Lisa Thorpe

I place my heart in this little boat…

Dear Reader,

It has been many, many days and months since my last confession, I mean blog. To be precise it has been two hundred and fifty-six days. On the surface my blogging was always about my art, but with very little scratching one could see it has really been about my heart, my struggles, my journey. In the last 9 months there has been and continues to be: plague, isolation, economic hardship, personal loss, drought, fire evacuation, fear, frustration, and yes joy and delight, too. I’m not sure why I stopped blogging. Maybe in some ways my own inner thoughts didn’t seem very important compared to the litany above. But last week I cracked open. My despair sat heavy on my chest like an old tabby cat seeking warmth. She wouldn’t get up; her weight stifling my breath. For solace I reached for my old friend poetry. From the shelf I pulled Devotions – The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver and spent half a day reading. My despair was deep, and that old tabby cat didn’t budge. The next day, in need of company, I turned to the Poetry Unbound podcast guided by Pádraig Ó Tuama. Pádraig has a lovely thick Irish lilt and every poem he reads feels like prayer. After listening through twice, with a lick of her paws, the weight on my chest lifted and wandered off to find warm patch of sun. I felt my lungs fill and a knowing came to me. I have not been doing my inner work. I have let the world-weary worries batter me – let it suck the breath right out of me. All the poems Pádraig Ó Tuama read moved me but The Language Issue by Nuala NÍ Dhomhnaill, brought me to my senses, eager to create, to do my soul work, to share with you. Here is my art journal response to the poem.

The Language Issue – by Nuala NÍ Dhomhnaill, translated by Paul Muldoon:

I place my hope on the water
in this little boat
of the language, the way a body might put
an infant
in a basket of intertwined
iris leaves,
its underside proofed
with bitumen and pitch,
then set the whole thing down amidst
the sedge
and bulrushes by the edge
of a river
only to have it borne hither and thither,
not knowing where it might end up;
in the lap, perhaps,
of some Pharaoh’s daughter.

In the poem Nuala is writing about her dying mother tongue, Irish. Placing her hope for her fading language in a woven boat like baby Moses. Letting it float “hither and thither, not knowing where it might end up”. That line kept traipsing through my mind again and again “hither and thither” became a mantra as I hiked the trails beyond my home. That morning the smoke found itself caught above the foggy morning air and I found myself taking a deep, damp breath for the first time in many days. As my lungs filled and my ribs rose and fell with the rhythm I imaged my rib cage as my “basket of intertwined iris leaves” and in “this little boat” I place my heart, “to have it borne hither and thither not knowing where it might end up; in the lap, perhaps, of some Pharaoh’s daughter” – or more likely your inbox to ponder and turn over like a smooth stone collected on the beach, slip it into your to pocket feel the weight of it, respond in your own way in your own time.

I hope you are doing your inner work, your soul work whatever that looks like for you. Maybe the poems in the podcast will move you too, maybe it’s something else. Please feel free to share your thoughts and where you are finding your crossing in these troubled waters.

A bit of self-promotion – I’m teaching an Accordion Collage Book making class January 17^th, 2021 at Virtual Craft Napa – here is a link to info and registration details.

If you want to have a little creative thing going but don’t know how to start, may I suggest getting one of my Quilt Haiku Stitch Kits. Everything you need to create a unique one of a kind hand-stitched art quilt.