Too Much Wool

walls

When I was in India, I was sure that I was going to come home and clean things up, clean things out, cleanse and purify and simplify and reinvent ... everything. 

Its so much easier to see possibility everywhere, to think that anything is possible, when you're in a place that's magical and limitless. India had that effect on me, making me feel like anything could happen. 

Then I got back to NY and the walls closed in again. 

There was a time when I would have seen this as a gateway to inspiration and creativity, full of possibility and potential.

I thought when I blogged again last week, for the first time in a year - that i could kickstart my creative spark by engaging the blog and its audience (who have proved that they're still out there - thanks folks). 

I thought I'd be able to dive into some projects - quick ideas, working through some fabric, some concepts - a push to produce. But really, it doesn't seem to work like that. 

There's more, so much more ...

I thought that if I didn't commit myself to finishing tired old projects, that I could start fresh. New ideas, new ground to cover, new everything. And I think that it is possible. I like to think I brought back something of that unlimited possibility I felt in India. But ...

Right now I'm not feeling it. I'm not feeling a spark of anything. I feel the weight of obligation and a decided lack of inspiration in my life. I thought I could bullshit my way through a chirpy, happy blog post and show some exciting new beginnings by now. Not so much, though. And I'm kind of tired of making believe, so you get what's real - sorry folks.

If you had walls of fabric, where would you look for inspiration? Where would you start? 

facades

People's personalities, like buildings, have various facades, some pleasant to view, some not.

~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld

too much ... India

Its occurred to me that no one is out there anymore. That I could be whispering (or screaming) into a void and there wouldn't even be an echo. 

So let's just cut through the intervening (holy wow, its been nearly a YEAR) and say - 

I just got back from India: 

I spent three months there, doing various things (including sewing and knitting) but barely taking pictures. So that picture up there is just to ... you know, grab your interest. Although its really one of my pictures, and I really was there...

Three months is a very, very long time to be away. And since I've been back, I've been struggling to find a balance, a happy medium, between where I was and where I am now. Which is a situation most of us find ourselves in, from time to time. In this case, the intense contrast is like getting hit by a train - nothing subtle or gently revelatory about it. It's more like - BOOM! - wake up time. 

Which is what brings me back here, to the blog. I was in a place like this: 

(Someone lives behind that door.)

And I come home to the land of too much. Too much wool, too much fabric. And the contrast is paralyzing and stupefying and life altering, in so many ways. Rather than sit on my couch and be paralyzed, which is basically where I've been for the past month, I thought I'd do something about it. 

I'm thinking (I can say this because no one is listening, right?) that maybe I'll try to work my way through things here. Literal things, not metaphorical things. As in, wade through the see of fiber, wool and cotton, stringlike or quiltable, that surround me. And maybe working through those physical, literal things will also help me work through the metaphorical, existential things that have been overwhelming me as well.