one stands again, another won't

Back in September, I wrote about how my best friend's brother was seriously injured in Iraq. Both of his lower legs were amputated and and his left elbow sustained multiple fractures requiring surgery to replace it with a cadaver's. Finally, just last week he was fitted for his prothesises and is learning to walk with beginner ones. He and Alica have been working together as a team for all this time at Fort Sam Houston, Texas waiting for his body to heal enough to start the process and I couldn't be happier that Catlin is "gettin' vertical". The sooner he walks, the sooner he and Alicia come home.

On a very sad note, there is one more young man who will not be coming home. I just learned a couple days ago the Duncan Crookston, the only other survivor of that September explosion died on January 25th after fighting for his life for almost five months in the ICU. I met his wife briefly when I went to visit Catlin and Alicia in San Antonio and I was first struck by her youth (19) and then her remarkable strength; she couldn't wait to get Duncan home just so she could take care of him. She has been a hero in all of this, and I imagine she is, at least part of, the reason Duncan held on for so long. The Denver Post wrote a little article about Duncan's funeral which Catlin(Joe) contributed to. There is a beautiful tribute written by a friend of his here and here, bring tissues.

I remember clearly:
weeping alone in my house
aching eyes staring
out that giant window
wanting to find it ugly,
instead it was golden green and heartbreakingly beautiful
perverse and alive.


miss you mom. there's so much you should see.

Day of the Dead

A modified version of Dios de los Muertos was celebrated in my house this year. I am not Hispanic, or Native American (that I know of), but the holiday makes a certain amount of sense, a holiday for the spirits revolving, as all good holidays do, around food and crafts. What spirit wouldn't love a party thrown in their honor? My mom was always fascinated with the work of Frida Kahlo and the idea of the spirit world, though I'm not certain she believed in it herself, I still think she would have approved. Preparations included making some of the dishes from the messiest pages of my mom's cookbooks: Tuscan Chicken, polenta, beet and beet greens with balsamic vinaigrette, and bread pudding. So utterly delicious and filled with such bright memories of my childhood. And then as part of the festivities, I included a little more traditional bits of the holiday with a little altar of "mom" things: flowers, art tools, bread, brie, wine, and then made sugar skulls. How happy was I to find a new material! Sugar skulls are made with a mixture of sugar, meringue powder, and water pressed into a mold and inverted on cardboard to dry. I bought a skull mold and meringue powder from a local store, but you can find them (along with various saints) online here. I took photos for a short tutorial but the one on the site is more than adequate, so I'll leave them out.

Making bunches of the skulls was so meditative, mix, scoop, press, smooth, invert, dry, scoop out the innards and glue sides together. Visions of molded sugar artworks as part of art opening fare danced through my head. We decorated them at the party, such a colorful mess. . .mine turned out very minimalist in color, but still quite intricate. Here's a snapshot of one of my mom's pieces, sorry it's a not great quality image, but you get the idea. . .

charcoal on paper
30" x 40"

Spun Experiments

plaster, thread, graphite powder and sometimes wax on masonite
8" x12"

One of my old jobs required hours of sewing. At the end of the day piles of little threads littered my workspace, linear tangles. At the time I was newly grieving my mother and felt words couldn't express exactly what I was feeling but all the same I repeated the story of loss over and over to anyone who would listen. *edit* I was telling myself the story trying so very hard to untangle it and there on my desk was the perfect expression. The thread tells a story; the story, both important and unimportant, unique and universal, spins and winds tangled.