everything exists

"...[she] wishes it were otherwise, but things are never otherwise, are they? Things are always as they are."   (Richard Russo)

It's been more than a week since I've written here. I apologize for the gap. I made a vow to myself a couple of years ago to never let more then two or three days elapse between postings, but lately it's been harder to keep up.

I completed the second 3-day-weekend meditation/writing class on Sunday evening. I now have some new material in my notebook that I may expand and work on; also a deeper understanding of Zen meditation practice. The latter is helping me to deal with the "otherwises" in my life and the busy and complicated thoughts that invade my mind. They're not going to disappear, but when they come I can bid them adieu. What a relief! (the above photo is a closeup of the lap of the small Buddha on my desk and some of the stuff it's accumulated over the years).

and then Monday came...
Bonnie, Margaret, and I visited Dorothy Zopf at her cheery light-filled apartment in Taos. She served tea with Margaret's homemade cranberry/cinnamon scones.  (left to right: Dorothy, Bonnie, Margaret in front of D's newest quilt).

Years ago Dorothy invited me to become part of her New Mexico quilt research team. A group of three to five women traveled all over New Mexico over a period of about five years. We drove to places that hardly even required a dot on the map: Pie Town (where I saw a circus train go by while eating homemade green chili soup), Mountainaire (where we stayed in a hotel with swastika decorations ~ not Nazis, but ancient Native symbols) Deming (I can't remember it), Mora (with its popular raspberry farm), as well as a few larger cities like Santa Fe, Silver City, Truth or Consequences. I was a scribe and backup photographer. We collected quilt stories, measured and recorded what we saw. Dorothy's research resulted in an amazing book called Surviving the Winter (UNM Press). She is a popular speaker in Taos and a quilt demonstrator at the Martinez Hacienda Museum. She continues to be an active quilter and painter ~ and I loved visiting her workroom.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, Bonnie's new book, How to Make an African Quilt, about her years living and teaching quilting in Segu, Mali has recently been released. It was natural to bring Dorothy and Bonnie together. Because D's apartment is not a vast space, she stores her quilting frame on the ceiling.

Which prompted Bonnie to tell how she built a frame in Mali with bamboo poles and sawhorses.  Without a car, in 105 degree heat, she rode her bicycle six miles home with the bamboo poles attached to it. "I was lucky that I didn't have to make any sharp turns during the ride," she said.

Margaret and I are not quilters. In fact, truth be told, I hate sewing! I have once or twice thought I wanted to make patchwork squares and even bought fabric and notions (especially after the inspiring quilt trips), but after cutting and sewing together a few half squares of strips and shapes, I had to face the fact that quilting isn't for me and it would not happen in this lifetime. Instead, D made me a quilt using my mother's old cotton house dresses and in exchange I knitted a sweater for her!

Zazen socks

Which brings me to the latest sock-in-progress. Yarn picked up at random in a non-yarn store but which I'm enjoying in a Zen way. No expectations came with it ~ I didn't know if I'd even like it, but I let it happen and it turns out to be fun and a good portable movie-watching project. Actually I think they'll make nice socks for my next meditation practice.

When you do something, if you fix your mind on the activity with some confidence, the quality of your state of mind is the activity itself. When you are concentrated on the quality of your being, you are prepared for the activity.

         Shunryu Suzuki (from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind)