I realize I was supposed to manifest a shop update today but yesterday afternoon, I looked up from the delicate work of my hands while perched at my bench in the studio and I didn’t feel ready to quit creating for the week. Later in the evening, I began processing my concord grapes in the kitchen and I sealed the deal on a postponed shop update by staining my fingers purple and blue, and when I say stained, I mean stained beyond repair. It will take a few hot baths to get these hands clean and photographing rings is not in my near future.
I will be glad for a few more consecutive studio days. I have nice momentum at the moment and since I have been hermited away this week, I’ve achieved a lovely, syncopated life rhythm that feels enduring and steady for the first time this summer. Oh wait, it’s autumn now, isn’t it!
A word about this necklace, it’s a continuation of the Hatch Matcher Series I have been working on for a few weeks now. I’m obsessed with this shape, and all shapes derived from it. That graceful, delicate double fin, or rumpled wing, or dogwood leaves or whatever you see in this shape…it is easy on my eyes. It is abstracted, which I like very much, so you can feel free to call it what you will. I do.
I wrote about the original root of this series and included the writing in my listing details for the original batch of earrings and necklaces in this series. Those thoughts read like this:
“The thing I love most about fishing (and hunting) is the way my senses are re-trained and heightened — when I am out on the river or out on the land, I can feel my senses reach a more full faculty and strength. It is understandable. The very quest for a creature that can run faster, swim faster, see, smell, and hear better than me demands excellence from me. I have to rise up out of the soft dullness of my humanness and move in a deeper manner. It’s the return of the power of my senses that I cherish most about picking mushrooms or berries, stalking antelope or reading river water and knowing, instinctively, where the cutthroat are stacked in the current during a bug hatch in a pretty riffle.
Fishing, hunting, gathering and being out on the waterways and mountaintops makes me a better human. The deepening of my senses in those wild places is a reality I carry with me when I return to civilized spaces. I continue to see my world in a deeper way, understand better why humans react the way they do, comprehend better the root of action or inaction.
Each time I stand on the edge of a river at dusk, watch the fish rise, select a fly to match the hatch, and begin to cast out over the water I establish my place in an ecosystem as a caretaker, a member of a simple, wise, honest society — and then my senses take me deeper.”
While that all continues to ring true, and while fly fishing is still at the root of this series, and the actual form in the photo above still reminiscent of rumpled bug wings unfurling, freshly hatched, skimming river surface and slurped up by trout, fly fishing is not the absolute root of this series. This is about the senses. This is about elevation. It’s about more than that, too. I’ll let you know as it comes to me.
I say work with a shape, with a form, as long as you need to in order to reach the very end of it, in order to understand it and where it came from — in order to understand yourself in relation to it. I suppose that’s why I’m keeping on with this shape.
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I have been listening to the The Dorsey Brothers Pandora station while out in the studio which requires me to break out in tap-dance routines between spurts of soldering. I am not trained in tap-dancing so I’m sure you can imagine how I look, however, I don’t tap-dance to look good, I do it because the music moves me, windmilling my arms makes me feel happy, and I like the sound of my boots on the studio floor.
There’s something spine aligning about a good bout of stomping in a sturdy pair of boots.
I’m also hearing a lot of Shakey Graves out there and when Unlucky Skin comes on I drop what I am doing and begin clapping wildly to and against the rhythm of the song, while I perform what I would term clogging — yet again, I have received no formal training in clogging so imagine my clogging technique at your own great peril. That song is so great. The video to go with it is weird, so shut your eyes and just listen…unless you like weird stuff.
Also, there is this, and I always sing along to it in a clean, swooping, third harmony. Everything about it makes me feel sad, makes me feel like a leaf slowly turning red, but those harmonies get in my bloodstream and sail against the current there like wooden ships on the wind. This is a song for autumn:
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I took a scroll through my Instagram feed two days ago and noticed that I’m not normal. I’m not abnormal, everything about me is tremendously human; my suffering, my success, my joy, my sadness. What I suppose I mean is that I don’t clearly fit into any kind of box. There’s nothing especially stereotypical about me that would position me strongly in any sort of sub-culture. I don’t fit anywhere specific in this world of ours. I am twenty different things, without really being those things enough to merit a title for myself or an accurate definition. I cannot even accurately define myself! I tried to make a list of the things I am here but everything typed out looked strange and felt uncomfortable or directly contradicted (on societal terms) something else that I seem to be.
How do you define yourself?
Since realizing I am not normal, I’ve been thinking about not fitting in quite frequently, suddenly aware of the fact that by escaping definition I’m somewhat free. Free to be whatever that thing is that I am in any given moment. Free to discover the elegance of the wild. Free to be free.
I’m committed to simply continuing to be exactly who I am, any other way looks like shackles.
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I don’t claim to live this life intentionally. On the contrary, I rarely plan anything out, suffer from poor foresight but delight in the ability to fully submerge myself in the moment. I am known to bite off far more than I can chew on a daily basis. I live this life intuitively, instinctively, as the wapiti do while they spend their lives in continual ascent and decent, searching for sweet grass.
I am searching for sweet grass. I am searching for the sweetest grass.
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Lastly, I am writing again. It’s been a while.
I so understand that feeling of not fitting in neatly to a little box. I can never seem to pin down a definition for myself either, or where I belong. I know only that I belong to the land, the birch & aspen, the well tumbled river stones.
Even though I’ve felt too shy about commenting here in the past, I had to today because I wanted you to know how much I resonated with this post. And I love that you see the freedom… Wide sweeping vistas of adventure in a lack of definition. Regardless of contradictions, I would rather count myself among the wapiti & you than be confined to a life without wild, foot stomping freedom.
Let us always find the sweetest grass!!!
So glad you weren’t shy today. 🙂
X
I have never belonged. The more I look around, the more I’m glad. I don’t see a lot that I care to belong to. I belong to myself, and that is just fine. That doesn’t make you abnormal, it just makes you human, and it makes you you.
Good to see you, sweets.
I care to belong to a good many things!!!
Good to see you too, darlin’!
X
Hi!
I’m so sorry about your garden:( hope you got all you could from it this summer!
Oh, it was a good time while it lasted. It did freeze a few weeks earlier than usual this year which is…hard. It’s supposed to warm up again here and it feels like such a sad waste. Darn this Arctic blast.
🙂
X
Anyone who thinks they fit ever so neatly into one box is delusional! Like this strange world of ours, nothing is black and white or as it seems. All people are ever-changing and though we may identify partially with certain groups or cultures there is always something that makes us different.
We are full of a variety of evolving, conflicting beliefs and interests, tastes and styles, dreams and wants, loves and hates, and qualities and talents…limiting yourself to a single box would be rather sad, wouldn’t it?
to everything alisha just said, I say ditto.
I too believe that people are more than cartoon 2 dimensional beings and for a person to desire to fit into a so called box created by someone else is kind of limiting. I am dark and light and rough and smooth and everything inbetween.
we grow into and out of ourselves..that is the gift.
as for the shovels and rope clip…the two of them make my blood move in ways I cant explain
Thanks for sharing your opinions on the matter!
Honestly, I’ve stopped trying to fit in lately, I’m just me, I’m an oddball but I’m dang proud of it! I’m slowly but steadily unraveling into the artist I’ve always wanted to be!;) it’s great!
I’ve never tried to fit in.
It’s kind of delicious…
this post fits *exactly* into my today-path.
i appreciate that you recognize your human-ness….because i love that about you….my heart is with you.
and i look forward to my hatch matcher earrings arriving, because i was totally unable to do any fishing this season past….
and that definition of myself?….i’m working on it. today. writing….
love you, jf.
[and….i love that green chair. you know how much i love that green chair.]
It’s a good green chair! My studio wouldn’t be my studio without it! XX
Great post.
Obviously, none of us responding to you here fit in a box, but what are the boxes?
Where are they?
What are they called?
And what is “being normal” in fact?
If you had to be put in a box it would be the box of a life surrounded by nature, a life of freedom and authenticity.
I have had several lives already and I love it and I want more. May be I have been in several boxes??? What is great is to be happy with the life we have, that we’ve created, and that is not everybody’s case unfortunately.
Your life looks pretty good, you obviously created it and you love it.
Great post, great writing, great photographs, great blog, great jewelery, would you be in the box of happiness too???
Well heck! That’s a lot of questions! Let me know when you discover the answers! 🙂
XXX
Oh Jillian…I GET IT. Big time. It was always difficult for me to find my niche – Or if you will, I’m still looking for my tribe! I never really fit into any category, even as a child. Though, as I get older, I’m thankful for it. Maybe it’s my introverted-hermit nature, or maybe I just haven’t found the place I truly belong yet?
You are an Artist – through and through. You create beauty from life in so many mediums. You’ve followed a blessed path. You’re making your own box and it’s awesome.
Sending much love XOXO
P.S. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs2j8f7H2WY
We’re wanderers, Lulu. I always appreciate your gentleness.
And that clogging film footage is off the chain. There’s just nothing quite like country music, country rhythm, country harmonies and traditional country dance.
X
“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”
When I think of how to define myself I this quote often comes to mind. LOL. I’m all over the map and the map is allowed to morph. What a journey. Have a good day girl!
BTW….Walt Whitman is attributed with them thar words!
My goodness what a cord this post has strummed within my heart!
Do you ever read one thing and then next thing you read, in a completely different source, sums up and supports the first so well that you are left mouth agape at the beautiful synchronicity the Creator orchestrates so that messages you needed to hear are whispered into your very being so deeply that you now know, truly know, the message was meant for you to receive?
Thank you 🙂
I’m back in the Tetons for the next 10 days. What I know above almost everything else is the I belong HERE.
I love this post Jillian. My friend and I have been discussing this very thing pretty much since I stepped off the plane.
I think any and all descriptions attempting to title or peg folks should be long eclectic and contradictory Suess like treatises on all our bits. Boxes just can’t hold all of our awesome, and settling for one broader bit makes things misses important parts. We all need to be all we is!
Drooling over your own homegrown concord grapes. They’re the only real pregnancy craving I’ve had, and the first bunches just arrived in Dawson from god knows where covered in god knows what. Happy harvest and happy hands in all your making! XO
* Should read: “settling for one broader bit makes things boring and misses important parts…”
Baby brain. Its a real thing.
I’m what is termed, “eccentric,” “eclectic,” or my own woman. There ya go!! Lovely writing, dear one!!
Fit in? I do and I dont. I can get along with most people. But for me to fit into any one crowd- nope- not really. SOmetimes it makes me feel lonely, sometimes it makes me feel good about myself- that I have the confidence to be who I am. I dont follow the norm and as my husband says- we are not plugged in to the matrix. Love your post. Thank you so much for turning me on to Shovels and Ropes. Reminds me a bit of COunt This Penny and I love them!