I’ve been trying to remember and draw a Native American Kilim that hung on my Grandparents wall. I remember it so clearly and yet I’ve been finding the details of it elusive. I thought I knew it but then found I can’t quite get there.
I’ve had to do a bit of online searching to find similar rugs to jog my memory as well as ask family members to sketch out the pattern they remembered. I’m so surprised to find that one family member has no memory of it – though he would have had a grown-up memory so more chance to not have the fog of childhood. But then perhaps it is because it is from childhood that I do remember it – in that way that kids look at things and pay attention to details in depth. Perhaps even being a foundation-laying building block. A slide was found of the room it hung in and send via a photo taken on a phone while holding the slide up to the window. While not the best quilty (a rather fuzzy image and only a fragment of the kilim is seen) it feels appropriately similar to my memory of it – that it is there and not there at the same time.
Now, I am wondering where the final work is within these various remembered images/drawings – is it recreating the final remembered-found version life-size; redrawing all the attended rememberings; creating an overlapped ‘final’ version which includes all the rememberings; or perhaps another thought still needs to come. I will sleep on it and continue to play with it tomorrow.
Not much but also lots has gone on today – great conversations, some reading, lots of looking at details inside as well as some important staring out of the window.
Thoughts and conversations around: time and timelines; the past and the far past; who tells the story’s of the past; bringing together and making sense through ones own prism; the joy of German straightforwardness; some political discussion about ‘he who shall not be named’; objects and their resonance; cycles, spirals and revolutions; hot toddies and virgin toddies; gros point and petit point.
A fairly quiet day ending with a lovely communal meal and movie watching. I’ve been focusing on reading some of Fryn Tennyson Jesse’s writing today – something I’ve been meaning to do for ages but never seen to find the time. Funny how even important and relevant reading is hard to find time for. Our movie choice (after convincing by myself that a movie about a bunch of strangers coming to a large house and getting knocked off one by one would be great fun….) was Agatha Christies 1945 film adaptation of ‘And then there were none’.
Thoughts today: how reading for long-time filters through into a narrative into my own head as I then continue my day; grandmother clocks and grandfather clocks; true-crime v mystery novels; and witnessing of the repeating un-repeat (my favourite thing); an hour of aubergine cooking; how time is ticking by.
A good day of looking at the bigger picture in combination with the details. I am beginning to get a sense of what some of the work will be, how it will come together, and what needs to be tested to see if it works.
Good conversations and thoughts around the quiet beauty of winter gardens; the importance of being outside; hot water bottles and keeping warm; printing here and there; knowledge and unknowing; stopped clocks as memorial; time zone of clocks within a single home; ribbons and ash; tankards – hers and mine; parallels, commonality and variance; real and unreal; blurring boundaries; empty spaces; false and misunderstood connections; the milky way v. the big dipper; and badgers.
