wonder and amazement

There’s been a lot of wonder and amazement in the more negative, disbelieving sense lately… as in, I wonder how people can be so insensitive to the suffering of others, to the ongoing genocide in Gaza and continued targeting of immigrants and indigenous folks everywhere. And I wonder how anyone can be so selfish and short-sighted as to prioritize tax cuts for the insanely rich, at the expense of social programs that benefit everyone…. But this train of thought could lead to madness, given the amount of fodder being generated every day. Instead, I wanted to share some wonder and amazement of the more wide-eyed, receptive and enthralled variety, in part because I believe it’s what can ground us in the sanity and compassionate care that is needed, always.

These images are from a visit to the Painted Hills of Oregon, where the various mineral deposits and volcanic action of the land have left layers of unusual color, some of which are only exposed through erosion. The lavender in the next photo is true color - purple dirt!

Against the deep cinnamon hills, the delicate greens of sagebrush and juniper gained potency. And the sky seemed to intensify its blue.

Some of the rocks were also blue, or an interesting blue-green that almost matched some of the sage, and was close enough to my sweater color that I had to pick up a sample, just for a photo.

Amidst all this far-out color and trippy landscape, I was also entranced by the basic, gentle blooming of a cherry tree on the land where we stayed.

A large part of my amazement these days is simply that spring happens, that all these plants bubble over with life in the form of buds and leaves and blossoms and so much outreaching growth it’s almost hard to handle. The giddiness of perceiving what all is going on - especially when the birds are calling, chasing around, busily gathering nest materials. It’s so energetic and happening, and yet so peaceful. The waving of bright green fir tips and flitting of warblers carries deep peace because it’s just so right, so much the way things are.

I have very few words these days, to counter the deliberate destruction going on, but to be still and look and listen continues to feel like a crucial practice.

True emptiness is clear and always present

masked by delusions for reasons we don’t know

how could what is real and what is false exist apart

flowers bloom and flowers fall when the spring wind blows

- Mountain Poems of Stonehouse, 92 - Red Pine translation

PS - I do keep adding to my poetry page, this one posted as a typewritten image on instagram last fall. Still working on the weaving blog post, and the weaving as well.

PPS - I wrote some commentary, added to yet another page. My virtual house of words, it is sprawling. Also just read this please - Arwa Mahdawi telling it like it is.

uplifting play

Rattlesnake Creek in Missoula, Montana. A photo that looks like a painting, the texture of the water making brushstrokes somehow… not at all intentional on my part. I love the colors of the Rattlesnake’s rocks, and wanted to keep them with me.

Yes, the sky is falling, and also creative work is rising.

Creative, heart-based truth is leading the way I wish to follow. The performance of Les Arrivants in concert with the Glacier Symphony orchestra was a good example, a nourishing blast of brilliance that I’ve been cherishing and revisiting over the last month.

It’s hard to speak about the music, because it’s such a qualitative experience, so emotionally connected. Of course I have a Rilke quote for this. In a letter responding to someone asking about the influence of another poet on himself, Rilke says the influence is “dissolved in memory and experience… interwoven with it,” and that it mainly “consists in developing one’s capacity for wonder and for work and in compelling one back to nature.” That’s how art works: you can’t point at anything specific and say it did this to me, but it does something. It affirms something you already knew…. it motivates your own work.

Birch with pink inner bark and cool fungus, outside Kalispell, Montana

A bird’s nest with blue tarp strands and bits of my husband’s hair, which I cut out in the driveway and always hoped the birds would make use of it. This was in an Ocean Spray bush, found in winter - I don’t know whose nest it was.

Those of us who watch Les Arrivants perform live tend to overuse the word “amazing.” I say it myself, and I hear other audience members as they approach the musicians afterward or try to express their reactions. I think it’s because this group takes us somewhere new and unexpected, outside of any ready vocabulary we might have. Part of the mind is still chewing on the experience long after it’s over, and in the moment of greeting them it’s still just new and delightful and moving, and we haven’t had time to understand how we’ve been touched. It’s a powerful enough experience that it requires a time of processing, metabolizing new input that goes way beyond any form of mere entertainment or pleasure.

The first time I saw them, all this was true, and they were alone as a trio, in a relatively small venue. This time they collaborated with a symphony orchestra, playing five works in a row that were newly orchestrated, three of them world premieres of original compositions by each of the three musicians. It was like dwelling in a series of multidimensional worlds called up by these unique minds, one after another. Unbelievable.

Low tide on the Salish Sea.

Although they’ve coordinated with an entire symphony and have expanded the sound and texture and grandeur of each orchestrated piece, they retain the sense of intimate communication and responsiveness among themselves as a trio. Even with a full orchestra behind them, the three play for each other and include the audience in the warm-hearted way that defines their music. The more you know their music, the more you appreciate their sense of play and conversation, the way they explore and support each other.

The introduction to Bagelissimo, the Mile-End Tango, was a great example of this. Abdul-Wahab Kayyali and Amichai Ben Shalev indulged in a languid, almost teasing exploration, tickling and caressing all sorts of possibilities before giving the orchestra the gratification of the bright tango beat (which the orchestra clearly loved playing.) Ben, having done the orchestral arrangements for the five pieces being premiered, seemed to be on a justified high, judging by the look on his face as he sat surrounded by the sounds he had summoned from the instruments, and in his own solo work & virtuoso treatment of the bandaneon.

Wanting to say something about improvisation and weaving, as I attempt to learn double weave, copying motifs from Shahsevan tribal weavings (nomadic Iran). As with a musician’s skill, a weaver’s increased familiarity with a technique and the design possibilities gives more opportunity to improvise and be inventive within the format. I have my hand in too many different weaving techniques to master any one, probably, but I’m working on gaining some fluency in the design languages and the structural rules that inform them. Watch this space for more on weaving & improvisation.

I can’t remember much about the oud solos, except that I wanted them to go on forever. I’ve already been expressive about how much this musician’s work moves and inspires me, and this performance was further confirmation. The emotional intensity of the concert was front-loaded, since the first piece was played by Les Arrivants without orchestra, and the next piece was Shaymaa’s Dance, Abdul-Wahab Kayyali’s piece composed upon the death of Palestinian poet & academic Refaat Alareer’s eldest daughter, months after his own death. The music envisions the two of them dancing at her wedding.

The composition is an imaginary celebration of the simple continuation of life that will never happen for these two, who along with other members of their family, were killed in separate, targeted Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. The grief and infinite pain of this vision permeate the lilting melody and sweetness of this classic, lyrically moving waltz. (A brief excerpt is in the Glacier Symphony link above.)

This image is from the article linked above, from a protest in Cologne, Germany soon after Alareer’s death.

Unfortunately, the world premiere of this work was accompanied by a compromise of its power. Whoever finalized the program for the Glacier Symphony chose to edit the artist’s statement, without consulting or involving the artist/composer. As a result, the description of Shaymaa’s Dance was scrubbed of any reference to Palestine, Gaza, airstrikes, genocide, or even the violent and targeted death of these two individuals. While Refaat Alareer’s name is mentioned, the situation is glossed as “loss,” and thus impossible to interpret unless you already know who he is. 

The composition and premiere of this piece is what motivated me to instantly seek tickets, bring my family to the concert, and tell others. To have it sanitized in the interest of genocide-denialist sensitivities seems counter to the purpose of playing it, and of inviting Les Arrivants to Kalispell. Fortunately, the music speaks for itself, and I know that Kayyali and Les Arrivants will have more occasions to highlight this work and reach ever wider audiences with their brilliance, now that they have taken this first step into orchestral collaboration.

I’ve been working with Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus lately, and the phrase that keeps cycling through my mind with regard to this music is from the final sonnet of Part 1, which talks about Orpheus’s dismemberment at the hands of the raging Maenads. The German is “aus den Zerstörenden stieg dein erbauendes Spiel”: From among those who would destroy you, your uplifting (edifying) play arose. The word Spiel, or play, is the playing of the instrument, and you could say ‘tune’ or ‘song’, but ‘play’ evokes the improvisation that is so integral to the work of these musicians. Each of them is raising something new and edifying each time they play. The premiered compositions of this concert were ‘erbauendes Spiel’ on a grand scale, but every performance involves this uplifting play, and among the forces of destruction that currently surround us, lifting up an edifying song feels like a sacred calling.

The tatreez-supporting jacket also had its debut at this performance. No photos allowed in the theater, but here’s Abdul-Wahab Kayyali wearing it, speaking with admirers from the audience after the show with Amichai Ben Shalev.

On the topic of censoring Palestinian voices, the response of universities is getting me down… (eta: understatement, and Rebecca Solnit says it way better than I can here. Read, follow, act on her encouragement.)

Despite their evident financial emphasis and power games, all of which was more than obvious to me as an Ivy League undergraduate thirty years ago, part of me still wants the university to be a bastion of clear thinking, a safe place for dangerous intellectual experiments and risky conversations. It must be the part of me that never gave up the dream that being a serious student and an intelligent person was the way to move forward, to achieve lofty aspirations and enhance the world.

I was raised with this implicit ideal: the university was the place to go to exchange thought, to further ideas and creative growth. There was no doubt in my mind about this. And of course, this led to repeated disappointment. I perceived things clearly enough to dissuade me from pursuing academia as a professional. And yet, I see now in my current bafflement, there was lingering faith somewhere in my mind, that universities were the stage where things could happen that would expand and change our society.

And I don’t know why I feel closer to universities, or expect more of them, except that academia is where you’d typically belong if your primary activities are writing, thinking, and comparative study. Doing these things has made me feel close to academia and pay attention to how it works, even though it’s never been my job. My independent study of poetry and textile research also keeps me in the scholarly milieu, so it just feels like the portion of society where I should be most at home, although I haven’t associated with a US university in decades, really.

To see the universities motivating against their own students and faculty, in the service of ideologues, deflates the residual hope. It’s not all universities, of course, but I’m not going to dig through the newsfeeds pulling out names of who is punishing, expelling, and allowing doxxing of pro-Palestinian activists and who is being more supportive of freedom of thought and expression. At the moment Columbia is in the spotlight for the former, and what matters is the general trend.

Here’s a thoughtful conversation about it, at least. And here is a written statement from Mahmoud Khalil, from his unlawful detention, including the sentence, “I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear.”

Clouds, from where I live, telling me about ‘erbauendes Spiel.’

May we keep expanding our minds and hearts, and keep developing the skill and fluency to allow our improvisations to rise up and edify one another.

a tatreez story

There are a lot of parts to this story: the textile, how I found it, what it’s own (partially known) story is, what I decided to do with it, and the work and result of that. This may be a long post, but I think that’s better than dividing it up into episodes. I also hope the story continues, and will happily add updates when there’s more.

Tatreez piece, rolled up and prominent in my studio. For more information on tatreez: Tatreez and Tea, Tatreez Traditions, Tiraz Home for Arab Dress are all excellent resources.

Having found this piece in January, 2023, I will have lived with it for almost exactly one year. The uniqueness of a handmade piece makes it like a person’s face, something you learn to recognize beyond doubt. So the presence of it becomes familiar. I kept this piece visible in my studio for many months before I knew what I would do with it, and its face is precious to me. Even now, I sit and stare at the photos, enthralled, and have to urge myself to work with words… in some ways, the textile says everything on its own.

At the time of finding it, the attack on Gaza had been under way for (only) 3 months, and the sight of Palestinian embroidery pierced my heart. Somehow I felt that it was older, made as part of an original garment, but I didn’t really know anything for sure except “Palestinian cross stitch.” It was in a consignment shop in Port Townsend, Washington, where many of us buy and sell each other’s goods. It had been sewn by machine into a sturdy linen border & backing, which I left on while I contemplated what to do with this piece, apart from posting photos online over and over again.

When I finally removed the border linen and held the tatreez piece by itself for the first time, the voice of it came to life. Handling an old textile, there is a liveliness, a warmth to it, like holding someone’s hand. Being able to touch both sides and to see the back was like a direct communication with the maker, the woman who held it before - a more intimate listening to the language she wrote with her stitched marks.

Then I learned more about this piece. I noted that the three uniform-sized panels are not the style of design used for a Palestinian dress. Reading further into Shelagh Weir’s Palestinian Costume book, I saw that the Hebron area head shawls, or ghudfeh, have three panels, and bands of embroidery along one end. Using ghudfeh as a search term, I found other examples, also identified as Hebron works. Clicking through links, I suddenly found myself looking at exactly the same embroidery patterns, in a portion of a shawl in the collection of the Textile Research Centre of Leiden, Netherlands.

Doing a watercolor painting of a textile is a great way to study the designs, complexity, scale, and color choices, to learn more about the language.

The same! I knew the designs well, having looked closely enough to try to paint them. I still don’t know what this similarity means, exactly - what is the microcosm of shared embroidery vocabulary that would result in such an identical design… same family, or village, or time frame within an area? I haven’t successfully communicated with any textile scholars about this yet, but it’s certainly striking - I’ve looked at a lot of tatreez, and this is the only time I’m aware of seeing identical patterning. The benefit is that I can more confidently place the segment I have in time and place. And the conclusion of the TRC folks, in consultation with Wafa Gnaim, is that their piece is c.1900.

When we talk about old textiles, I know there’s a tendency to glorify age for its own sake - older pieces are more valuable, considered more authentic. Sometimes this is unfair to anyone still making textiles now, and in terms of the marketplace, I believe in supporting active craftspeople and not inflating value based on scarcity or exclusivity of access. (I’m also opposed to the way the textile collecting world mirrors the rest of the fine art luxury market in this way, with artificial fashion trends and status competition affecting the way things are valued. The inherent value of textiles and why they matter has nothing to do with all of that.) When I revere something older, it’s because of the life that is in it, the context that was woven or stitched into the piece itself, through materials and technique and the lived experience of the maker.

In this case, finding out how old this piece is likely to be was emotionally moving, because it places the original maker before so much of the suffering and disruption that her people are experiencing now. These stitches were made before Israel was established as a country, before anyone in this woman’s home environment was being forced to fight for their ability to live there, or flee. Her voice is grounded in place, and the language of her composition flows like confident music. Knowing that this piece was made in the pride and faith of belonging, of fully living her culture, makes it a powerful message from an ancestor, something to pass on strength and integrity of being.

Magnified view of the cross stitch embroidery - the white lines on the side are millimeters.

Which leads me to the obvious need to put it into Palestinian hands. I’d been contemplating this, how to give this on to someone for whom it would have personal, identifying meaning. And after meeting and beginning a correspondence with the musician Abdul-Wahab Kayyali, (whom I have mentioned before) the thought occurred to me: could it be made into a gift for either display in the home, or to wear? I had not yet come up with anything when he happened to mention in an email that he was interested in wearing tatreez while performing. This gave me a concrete goal, and I started thinking about a wearable base that could serve as support for this textile.

Abdul-Wahab Kayyali plays with guitarist Tariq Harb as the duo 17 Strings.

I envisioned a boxy jacket that could go over a dress shirt, with the tatreez wrapping around the jacket body, above the hem. I think I was influenced by Southeast Asian tribal clothing shapes in going for a black, square jacket - but I also found these Turkish fellows looking very sharp, which I was sure the recipient would appreciate, given his musical and personal Turkish connections. The Turkish image gave me the idea to use piping along the neck and front opening. I got some black linen twill from my local fabric shop, and found a suitable silk for piping in my stash of fabrics I’ve dyed in the past. After a few practice runs with making and sewing piping, I took the plunge and cut the linen, creating a piped edge along the round neck and center front, between two layers of linen.

Piping is basted onto one side in the first step

Linen is shifty stuff, so there was much basting. The two layers of the jacket body were basted before cutting the neck, and here I’m basting them again after sewing the piping in the neck edge, before adding sleeves.

I decided on a T pattern with square gussets for the sleeves.

(I’m narrating it slightly out of order. I was already well into the project when I found out the age of the piece. This caused me to [hyperventilate and buzz around going omg and then] be more thorough in my documentation of the textile, especially the back which would no longer be accessible once it was mounted on the jacket. I will make the images and information available to others who work with preserving Palestinian textiles, if they are interested.)

Magnified view of stitches including joining stitch. Millimeters marked at the side.

The back side of the embroidery

Given that the sleeves would be visible, I wanted to add something decorative on the cuffs. In dresses from the 1930’s or earlier, Palestinian women used imported silk taffeta to appliqué onto the skirt panels. A typical design is a rectangular strip with diagonal lines made by reverse appliqué. A slit is cut into the silk, and the edges are turned under and stitched. I knew this technique from other textile cultures, and had done it myself in the past. I auditioned a few different silks and practiced the reverse appliqué several times over, before working it onto the jacket sleeves. The cuffs have a small vent, and are hemmed with lines of running stitch in handspun yak/silk yarn. Running stitch is another embellishment that is seen in Palestinian garments and cloth. 

Some of my reverse appliqué samples, with the preferred choice in the foreground.

Image from Shelagh Weir’s Palestinian Costume book showing a dress with taffeta appliqué in the center front of the skirt.

Spindle-spun yak/silk singles, sewn in rows of running stitch along the cuff hem.

The idea was to provide a supportive, wearable base for the tatreez, consistent with some aspects of Palestinian textile culture, while not drawing attention away from the embroidery. It is different enough from any traditional garment that, I hope, it takes the tatreez sufficiently out of context to be essentially honored as an element of traditional culture, and not co-opted in a way that conflicts with its original use. 

Primarily, it is a way to connect the voice and art of an ancestor with the living continuation of her culture, to make it possible for others to continue listening to and learning from the beauty and message and strength of this textile.  I hope that it will provide deep-rooted support for this musician as he expands his creative and expressive potential through composition and performance. Like the tatreez piece, his music is powerful, compelling, and tapped into strong cultural roots. 

Abdul-Wahab Kayyali during a performance of Mafaza, in a screenshot from the Instagram of Majd Sukar, co-composer of the Henna Platform production. Photo by Joshua Best.

The image above was concurrent with my beginning work on this jacket, and I hope I can convey how much it broke my heart. Mafaza is a powerful stage production, involving two Syrian poets, Waeel Saad al-Din and Mosab Alnomire, and two musicians, Abdul-Wahab Kayyali and Syrian clarinet player Majd Sukar. The debut performances were in early November, 2024 in Toronto. I was compelled by the trailers and interviews that Henna Platform was sharing as the performance date approached, and I knew from Abdul-Wahab that creating this work was a strong experience for all of them. What I didn’t know until I saw this image was that the musicians, who were on stage the whole time along with the poets, were dressed and made up as survivors of an explosion, with torn and dirty jackets and dirt-smeared faces. The fact that they performed the whole time in the garb of the bombed, embodying the dehumanizing, targeted status that many would give them, was almost too much to fathom. And the contrast between this and the type of jacket I’m trying to make, the message I’m conveying with it, that this musician is esteemed and worthy of the best, most meticulous efforts - it still squeezes my heart when I think about it.

When I describe the details of the textile and the garment making, I’m trying to be thorough with the information, so I get into report-writing mode. But the feelings are there in the work and care, and the truth is I often had difficulty working on this project and not crying. It feels like the most important thing I’ve done in recent months, and one of the most significant textile projects I’ve ever had the honor to work on.

Beginning to stitch the sleeve detail, while listening to Les Arrivants.

Sewing the hem on Dec 7, 2024, the night that Syria was being liberated.

After the sleeves, and after sewing the hem, the only thing that remained was to attach the textile. I had one of those sudden bright ideas that come while lying in bed, regarding the stitching for securing the textile. Given that the jacket has two layers, if I quilted them together with colorful sashiko-type stitching, I could conceivably stitch the tatreez onto the top layer only, and then the stitches wouldn’t show on the inside of the garment. I basted guidelines for the top and bottom edge of the tatreez placement, and did some decorative stitching in between with (cotton) embroidery floss. (see finished photos)

The tatreez textile is tacked to the jacket body, which is wrapped around a large pillow.

Securing the textile along the top. The tricky part was sewing through the top layer only. The curved needles helped.

For mounting the textile, I needed a support that would hold the body of the jacket in a rounded way. I used a large throw pillow, covered with cotton cloth, and laid the jacket onto the textile, then wrapped it around to the front. After securing in several places with stitching rather than pins, I began to sew along the top edge, with white linen that was darkened with natural dye to match the old linen cloth. This was a chance to bring out the textile conservation needles - tiny little curved needles that are nearly impossible to thread and hold, but that make minimal holes in the textile. After a few minutes, I got back into the habit of holding the wee needle, and this part of the work was calm, reverent, and rewarding. Every moment of looking closely at this piece has been a gift.

Finishing the stitching on winter solstice, with the setting sun lighting up the tatreez textures.

Detail of finished jacket: bound side seam in foreground, interior decorative quilting stitches, and the outside of the jacket in the background, showing piping and textile.

When I finally hung and stepped back from the finished jacket, I was overwhelmed by a mix of emotions and anticipation, barely able to wait for my visit to Montreal and the giving of it.

As it happened, I was visiting Abdul-Wahab Kayyali on the 19th of January, 2025 - the day the ceasefire went into effect in Gaza, so the wild mix of emotions continued, and how could it not? The heaviness of all the surrounding story, of historical and present-day suffering, are bound up in this textile, this garment, and the friendship that has caused me to make it. Even where there is joy, and beauty, and love, deep pain is an inherent texture of it all. It brings Rilke’s phrase from a letter to mind: “Wie sollen wir es nicht schwer haben?” How can it not be heavy for us?

Nevertheless, it makes me very happy to report that the fit is just right, it works well with playing the oud, and when he first put it on he said, “Perfect.”

I’m quite sure there will be more photos of this project, here and there, and I look forward to sharing its public debut when Abdul-Wahab Kayyali chooses to wear it for a performance with Les Arrivants.

what I'm doing now

November, 2024:
Of course I think about leaving the country - I spent nearly 20 years living outside the US prior to 2015, so the possibility of doing so again is never far from my mind. I think about Jordan, which I wrote about after a very short visit, where there could be excellent cultural and relief/volunteer opportunities, as well as a chance to immerse in Arabic and really learn. I’ve been plugging away at Duolingo and some old Teach Yourself recordings, in an effort to improve and also just to hear and affirm this language with a depth and intricate wisdom that has so many iterations across the globe, and which has been relegated in the US mindset to negative associations. I won’t write the negative, misleading words, because repetition gives them weight. Instead, I listen to music and poetry from the Levant, and explore the small ways I can discover what Arabic has to teach me now, with my limited capacity.

Sunrise at Salt Creek Campground - S’Klallam and Chimacum and Coast Salish ancestral lands.

And elsewhere there are several weavers I would love to sit near and learn from for weeks or months, in Laos, in Mexico, in Japan… 

Japanese maple in my friend and neighbor’s garden.

And I understand the outrageous privilege and freedom of movement these possibilities attest to, which is another aspect of my reluctance to just go somewhere else. I found a piece I wrote in 2020 about travel, and have added it here because the reflections are still true.

Heart of the Hills Campground, Olympic National Park

Heart of the Hills Campground, Olympic National Park

The main thing is though - all the images here are things I’ve seen during the second week of November, when I took off camping alone - here with my own senses, not far from where I’m actually permitted to live, to own a house that is not currently being bombed or flooded or set aflame…. I have the grace of this natural world around me, willing at every moment to interact and teach, and so I only need to remember to listen and be available to it, and since this is my greatest benefit in life right now, it feels like a responsibility, one that I take seriously and with joy and gratitude.

(you can stop reading here if you’d like to end on that note)

Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park

Now: All of that was written in November, soon after the photos were taken, and it has taken me a while to catch up. In the meantime, I self-published a book of poems whose title conveys the topic: Breathing Rubble Dust. Some of these poems have been published on this blog or the poetry page already, all of them written between October 2023 and February 2024, which is already so long ago.

Book cover: Breathing Rubble Dust, Tracy Hudson

Back cover: Poems for and from occupied lands

I know the poems are heavy and hard to read. They are for me, too. Because they reflect my waking awareness that a rogue nation is slaughtering innocents on a daily basis with the full support of my own country and an utter lack of impunity, despite worldwide efforts at condemnation.

How can this not be heavy? Given that my experience as mere helpless observer pales in comparison with anyone who lives there or has family being relentlessly and unpredictably targeted and bombed, their lives set aflame….. this reality is my breath, blood and bones, it’s part of my own body and yours as well, whether you realize it or not. This human collective, this earth’s skin in which we live together - each drop of poison affects the whole.

The gap between my posts is me trying to summon the sense that it is worth it, that I have anything to say that can matter. At the same time, the message and purpose of printing these poems is that our individual and collective creative voices matter, that we mustn’t stop speaking about how we are all affected by the reverberations of what happens in the world.

At the moment, I’m distributing these chapbooks personally. Contact me or comment if you’d like to know more, acquire a copy, or help spread them around. 

Update: the books are also available through this site, as a fundraiser, and through Camas Books & Infoshop.

moss energy

What I love about the picture above is that I really can’t tell you what is going on there. I still don’t know yet. But the alchemical invitation of combined elements feels activated, there is potential for an emergence of some kind, however small and searching. That’s the nature of my studio space these days. It holds and pools and mixes together images, textures, acts of mark making and folding and tying - possibly generating amulets, or maybe the assemblage itself is the amulet, a protected and protective space to hold thoughts that wish to heal and halt destruction.

This rock also felt strongly of healing and wholeness. Such a wise and soothing design, so smooth and comfortable in the hand. I carried it along the beach, my first time back since an incident of local violence, and I left it there to mark the site with its calm assurance, another hope for healing and reparation.

I only feel capable of temporary offerings these days, momentary indications of care and tentative hope. I gain reassurance from these ancient forms that don’t need us humans, really.

A cedar showing me the beauty of a difficult life.

In preparation for a moss walk with the land trust study group, I was thinking about two aspects of mosses’ being. First, their extreme delicacy and sensitivity: with leaves only one cell thick, mosses have no protective layer filtering the outside world. The environment permeates their cells, making them highly susceptible to toxicity and air pollution. At the same time, many mosses are drought tolerant, can essentially go dormant until conditions are suitable to flourish, and when land has been depleted through mining or deforestation, they are often the first to come in and begin to find ways to grow. As some of the oldest plants on the planet, mosses have an ability to make soil habitable for other organisms. So they are simultaneously more sensitive, and more likely to create the conditions for communal thriving. These sound like the kind of characteristics the world needs, and it’s encouraging for those of us who have the experience of being too sensitive, feeling too much and too easily, to recognize that we also may have the capacity for encouraging better conditions for everyone, for starting over with small-scale care and attentiveness.

I roll it around in my mind as I visit the mosses and watch the birds and handle fiber: slow, gentle delicacy as teaching and strength.

Cotton from Traditions in Cloth, leather-whorl spindle by Allen Berry

Recycled paper stitched together and dyed with onion skins.

Maybe that’s where hope resides - with those of us who are unable to tolerate bombing of children, hospitals, libraries. Maybe our very intolerance, our inability to harden against this unacceptable reality, is what will create conditions where more of us can grow together.

A Bigleaf Maple offering shelter & embrace.

Small, persistent offerings feel small, but also crucial, as so much is being wantonly destroyed. Like the stitches in this Palestinian embroidery, creating meaning and preserving an attentiveness to life, to identity and place.

Palestinian cross stitch, found by chance in a local consignment shop. Someone tells me it has West Bank motifs from the Bethlehem area (thank you, Dot Ranch!) Along the right side are cedar/cypress trees of life.

what I can do is try to write

Power hungry men

make rules

      make decisions

                 make war

from within their hunger

       not from deprivation,

        but from excess

More is never enough,

hungry since their power

           is not valid

          comes not from them

but is grabbed and claimed

           and vapid and fragile

Real lives in the balance

people hungry just for food

             and water

earth, fire, air -

            enough to live,

to call into relationship 

            with praise

People only want to live

in places without fear

but power hungry men

           like hungry ghosts

cannot be satisfied

           by just enough

enough to sing and sit

        and watch the clouds

        and hear the birds

        and touch the soil

these simple, sacred dreams

              are only fodder

         for the scavenging

         ideologies that serve

to drive the threshing machines

   that flatten all resistance 

          into stubble

broken stalks of

         things that might have grown

if power meant

         the way we know ourselves

         the way we show respect

         the way we humbly learn

         and carry teaching

© Tracy Hudson 2023

city moss thoughts

(This observation was written in an Airbnb that seems invested in the minimalist, urban professional look, in the otherwise moss-rich city of Portland, Oregon. The view directly out the window is what matters most to my early morning musing.)

Outside there is a small patch of (unidentified) moss and lunularia liverwort, at the edge of the manicured sod, accidental. A mini garden of forest vibe, quietly asserting itself in the unnoticed dirt under the stairs. Unconquered by gravel or mulch, it’s a welcome mat for my feet, in this otherwise very linear and grey built environment. The moss and liverwort form at the interstices, where the careful arrangement of planted lawn, gravel, and dark mulch laid out in square-edged strips, gives way to curve and slope. I hope they will be welcomed and encouraged once they are seen.

Lunularia cruciata liverwort

And I’m thinking about how we sometimes have to assert ourselves surreptitiously, quietly claiming what we know as our nourishing substrate, in spite of not being part of the design or the engineered layout of a place. We find what we need and grow, quietly and beautifully, offering our softness to those who can honor it with their own soft hearts and bare feet. The threat of distrust or misunderstanding never goes away, unless we are embedded in a large, conducive ecosystem of forest. Someone may decide to pave over or remove us any day, heedless of our contribution because they’ve been taught that we signal damage, neglect, rather than restoration and source. But there is hope and promise in our chloroplast-rich cells, our tiny leaves and lobes, our ancient adaptability.

beach listening

I used to think that as an artist, I needed to DO something when I saw and felt a beautiful or powerful scene. That I needed to make art from that specific view or immersion or feeling.

But now I know that it’s more important to just be here with whatever is going on, to pay attention with all senses, which today felt like listening.

At some points, it was actually sound-focused, as when I reached the outermost curve of the point, and the gentle waves approached from my right, passed in front, and continued to my left - a wraparound sound of sea caressing small stones.

Or when I heard a distant peeping on the water, higher than gulls’ voices, and could see lots of tiny bird shapes in the distance. The app on my phone suggested they are Marbled Murrelets, a few of whom I did see close enough to recognize. Yes, they are as sweet looking as their names sound.

self portrait in wet rock - this one almost came home with me - those lines!

Generally it was just a form of attention, the sounds joining the light on water, the shapes in the sand, the language of the tide and the shore, and I listened to see what it might teach me.

the color and texture of the sand are striking me now, whereas when I made the picture it was a neutral ground for the shell and stone

In addition to reminding me that I don’t have to do anything ‘with’ this (but who can resist taking pictures when the colors and textures and shapes are so cool), the teaching today was that wherever I am is the view that matters. I’m often seeing the bay from up the hill, and thinking oh I have to get down there! But the truth is, I can only see the angle of light and reflection, for example in the first image, from just that point on the hill. So I stopped there long enough to appreciate that this view is unique to this spot, before continuing on. There’s some broad lesson in there, that the view from where you are now is unique and most important. It makes me slow down, which has to be a good thing.

I can’t claim to understand the heiroglyphic messages in the beach debris or the designs of rocks, but I have a priority these days of listening to wise language, whether I know what it means or not.

bonus spindle content, with green rocks to swoon over

winter plans

I’ve got big plans for the next couple of months. They do not involve any travel, but possibly lots of walking. They are not about getting out, but going in. Digging around in my house and studio and digging on what I find there. Given that I’ll have a decent amount of time at home (if all goes as planned,) I hope to share some of what I do and find. Like this little piece, for example, about which more detail in the Akha page (under the textiles tab - I know, lots of pages, that’s how it is around here. Kind of like my studio space.)

Akha pouch with seed beads and metal discs, mounted on stretched linen, hanging in my studio. Purchased in Chiang Mai, Thialiand, 1998

I’m in my burrow and growing my peace and skills, with the help of fiber and textiles and the many people around the world who have given of their skills, over time, to enrich us all.

Action in the studio ranges from the always-in-progress weaving, to hand stitching, to machine piecing a quilt, to reading and writing and collage and sometimes all of them together. I’ve been modifying an 1895 tome on women’s health as a form of ….. resistance, or therapy, or radical optimism? Somehow it feels right to mark out all but the most positive, affirming words in this book of pompous misogyny masquerading as scientific knowledge. And often, the happy words are very few.

Book page, collaged and marked, with the words “support future friends now” remaining visible.

Book page, collaged and marked, with “CHILD - life - life” remaining.

But that’s an occasional exercise - as with many situations, I find it more fulfilling to engage and uplift the things that move me rather than to try to block out all the enervating, maddeningly entrenched negativity and ignorance. So many excellent people are moving along with their important, responsible, loving and living work. Voices I value right now are Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Tricia Hersey, and Reverend angel Kyodo williams, as well as my forever homey R.M. Rilke, whose Book of Hours I’m moving through very slowly in German, dictionary in my lap and helpful translations nearby.

simmering

And is this quiet life a way of hiding?

I tell myself that this is service, too –

to learn, to see, to read and hear and know

to bring to light my own awareness

and dwell within that knowing,

simmer as others have simmered,

become tender –

this shared tenderness, having

weathered the impact of truth.

This is what joins us, as undercurrent

- it does not flow with words, so

much as tacit understanding, that we

cannot afford to ignore what has

been done and how that formed what

still is done and shapes us now.

flowers, thoughts, carrying on

Time goes by so fast, the photos I wanted to share are already two months old. But I can walk you back through some springtime blossoms that are long gone now - it fits with the theme of life being fleeting, change inherent, and so forth. That’s all we’ve got. An indigenous woman I admire recently posted that sometimes “summoning up the energy to be positive and educational and shit is just beyond me.” When you’re looking at how things have gone down in the past, leading to what’s happening now, it often feels that way to me, too. Case in point: I dug around for my pretty flower photos, knowing they might just be escapist prettiness, and behold the field of Camas above. Which is a single acre of restored native prairie, salvaged from the entrance to a golf course. It used to be most of the land between this hill and the qatáy lagoon, qatáy being the name of the S’Klallam village that was located in what is now Port Townsend. (The lagoon and prairie are spelled Kah Tai in promotional literature - notably when you look up the qatáy spelling, you see that the village was burned in 1871. Even how we spell things changes the history that people see.) I read somewhere that much of the Willamette Valley in Oregon was also covered in this type of prairie, prior to colonization. Anyway, this is the Camas, a flower with edible bulb that was a staple of life for the people - and as Robin Wall Kimmerer notes in some of her essays, the foraging of the people encouraged the growth of the flowers, in a cycle of reciprocal sustenance.

The other pretty flowers came to me from a local farm’s weekly share. It was such a cold, wet spring that the vegetables were late, but the tulips just kept blooming, and we got them four weeks in a row. I had never really gotten the infatuation with tulips, seeing them pop up all tall and bright, then drop their petals. But this year, I actually went to the Skagit Valley tulip festival, since my mom was visiting, and we walked through staggering fields of tulips in bloom and whoa. Then the little bouquets in my home from the farm share showed me how tulips can look like silk, how they have depth and impossible symmetry, and now I’m full of respect.

I also got to pick the colors - purple tulips getting wild as they open

Tulips almost dancing in their bunch of five.

I’m otherwise immersed in Alexis Pauline Gumbs, reading her book Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals, kind of on repeat. It’s the kind of thing you read, and you need to read it slow so you can feel it, and sometimes you need to read parts out loud to yourself or to friends. And then you need to read it again, and go back and find that thing. So I’ve been living with it for months now - but I’m not actually ready to share any excerpts or reflections. I will say that her Stardust and Salt program has also been a part of my life, a stimulation to engage in daily creative practice. Which I was sort of doing, but started a whole new thing thanks to the beautiful words and thoughts and encouragement and love emanating from this awe-inspiring woman. Wow.

Wool warp and weft, above my lap of linen

I also keep weaving, some cloth that will be cloth, that I can use to sew a garment, is the idea. Same yarn, warp and weft (unusual for me), from the deep ancestral stash of my friend Ann. It is weaving up soooo nicely, and I’m eager to see how it snugs up with a good wet finish. But I have many yards to go yet - I made a long warp this time. And I keep getting called outside by birds and green and tree friends.

Also retro - trilliums were in bloom back in early May.

Really just making an effort to be here with some content that is wholesome, loving, full of curiosity and respect, and possibly encouraging to others. On that note, I’ve got a Hafiz poem for you. And one more thing I’ve been doing is watching Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls. It’s related to all of this, believe it or not. What the beautiful Big Girls are giving me is joyful resistance, an assertion of life and love that does not look like what we're typically offered as the ideal. They're blasting open our indoctrination with every episode of the show, to assert the beauty of real, messy, confused, hopeful, determined, struggling people. The things they say to me about bodies and movement and dance and love are very similar to the poem below, and thus it intertwines, and I’m thankful.

(Poem by Daniel Ladinsky, in the guise of rendering Hafiz into English, but after reading this article, I won’t call it Hafiz… nevertheless beautiful.)

Because of Our Wisdom

In many parts of this world water is 

Scarce and precious.

People sometimes have to walk 

A great distance

Then carry heavy jugs upon their 

Heads.

Because of our wisdom, we will travel

Far for love.

All movement is a sign of 

Thirst.

Most speaking really says,

“I am hungry to know you.”

Every desire of your body is holy;

Every desire of your body is

Holy.

Dear one, 

Why wait until you are dying

To discover that divine 

Truth?

a little rant

This rant, or maybe I should say “response,” will be held on the ‘threads’ blog page (textiles tab), because that’s where I want it to be stored. It has to do with assumptions people make about backstrap weaving, and the pervasive ignorance that Western academics keep generating. It is a backstrap weaver’s rant/response, and an informative one (with footnotes!), so join me.

Evidence of backstrap weaving. A ridiculously long warp. Wish me luck.

sakiori pictures and unrelated thoughts

Some unwonted, taught pride diverts us from our original intent,

which is to explore the neighborhood, view the landscape,

to discover at least where it is that we have been so startlingly set down, if we can’t learn why.

- Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

My sakiori (behind) with a traditional Japanese piece.

I read Annie Dillard and feel urgent, often. Her sense of duty is compelling, and it motivates me. But it motivates me to very minimal actions, since the imperative is, as I’ve mentioned before, to pay attention. To look, to see, to witness. In another passage, she writes of seeing a bird dive in free-fall before deftly landing on the grass: everyday, commonplace, and extraordinary. She concludes that “beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”

So more often than not, her words compel me outdoors, as do Mary Oliver’s poems or Robin Wall Kimmerer’s essays on our participation in this world. Participating, as a seer, a person trying to have what Rilke called “the right eyes,” is a full-time occupation. Unless we get lazy and neglect our duties, which is easy to do. Easy to get pulled into online discussion or news, easy to binge-watch something as an escape from the arduous act of thinking. I try to increase the time away from such distractions (unless the online stuff is truly feeding a worthwhile train of thought, which happens.) I turn to Ursula LeGuin and her mother’s wonderful writings about Ishi, their tragically famous friend. I read David James Duncan and Robin Wall Kimmerer, Tim Ingold and Dr. Leticia Nieto. Most recently I read Elaine Pagels Why Religion?, a gift from my father-in-law who, as a Biblical scholar, has always been a fan.

They are all pointing down a similar road, leading away from colonialism and the old, destructive narratives that I somehow grew up with. I’ve been trying to dismantle that ideological box for a long time, and I keep finding new tools. But it is an uphill trek. For every sentence I manage to write here, there are countless thoughts and potential words swimming around, uncaught and fleeting. At any rate, I’m trying.

The sleying process. Reed is 8” wide, 22epi. (Ok, this photo was in the last post, but here it is again.)

My first project with the smaller bamboo reed that I made at home, on my own, is a sample of sakiori, a weaving made from torn up fabric. The weft is made of strips of kimono silk fabric. I’ve been preparing the strips for some time, and this is the warp I impulsively wound when I arrived home in December (last post.) It wove up quickly, and was finished in time to show friends in mid-January.

As with most of my weaving thus far, it is nothing more or less than an attempt to make a certain type of fabric, to see how it might be done with my backstrap loom situation. I’m pleased with the result, am interested to work with finer strips of fabric, and do not know what I will “do” with this piece at the moment.

Here’s the setup. Don’t be confused by the rolled up weaving on the floor beneath (extra sticks at the top of the photo.) This one has lease sticks, a fat shed stick, string heddles, two swords and a reed. I had to beat with the sword rather than the reed to get this packed nicely.

Need to work on tidying up that selvage, apparently… (actual Japanese weaving on left)