Demeter passes through the land, the dying grasses in her hand.
Inktober day 20: Tread.
I really did read the official prompt, and then ignored it. But maybe Demeter passes with a heavy tread. Or a slow one, or lightly but sorrowfully. But mixed with joy; maybe she has some love for her husband in the underworld, maybe she knows that we all need time to go inward to ourselves and our communities, to preserve and honor the harvest we’ve gathered during the warm months.
Inktober Day 19: Sling
Back to the prompts, sort of.
Inktober Day 18: Yeah OK, I’m completely ignoring the official prompts by now. It was fun for a while, but when I’m short on time or tired, it’s too much work.
I have become the Baker of Pretzels for The People’s Pint, where I work. Today was a pretzel-baking day, and I got home late after all the rest of my work as bookkeeper. But the pretzels are pretty, and I’m proud of them 🙂
Inktober Day 17. A story for birds and snails.
Inktober Day 16: Well I fell off the list of official Inktober prompts over Indigenous People’s Day long weekend, but it seems to me one of the prompts was “dragon”. So, belated but hurrying to catch up is this nonsensical sprite.
Back to the tangle of everyday life, trusting that the openness, connection and kindness I found over the weekend will stay with me even when I have to turn all my attention to pragmatic tasks.
At the end of a longer than expected day, I sat with paper and ink, just to doodle and play but I think the result is a kind of self-portrait of re-integration of the magical weekend retreat with the regular world as I have come to move through it.
Though I didn’t plan it, it still reads as a face with a different expression, turned upside-down.
Back home in my studio, rich with the memory of singing together to the point that I lose myself into the sound, and lose the sound of my own voice in the tapestry we wove together.
Did I mention that the full moon lit the night the entire weekend, even with occasional cover of clouds. The lake, the surrounding tree-clad hills burnishing to gold and red and brown in the day, webs of pale and dark in the night. As the season changes to cold, I need the reminder to go outside, to breathe.
AND ALSO: Twilight Covening marks the anniversary of my daily drawing practice, which I started during Sarah Rosehill’s Otter Clan 10 years ago.
10 years of daily drawings. When I started, I had no ambition or idea that I would still be doing this now.
Inktober Day 13: I had time this afternoon for a long break, to walk around the lake and find a place in the sun. The lake is low this year; there are beaches in new places to me. I could see where the water carved out under the mat of roots, making little caves where the waterline normally is. This network of roots made wave shapes.
Inktober Day 12: This year at EarthSpirit Community’s Twilight Covening, I am in the Crane clan. We spend much of the day singing Lithuanian sutartines, as taught by Will and Lynn Rowan. These songs are sung in parts, with buzzing, sparkling harmonies, like autumn katydids, spring peepers, or I suppose in Lithuania, flocks of cranes. There is space for breathing built into the songs, so you can sing them literally for an hour without fatigue.
Inktober day 11. I am at EarthSpirit’s Twilight Covening, and off the official Inktober prompts. This came after the evening Releasing Fire on the beach, letting go of anything that might hinder me from opening myself fully to the weekend’s offerings.
