Moving the Sky

How well I remember last April’s three in the morning tui tui twees. The musically impaired mockingbird, though trying very hard for a long time, never learned new melodies. My morning hours this March are quite different.  A mastersinger has taken residence in my pine tree and entertains me at just the right time – seven a.m. – with his endless repertoire. His song accompanies me into the kitchen and to my desk as he takes a seat high in the redwood tree in front of the house. He is an “early bird” and the only one I have heard so far, though I can’t be sure until I actually see him fly from one tree to the other.

Today my mind is preoccupied with Bear number 226, little Gretl from The Sound of Music, and the mockingbird offers a sweet harmony for my thoughts about knitting, about the factors that guide the fabrication of a group of bears from concept to shipping. I sort through metaphors, chase symbols, wade through considerations and convictions as I jot down Gretl’s finish date 3.5.2011.

I’ve found in the Mother Bear Project a perfect vehicle for artistic interpretation. I see a little gift box, wrapped and stored on a shelf in my mind’s storage room, for each group of bears. Looking at these boxes I realize how much fun I had and how much I learned from the Blues Brothers, Carrots and Guacamole, Mango Salad, Pigging out on Pink, Melonberries, B-List, Purple Rain, Rainbow Kids, and now Sound of Music. I muse about my involvement with loose ends and my determination to draw a baobab tree. I grin when I think about the time and money I spent shopping for as many browns as I could find; I still have the chart and the piece of cardboard with yarn samples.

In The Sound of Music I added two new considerations to the gift box: imitation of leather with ordinary yarn and addition of human hairdo to an animal face – I had resisted both at first, but now I am happy about the experiments.

Photography is an integral part of my bear making, and since bears don’t photograph well I stash these experiences in the gift box too. Bears are not easily poseable, the way my fashion dolls are, and they are more or less expressionless. But yesterday, as I was photographing Gretl, an interesting incident made me pay attention. I had noticed that my background – a poster board sky – was too narrow. Shortly after I moved the sky Gretl tumbled down because I had also moved her support. When I printed the photos I saw that I had caught the instance in which Gretl started to fall. She looked different – she looked surprised. I laughed. That’s when I had the thought that “Moving the Sky can cause your image to change.” A rather symbolic gesture – sliding the sky into place - considering the implications for the self. The picture quickly became my “artistic journal of the day.” Journaling is just another aspect of the gift box, a kind of packing list and timeline, though sometimes it looks more like a letter to my favorite psychiatrist.

But the most important part of the gift box is the journey the bears take after they leave my home. As I say farewell I sprinkle them with a final dose of good wishes and hope that they will bring a bit of happiness to a child in a far away land. Occasionally a bear’s image pops up again on my computer screen – in the arms of a child – and this, of course, is a special treat. The gold ribbon on the memory box.

I give little Gretl a hug before I confine her to the plastic container that holds my finished bears. The mockingbird must be taking his mid-morning nap; only a hum from the freeway enters through the screen door. A neighbor’s cat peaks in, then she runs off to chase a squirrel on the lawn. I pick up Louisa to give her a face.

For now the sky is in the right spot.