resilience

in three somewhat unrelated contexts, the topic of resilience has come up over the last few days. today i was listening to a podcast (whenever i say this, my husband mockingly asks, “really?!”) in which anna konnikova was talking to debbie millman about the quality of resilience and how dependent it is on both nature and nurture. then i took this picture of a queen anne’s lace plant that must have endured some fairly extreme hardship and somehow ended up, however crookedly, facing the sun. then tonight steve played me a couple of you tube piano pieces by a fellow named georges cziffra, a hungarian who played the piano so fast and beautifully that it seemed beyond human, until you noticed the leather wristband he always wore to support the tendons of his wrist, after being tortured for his political views in a hungarian prison. his captors knew he was a pianist so they beat his hands and made him carry heavy stones, which so stretched his wrist ligaments that he had no power left in his hands when he was released. the pieces i watched him play tonight were performed sometime after that. i don’t know. is that resilience? or is that something else, that you and i won’t ever understand?

queen anne’s lace in winter

lake johanna, saint paul, minnesota

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exercise in frustration

usually the making and arranging of my STILL blog images is a form of pure play for me. on the best days, it even becomes a form of deep play–that meditative flow state where you get so absorbed that you lose all sense of time.  well, that didn’t happen today. i had gathered these twigs on a walk yesterday, and woke up knowing exactly what i was going to do with them. i made tea. i put on music. i cleared my desk of everything except my pile of colorful twigs and a pair of snips. i was relaxed. i was ready.  i had visions of  detailed striped patterns filling in each v of the twigs.  i placed my first twig. success. this was going to be fun. i placed my second twig, trickier but i got it. i placed my third twig, and the first two fell out. i started saying to myself, “there is no hurry, you have all afternoon.”  after an hour, i called in twelve-year-old joseph, who shares a kind of genetic patience with his father, though not his mother. joe had more success than i, but after 45 minutes he too was defeated. after two hours we raised our white flags, and photographed the measly results of our afternoon of all work and no play. thank goodness february has an extra day this year so i can give myself a mulligan.

winter twigs laddered with smaller twigs

 

  • Carol says:

    It is a perfectly executed pice if minimalism – love it !

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    • Thank you Carol! So maybe I shouldn’t take a do-over?!?

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      • Carol says:

        You can if you want, it is your blog. Perhaps if you did a do over with more “strings” it would tempt me to pluck at them as if I were playing the harp – which I cannot

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  • Jessica says:

    Well I really love what you did manage to create. Before I read your details, I was ready to try this myself. It’s gorgeous, as an idea and as two masterpieces.

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    • Hi Jessica,
      Don’t let me discourage you. It was only frustrating because I used too small of branches for my v’s, they were too flexible. So when i place a new twig in, it tended to flex and make the others fall out. If you use stiffer branches, I don’t think it would be quite so frustrating. Let me know how it turns out!
      Mary Jo

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sort of

i have always loved things that are sort of perfect but not quite. i like colors between colors, and perfect arrangements knocked slightly askew, and otherwise accomplished people who are passionately bad at something. in that spirit, i love this grid that hints vaguely at perfect geometric squares, but can’t help being it’s own organic self.

these twigs have flat, two-sided, evenly spaced, alterante branching that is very striking in winter. i am not sure the species…maybe siberian elm?  any other ideas?

saint paul, minnesota

 

  • Just like all your work Mary Jo, this set of twigs brings a fresh look at things we take for granted. I love it!

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channeling georgia o’keeffe

joe, say something interesting about this photo. Joe: “the skull looks like it’s chasing the butterfly . . . and the flower center looks like a black hole pulling the skull in the opposite direction.” stevie, what kind of butterfly is that? “it’s a monarch.” how do you know? “because it could only be a monarch or a viceroy, but viceroys have a black line across the hindwing.” and so it goes here in my house, where i am surrounded by smart, strange boys.

monarch butterfly, beaver skull, dried gerbera daisy

  • Kathleen says:

    Beautiful. I have your blog noted in a sidebar on my blog. I saw the title of this post and rushed over for a peek. :)

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a gift horse

in a week of STILL blog appearances on some pages (star tribune), and in some blogs (french by design, SfGirlByBay, wit & delight), that i have only previously admired from afar, i have to say, i received some attention from a couple of unexpected quarters that surprised and moved me as much as all the rest. this afternoon, my 80-something neighbor stopped by, after reading my feature in the minneapolis star tribune, and he was concerned that i might be having trouble finding still blog subjects this late in the winter. so he dropped off a handful of black walnut shells, and worn oak fragments, to supplement my diminishing late-winter gatherings. then, about an hour later, gayle and denise, who clean our house every two weeks, arrived with a surprise in a ziploc bag. gayle’s ancient and beloved horse had lost a molar in the midst of a tooth cleaning, and her first thought, to my utter delight, was that maybe mary jo would be interested in seeing this tooth, with its black cavity and its eroded roots. women bond over lots of superfluous things. shopping. cell phones. shoes. margaritas. but i’d trade all that for more women who will bond with me over the shed molar of their favorite horse.

horse tooth beside and joseph’s recently lost twelve-year-old molar

  • celia says:

    Very cool. Is it just me, or does that horse tooth look huge?!

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  • Wow! Amazing! Now that’s a friend! :)

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    • She came to clean my house, and essentially paid me! What?

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