Lost Luggage Far From Home

Lost Luggage Far From Home

Lost, but not forgotten.
Lost, but not alone.
Far from home, but not abandoned, not cold, not empty,
Not not.
Lost, but not less.
Luggage full of meaning and feeling.
Luggage of insight;
Luggage of delight.
Loved luggage though unnamed and unclaimed now.
Long loved luggage.
Layered luggage.
Longing luggage, witness to absence
And presence, witness
To love and beloved, witness
To lost love.
Love carried across time and place,
Across lives;
Living love always lost, but never
Far from home.
Luggage of generation
And generations, marked
With lives lived across
Time and place, across
The gap between love and
Suffering, between
Home and far.
Luggage from home.
Lost, but
Not
Forgotten.

Metaphorical Ink Meets "Life in Pieces"

Metaphorical Ink: Results Through Writing
Life in Pieces: Abstract-Bold-Conceptual Fiber Arts Fabricated for Delight

My new business card is printed on both front and back; “both sides of the coin,” so to speak. And I’ve been using my blog, “metaphorical-ink.blogspot.com” as a home for two arenas of reflection and creativity: writing and stitching. The two practices are seamless in my world, though I do float from one to the other irregularly, sometimes focusing more attention on the machine with alphabetic components and other times on the thread-bearing machine. Here is how I think about them.

Not all writing is flush with metaphor, but I wanted to suggest something with the name "Metaphorical Ink." The strategy of metaphor in language forces into conjunction two concepts that diverge in aspects of their meaning. The strategy encourages consideration of ways in which the two might reflect and resemble one another as a means to deepen the meaning of one or both. This juxtaposition of unlike models or notions sharpens the perception of elements and brings a pleasurable surprise into play. The unexpected combination tickles the imagination and possibly lights up a few synapses as well. It can even go so far as to be downright inspiring.

The fiber arts that I practice as “Life in Pieces” are much like the process of metaphor in language. Shapes, patterns, colors, textures, and concepts are the elements or pieces being juxtaposed for novel effect and consideration. When I use the phrase, “Fabricated for Delight,” I do not gesture outward to an observer or client. The delight that results is, quite selfishly, my own.

In writing and in the fiber arts, I reach out for components that will take a place next to other components in a way that I find pleasurable. In neither form do I see an unrelievedly linear progression. In a poem, words may be placed adjacent to one another but they rarely, if ever, lead the mind in a straight line. While it is easiest at my sewing machine to stitch a straight seam, the shapes of fabric bits combined with their colors and trajectories rarely lead my eye in a direction that could be called straightforward. In both arts, it seems to me, the goal is to surprise and delight the mind with unique perspectives that encourage further expansions in sometimes unpredictable directions.

My Fiber Fables combine both writing and stitching. Each piece is more meaningful because of the conjunction. Each of my fiber art forms holds its meaning not merely in shapes and colors and functions, but also in the names and phrases associated with them.

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?

Heart Healthy
Gluten-free ~ Color-full
Fat-free ~ Joy-full
Nut-free ~ Versatile
High Fiber ~ No Calories
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

THE GALLERY SHOP in Lemont

http://www.gallery-shop.com/

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