image keeping

Finished at breakfast this morning! The Helen's Lace clapotis. When I ordered the yarn and started it a couple of months ago, I imagined a light silk/wool wrap/scarf for spring. Saw myself wearing it on a cool summer evening in the mountains, a beach back east, west in San Francisco. This first day of March did not come in like a lion but like a nice domestic cat. A kitten curled up in a patch of sun. So bright in the kitchen that I drank my coffee and finished knitting, wearing sunglasses! I steamed blocked it right away, took some pictures in the morning sun,

wrapped it around my neck and hurried off to my Latin class. It felt perfect. The color is Lorna's Laces limited edition dye lot #8040 called "Amber's 1st Kitchen".

My days seem to be speeding up lately but I managed to get in a couple of walks in the park. The only signs of spring that I noticed were the incredible clear blue sky and some weedy green things growing close to the earth. The rest is still shades of brown and gray. No sign of buds on trees yet either.

Because I'm not traveling at this time, I find myself collecting images in words and photographs - things I've noticed without seeing. I'm working on a new essay based on a photograph and it's filled with things I don't remember being there at the time it was taken. I may write more about that later. It's been a challenge and I'm still working it out. The landscape here is endlessly interesting, but I could just as easily spend time in an apartment in a city, traversing the same square block over and over, or with windows overlooking the street, and come up with something to photograph or write about. Colette did it in her later years. Her bed was the ship in which she navigated through the images that turned into novels. I have a copy of a wonderful photograph of her in that bed - frizzy hair, dog, books, papers, pens. If there had been cellphones and iPads in those days, they would have been there too. Just as there were when my friend was ill last year and we named her Colette. She was surrounded, in her bed, with cellphones (two), laptop, dogs (three), newspapers, knitting (she was learning), books, CDs and music. Her toenails were painted vivid red - just as Colette's were. Remember Old Rose in Titanic? Those red toenails? I vowed then and there to keep those slightly wild-spirit touches alive for myself - in memory of those other wild women who inspired me.

I've passed it a thousand times. Never noticing the geometric symmetry and the gray-green color of the weathered boards.

Or the way long afternoon shadows can make ordinary wooden park benches look mysterious - as if they have a tale to tell.

spring is in the air these days but not yet on the ground 
where there are large patches of snow everywhere, and 
the road in is deeply rutted in mud. When I wake at five 
there is already faint light, and I eat my breakfast watching 
the sky turn rose or orange just before the sun leaps out
like a jack-in-the-box...
                                                May Sarton