A life in scraps

It’s unusually cold tonight, eerily silent. The fire’s burning and there’s enough wood to last the night. This means tomorrow I’ll have to confront the dragon at the sawmill to buy another $15 boot load. Worth it I suppose.

I just went outside to break a dead branch off the tree to give the fire a boost and clumsily stepped into a bucket of putrid water. Now I stink and my only thick socks are wet. Ma che stupida!

Tonight I need kindness, a healing massage, or divine inspiration, but instead I find myself obsessing about the slow and cunning osmosis that happens through the flimsy wall that separates my writer and critic. I’m practising some voice dialogue and even think sometimes a session with the therapist might be a good idea, but mostly I'm just arguing with myself and trawling through the scraps. Scraps aplenty. Nylon scraps, brown, fawn and crimson swirly abstract bits; cotton liberty prints, crushed velvet lengths in ivory from the Fatherhood Festival, scraps of faux fur, skin print, tapestry, emu skin, calf hide, vinyl. There’s scraps from opulent teal quilts and scraps of floral upholstery weave in rich mauve and eucalyptus green, leftover from the cape i made for my new and virtuous non-smoker years ago. Trimmings and cords and ribbons, braids in intricate hand-made designs, tiny bronze elephants and coins sewn in, and woolly hearts, and pom poms. Victorian tassles and Spotlight tassles. Dark blue pinstripe wool and violet and magenta felt that reminds me of my sister Margaret. Linen and poplin, fleecy and drill. Olive green rayon. There’s 50s white cotton lace, 60s daisy flower-power. Bits of old rugs and geometric black and white and red retro cuts, a cut above the rest those pants! Exotic strips of golden raw silk from Varanasi, ah, the bridal dooner cover fashioned when I was certain my internet date was the one. Peacock blue silk from Hyderabad and silver sari scraps from Byron Bay via Calcutta. Pinwhale and brown jumbo corduroy. Scraps of lycra in happy orange. Netting and tulle in rainbow hues. Dark night taffeta, even darker chiffon and organza. 20s black lace from the gothic wedding I dressed. Red leather ... the prostitute’s hot pants. And so much more. All locked away in the storage shed, miles away. Why it's taken me so long to give them a voice I'll never know!

Oh, did I say lots of scraps of relationships.