mountain dwelling

We're all about snow, wind and cold again ~ just when the ice and packed snow on the north-facing side of the driveway finally melted a couple of days ago! Abstract patterns emerge...and I'm out there freezing and taking pictures...instead of working again....

In fresh snow I drove to an editorial meeting this morning in a friend's studio and it was a nice change from an office setting. We sat at the old heavy wood table in the kitchen/sitting area of the studio, paintings on the walls and coffee and sweets from the restaurant next door. Two small well-behaved doggies stayed near and I picked up some lately-lost dog energy (I do miss Spike). One of the dogs had the calico colors that Spike had that makes four-leggeds look deliberately artistically rendered. Dogs, snow, cloud-smoke mountains, mystery, color and pattern....always present...the necklace I wore...

...an ancient (600-800 years old) Indonesian clay bead ~ from my friend Mag at Magpies Beads (check it out). It's my favorite piece, not due to its value which is relatively low, but because of age, history and craftsmanship. Whose hands fashioned it? where? The beads were common and plentiful, used in trade, and I guess they still are as they circulate down through the ages. I feel fortunate to have one. It almost feels as if I'm the current bead custodian, allowed to wear it these many years, but I don't own it and it will continue on, as it should, long after I'm gone. God-knows-how-many stories and places have been absorbed by it through the centuries. Imagine being able to see and hear them? Put bead to ear and listen....

things of the past are already long gone
and things to be, distant beyond imagining.
     Ch'ing Kung (d. 1352)