My hands scarce fit… (in progress)

My hands scarce fit… (in progress)
Originally uploaded by anselm23

Via Flickr:
A woman whose daughter is in my history class is working on a book based on the Connecticut soldier’s experience in the Civil War. She’s gathered diaries, letters, newspaper clippings, reminisces, and official records, and all sorts of materials from the era, and complied genealogies on many of the men and women who served — as nurses, soldiers, doctors, ambulance corpsmen, and more. Some of the letters come from Andersonville Prison, others from the camps of wounded in the aftermath of Gettysburg, and some from women working in the field hospitals in the ruins of Richmond. They’re a fascinating look at the US Civil War from a ground-level view, and it’s amazing to me how many times Lincoln appears in the view screen of the men and women who experienced the front lines; one of the men reports in his letter that he and his unit are camping in General Lee’s farmyard, while another expresses discontent at the news that he is now fighting to free the slaves; another spends the battle of Antietam unarmed and exposed to enemy fire, while his thumb plugs up a wound to the jugular of a comrade in arms. By turns fascinating, and horrifying, and deeply moving, the letters and stories are a window into another time.

This mother opened her archives to my students, and, out of the goodness of her heart, assembled a portfolio for each of thirty students, of the letters and reminisces of a soldier or nurse each. This painting is going to be my thank-you note to her, based on one of the letters, which opens, “Dear Wife, my hands are still scarce fit to touch paper…” that was written a few days after the battle of Gettsyburg. It shows a man’s hand, tanned from being out in the July sun, wrapped in bandages (that will need some blood and powder stains), writing with an old-style quill pen on a mini writing desk with the grass in the background. In time, as I work on the painting, there will be some brass buttons on the blue coat, and maybe some gold stiching, and the paper will need to be a little more messed-up. But the words will need to be visible. It’s taking me longer to execute than I planned, in part because I want it to be a great painting… but I’m pleased with the progress so far.

My Mother, the Shakespearean Magician

Today in the mail, I got a package from my mother.  It contained a newly-made pillowcase: the fabric it was made from featured chickens on the body, a bit of music that looks to be from Handel’s Messiah along the edging, and a ruffle that looks like it was made from some of the gaudiest present-wrapping paper you’ve ever seen.

Inside the pillowcase was a note:

Marcellus to Horatio and Bernardo, marveling after seeing the Ghost who departed:

It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
this bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,
the nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
so hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

Andrew,
here’s a graduation present.
But these birds of dawning singeth all the night long now.
Not just at Christmastime.

You are safe. Love Always, Mom.

My mom knows that I know that Marcellus and Horatio and Bernardo are watchers upon the walls of Elsinore, at the opening of Hamlet‘s Act I, and they have seen the Ghost of Hamlet’s father, the dead king.  She knows that I’ve been working my butt off the last few weeks to finish school, and that I’m going a little bit off my rocker with stuff to do.  And so, what does she do? She breaks out her ancestral sewing machine, makes me a pillowcase, and enchants it with a spell from the grimoire of the Bard.

Thanks, Mom.

Taiji Day 98: You have permission

You have permission. Open it up. Add extra moves to your qi gong routines. Blend the Five Golden Coins into the Eight Pieces of Silk.  Bust out the yin-yang meditation in the middle of the routine.  Find the stretch in each pose, but find the grace between each pose as well.  You have permission.

You have permission to stop and see the photograph of your father and grandfather on the bulletin board.  You have permission to hold the pose and notice the hand-made card from your mom.  You have permission to be surrounded by beauty all the time.  It may be fierce beauty, it may be dangerous beauty, but you have permission.

You have permission to bust out of the constraints of the tradition, and find your own moves between the tradition’s moves.  But remember: the tradition is important for the beginner.  No one puts up a building without scaffolding.  No one makes a realist painting without some preliminary sketches, even directly onto the canvas. No one expects a two-year-old to read and write without some time to learn the alphabet, and the numbers.  Rome was not built in a day.

You have permission to bend, wrangle, and play with the forms you have been given.  But remember to hand down the tradition. Even if the tradition is chaos, or broken, or incomplete.  Five Gold Coins.  Eight Pieces of Silk.  Tai chi form. Yin-Yang meditation.  Magnum Mysterium meditation when the time is right. Recognize, in the tradition, that there is a scaffolding for the newcomer to climb, possibly high into the sky, until she has grown the wings necessary to fly on her own.