Moments of Quiet

The exhibition at Chartres finished last Sunday and I headed off to my cousin who lives in a rural France in the Indres region on the way to Chateauroux. Her brother, also my cousin, whom I had never met before and another cousin from their fathers side of the family were also visiting for a few days. It's uncanny meeting family you have never met  through circumstance and because your parents immigrated to the other side of the world, and to find you have so many commonalities and that my brother even looks a little like him. It was pleasant spending a few days getting to know them in front of the fire, as the weather was not very co-operative.It is lovely to enjoy the peace and quiet of the rural area where my cousin lives- so different to being in a city!

I have also stitched quite a lot on my pomegranate piece since I last posted- I think the black stitching is finished- just as well as I have 40 cm of black thread left! As I said this piece is a Travellers Blanket of sorts and a very personal journey but its morphing and changing as I stitch simply because so much of family is in this piece, and just the last few days spending time with cousins has added an extra dimension for me, and it has acquired even more meaning, and one that I did not think it would- but I know whenever I pick up this piece part of the memory will be of this week. Now I need to get onto embroidering the lighter indigo areas.

The travellers blanket book is being translated at the moment so there has been a few back and forths with the translators about certain words or ways of expressing which is very interesting in its own way. When I wrote it, I did think about how it might be translated into french ( even though my french is not good)  but there are ways of saying things in english that are difficult to translate into french. I completed the drawings for the book before I went to Chartres but as I did the drawings, a few ideas did pop into my head and it's been lovely having quiet time, so to speak, to explore those ideas a little.

I was a little intrigued as to how much like maps my drawings of the embroideries looked, and I guess when you think about  embroidery patterns they are a map really. But it did make a little buzz sort of go off inside my head, about lets put that into the thinking tank. I made about 64 of these little drawings so there was a bit of thinking to do lol! But then I played around with them this morning because I actually am thinking about the next blanket as well - the one after the pomegranate one- and well this is what I came up with.

And then my brain jumped to linocut linocut- because I was doing some looking around on the internet to share for the linocutting group I am teaching- so tomorrows job is a lot of  carving! It's quite big and a few changes will happen because of the way the tools work.

So there is still time to sign up to the Travellers' Blanket on-class which starts on April 3 - which is the only one I will be teaching this year-it's an online class to hopefully inspire you to explore your own stories in hand stitch. there is  more information on my previous last two posts with a Paypal button also.

And lastly but not least , and how did I not know this??? There is a Rilke connection to Chartres. He wrote a poem about the Meridian angel on the outside of the Cathedral ( he actually wrote six poems about Chartres but until I get home I will not be able to find out exactly  what those were)

http://oriana-poetry.blogspot.fr/2015/10/rilke-angel-with-sundial-redux.html

round the strong cathedral 
like a denier thinking through and through,
your tender smile suddenly engages
our hearts and lifts them up to you.

O smiling angel, sympathetic stone,
your mouth distilled from a hundred mouths:
do you not mark how from your always-full
sundial our hours slide off one by one –

that so impartial sundial, upon which
the day’s whole sum is balanced equally
as though all our hours were rich and ripe?

What do you know, stone-born, of our plight?
And does your face become more blissful still
as you hold the sundial out into the night?

~ Rainer Maria Rilke, tr, J. B. Leishman
  (slightly modified by Oriana)

https://lionel-edouard-martin.net/2016/08/04/reiner-maria-rilke-1875-1926-lange-du-meridien-cathedrale-de-chartres/

Dans la trombe assaillant la forte cathédrale
Comme un dénégateur qui pense et qui repense,
On se sent tout à coup plus tendrement guidé,
Du fait de ton sourire, en ta direction :

Toi l’ange qui souris, figure qui ressent,
Et dont la bouche unique est faite de cent bouches :
Ne remarques-tu point comment pour toi nos heures
Vont glissant tout le long du plein cadran solaire,

Où le nombre du jour se tient, entier, ensemble,
Pareillement réel, en profond équilibre,
Toute heure étant tenue, croit-on, pour mûre et riche ?

Que sais-tu, toi qui es de pierre, de notre être ?
Ton visage est peut-être encor plus radieux,
Quand entrant dans la nuit, tu montres le cadran.

---

Im Sturm, der um die starke Kathedrale
wie ein Verneiner stürzt der denkt und denkt,
fühlt man sich zärtlicher mit einem Male
von deinem Lächeln zu dir hingelenkt:

lächelnder Engel, fühlende Figur,
mit einem Mund, gemacht aus hundert Munden:
gewahrst du gar nicht, wie dir unsre Stunden
abgleiten von der vollen Sonnenuhr,

auf der des Tages ganze Zahl zugleich,
gleich wirklich, steht in tiefem Gleichgewichte,
als wären alle Stunden reif und reich.

Was weißt du, Steinerner, von unserm Sein?
und hältst du mit noch seligerm Gesichte
vielleicht die Tafel in die Nacht hinein?

(in Neue Gedichte, 1907)