Friday Quote: One Insular Tahiti

…Consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick 

Cyber-Samplers for 12/12/12

Nearly blinded myself this morning while attempting to capture this shot.

Took this of my son while on a camping trip last summer.

Made this with a paper bag on the kitchen floor.

I've been having a blast making little quote pictures lately. If I hone in on your favorite quote, I'll probably be sending you one. (If I know your email address, that is!) When I was a teenager, I cross-stitched little designs and sent them to my friends in the mail. I've come to think of what I'm doing now as as "cyber-stitchery"! What you see here are "cyber-samplers".

When I hear a person say they love a certain quote, I try to really pay attention to it. The quote will usually reveal something essential about that person, something he or she may never articulate to me any other way.

 Made this with a silk apron which has "France 1919" embroidered on the pocket.

I always read with a sharp #2 Ticonderoga. My pencil also serves as a bookmark. 

On my blog you will only see cyber-stitchery from quotes that I've come upon in my reading -- stuff I've underlined and reread and pondered on my own. This is a little rule I follow because while it's fun to skip over to Pinterest or Wikiquote and grab a quote I like, there is nothing quite like scaling a mountainous tome in a hungry search for a morsel of nourishment. Something about that whole process makes a quote much more memorable and personal to me. If feels like it's mine.

For this one I used some red Christmas wrap with white dots. 

Took this picture on one of my morning walks this past year. 

Take care dear ones.

Oh and I nearly forgot -- Happy 12/12/12!

This is a good day to do something you'd like to be remembered by!

Love to all!

~ Adriana

p.s. Did I invent two new terms? I haven't noticed anyone else use "cyber-stitchery" or "cyber-sampler" before. Which do you like best?

This is a portion of a sampler I made in 1996.

p.s.s. If I DO send you a quote via email, It's a gift. Please don't feel obligated to stick it on your blog or anything! (But you certainly may if you want to.) No need to reference me in your post, my  blog-signature is already on the stuff I make.

Create Your Own Life Story

Today I am pondering Moby-Dick in light of a new memoir I read this past weekend: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, by Donald Miller. It challenged me to view my life as a story -- one in which I am a co-author.

Author Donald Miller found himself in what, Ishmael would have called "a drizzly November in [the] soul." Through the aid of two movie producers, he began to"edit his life into a better story."

Through the passing of a beloved uncle, Miller realized that at the close of life "If you [haven't told] a good story, nobody thinks you died too soon; they just think you died." He began to wonder if a person could plan a story for his life and live it intentionally.

Ishmael contemplated this too. In chapter 47 of Moby-Dick, he and Queequeg were weaving a sword mat. Ishmael used his hand for the shuttle and Queequeg slid his oaken sword between the threads.

...it seemed  as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates... this warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads.

 Miller:

If I have a hope, it's that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the Story, and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, 'Enjoy your place in my Story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you.

So what's the basic structure of a good story? "A character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it." That's it. 

What does it all come down to? Relationships. "Most of our greatest fears are relational. It's all that stuff about forgiveness and risking rejection and learning to love. We think stories are about getting money and security, but the truth is, it all comes down to relationships."

What's the point? "If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation."  One of the important questions I must answer at the end of each novel on the WEM list is

"How did the protagonist change?"

"The point of a story is never about the ending... It's about your character getting molded in the hard work of the middle."

Miller wondered if:

...we were designed to live through something rather than to attain something, and the thing we were meant to live through was designed to change us. 

Into the Deep: Spring Cleaning and Moby-Dick

I really don't like to clean house. It feels like such a waste of time -- like when I was a kid, my grandma used to give me a bucket of water and a paint brush and send me out to "paint" her driveway on a hot summer day. I would work diligently to finish a square of concrete just in time for the water to begin evaporating...

I have the same sensation now as a homemaker: Didn't I just wash these dishes...sweep this floor...sort these socks? Again and again and again like I'm stuck in a time-warp.

Happy Easter!

"For heaven's sake," I say to my kids, "WHERE'S THE MAID?"

"Mommy, you are the maid!" they giggle.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

A few days ago, I was closing in on the half-way point of Moby-Dick. I had completed chapter 42, which is considered to be the "visionary center" of the novel. It was an unforgettable, amazingly cool chapter. Up to that point, I had been clipping along at a nice pace of seven to nine chapters per day. The problem was, my eldest son suddenly had no clean socks for school (I let him wear a pair of mine.), my daughter couldn't find a t-shirt to match the shorts she wanted to wear (We settled on something that was close enough.), and anytime someone walked through the kitchen, a comment was made that the floor felt sticky.

I took a walk through my house and observed this:

Happy Valentine's Day!

and this:

Merry Christmas!

Time for spring cleaning!

Mom agreed to take my little boys overnight, so this morning after my oldest two left for school, I had the house to myself -- well almost -- my precious new baby girl stayed with me of course!

An entire day stretched out before me! I felt very optimistic about what I would accomplish. My goal was to organize the rooms upstairs until around noon and then clean those rooms until four o'clock or so. Afterwards, I would enjoy a leisurely dinner with (part of) my family and indulge in some uninterrupted reading until bedtime. I figured tomorrow I could handle the downstairs portion.

But it didn't work out that way. 

At all. 

I gutted and sorted five closets all day. It felt like gutting a whale. I just kept pulling stuff out. Pulling and pulling. Each of the beds were heaped with clothes -- winter clothes, summer clothes, stuff too small, stuff too large, a few things were even dirty.

It took more than ten hours to organize the bedrooms and closets of my five children. 

I didn't get to the actual cleaning. That part has been re-scheduled for tomorrow. (Before my little boys return!)

It would have been a perfect day for reading. The house was so quiet, a gentle rain came down for hours. I was tempted, but I did not cave. 

Next week will be better. My house will be orderly and clean. People here will be able to find the clothes they want to wear. Moby-Dick is not going anywhere. No, The Whale awaits me!