Diaries of Light, Diaries of Dark

1.
Sun out for a little bit today. I feel like it was a parade. I've had a migraine all day, so besides a monthly doctor check up, I have done nothing today, but sleep, pet the cat, and lie with an ice pack on my forehead, ala nineteenth century femme and finally give in to one helluva cup of coffee which has knocked me upside the head, messed with my gut, and made my headache go away. I'm tender and fragile the way a migraine leaves me. My skin shivers at thought of being touched. My eyelids twitch with the uneven light of autumn leaves gently banging on the window as the wind goes in and out of the arbor. Sometimes i am protected by a whole branch of rattling leaves, and then the wind blows the branch aft and my eyes are inflamed by the weak sun on the maple limb that lost its leaves first. It's such an ordeal to go through, listening to artillery all day and it's only the distant whirr of cars two blocks away where the transcontinental highway roars through town.
Any kind of big noise makes me try to get away from it, fast-walking, since I was a little kid, but migraines, double the effect. Now I can't run away from the noise, so I stick my whole head under the covers and let the dark ease the pain from my psyche. It's a relief to be over it. It's a chocolate kiss dripping down my throat as I gently suck on its triangular form of sweetness.

2.
Several years ago I was commissioned to make a crown for someone to give to a relative of theirs who had won two Grammies for script-writing day-time soaps. It sits under a bell jar with a Grammy on each side of it on her mantelpiece. wow! The guy who made the initial base for me made several, so I'm working on another crown and having so much fun going through boxes of stuff looking for rhinestones. "All that glitters..."

3.
My studio is absolutely immaculate with cigar boxes labeled with this and that: it's a little too much like lining my dolls and animals up at the foot of the bed before I go to sleep which I still do, but I can FIND stuff when I need it. That's a relief. The Magpie is getting bad posture walking down the street looking for...TREASURE. I need more shiny stuff. The nice thing about ANY project is glue and paint takes awhile to dry, so I'm making a second crown with small iridescent turkey feathers and paper dolls from Italy glued to the tines that rise up from the base. I'm not sure what else I want to cover the metal with. Obviously jewels, but not white diamond-y gems like with the first one. The turkey feather one has white rabbit fur sewed to the white velvet I glued to the metal. I wanted light brown velvet and that nut brown rabbit fur that feels so soft on the bunny, so eastern wind without a vicious nip. These are on the inside of the metal, so it sits on the head gently. Oh it's an enchantment. Not sure I can sell this. But I say that all the time.

4.
There's only one book I've made I should not have sold called "Transfusion".  I dream about that book sometimes: it's beauty and of personal importance. I made it after I had two units of blood. (infected pacemaker and finally a signal that I had something wrong and it turned out to be as simple as celiac's syndrome, which is self-curing. (is that a word?!)So, as far as I can figure from what the techie told me, units of blood are made up of the plasma of twelve donors, so I had the blood of 24 people in me as far as I tell. It took all night to drip drip drip into me and then they sent me home at the unholy hour of 7 am. The nurses who were not doing anything major wanted to trundle my butt out the door at 4am, but my doctor (yeah! wave flag!) yelled at them to let me lie there and rest awhile.

For the next two weeks I dreamt those other people's dreams. I know that sounds bazaar, but it's true. I never held forth at night with my unconscious like that before. So I wrote those stories down in first person and found pictures and stuff to make collages and sewed the whole thing together and put it in old paste boards held together by a strip of black velvet. The cover itself was a magpie heaven. Oh, it is a piece of beauty. I showed in Palo Alto and these women of, let's say, means, started taking this little book's picture with a digital camera until I told them to stop. They wanted my ideas, but didn't want to pay. I sure liked the shine of their diamond ear-bobs!! The magpie came out with a flutter! Very frustrating to have my unique ideas stolen. I had never thought of something as ephemeral as an idea being something that could be stolen. It's called Intellectual property. But I had sold it an hour earlier to a woman who truly appreciated the whole conceptual masterpiece. She was nice enough to let it stay on display until the end of the show. She even said I could come to her house in Sacramento and photograph it. (At that point, I didn't have a camera, but this woman bought all four books, so I bought a camera the next week.)

5.
I took this year off. I desperately needed a sabbatical. I made no art, I only wrote poetry and essays. And now, it feels so good to be back making things, collecting things. Women from my church bring me little baggies full of junk jewelry. I think that's one of my most favorite things to do, is to go through those baggies. Every woman saves the earring of the pair she lost one of. Every woman saves old-fashioned jewelry Aunt Agatha left her, but isn't her style. I love to inherit those things. I love yard sales and church rummage sales for the same reason. There is always jewelry only someone like me knows how to look at with a different eye. It's not one earring from a set. It's its own shining little planet of sparkle. And that necklace drippy with rhinestones, but missing one or two, is a cascade of icicles to me. Suddenly I am making a crown for Hans Christen Andersen's Snow Queen, in my imagination. And maybe I will someday. But right now, I am waiting for the glue to dry on the crown that will be worn by the Woodland Gypsy Girl on the First Day of Winter.
"Darling,"says my husband as he peeks into my studio, "There's glitter all over yr brow..."