The Poetry of Quilts

Good quilts are like good poetry. When you look at them, you notice something different every time. A color combination, an exquisite line of quilting, even something that makes you chuckle. Quilts should reflect something about the maker -- quirks and all. They should be individual expressions.

With the exception of polyester, there's really nothing you could add to a quilt that would be wrong, but many quilters are way too fearful. "The colors must all match exactly", "I want it to look exactly like the one in the magazine", or "I can't do that. It's too hard." So they buy quilt kits with the fabric pre-selected and attend classes where the prevailing themes are "Get it Done Fast and Easy."

Quilting should be about fun and creativity. It should be about quality, not quantity. It should be about the experience of quilting, not the end result, especially when the end result is a pile of quilts with absolutely no personality.

I'm guilty too. I want to design quilts, but I'm afraid I'm not good enough, my ideas aren't intricate enough. I bought quilts at an auction Sunday, (it's like going to an animal shelter and wanting to make sure all the puppies have a good home) and the quilts I fell in love with weren't particularly intricate. One was scrappy; one was posies in pots. They weren't complicated, just exquisitely pieced and appliqued. Their beauty was in the execution and in the time the quilter spent working on them.

How many times have I heard it? It's not the destination; it's the journey. It's the time we spend on vacation looking around, soaking up the experience, talking to the locals , not the pictures or the t-shirts we can show people when we get home. It's not the quilt-in-a-day that you forget you have because you have nothing invested in it. It's the one that takes a year, the one where you remember every stitch, especially the ones where you poked yourself and bled on the fabric, the one where Sun Bonnet Sue looks like the Flying Nun or your appliqued flowers grow backwards.

It's not about being perfect. It's about having perfect moments.

If there's no beer at my funeral, I'm coming back to haunt you.

I started writing my own eulogy yesterday. Last week I attended yet another funeral where the minister didn't seem to have the slightest clue who he was celebrating. I see no point in reading an olio of unrelated scriptures, reading the mini-bio off the back of the bulletin and calling it a "good-bye".

There are too many "suppose to's" in life as it is, and there are definitely too many associated with a funeral. Has to have scripture, has to have cheesy hymns, has to be in a church or the next best thing -- a funeral home swathed in gauze orchestrated by men in dark suits. And there's nothing wrong with that if that's what the celebrated person wanted. I would have preferred to bury my dad in a pair of overalls, but I know he would have been appalled. My mom has been a church-goer all her life; for her it would be odd to not hold her funeral in a church when the time arrives. But ever since graduate school, I've spent more time in delightfully sleazy little taverns than I have churches so why be a hypocrite.

I want to be celebrated outside in my flower garden. If I croak in January, you'll just have to wait. I'd rather be remembered in a place where I felt absolute joy under a vast blue sky with the birds overhead and cats underfoot.

I hope there will be music -- Dave Mathews, Bonnie Raitt, any good jazz. And if there are readings, I hope it will be passages from favorite books. If fiction must be read at my funeral, I want it to be the good stuff.

It's rather empowering to write a final message for the people you love -- the words you want to leave them with. I wrote that "I have no regrets." In real time, I have to make sure that is true at the end. So that forces me to look at my bullshit for what it is and get past it. It doesn't matter that my mother never encouraged me or made me feel so ashamed of myself that I've struggled for years to feel worthy of breathing. I can give meaning to myself. And I'll have to if that "no regrets" thing is going to be true. Besides, haven't I really known all along that she was wrong? That all the people who made me feel small -- idiotic eighth-grade boys, a morose ex-husband -- were all wrong about me?

Absolutely.

So that's the message I'll want to leave people with -- believe in yourself; listen to your own truth. Do nothing you're "supposed to" just for the sake of social convention or someone else's convenience.

And eat lots of ice cream!

Straight Up the Mountain

from Petrarch's "The Ascent of Mount Ventoux" : "Once more I followed an easy, roundabout path through winding valleys, only to find myself soon in my old difficulty."

It's reassuring to realize that Petrarch has some of the same weaknesses and foibles I do -- I skirt the mountain too, hoping for an easier path, or just because I'm too afraid to commit fully to the climb. If I never commit, I never fail. Of course, I never succeed either. And like Petrarch, who looked three times for an easier way up the mountain, I didn't figure it out the first time either.

Petrarch considered carefully who he would ask to accompany him on his ascent -- one friend was too timid, one friend too loquacious. One was too sad, another overly cheerful. In the end he asked his brother. His brother was the one who headed straight up the mountain, while Petrarch was fooling around looking for an easier way, and Petrarch, in the end, who expended more time and energy achieving his goal.

If I think too hard about all the time I've wasted ascending my mountain, I'll probably crawl under the bed and commune with the dust bunnies. But that would only waste more time. I'll be 50 sooner than I want to acknowledge -- I don't have the time to waste. Maybe the memento mori poets had it right. (Of course, they were mainly hoping to get laid. )

I create this blog for some accountability -- to remind myself daily what my goals are and that I am strong enough to get to the mountaintop.