. Meanwhile, these shadows of these roses, making lines and lights on the floor.




Rose Shadows

In the Garden of Memory

My mother died two years ago today. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't affected: in truth, it's been an emotional day, more emotional than usual. I've also been more tired today than all week, physically and mentally. I'm sure these are all related events. I'm feeling emotional, as I said, so I probably am not coherent to write anything that isn't a ramble or random walk, and I probably shouldn't, and I'm going to anyway.

My mother's death began the process, in earnest, of getting to where I am now. First there was six months of going through the house, through 30 years of accumulated belongings, very disorganized because my mother had had Alzheimer's for at least a dozen years at that point. There was the funeral, almost exactly seven months after my father's. There was the vast amount of bank paperwork and inheritance details. There was my need to buy my own home, and move into it, while still clearing out the old belongings from the old house. There was the need to sort through what I was going to keep, during the move. There was moving day itself, and the disruption of that; there are still a few prized possessions and books that I cannot find anywhere, and have given up for lost. During all that there was the diagnosis of and initial recovery period from my chronic illness, ulcerative colitis; which looking back through my life, I can see that I had had at least one or two undiagnosed episodes in the 1990s. There was a lot more to deal with.

And that was only 2008.



The following year, 2009, turned out to be even worse. It was the worst year I've survived recently, even worse than the preceding three or four years, during which I had given up my own life and career to take care of my parents, to move in with them and be the live-in caregiver, and make all the medical decisions. I'm able to be clinical, and I'm able to understand the technical aspects of medicine, having been around it my whole life, so I was usually the family member that the doctors and nurses liked to talk to, because they didn't have to dumb it down. That was a mixed blessing, for me.

It seems that almost everyone I know and care about had a bad year in 2009. Sure, some of that was the global socioeconomic climate of recession, unemployment, and financial and political crises. But there was more to it than that. There was something on the global level that was like the whole human race was struggling, was fighting for its survival, mostly against itself. Perhaps this is species-level adolescent turbulent. Perhaps it's the lingering Millenarian vibes from the Big Calendar Change at the year 2000, with all the attendant apocalyptic visions and fears and desires. Now the apocalypse rhetoric is all focused on 2012, when the Mayan Calendar changes over from the Fifth World to the Sixth World. (I have to say, it's one of the more stupidly misunderstood apocalypses of late, because most of the people fearing it don't even realize that it was never prophesied as be the end of this world, but as the beginning of the next. But then, most people seem to want to see that glass as half-empty rather than half-full; or are addicted to the drama of being in fight-or-flight mode all the time.)

Although I know there's no apocalypse, it's still an uphill battle to to fight against it. Too many people want it. You can see it in the national discourse whenever there's a new terrorist threat, or even an evaded event: the dumbing down happens, the rhetoric turns hateful and emotionally-driven, it becomes very Tribal with the usual "you're either with us or you're against us" rhetoric. Nuance and balanced thoughtfulness get trodden upon. Words become insults on a whole new level, words like "socialist" or "PC"—both of which have become swear-words like "Commie" or "faggot" were forty or fifty years ago. It's all about having a scapegoat to hate—anything but looking in the mirror and seeing what we don't want to see about ourselves. And we seem to be so impatient that we don't even allow time for wise solutions to be developed; everyone demands fixes Now, and never gets them, and then we turn on each other in blame and revenge. It's all so very kindergarten.

I know there's no apocalypse. i have faith in apocatastasis, which I know to be more true, always.



So why was 2009 so horrible? It's hard to say, exactly. I did feel like I was fighting an uphill battle all year long. 2009 was also the year my uncle died, after a long protected illness, and my aunt was pretty much taken over by her dementia. Probably Alzheimer's, but it's undiagnosed because she hates and fears doctors and won't deal with them or listen to any advice. I drove out to Connecticut to help them out, for awhile, and the stress and anxiety of that trip were bad enough to trigger a relapse of my chronic illness. That was October, and I've been in full relapse, feeling sick and tired ever since; and I'm not well yet. I might be recovering, finally, but I'm still having symptoms, and still tired all the time. That's the truth of a chronic illness: you don't just "get over it."

When your parents die, you don't just "get over it." I've had to break off contact with some people I used to care about a lot, because they were acting as if, by now, I should have just "gotten over it," and resumed my life at full speed. Well, you know, I was just about ready to do that—when October happened, Connecticut happened, and I got sick again. I felt like I was just beginning to get back on track—and then I got derailed again. That led to some serious depression—let's call it situational depression rather than chronic—and for now, I'm doing what I need to do to recover from that, as well.

You don't just "get over it," when so many blows happen in such a short time. It can take years to recover. There have been times when the suffering was so bad, I didn't care if I lived or died anymore. I spent a lot of time burning out what little energy I had, in 2009, struggling to find a reason to go on living. And I was also drained by some of my friends, who have also been in crisis, dragging me into their soap-operas, or needing a shoulder to cry on. Well, I'm happy to offer a shoulder to cry on, but my own diminished resources have forced me to withdraw from those friends who never offered a shoulder in return; in other words, reciprocity, which is what real friendship is all about.



In 2009, therefore, I've learned to marshall my energy, and be more "selfish" about where I spend it. I've learned to keep to myself when I find other people draining; even people I like can be draining. That's why it's a chronic illness, that's why it's depression, that's even why it's grieving: you don't just "get over it." You have to own up to it, and admit that sometimes you just plain feel like shit, and be honest about how you feel every single day, and then decide what to do next. And when you energy budget has been reduced, you start to prioritize. You do get a little impatient with the apparently clueless, but you also discover in yourself a lot more patience for your own process of recovery than you ever imagined was available to you. And so it's been: I've learned patience with my own process, and that some days I really just genuinely have to sit there and Do Nothing. That wasn't always an easy lesson to learn; but the physical limits imposed on you by a chronic illness force you to Pay Attention, and slow down.

In 2009, I learned to understand and share my father's lifelong love of gardening as a form of personal therapy. I spent a lot of time in the garden this summer; it's a small garden, and I've focused mostly on flowers and perennials, that need little care, when I'm traveling. I planted several new rosebushes, many lilies. This fall I planted a lot more bulbs for spring, and made a few new landscape art sculptures in parts of the garden. It was a big part of my return to life—and will continue to be, in future.



I’ve spent a lot of time this holiday season Doing Nothing: napping, watching some movies, a little reading and writing, okay a lot of reading, and taking it quiet and mostly easy. I haven’t gone out of my way to overdo things, and I’ve been taking extra naps, sleeping in late, storing up energy and trying to recover my strength. The past week or so my stomach has been upset and touchy, but overall I’m feeling okay, neutral or slightly better. I haven’t been trying too hard. I’ve been waiting. Waiting for the calendar year to change, for the holidays to be over, for my health to rebuild itself (assisted by lots of Reiki, etc.), waiting for life to come back to me. It feels possible, now, this deep cold winter night. It was full moon on New Year’s Eve, a blue moon. The sky was clear and bright, and the moon was beautiful. Now, a few days later, after more fresh snowfall, the snow is still blue and cold and bright under the waning moon, the air still and cold and clear, and filled with stars.

I don't do New Year's resolutions, for two reasons: I think it's stupid ritual that most people use masochistically; and I celebrate the new year on Samhain, by the old calendar. A few years ago I started doing annual Gratitudes instead of resolutions.

I’m having a great deal of trouble writing my annual Gratitudes this year. I haven't been able to do it. The glass has felt half-empty for so many months, it's hard to remember things to be grateful about. 2009 was a terrible year; in some ways, it was even worse than the bad years just in front of it. It’s been hard to find things to feel grateful about. I’ve had no problems making a list of troubles that happened in 2009, which I’m grateful to put behind me, but for which themselves I can’t generate much gratitude. I want to keep to this annual self-invented discipline of writing Gratitudes alive, and active; it’s a good discipline, and a good annual clearing and releasing. I may have to work into it even more gradually than before, however. I am really struggling against all those black crab thoughts trying to pull you back down into the bucket. It’s been a deep bucket this fall, really a black hole, and climbing out of it has taken more than I had to give. Assistance has been required. And even then, the outcome is not certain.

There are some lessons learned in the past year, things I’m grateful to have learned, though each came out of a process painful and difficult and ongoing. Some of these lessons have rooted themselves in new changes in my life, probably permanent changes of direction and attitude; although changing an attitude is a matter of changing a bad old habit into a new good one, and takes practice and repetition. Some of these don’t translate easily into words; and even those that do would require too much background to make much sense of, to anyone but me. And not everything need be told. Some things need to be kept silent, and private, for releasing them into the town square dilutes and diminishes their power.



Two years ago my mother died. It was a bad death. It was not a planned-for and peaceful slipping-away like my father's dying, in which he was in charge, had time to say goodbye and tell people what he wanted, and be watched over by Hospice for his last few days. Two weeks before she died, my mother had been taken by ambulance to the hospital from the Alzheimer's residential facility where he had had to move two years before, when my father could no longer take care of her by himself at home. She had a urinary infection, which is why she went to the hospital, but it was discovered when she was there that he had developed old-age diabetes. That was sudden; it had probably come to fruition only weeks before; my mother had been physically healthy her entire life, almost never needing any serious form of treatment. But here was the dilemma: she was now too confused to understand that the doctors were trying to help her, and she thought they were trying to kill her. She screamed in the Emergency Room when they were trying to examine her; her screaming filled the entire ward, and turned heads; it took about six nurses and doctors to hold her down, eventually; i was there to hold her hand, but I had to step out of the cubicle when they were examining her, and that's when the screaming began; those screams coming from my distraught mother's heart tore scars open in my heart that will never heal; I will never forget them; but I can bear all that because I'm grateful than none of my family or friends heard her like that. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

They kept her in the hospital overnight, but they couldn't treat her, because she thought the insulin they tried to give her was poison. She wouldn't eat, or accept anything, and she wouldn't settle down. I stayed as late as I could stand, then I went home and spent a sleepless night staring into the fireplace and crying. They gave her new pills to take, and the nurses at the Alzheimer's home tried everything they knew to get her to take them; but she wouldn't. Since my father had died, it had been hard; he was the one person she still would do anything he asked her to do, and trusted. She didn't fight, she wasn't mean or vicious, she just wouldn't do it.

The Alzheimers had brought out, most days, an inner childlike cheerfulness and happiness in her. Most days, when I went to visit, she was in a good mood, and liked everybody. She didn't like anybody on the days they cleaned her room, or made her take a shower. Mom was always very independent, and never liked being told what to do. She was always headstrong. She could be hard to get along with, as a person; but as she began to revert to childhood in old age, she became often quite a bit sunnier than she'd ever been when she was of sound mind.

There was one day, the autumn before she died, before her last illness, that I will always be grateful for. It was a sunny autumn day, and for once she was lucid and talkative and present. She remembered my name, she remembered that I was a musician, like her, and we talked about music and life for a few hours. I felt for the first time in years that I had my Mom back, the person I'd always gone to talk thing over with, the person who shared my love of music and art and writing, who was my friend as well as my parent. For that one lucid day, I had my Mom back. She was never that lucid or clear-minded again, but I remain grateful for that one day. It was so good for me to have had that, so healing of my own grief. You see, you start grieving for a parent with Alzheimer's even before they've died: because they themselves, what made them who they are, is gone long before their body dies. Alzheimer's is torture on the families and other survivors; "torture" is not too strong a word for it.

At the end, a few days after going back to the Alzheimer's home, she was back in the hospital. it was clear that she was failing, that they couldn't treat her, mostly because she wouldn't let them, and she was therefore on her last legs. I went to see her in her hospital room that afternoon. She was in a coma already, and I talked to her for awhile, and held her hand, but she didn't respond. That afternoon we took her back to the home in the care of Hospice. That night, she died, in the early morning, alone in her room. We all went over there, long before dawn, to say goodbye. I wept over her body, unable to stop crying. I took her loss harder than I had my Dad's; perhaps because it was the second loss of a parent so soon in time; perhaps because I'd always been closer to her, the way sons are to the their mothers; perhaps because I was already exhausted and sick myself at this point, and just felt completely lost.

I was grateful that she had died when she did, though, because I had been afraid that her funeral would have to be held on my birthday. Instead, it was exactly a week before my birthday. Try "getting over" that one: your Mom dies between the Christmas holiday and your birthday, and misses her funeral being actually on your birthday by a mere week. How would you have felt? I'm just grateful, as I said, for the near miss.

I loved her; there are no words to say how much. Tonight, the second anniversary of the night she died, I miss her. Again, there are no words.

Her death began the year of moving, sorting, buying a house, and so forth. I was just starting to think I might be able to get past all that, in 2009. Life had other plans.

I need to pause. I want to get to my Gratitudes, eventually, and say more about what lessons I've learned from 2009. I want to say more about my mother and father, while they're in my memory, on this sort of anniversary. And it will have to wait awhile. I need to stop for awhile—because I'm tired, not because I'm upset; and because I feel finished for the moment. I'll get back to this writing when I can.

Images are from my garden, June 2009.

Happy Twelfth Night

Bright Angel bless
all those I know and care about and love
to being them peace.

Dark Angel stand
guard on their edges and indwellings
to keep them safe.

Rose Ritual: Completion

My parents' grave marker, Muskegon, MI. Their ashes are buried approximately 20 yards away from where my mother's parents' are also buried.

A Rose Ritual, a Year and a Day

Last weekend was the anniversary of my mother's birthday. Just over a year ago, I undertook a ritual of remembrance, for a year and a day, for my parents. I bought some yellow roses for my mother's birthday, then red roses for my father's. I also bought roses on the anniversaries of their deaths. I've spent a year and a day on this private, personal, invented ritual, not knowing where it would lead. After each group of roses dried out, I added them to a glass bowl kept on my mantlepiece, next to the tall vases of dried roses from my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary, and a rose each I had kept from their funeral bouquets.

Now I've completed the year and a day, and feel complete with the ritual. I don't need to extend it, or repeat it. It has served its purposes. I may celebrate my parents' lives by remembering them on their anniversaries, and it no longer needs to be in this ritual form. I now release all forms and contents of these rituals. It is accomplished.

To complete the ritual, I did something a little different, to both end the cycle, and to open it out into infinite future time. Trusting my intuition, I went to the florist on the day they were having a sale, and so I purchased a full dozen roses, now opening broadly in two vases on my table. Today is the first sunny day we've had in a week, so the rose blooms have been subdued in the gray daylight. Today, they're exploding with color and scent, already beginning to fade a little. For these dozen roses, I bought even numbers of yellow, red, and white roses. I will eventually dry them, and add them to the bowl on my mantle above the fireplace.



And I also bought myself a more enduring plant: something to sustain the life-brining aspects of having living things in one's home. I'd been thinking that my home needed some indoor greenery, as well as the garden surrounding. My home especially needed a living plant to nurture me through the cold white months of winter. So I brought home a christmas cactus, already in bloom. My parents used to have a christmas cactus in their home, which I had to give to a friend during the moving-out process, as I was too overwhelmed at that time to deal with houseplants on top of everything else. That cactus had bloomed on Christmas Day at least three times in my memory, over the dozen and more years it resided in my parents' living room. This is the first indoor plant I've bought for my new home. It's low-maintenance, which is just what I need, and brings green and color into my rooms. I look forward to spending time together, and sharing our breath.

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To complete the ritual of a year and a day, which I have been writing about as it proceeded, here is the complete series in chronological order:

Yellow Roses

Yellow Roses 2

Yellow Roses 3

A Rose Ramble, a Rose Rent

Red Roses

Red Roses 2

In the Garden

Red Roses 3

Red Roses 4: Shadows and Light

My Father's Roses

A Rose Ritual, A Year and a Day

Rose Ritual: Completion

In the Garden of Memory

I'm grateful for this project, this ritual, this process, and grateful to its completion. I will no doubt post once or twice more in this series, as the roses dry out and I add them to the bowl.

My Father's Roses

This is the rosebush that my father grew for many years in front of my parents' house, near the garage. It was partially shaded by tall oak trees, and surrounded by other plants. When I moved to my new home, when we put the old house up for sale, I transplanted this rose to my front garden, and tended it carefully. Now, two blooms have opened at the same time, just this past week.



After we had to move my mother into the residential Alzheimer's care facility, because my father couldn't take care of her any more, whenever this rose produced a bloom, he would cut it, and take it to her. He visited her almost every day, his own health permitting, and went and sat with her while she ate lunch. Sometimes she wouldn't eat if he wasn't there, just being with her, coaxing her along. He didn't use a fancy vase to bring her each rose, just a cup with some fresh water in it; vases would disappear there, who knows why. Mom often put Dad's roses immediately on the windowsill in her room, where they would catch the west light, and admire them.



This rosebush has bloomed at last this summer. There are two blooms on it now, with another one about to open. I sit on the lawn and take in its rich fragrance, but I can't bring myself to cut the blooms off, even to take them inside. Perhaps next year, when the bush is even more established. I'm told it's good to let a rose go a little wild, the first year or two of planting, till it establishes itself firmly in its new home. Last year, late in the fall, it was about to bloom, when the first frost came. I almost had a November rose. This season I am letting it go, just watering it and watching it. If it continues to do well in its new home, I will think about trimming the blooms and putting them in a vase on my kitchen table.

And remember.

Red Roses 4: shadows & light

Red Roses 3

June 15th of this year was the second anniversary of the day my father died. I had a very emotional day. What was surprising was not that I had emotion, but how much of it there was. I couldn't listen to a single piece of music without becoming overwhelmed with tears.



These were the feelings I didn't have time for, two years ago: there was too much to be done. And I carried the vast burden of it, it felt like at the time; far more than I could deal with. I tensed up, and kept myself from feeling too much. I shunted these feelings into the future, where there would be more time to deal with them. That time is now.



Dad had a major sweet tooth, even though he was diabetic. Towards the end, he indulged himself a little. Not so much that he made himself sick. But his philosophy was, better to enjoy it now, because later you won't be able to. I can't really argue with that; and I don't want to. Dad would have appreciated this set of remembrance roses being next to the candy bowl. And the pretty chocolate and peanut spheres would have suffered gradual attrition, appreciated each time they slowly disappeared.

Red Roses 2

Red roses from my father's birthday, now dried and in the bowl.



Tomorrow—actually very early in the morning, so really late tonight—is the second anniversary of his death. So much has happened since then. I reel to consider it. I will buy more roses tomorrow, to continue the remembrance ritual for my parents, my ritual of a year and a day.

And then these too shall pass.

Red Roses

May 30 was my father's birthday. It was a sunny, warm day in Wisconsin. I drove up to Madison to sing in a choral concert, and also to play some drums. I also bought three red roses, and one yellow rose, to continue the ritual of remembrance I am doing for my parents.



I am buying roses for them on their birthdays, and the days they died. This memorial ritual will last a year and a day, and then I will decide if I will continue to buy roses again on those days. The memories will be there, regardless.



Yellow was my mother's favorite color, so on her days, I bought yellow roses. Red was my father's favorite color, so I am buying red roses for him. Because they were so joined as one, each time I buy roses on one of these remembrance days, I buy one rose in the other parent's favorite color, to keep with the main bunch bought on that day. I am drying the roses after each remembrance day, and keeping them in a glass bowl on my mantelpiece in the living. The glass bowl was made by an artist friend of mine, who used to blow glass.



Next to the bowl of roses are two tall glass vases, containing the 50 yellow roses my father bought for my mother on their 50th wedding anniversary. Achieving 50 years of wedded life is no small thing, anymore, and is worth celebrating; we made it into a big family party. Afterwards, Mom kept all the roses, and dried them, and kept the rose heads in these two glass vases. When I moved to my new home, and we sold their old home, I kept all the roses. I couldn't bear to part with them.



Roses are a personal favorite among flowers. In my new home, I have planted several new rose bushes in my garden. They are just beginning to bloom, this year. A yellow rose opened just a few days after Dad's birthday. More will follow soon.

It's still hard to write about all of this. I will continue this ritual of remembrance for several more months. We go on, as though everything happened.

Yellow Roses 3

Yellow and red roses, added to the bowl. Part of the ritual of remembrance for my mother and father. Yellow roses for her, red roses for him. This time, I bought two yellow roses, and one red rose. Symbolizing the mix of them together.



The next celebration will be my father's birth, in May. A year and a day I plan to do this. After that, we'll decide what to do next. Time will tell.

It's a (comforting) cliché that "time heals." That's wrong. Time just scabs over. Time doesn't heal. Some wounds you never get over. But you do live on, you do go on, and you do continue. Things have changed, and nothing will ever be the same again. You go on, not as if nothing ever happened, but as if everything has happened. You live. You do your best to live.