My deepest apologies for the radio silence lately. I’ve tried and failed to write something several times, and instead have basically been lying in a pool of inertia and probably more than a little depression. Isolation has been getting to me lately, and the inability to do any real travelling has been bad for my brain. I realized the other week (decade? century? I don’t even know, time is a myth told to tadpoles) that, aside from the grocery supply runs and getting our taxes done back at the beginning of March, the last time I saw and interacted with another human that was not Himself was at a friend’s birthday dinner on January 4, and I guess that explains a lot. January and February are usually quiet, relatively solitary times of year for me, to be come back out of in March, starting with a trip to the Butterfly Place for gathering with a couple of friends to remember warm and how to people, while surrounded by greenery, hundreds of butterflies, and tiny, Chinese Quail. That didn’t happen this year, and so here I found myself, lying in a muddy puddle of blarg.
During my time in the pool, I had time to do some thinking. Back when I originally started this, I had a rough idea of what I wanted to be doing with things, as well as percentages of each. I wanted to be mostly writing about wandering my little corner of the world, poking around in the places that get overlooked, with maybe some art and other odds and ends as the mood struck me. It got reshuffled a little, and I lost track of myself a couple of times, but the trend was more or less heading in the direction I wanted. A large part of why I chose the words I did, back in January, for this year was to make myself really focus on what I wanted to be doing, clarify it, and build a solid road to travel on.
We were all so innocent and naive back then, in the Before Times…
Pandemics are not a roadblock that I know how to build a road around. It’s like a sinkhole appearing in the middle of the pathway, and it extends out further than the eye can see. I think a lot of the last few weeks have been mostly sitting on the edge of the canyon, numbly staring into the abyssal black. At some point, the Abyss started whispering. At some point after that, I started listening to what it was saying.
It whispered to me that there are other paths to travel and other stories to be found on them, even though the highways and roadways are lost to memories and dreams for a time. It reminded me that painting and drawing, while I love them, were things I never wanted to have as a primary source of support and told me that that is why I’m having such a hard time with them. They are supposed to be gifts, and nothing more, and I need to honor them in that. It whispered of words and stones wrapped in wires and charms lost and found in the woods. It spoke in the poppets’ voices of branch and bell and waterworn glass and told me that they have a story to tell and while others may never see their faces, they may one day hear their voices, if I am resourceful and canny enough.
The Abyss is wise and I have learned many times over the years that I should listen when it speaks.
I dragged myself out of that murky, stagnant pool and took stock of my resources. I focused on seeing what I have on hand, and wondered what I could build with them. Paper and ink I have, in plenty, and despite having given away what I had thought was more or less all of my jewelry making supplies from when I closed that door some years back, I seem to still have a cache of beads and wires that would make an entire murder of crows weep in envy. I found bags and tins of trinkets, hidden, forgotten, in boxes long thought lost, covered in moth dust, buried beneath old, dry bones and broken feathers.
So, if I can’t travel the world, and selling my art mostly does not bring me joy (though giving it away very much does, so if you see a monster or fish that you love, please do tell me and I will find an envelope and send it to you and we will all be happy), what *can* I do?
Well, I can go home, to my writing and my jewelry, though I think the jewelry will be a much different creature than my previous styles. The world and I have changed a lot in the years between than and now, and what I made then will not suit me now. Happily, once the organizer boxes I ordered last night arrive in a couple of days, I can start the process of cataloguing the truly amazing stash of beads I located yesterday (I had to order 3 large containers of 36 boxes each, as well as 2 dozen individual boxes, and I’m not sure that’s going to be enough…I really am a crow girl) and seeing what I will make with the beads and ribbon and wires I’ve got cached around. I’ll be writing stories of Adventures Past and little stories and fictions to go with the jewelry (because anyone can just make a piece of jewelry and list it by materials, but not everyone can go for a walk in the woods and find a fairy charm or pilgrim’s token) and trying to find out what the deal with the poppets is. Eventually I’m hoping to add real, current travel adventures again, but that will depend on the state of everything.
So yeah…that would be the current state of things. Let’s see where this road leads?