Category Archives: Mandalas

Fandom

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About a week ago, on our morning dog walk, we stood waiting for the traffic light to change and a young girl, perhaps nine, long dark hair, hooded coat and wearing a backpack, approached and stood near us. She looked over at us a couple of times. When the light turned green, she walked in front of us a few metres, but she kept turning back, peering around her big hood to look at me. And at one point, as we crossed the bridge over the Gorge, I decided to say something. “Do you like dogs?” I thought perhaps she was looking at us because of Marvin, our goldendoodle, who trundled along beside us, at the end of his purple leash. Lots of times kids want to pet him, but they’re too shy to ask. 

“Yes, I like all animals,” she said. And then she spoke, in the most serious way, a line I will not soon forget: “I’m a big fan of nature.” I moved ahead of Michael and she and I walked together for a minute, discussing how we were both big fans of nature. Then we were at the school crosswalk where we parted ways. 

We laughed affectionately about what she’d said—what a great line! “I’m a big fan of nature,” we kept saying to each other throughout the day, and then “I’m a big fan of ____” and we filled in the blank with whatever…fizzy water, sunsets, Marvin, taking out the garbage. 

I’ve thought about that delightful exchange many times this week. The girl’s innocent enthusiasm for nature. A simple trust in the goodness of the natural world and people. Her approach wasn’t naïve; rather, it seemed wise. We spoke so briefly, but what she said made me want to adopt her attitude of fandom. 

I am a big fan of hand sewing

When we went to NYC in December, I heard about Tatter, a Brooklyn-based textile organization that is “committed to preserving skills of the hand.” They promise a lot:

“We work with makers, archivists, and anthropologists to develop extended courses that use textiles as a portal to reclaim history, cultural encounter, indigenous practices, a harmonious relation to the natural world, and making as a tactic of collective liberation.” 

I didn’t have a chance to visit Tatter. However, in February, I took one of their classes on Zoom with Karen Stevens. We learned to hand-sew zippered pouches. Through this class, I rediscovered the enjoyment of hand sewing. The whole-body rhythm of a slow, contemplative backstitch and the satisfying emergence of a line of running stitches along a zipper‘s edge or around an appliqué. There is no rush with hand sewing, no urgency like I feel sometimes when I am at the machine. Hand sewing is portable and calming.

I learned some tips from Karen that I’ll share with you. Perhaps you already know this stuff, but for me, the following was revelatory information.

  1. Don’t thread the needle, needle the thread. This practice makes so much sense, after years of trying to poke three saliva-soaked strands of embroidery thread into a tiny hole. Hold the very end of the thread(s) between index finger and thumb in your non-dominant hand while you angle the needle over the thread. Much easier to get eye over thread than thread into eye.
  2. You don’t need knots. You can just sew one straight stitch several times over to start and end your length of thread.  I think of it as akin to building a house with joinery rather than nails or glue.
  3. Basting is a very useful practice. Sure, pins hold things together, but if you baste with big loopy stitches—it doesn’t take long—your fabric stays in place until you’re ready to anchor it with backstitches. I used to think of basting as a waste of time, but what is time for?

I am a big fan of upcycling stores

I happen to volunteer at one of those stores, Women in Need Upcycle and Craft, so I am biased. We just expanded to double the space, and every week I open boxes of fresh treasures to line our shelves. Some weeks it’s skeins of merino wool and tiny wooden canoes. Other times it might be a kit to make a paper lamp and bags of beautiful retro fabrics and lace. 

I appreciate all of our sister upcycling stores as well. The Green Thimble‘s name is alluring to eco-conscious sewists. Today, March 4, they are moving from their Quadra Street location to 2950 Douglas St. #400. At Green Thimble, I filled a small paper bag with scraps and loose buttons for only five dollars. I admired the refurbished sewing machines for sale and the bolts of fabric at bargain prices. Supply Creative Reuse Centre on lower Douglas is a finely curated collection of paper, books, cloth, yarn, buttons, ribbons, and more. I was impressed by their sliding scale prices. At Supply, I found a scrap of pink sheepskin for $1.50 that features as the centre of my wall hanging work-in-progress. Thrift/Craft in Market Square is a huge space filled with unusual items and hosted by a devoted proprietress. One of my favourite things there is the weird stuff housed in tiny drawers, for example, Catholic paraphernalia. In each of these places I encounter interesting people who like to chat about making things. 

I am a big fan of creative immersion

Immersing yourself in a creative project can lift your mood, and we could all use some mood uplift now. Am I right? I am presently working on “Ten Thousand Joys,” a large wall hanging in oranges, pinks, reds, and purples. At its centre is a fabric circle I created using a ten-degree wedge. I cut and sewed three alternating brightly-patterned fabrics together to make this 45-inch mandala. I cut an old blanket into cascading circles to lay under the mandala to create a three-dimensional effect. At the centre, the bit of pink sheepskin peeps through. I basted the padding onto a big piece of orange burlap I found at Value Village and then basted the circle onto the padding. Now I am in the process of using embroidery thread to sew the circle onto its backing at the circumference. I’ll add lots of embroidery stitches in bright colours, zig-zagging up and down the long wedges. The hanging will be finished by sewing on, not ten thousand, but dozens of pink, red, and purple buttons around the central circle. It feels inevitable that I will make a “Ten Thousand Sorrows” wall hanging next. 

“When you open your heart, you get life's ten thousand joys, and ten thousand sorrows.” Chuang Tzu

And what, may I ask, are you a big fan of?

A love to which there is no reply

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We recently spent three days in New York City.

As I read the last line of Mary Oliver’s poem “Heavy”—”a love to which there is no reply”—it occurred to me that this describes my love for NYC. You can love NYC, but NYC doesn’t love you back. NYC doesn’t actually give a shit about you; the city is completely self-absorbed, and that’s just fine. It’s all part of the city’s mystique, its swirling, pigeon-flocked, neon-lit-glass-and-steel, rapid-fire, whirling-dervish, creative vibration. 

We stayed at a sweet hotel in the Flatiron district, saw wonderful exhibits at the Whitney and the Met, watched Kenneth Branagh as King Lear, went to a comedy show where five hilarious stand-up comedians made me laugh for ninety minutes. I loved all of it, every minute. But a few small vignettes stay with me and keep breaking the surface of my thoughts.  

One dollar for an original print

In the Whitney Museum gift shop there’s a vending machine at one end where you can slide four quarters into the slots, push, and out pops an original print of some NYC iconic object or scene by Ana Inciardi. We put our quarters in, and now we own two tiny prints (2.5 inches by 3.5 inches): a black and white cookie and a NYC water tower. Inciardi is kind of genius, isn’t she? I don’t know if she profits from this—surely a print for a dollar is not netting her much money. But it is such a delightful thing to encounter: a vending machine dispensing original art. I want art vending machines to be installed everywhere, machines where you insert coins and receive poems, collages, small clay sculptures, watercolours, flash fiction, holograms, fabric art, tarot cards… Can you see it? 

The women’s washroom at Barnes and Noble 

To use the washroom at the Fifth Avenue location of Barnes and Noble, you must first purchase something. At the bottom of your receipt is the bathroom code. I bought The Temporary, a novel by Rachel Cusk, an author I have been wanting to read (the novel is wonderfully written, but very depressing). I then used the code to enter the women’s washroom, where there was a line up for the two working stalls (there always seems to be one stall with a scrawled “out of order” sign). A woman of colour (#1) exited one of the stalls, but the next person in line (white woman) looked in, then withdrew with a look of disgust on her face. Woman #1, was busy washing her hands. I said to woman #2, “what’s the problem? You’re not going in?” Woman #2, not making eye contact with me, said cooly, “they got stuff all over the seat.” I went into the stall and saw a fine spray of water droplets on the seat, likely created by the toilet’s back spray. Quickly removed with a wipe of toilet paper. The venomous way woman #2 said “they got stuff all over the seat” implied something terrible, perhaps excrement smeared everywhere. Her contemptuous reaction was so overblown and ridiculous—it felt symbolic of a rising wave of incivility and prejudice in (American) society. Ugh.

Four girls draw a statue

I loved the two exhibits we spent time with at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Mandalas, Mapping the Buddhist Art of Tibet and Mexican Prints at the Vanguard. As we left the museum, passing through the Leon Levy and Shelby White court filled with ancient Greek and Roman statues, I saw four teen girls sitting on the marble floor in front of a bench, absorbed in drawing a statue of a nude man. This is what I will remember from the trip… their bowed heads, their silent engagement with the statue and with each other. A refreshing palate cleanser after bathroom woman #2’s remark.  Oh, and the Joan of Arc by Jules Bastien-Lepage (1879): her face had me swooning.

Docent at the Met

We got a bit lost after the Mandala exhibit and asked a docent for help locate the gallery where the Mexican prints were on display. She led us rapidly through throngs of people, and I told her my mother had been a docent for years at the Art Gallery of Ontario (I had many moments of thinking of my mom in NYC—we visited the city together in my early twenties and saw, among other things, Zero Mostel in Fiddler on the Roof). The docent explained she had to do highlights tours for two years before they let her specialize in anything. I asked her what she specializes in now. Arms and armour, she answered. And I get to have another speciality, she said, but I am taking a break. Evidently, it’s exhausting to learn all there is to learn about the arms and armour in the Met’s extensive collection. 

Pumpkin Pie at the Malibu Diner 

Before the show at Gotham Comedy Club, West 23rd and 7th Avenue, we ate dinner at the Malibu Diner across the street. An old-fashioned American diner with a huge, laminated menu, plenty of booths with red vinyl benches, low chrome stools facing the long counter. All of the waiters spoke Spanish among themselves. When our waiter brought my twice-baked potato, I said Gracias Señor, and then he started to speak to me in Spanish, and I had to explain that I only know a few words. He laughed. 

We paid for our meals and went to the club, but we were early. The woman said come back in half an hour; they were running late. Where to go? The cold wind bit our cheeks that night. So, we returned to the diner, where the waiters welcomed us like old friends. Come, come to the back, sit in this booth, where you won’t feel the wind that sneaks in whenever somebody opens the door. It’s warm back here. Our same waiter from before brought pumpkin pie with whipped cream. Sometimes eating dessert is the perfect way to pass time.

Shakespeare groupies

We took our excellent seats at the Griffin Theatre (at the Shed), where we had tickets to see King Lear. In front of us, two women about my age were taking off their coats and chatting. They started to engage us in conversation—where were we from? Did we go to a lot of Shakespeare plays? They had both lived in Atlanta and belonged to a Shakespeare reading group. When one of them moved to Baltimore, Maryland, they figured that was it—they wouldn’t see each other again. But then the Maryland woman saw an advertisement for King Lear with Kenneth Branagh and called her Atlanta friend. Why don’t I buy tickets? You can fly here. We’ll go together. So, Atlanta woman got a flight to Baltimore, and that morning they’d taken the train from Baltimore to Manhattan. We’re Shakespeare groupies, the blonde woman from Atlanta said. In April, we’re going to see Denzel Washington in Othello, said the Baltimore woman. Shakespeare groupies. I love it. 

Window shopping

NYC is the best place to window shop. No need to buy a thing; just absorb the kaleidoscope of artifacts and moods rippling through glass. Mannequins wearing weird t-shirts, everything Harry Potter, bolts of cloth, soaps, sculpture, ceramics, sexy candles, life messages, and rainbow bagels.

Until next time…

We walked through Chelsea along a sidewalk that bordered a basketball court. Kids were shooting baskets on the first day of December, laughing, talking. A flock of grey pigeons passed overhead while the sun winked from behind a fringe of clouds. A bubble of pure joy passed through my body and into my head, exploding into a private smile. I love you, New York City; no reply necessary. 

Creativity is a fox: A year in review

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I start the year with a glance back over 2023. Last year, creativity often eluded me. She was a timid fox, hiding in her hole. I tried to lure her out, but at the first sign of self-doubt, she’d scurry back down the tunnel. Making things—in cloth or paint, in the kitchen, with words—can feel pointless in the face of climate crisis, grief, war, and ennui. And yet, don’t you think we must continue to create as an antidote to all the destruction?

When fox stayed out long enough, she inspired me to bake cakes, sew things, paint mandalas, and write stories and poems. 

Baking

I love making cakes and preparing gifts for people. I fantasized once about starting a small business: I could make bespoke cakes and gifts to order (quilted bookmarks, small herb bouquets from my garden, stones from the beach that feel good in your hand). Nice idea, but maybe not a great business move.

This year Michael got an upside-down blood orange cake for his February birthday, and we had fun sourcing the oranges. Found some good ones at the Market Garden on Catherine Street (where shoppers sometimes sit down to play the grand piano—such a cool store). I baked mini-chocolate cakes with strawberries later in the month for Barbara, and for Easter, an almond torte with whipped cream and more strawberries. Like my mother before me, I love to set a beautiful table, and Easter was no exception. The origami Easter baskets filled with foil-wrapped chocolate eggs provided a whimsical touch. (Entertain your inner child, I say.) For my own birthday party, a classic carrot cake baked in a heart-shaped pan frosted with cream cheese icing. For Andréa’s big five-oh: applesauce cake with three kinds of ginger. And for the final English conversation café at work: ginger cake with buttercream icing. What is it about a cake that speaks pure love?

Sewing

I didn’t make any new quilts, but I did sew a purple wall hanging, about 30 by 30 inches, that now hangs in our bedroom. I like to lie in bed and gaze at it. Four sentinel circles surround a larger one—all shot with gold thread (fragments cut from an old wraparound skirt from a yard sale). Those circles/mandalas ground me; cloth clocks tick noiselessly, watching over us as we sleep. 

Smaller sewing projects attract me because results come together quickly. My sister Kathryn bought me a drapery panel of Indonesian fabric in browns, reds, and purples at a thrift store. A lot of fabric—40 by 83 inches—for only $4. I’ve enjoyed making some things from it: placemats and napkins mostly, and a sweet little fabric basket (I made a few of these for friends for Christmas, then filled them with chocolates and gifts). I felt most proud of the lunch bag I made for my boss, Nancy, because it tested my skill. I used fabric in a brown geometric pattern by an Australian Aboriginal designer. Then I lined the bag with sturdy brown linen from a too-big jacket I bought at a yard sale down the street. Nancy loves it. Adrian’s bag (filled with toys) for his second birthday involved some great scraps I bought from Smoking Lily on Government Street. Finally, I sewed a butterfly apron at Christmas for my niece. She is beautiful in any outfit, even an apron. 

For my 65th birthday party (the theme was poetry and potluck), I made fabric wrappers for second-hand poetry books I bought for guests. So fun to comb through my stash and find colours and patterns that sing together. Party favours were fun when you were a kid, and they are even more fun when you’re an adult. Again, entertain that inner child…

Making Mandalas

Michael and I had a Monday Mandala practice for a while, but it fizzled out sometime during the year. One exciting project: we delivered a multi-day mandala-making workshop in March and early April on Zoom. Our participants were mostly from New Mexico—all lovely, open-hearted women. It was a good experience. Michael was a guest presenter at two Creating Mandala monthly events. The CM team featured a new goddess each month, and Michael chose to talk about the High Priestess (Tarot) and Kali (Hindu goddess associated with death). I attended both of these events with pride and pleasure. Some mandalas last year were inspired by dreams—a rich transmutation. I dreamed I entered a room in my house and found that someone had painted on my white wall a red dragon being devoured by three beasts. Still musing on the meaning of that one. 

Writing

Here’s where the fox was most recalcitrant. I aborted so many poems, blogposts, and stories last year, I am surprised to find anything in my files. I posted on this blog only five times in 2023. However, I did complete a series of linked short stories (started in previous years): Nothing is Wasted: The Stan and Deedee Stories. I shared them with a few friends and family members. If you are interested in reading them and you’d like a digital copy, let me know (maddyruthwalker@gmail.com) and I will send you one. 

Some months, I had nothing new to share with my writing group. I’d scour the old folders for some scrap from the distant past to read. Or I’d just listen to others read their work. But that’s okay. I know that I’ll write again. When nothing seems to be happening, the fox is deep in her hole, pregnant with kits. How many will be born and when? Just have faith.

I wrote only a few poems in 2023, and one was for my birthday. Each guest was asked to bring a poem to share. It was extraordinary to see my friends and family members get up into the poetry seat and read poems they’d chosen, poems they’d written: one of the best gifts I’ve ever received. To close the offerings, I read my own poem– one that expresses the expansiveness I feel as we enter 2024. Happy New Year to you!

Expansion

I started slim 
and willowy.
Then, whoosh of years. 

My waist - heavy as grief, 
soft as dough - 
expanded.

Grief. Have you met her?
Well then you know the
grace that she bestows.

Hard things—she
cracks them open, 
ignites a hotter flame, 
imbues a deeper shade of red. 

So, like my waist, 
my heart’s made wide by grief, 
a vast container for the love I feel 
for trees, and animals, the sky, 
the planet, for you, my friends, 
for people everywhere, 
for life expanding.

Take a chance

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I’m not a gambler. I’ve never been one to buy scratch & win or lottery tickets, with the exception of raffle tickets for a good cause. But I have a weakness for the random—for letting books fall open, for reaching into my closet with my eyes closed. I wrote about random acts of reading in one of my early posts. 

Lately, my hunger for the random has become ravenous. Perhaps it helps me cope with the relentlessness of karma, of knowing that everything arises as a result of a complex web of causes and conditions. If I just grab something, I cheat the chain of causality for one moment. An illusion of course, but it briefly satisfies something in me. 

When I was at Women in Need thrift store a week ago, I bought a $5 jewelry “grab bag” and felt the thrill of not knowing what I would find inside. And then, at the Juan de Fuca 55+  Activity Centre Craft Fair last weekend, I picked up three “toonie bags,” again feeling excitement at the potential. I know the chances of getting things I neither want nor need are extremely high. But a pesky “what if?” tugs at me. What if there’s magic inside those bags?

I tell myself it’s not such an expensive gambling habit: $11.00 spent over the past ten days. As you have probably already predicted, the $11.00 yielded mostly junk. Costume jewelry I would never wear. Small glass bowls, silver candles, a MALIBU beaded bracelet: all of these go right into the Goodwill donation bag. But there were a couple of things I liked. A cheesy “love” ring that nestles nicely next to my wedding ring for the time being. Three hand-crocheted dish rags in a shade of grey-green that I love and will use daily. And the priceless frisson of possibility …   If I do this too often though—spend too much money on “grab bags”—I get disgusted with myself, like a gambler must feel about their addiction. 

The thrill of grab bags

Today, Mandala Monday, I asked Michael to continue with the buffet of randomness. Last time, we each chose a tarot card to inspire us. This time for our mandala-making prompt, I suggested that I would take a book of poems by Mary Oliver and open it anywhere, read the poem, and we would create mandalas in response. Being game to participate in most of my creative ideas, he agreed. I opened to the poem, “White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field.” Do you know this poem?  The huge white owl, wingspan five feet, picks up a rodent from the snowy field and flies off to the frozen marshes to devour it. Oliver imagines the animal’s death in the jaws of the owl as something incandescent, perhaps even pleasurable. Death, she muses, may be entirely unlike the darkness we tend to imagine:

maybe death 
isn’t darkness, after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us —
as soft as feathers —

Michael and I sat across from each other at the dining room table, he with his IPad and I with old watercolours and a piece of heavy paper I’d traced a plate on. The songs from Leonard Cohen’s Old Ideas album surrounded us. We worked for a time. I sloshed paint and Michael used his magic wand. I persist in thinking of making digital art on an iPad as something otherworldly, technology out of my reach, which isn’t at all true. However, more and more, I recognize the ways I deceive myself, all of the little lies I tell to keep my life comfortable.

I like to mop up watery colour with an old rag, feel the wet paper under my palm, scrape at the bottom of the indigo blue with my brush, feel that I am using up every last bit of paint. The embodied experience of artmaking. 

I got stuck on a phrase near the end of the poem, “aortal light.” Adjective + noun. Aortal – from aorta, the great arterial trunk that carries blood from the heart to be distributed by branch arteries through the body. I imagined aortal light as a lantern that pulses like a heart, sees all with a glowing eye. Warmth and insight at the end of life. 

I fell in love with Michael’s “Arrival.” After creating hundreds of mandalas, he has developed a quick entry into the thriving, visceral archive of his subconscious. His images are evocative, and today both the image and the act of creation visibly disturbed him. I was riveted by the words he read to me after we’ve finished painting and writing. His honest expression of troubled feelings about the mandala—his fear of death—they scalded me. Would that I could be so honest! I like to think I won’t be scared when I am dying. I may be deceiving myself again. 

Oliver writes, we “let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river 
that is without the least dapple or shadow —
that is nothing but light — scalding, aortal light —
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones.”

Choosing the random means taking a chance. Please, big “S” Self, let me take more chances in this life. Not just by grabbing toonie bags and reading random poems—please let me take a chance in being honest, vulnerable.