small mercies

It’s been pretty damp out here lately. It’s easy to let your spirits fall flat and feel dreary. Even the computer sends out small, slightly ominous messages of warning, in the right-hand corner of the screen.

Yet I take heart in Emerson’s words this morning: “I am thankful for small mercies.” The beauty of green lush scenery and the ever-changing skies, the humorous way my computer seems to be speaking, commiserating about the weather… it’s all so endearing, so regular, so northwestern. It’s life happening right before our eyes. The passage which follows in Emerson rings strangely familiar too, to readers of Michael Singer and other contemporary writers on consciousness:

“The new molecular philosophy shows astronomical interspaces betwixt atom and atom, shows that the world is all outside; it has no inside.”

Emerson also reminds us, like Singer in Living Untethered (just got my copy and loving it!) that:

“Life’s chief good is for well-mixed people who can enjoy what they find, without question. .. To fill the hour–that is happiness; to fill the hour and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval. We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them.”

“Life is a tempest of fancies, and the only ballast I know is a respect to the present hour. … we should not postpone and refer and wish, but do broad justice where we are.”

— from Emerson, “Experience” in Selected Writings, pp. 350-352.

And then there’s “All Star Seattle Quilt” No. 1, finished yesterday! It was fun to stitch in some of my favorite natural scenes and landmarks from this city I love so much… and to blend them with fabrics from the many cultures which make this such a quirky, lively place to be: African block prints, Vietnamese tigers, Japanese cranes in flight, Mexican flowers in bloom–we have so much to be grateful for, in this outpost on the far western side of the country.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Hint: those T-shirts and the tiny pin represent local landmarks which will be featured in “All Star Seattle Quilts” Nos. 2 and 3, coming for summer!

And now, about that weather…

Advertisement

Emerson on the human condition

Feeling blah and still aching from the shoulder where I crashed down, quite incorrectly, during a speedy Aikido roll on Monday, I was surprised and encouraged by these lines discovered during my morning reading, and so I share them for you.

“Every man beholds his human condition with a degree of melancholy. As a ship aground is battered by the waves, so man, imprisoned in mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events.”

“God enters by a private door into every individual.”

“Our spontaneous action is always the best.”

–Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Intellect” in The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Modern Library edition, p. 293-94.

Hang in there. You are not alone.

And some pretty pictures to remind us of what lovely things we can hold and create and appreciate, with our hands and simply by walking outside in nature, despite being shipwrecked in morality!

Featured is Alice in Wonderland Quilt No. 4, photographed yesterday at Green Lake in Seattle, WA.

goodness with an edge (hommage to Emerson)

In “Self Reliance,” Emerson warns against trusting in false allies and those of weak will, saying, “Your goodness must have some edge to it–else it is none.”

I translate this into a motto for my business, Honey Girl Books and Gifts LLC: We specialize in cozy, with an edge... Each of my quilts and books celebrates a work of literature or a group of people to be honored. They are canonical and non-mainstream, funny and scary and pretty, sometimes angry and always alive with feeling. Some are linked to fund-raisers for good causes; all use recycled materials from Goodwill and other thrift shops. All of them are different and they are not for everyone.

But when my people find them, how happy they will be!

(Above see Seattle Quilt no. 1, inspired by Sabrina B., winner of the Win YOUR Quilt drawing of December 4, 2021 at West Seattle Grounds coffee shop.)

How lovely to see a new design come to life. Coming in spring 2022: The Seattle Quilt with rainbow back!

battling cynicism, starting with me (w/thanks to Emerson

It is hard to keep your head up, remain optimistic, and have faith in our fellow human beings when you read the daily newspaper. That is why I drink my coffee with wise voices from the past, and merely glance through the news. (No imminent end, good.)

This morning, my gloom has been accompanied by Ralph Waldo Emerson. He just inspired me to stop spending money on Etsy ads (screw you, Etsy), stop feeling guilty over rebuffing an obnoxious person who can’t take a hint (screw you, DS), and kick aside my usual low-grade depression. Must remember this feeling, and combat the darkness. Fight back. Give a shit.

What the hell do I care. Read on if you dare. Take it to heart if you’re really brave, if you think you can. And don’t tell me what you think. Just do your own life and get off the internet asap!

“Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company.

I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady.

Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great [wo]man is [s]he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

–Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series in The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Brooks Atkinson (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), 149-150.