England, or the continent I had in mind when I came here
CE

Every bird is a sister of mine—can you believe
I never saw horses running
before I came to this island,
and nothing but their own good sense keeps them
from falling into the ocean?
At the edge of your country
along traintracks that run from Devon
to Cornwall, someone
set up a howl and it’s been going
longer than we remember,
or our mothers
remember, or their mothers.
Where else could a woman turn
into flowering rosebush? All
so peripheral, the crooked edges maps show—
the limit is sensate here
where I can never travel all night
and the next day—
I brought you what I bound you,
a piece of cloth in tatting thread and colors
I found here—loosestrife, sorrel, the guelder rose,
wood anemone—a tapestry
barring girlhood to one
field, long stripe of a neighbor’s plow turning
land just over the woven branches: earth
to earth.
The sandwich cart rattles by, you stack
cups on a tray. Meanwhile, unobstrusively, the air
diffuses particles, the sky is pinked.
This earth.
This shining in the sea.

gift

"We are forgetting how to give presents....Instead we have charity, administered beneficence....In its organized operations there is no longer room for human impulses....Even private giving of presents has degenerated to a social function exercised with rational bad grace, careful adherence to the prescribed budget, sceptical appraisal of the other and the least possible effort. Real giving had its joy in imagining the joy of the receiver. It means choosing, expending time, going out of one's way, thinking of the other as a subject....The decay of giving is mirrored in the distressing invention of gift-articles, based on the assumption that one does not know what to give because one really does not want to."

Theodor Adorno, "21./ Articles may not be exchanged", from Minima Moralia.

--

"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."

William Morris, who helped found the Arts and Crafts movement.

---

A month or so ago, I read an article in Crafts where the author thought about the purpose and nature of Etsy. One thing that really struck me was her assertion that most of what is sold on Etsy falls in the category of 'giftware'. (And I'm just paraphrasing from memory here, so please, if you can find a copy of this issue go and read the article.)

I'd been thinking about gift in any case--earlier this year I decided not to give store-bought presents if I could, and to try to give people only things I believed they would truly love, appreciate, and enjoy--and use. I wanted to stop giving people things because I felt obliged to, and to give presents instead out of a feeling of openness. I also wanted to get out from under the bizarre guilt I feel sometimes when I don't give someone 'enough'. What is that? Most people I know have too much stuff (me included)--why should I feel guilty not adding to that? Would a trinket I pick up at a giftshop really mean more than a letter? And what about my participation in the supply side? Are most of the things I make to sell made because they're easy and saleable, or because I sense that they will be useful and beautiful, for me if not for others? Obviously what's beautiful and useful is a matter of taste and I wouldn't want to legislate that. But I do think there's room for some critical thought about what we're doing with what we buy and what we make.

I've been thinking more about this as I prepare to reopen my shop. Of course I'm guilty of sometimes thinking of making things because I know they'll sell--but I'm held back usually by my lack of interest in those projects. In the larger scope, though, I'm not interested in just adding 'junk' to the world.

I know this is kind of a taboo thing--we're supposed to say everything is equal, it's all good, it's all fine, and I struggle with the non-democracy of my thoughts here. But I also think some kind of honest discourse about why I (we?) make things, why I (we?) buy them, and what the nature and purpose of gift-giving is is necessary. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, too.

miss blackwell, i presume

Spent the morning--well, early afternoon--having tea with Amy Blackwell, with whom I got into contact after seeing that both she and I are living in Nottingham and participating in the October Pikapackage--pretty small world! I saw some of her work through the windows of the Heart&Hand Gallery here, too, and so even before I knew her I was hoping I'd like her, because I really like her stuff. Happily, she's fun, enthusiastic, open, and warm, so that's wonderful! There are apparently lots of things happening on the Nottingham crafty-makey scene and it's so nice to feel more in touch with that.

These are two of her images--a fox and a badger--and I find them so appealing! I like the simple blocks of color, and I like the little dots around their cheeks.

* * *

I've been so tired out from the show preparations and making and framing and getting posters and things made, I haven't been working on much of anything (except reading for my dissertation and a lot of revision for the manuscript that's due pretty much now). But I'm still planning to have a little shop online for Christmastime--opening the weekend of November 15. So if you're interested in prints or other things you've seen from my show, watch for updates here!

heterotopias

The space in which we live, which draws us out of ourselves, in which the erosion of our lives. our time and our history occurs, the space that claws and gnaws at us, is also, in itself, a heterogeneous space. In other words, we do not live in a kind of void, inside of which we could place individuals and things. We do not live inside a void that could be colored with diverse shades of light, we live inside a set of relations that delineates sites which are irreducible to one another and absolutely not superimposable on one another.

...But these heterotopias of crisis are disappearing today and are being replaced, I believe, by what we might call heterotopias of deviation: those in which individuals whose behavior is deviant in relation to the required mean or norm are placed. Cases of this are rest homes and psychiatric hospitals, and of course prisons, and one should perhaps add retirement homes that are, as it were, on the borderline between the heterotopia of crisis and the heterotopia of deviation since, after all, old age is a crisis, but it is also a deviation since in our society where leisure is the rule, idleness is a sort of deviation.

...The heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible.

...Heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable.

...The last trait of heterotopias is that they have a function in relation to all the space that remains. This function unfolds between two extreme poles. Either their role is to create a space of illusion that exposes every real space, all the sites inside of which human life is partitioned, as still more illusory (perhaps that is the role that was played by those famous brothels of which we are now deprived). Or else, on the contrary, their role is to create a space that is other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours is messy, ill-constructed, and jumbled.

Michel Foucault. Of Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias.
This text, entitled "Des Espace Autres," and published by the French journal Architecture /Mouvement/ Continuité in October, 1984, was the basis of a lecture given by Michel Foucault in March 1967. Although not reviewed for publication by the author and thus not part of the official corpus of his work, the manuscript was released into the public domain for an exhibition in Berlin shortly before Michel Foucault's death. Translated from the French by Jay Miskowiec.

house: warm

I'm getting used to my new place.

28

A little man made out of felt, a packet of cinnamon sticks, tea, socks, candy, and a mug with a robin on it. A happy birthday banner. It was a nice day.