In The Garden Living an RPG Life

Just got notified that my Catrina fabric has been shipped.  I’m looking forward to seeing how it turned out.

I realized today, after spending an exciting hour or so in the library finding stuff, that the fabric design is part of this year’s novel.  Even though I have a story line, I don’t have a lot of details to work with.  Usually this doesn’t bother me.  Usually I don’t notice!  Usually, also, I have had a lot of other elements that I’m trying to fit into the novel, elements I’ve had in mind for a while.

My composing strategy is to ask “how does this fit into the world?”.  Then I make stuff up to fit.  For example, I bought a sewing machine the other day.  It’s a beautiful White Family Rotary machine from about 1909 or so.  It’s electric, but I read that this model usually is set up as a treadle.   Since I bought the machine during the time I am planning for Nanowrimo, I wondered how the machine might fit into a world without electricity.

I decided that the people who brought the machine into the world also brought the treadle base as well as the electric parts.  It is possible to generate electricity manually (think bicycle light), and the people who brought the machine know how to do that as well as have the materials to do it with.  So, what’s the big deal?

Well, in the first novel major havoc is wreaked by someone creating electricity.  Ok, so it was done on the scale of a major lightning storm, but it shouldn’t have been done in the first place.  Electricity is prohibited in the world.  So, how is it possible that an electric sewing machine is ok?  Ah!  That’s what makes the story interesting this time around.  Answering that question helped me create a little more depth about the world, help me to define this particular aspect of the landscape.  It also helps bridge between the world of this novel and the next one.

This novel is the last of this series.  This series has been a way for me to create the world and get a bunch of ideas out of my head and onto paper in a proper context.

Ooo…  Watching a kid’s show, Zula Patrol, about clouds. Today I found a book about drawing clouds.  Weather is an interest of one of my major characters and part of the conflict in the novel.  Love me some synchronicity!

I’m off to visit Ravelry to check up on the gang intending to write next month.  I get to go to the local kick-off party, here in Sacramento.  I’ve been working for the previous ones.  Looking forward to hanging out with other people writing furiously.

Memorii Mento

Ah.

Bones are what remain in time

long after we are gone

done with them.

What do our ribs say

about how we loved

or sang

or spoke?

Do our legs

feet

tell our journeys?

Backs and shoulders our burdens?

Our arms comforts?

Our hands

what we made

what we gave and received?

What did our skull hold?

What living thoughts,

scents

sounds

kisses and tears?

I just finished my first doll panel for Spoonflower.  It combines fabric, dolls, and an attraction to bones as a spiritual practice.  Or something like that.  I heard a poem and only remember bones as flutes.  I remember it was a man writing about his lover, a dead wife I think.  I remember where I was and that I took myself deeper into the image of bones.  I thought of them like flutes, like reeds or bamboo.  I thought of bones as being a perfect metaphor for our concrete essence.  Structure.  Support.  Our core. 

Yeah, core.  For all the muscle workout, without the bones for the muscles to attach to, none of the “core work” would make any difference. 

All that came up when I was thinking about why doing the Catrina Calavera felt so resonant. 

I love the nakedness of her in her big ostrich-plumed hat.  Naked yet not.  And I like that, unless you are someone who investigates bones, you can’t tell the Catrina’s race.  She is every woman.  She is not thin or fat.  Not muscular or flabby.  Not old or young.  She is always elegant, poised, serene.

She is the perfect dress-up doll.  I imagine dressing her ribs in crystals, her heart a chandelier.  Wrapping her limbs in ribbons.  She masks herself as all beings, crowning herself with leaves, flowers, feathers, horns.  Her nakedness, her spareness, inspires. 

She is the ultimate santos to me.  An abundance of relics held together by the spirit of her life.  I would compose lush gowns for her, be her dresser on and off-stage.  I have already become her old maid, her a vestir santos.  In having no children of my own, I am her child, bound to take care of her for all the rest of my life.

I didn’t know that until now.  I knew I had a crush on her cousin, Death.  Didn’t know it was a family commitment.  Good!  I’ve been lonely.