What can I say about them that they can’t say for themselves?
A person who leans in close to the weathered wooden beads and bright glass
might learn something from their tangled loveliness, their strata, their precise harnessing of human wanting,
their record of faith and penance, the something that emanates from them.
Last weekend, Jon and I packed up and drove five hours to spend the weekend in Yosemite. It was Jon’s brother’s birthday, and Jon and I were the surprise guests. We met Brad and Katie at the park on Friday evening…
…then went to bar at the Ahwahnee for some birthday cheer. And then we poked around the rest of that historic hotel. I must say, it is the only hotel that has ever struck sparks of patriotism in my chest. I had this feeling when I was there that the Ahwahnee represented the best parts of America.
Winter hasn’t quite lifted in Yosemite, and we were glad for our little heated canvas tent-cabin. We slept like four bugs in a rug, then got up to hike.
When you’re a mortal, sometimes you might notice that you’re devoted mainly to the things of the earth, the things around your feet, the things at eye level.
That’s part of being earthbound, I guess.
But sometimes you might look up. And then you might remember that other things exist beyond the realm you can touch.
That’s what I re-learn every time I go to Yosemite. I walk around admiring the duff and the stones and the trees. And then by chance I glance up, and no matter how many times it happens, I’m always surprised: there’s more above. A shocking height of rock, age-streaked and rutilant, stretching into the dome of the sky.
And once you’re learned that, even if you can’t see it (as we couldn’t on Sunday morning, in the fog and snow),
you know it’s there.
I usually wake up before Jon. Then, I like to move around a lot and maybe accidentally-on-purpose kick him so that he’ll wake up. Oops! And when he starts to stir a little, one of my favorite things to do is to put my face right in front of his face and stare hard at him with big eyes so that when he opens his peepers, SURPRISE! There I am. An early morning jolt.
This morning when I pulled my prank, though, he didn’t seem surprised at all. (Really, how many times can a person be surprised by the same prank? I have to hand it to myself, though, this one does have unusually strong staying power.) He just looked into my eyes. So I said: “do you ever think eyes are like camera lenses?”
And he said: “no, but do you ever look at people’s eyes and think ‘how do they see out of those weird things?’ Because they’re these white ball-things with colors on them, and it just doesn’t make sense. It seems like there should be these, like, telescopes that go straight back into your brain, but then I guess you’d need an eyeball on the other end peering through, and maybe a little person sitting back there to operate the eyeball.”
It’s a metaphysical conundrum.
Maybe the little person would look like this:
Or like this:
But no, that would be ridiculous.
What’s happening is probably something more like this:
I love to think of that dear friend, that little person living in my head. I wonder whether he thinks fondly of the tiny man is his head, and if that little man thinks fondly of the little man in his head. If only we could find a way to talk to them. We could surely learn the meaning of life and uncover the secrets of the universe. But I guess these little people are private fellows, hermits even, who cling to their native habitat. I’ve never heard of one accidentally falling out of someone’s ear or nose. And I’ve never spied one peering out of a friend’s eye, though I have certainly looked.
Winter in Rhode Island is cold. Very cold.
So cold that Jon says each wave feels like a fist when it strikes his bare face.
Still, every time we go back there, even during the shortest, coldest days of winter, Jon gets in the water–not with trepidation, not even just gladly, but with great enthusiasm. The Atlantic is his home ocean.
The Atlantic is my home ocean, too. Its waves and beaches are familiar to me.
And while Jon surfs, I poke around along the shore with my own great enthusiasm, made cozy in my solitude by my layers of long underwear and my two coats stacked one on top of the other and my hood cinched around my face and my shearling boots. My fingers, though, must be sacrificed to the cold in fingerless gloves so that I can operate my camera properly, with all of its tiny dials and switches and buttons, though my fingers mostly just become brittle, icy twigs that can’t work much of anything. But I don’t care at all that they might snap off at any moment when I’m crouching low to the sand, peering at the jewels the ocean has coughed up.
The day was tipping into night as I took these photos, and the light stole my heart–a deep, diffuse, generous light that seemed to have no single source. It seemed to radiate out of everything–the long expanses of sand and water, the striated sky.
Around the margins of the beach, too, I found many things to love.
This sweet tuft…
A feather…
A tangle of brambles along the dunes…
And oh!, the lichen.
So fierce and so lovely. A tenacious thing, growing on rock, taking what it can get. It has a small, hard-fisted look to me, pared-down, scoured bare by the icy wind, and so beautiful anyway, in the way that a thing that makes itself out of almost nothing can be.
Our friends Kelsey and Alejandra decided to get married. They asked me to make their wedding rings. I was honored.
Wedding bands are simple objects. And because they are so simple, they must be perfect. In bands like these, there are no distractions. The roundness must be true round, the joins invisible, the sizing just right. They must be burnished until the metal’s softness is completely gone so that they won’t take scratches or dents. They must be polished to a bright shine, then the shine taken back so that they emit a kind of glow.
I took great care in crafting these bands. The thing I love about making custom jewelry is that I know who will be wearing it and so as I work I think about the person I’m making it for. It’s not that I try to; I just do. I think about the things I like about the person.
As I made these bands, I thought about the joy Kelsey and Alejandra take in their work. (They are both noteworthy hard workers.) I also thought about their smiles and laughter. (They are both noteworthy smilers and laughers.)
I had to make the bands twice to get them right. Still, I think I must have been smiling the whole time.
Sometimes I like to be alone on a beach.
I like to forget about people altogether and fall in love with the tiny remnants of ocean life I find.
The fine hairs of the ocean...
its bright veins and arteries.
The seagulls are its flickering thoughts...
or its deep-thrumming emotion...
or maybe its strange, bold ideas.
In any case, by the time I come across people again...
my heart...
is open wide.
I’ll be peddling my wares at Saffron and Genevieve (which is at 910B Soquel Ave, Santa Cruz) this Thursday evening from 6-9 pm. All of my jewelry will be 10% off, and I will also donate a portion of the proceeds to Children of Mtaya.
Come if you can! It will be festive!
Hello!
I’m back!
I’ve spent the last month and a half working 90 hour weeks in preparation for the Celebration of Craftswomen show. Jon, too. I was hammering and sanding and soldering and ordering materials and setting stones and arranging the display and making clasps and measuring things and failing to measure things and ruining them and starting over. All day. Every day (except when I was doing my other job, teaching, which I happen to be doing full time right now, if you can believe it). Jon and I mainly ate cereal and take-out burritos because anything else would take too long. On more than one occasion, exhausted in the early morning hours, I found myself laughing and sobbing simultaneously–a sight to behold, I’m sure. But Jon remained calm most of the time, and put me back together.
Now the show has now come and gone (!), and I’ve had a few days to rest and become human again. I’ve been sleeping nine hours a night in an attempt to catch up, an process that should take about a year and a half, if my calculations are correct. As soon as I post this, I will begin to reassemble our home, which was badly damaged in the tornado that has been the past month.
But wait! Let’s back up. Would you like to see some pictures of my display at the show?
This one's a little blurry...not unlike my mental state at the moment I took the picture...
My friend Linda Anderson crafted most of the lovely wooden displays.
I shared a booth with a talented printmaker named Julia Lucey.
These are the shots Jon and I were able to snap in the few in-between moments available to us. But my friend Patti, who is a talented photographer, also took pictures, so I’ll have more (and better!) photos to share with you once I get those onto my computer.
I’ve got a bunch of new designs to show you, ones that I haven’t even had a chance to photograph yet since I was so busy making making making in the weeks before the show. I did snap a few quick photos of one, though. Here it is:
It’s a sterling ring featuring a lovely smidgen of lichen under a magnifying glass dome. I found the lichen on a hike a few months ago, and it’s been sitting on my bench inspiring me. I decided to immortalize it in a piece of jewelry, so that it can inspire some other lucky person.
How lovely to look down at your hand and see this lichen–the equal of any jewel, I think.
I’m excited to show you my other new baubles, too. Soon!
It’s nice to be part of the regular old world again.
For the Craftswomen show in a couple of weeks, I’m making some drawings of butterfly wings, which I’ll etch into silver and craft into fluttering pairs of earrings.
Here's one of my initial drawings. (I took the photo with my phone, so the crispness of the detail has been a bit muddled.)
This project is one I’ve been working on for awhile, but a walk Jon and I took at Natural Bridges State Park yesterday inspired me to return to it last night.
One of the things about the universe that amazes me is that butterflies migrate–imagining those paper-fine wings fluttering above, crossing miles and miles and miles. When the monarchs migrate to Mexico, they stop to rest in Santa Cruz.
This butterfly was resting just beside the path–it didn’t even seem to notice me as a grew bolder with my picture-snapping, moving closer and closer.
I want to capture that delicacy in metal. I know it’s impossible, but I have to try! I’ll show you some pictures of the results later this week.
