Escape Hatch: PULL HERE

Here is the story I wrote to go with this piece called "Escape Hatch PULL HERE"

Edward struggled to maintain his balance on one leg while frantically releasing the heavy blindfold. Opening his eyes, he saw four large doors. Each one had a feature labeled
“Escape Hatch; Pull Here!”
A clock soberly ticked off incremental bits of the universe.

Amygdala firing over inner ear turmoil—never his best suit—Edward hesitated at the threshold of release to combat incommensurable alternatives:
--the vacuum of empty space?
--a cushy lawn in New Jersey?
--the concrete jungle (or actual jungle)?
--the Marianas Trench?
--his own safe bed and pillow?

He glanced to the four winds and then to the myriad stars but found no message in their meanings.

En fin, Edward rose en pointe to give his options the gravity of their merit.

Symbolic Kayak

Sometimes I ride my symbolic kayak in the mornings.

Other days, it is just me in the dusty, dirty shell I call “Mango Dagger,” sprinkled with overnight leaf debris and marred with silver solder dripped from the shower renovation above its winter home in the damp dark basement.

Symbolic kayak is iridescent and a little blurry along the edges where harpoons might once have been strapped. It sails, though implausibly, through storms at sea in my estuary, past the visible tips of nearly obsolete icebergs and past their more significant and sturdy nine-tenths below.

Symbolic kayak expands to the size and depth of terror, the absorbed dread of my parents as small children crossing the Atlantic from poverty-stricken Sicily to the tenements of Lower East Side Manhattan. They were, as a result, brave beyond their years, though deprived and stunted in other ways.

Symbolic kayak has been stalwart through other voyages, none without its specific trepidations. Voyages where the sight of a bird was worth a man’s weight in gold; voyages for gold; and voyages for the sake of beyond. My dusty boat hovering along just above submerged trees and stones and worlds along a marshy shoreline disrupts families of ducks and geese watched by a hawk and blessed by the white egret. What is the symbolism in that?

Some early mornings when no other humans occupy my 360 degree view over pristine water, I declare that “I am Columbus!” It’s not too farfetched as I have been Columbus, and also the frightened children in the inky, wet, surging darkness.

Symbolic kayak sails and steams and flows and sinks over and over while just above the water, my arms propel a slightly less ethereal craft one mile out and one mile back.

Early Morning Kayak

I am a bird.
I am a boat.
I am a shadow on the water.
I am a slight fragrance where the lake
Narrows to a bounded stream between marshy banks.

I am a silver flag above yellow paddles
And a submerged shape reminiscent of a once-tree,
Once-crab, once-broken cliff.
I am a cliff dweller, a Columbus
Of sorts.

I am the calm and the becalmed,
The stiff breeze that heartens the spirit,
And the quiet mind that comes
To float.

I am the ripple and the flow, but
Not quite the tide,
Not so pulled by the moon
As by the stars.

I am the living tree lingering in air,
And the strong skeleton looking outward
And supporting those who also stand
And look outward.

I am here on this surface but
Also deep into whatever
It is.

I see the blue chairs and the
Long pier, but these
Are not home.

As the invisible insects touch
Water and inspire rippling circles,
I touch, make my point,
And lift off.

I am the stripped umbrella
Open with no one near.
I am the reflection
Of clouds.

I am the fine grains of sand
Earned over eons
On the beach that appears
Only twice a day
Briefly.

I am not the eye pitched open
To see the soar
Or even just to be me.

I am not that.
I am the bird.

CROPS

Have you seen my CROPS?

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Harvest One or Harvest a Ribbon
Art for your Heart

Fabricated for delight. © jo.carubia 2014

Small format harvests of abstract geometric quilted shapes on a ribbon-and-ring display. Mini-abstract patchworks, harvested and displayed for delight. Apply to wall, desk, bedside table for comfort, inspiration, delight. Pack in your suitcase to home-ify any location near or far.

Now available as single pieces or ribbon-and-ring harvests at

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Red Dwarf Speeding Towards Milky Way

Red Dwarf Speeding Towards Milky Way

“You really can’t blame this on me, Ma!” Spike was indignant.

“How could I know that my bike would get a flat making me late to pick up the tickets and we would miss the concert and Lily would get suspended from school for not showing up?”

He paused for emphasis after his litany of innocence and before hitting the punch line, “It’s not my fault!” and stomping out of the room.
Misty, weary mother of perpetual guilt and two offspring, absorbed both responsibility and venom while studying the view out the kitchen window in search of perspective.

The foreground of green leafy hedges held her shards together again today. The horizon of wooded hillside topped with a graceful wind turbine lifted her spirits for no reason at all.

Misty in the kitchen, Spike in his bedroom, and Lily sulking on the sofa all felt the infinitely light but significant pinch of a moment in their existence. They were three beings in full pique and vex, charged not with true or false, but with “IS,” a species of certain status and continuity.

Meanwhile, the infinite was also “IS,” rushing next—entirely without fault or guilt—into being.

"In-VISIBLE Short Stories"
(c) Fabricated for Delight

More Purple

I try to stay open to working with colors and shapes that do not immediately appeal to me. If I worked only with my favorite colors, I would be surrounded by (and wearing only) a panoply of shades and patterns of purple, red, turquoise, and indigo with black highlights. Instead, I occasionally allow beige, green, white, grey, yellow, gold, brown, and (ugh!) pink to enter the workshop. The challenge then is to transform these into something I can enjoy. Slivers of pink may transform a turquoise and indigo print into a vibrant spectacle. A boring rectangle of gold and grey flying geese can be sliced into segments that join seams with a purple and red stripe for greatly enhanced flights of fancy. Surprisingly (to me), yellow does have occasional beneficent effects in a dark red landscape. I was surprised by the bold (and pleasing) effect of a white and black mosaic, with red contrast of course. Somehow, I think that there is a life lesson in this, as there is in almost everything that happens in the workshop: accept experiences that don’t immediately meet my preferences. This could be as simple as the choice of a movie or trying an item of cuisine outside my usual color palette. Or it could mean traveling off itinerary or even cultivating love when my first reaction is to shy away and seek more purple.

Broken Box Spilling Insides Out

This "Fabricated for Delight" piece is called "Broken Box Spilling Insides Out." There is a phrase by Emily Dickinson embedded in the fabric design: dazzle gradually.

Here is the story I wrote to go with the piece:


Purely out of habit, Rennie plucked a plastic cup of carrot juice from the symmetrical display of juices chilling in crushed ice outside the corner store.

He crossed 71st Street and then neatly crossed Broadway toward the small brick cube. In step with decades and dozens, he clicked through a turnstile and descended to travel through windy tubes toward travail.

AT the center of his desk downtown was a literal textual tower. Every day, a new tower. Every day, the same texture.

At noon, Rennie split.

Out the door, spilling coins and cough drops from several pockets, he budded into commotion.

Zigzaggy thoughts burst him astray: a park, a portrait, a pita, a pal. Gliding diagonally across streets and sidewalks, Rennie felt loose and looser, and finally, lost.

The long longing and fast tether snapped as he darted through a parade and let the dazzling rainbow fish
GO.


“In-Visible Short Stories” Series
Fabricated for Delight. © jo.carubia 2014

Meaning Among the Stars

A crazy thing has happened recently; I have been writing short, short stories to accompany the small abstract fabric pieces coming off my sewing table! I've always said that I don't write fiction, that it isn't in me. I did discover, however, when I wrote Becoming the Blues for the Barber family that I enjoy composing a scene with dialog and character. It felt at times like dramatizing (and revealing more nuances of) real life. Anyway, after constructing these fabric set-pieces and having whimsical titles pop into my head, it occurred to me that I could write a story as another version of the visible image. The fictional narrative and the abstract fabrication are BOTH stories!

They are also both shorter than expected in their worlds. I recently received the orange brick of Lydia Davis's collected short (short) stories. I've known of her work before, but in this collection, I appreciated the form more fully. I might not write fiction in the traditional sense, but this I can do.

Here is one pair from my new and emerging "In-Visible Short Stories" Series. It is called "Meaning Among the Stars."

Meaning Among the Stars

On the surface of the earth, a woman named Será waited in uneasy comfort for a nearly indiscernible, yet quite inevitable disruption that was not unwelcome.

She was a beloved queen with all the accoutrements of entitlement: a royal flush of family, finance, and quotidian purpose.

Still, she wandered.

By day, she wandered through stories seasoned with piquant spices from the Far and the Flung. By night, she wandered the fields and woods, calling out pioneers from beyond the galaxy. (Her calls were answered only by a small and curious fox.) She slept lightly under the stars, forever aware of the nocturnal flurry and stir.

A mist of euphoria, night’s most intimate breath, drifted across the tips of fingers, fronds, and eyelashes.

At first light, Será rose from the tall grass, damp with mettle and consequence, to don her thousand-league boots; to plod; to tred lightly; and, finally,
to fly.


“In-Visible Short Stories” Series
Fabricated for Delight. © jo.carubia 2014