Wait without hope

There are many moments as I get older, where it’s been crucial to wait for some kind of news, often related to one’s health, but equally often waiting for news about a job offer, or a residency application.

I want to put myself in that place of wanting to be hopeful, wanting to let the imagination run free with what just might happen–but knowing that remaining without thought is the better path, just so. much. harder.

T.S. Eliot gets it.  That waiting without hope, that time of being even, without thought.

Wait Without Hope

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

Today’s Assignment:

I have three body stencils that find their way into my little collages and my altered books. All three of them are based on figures found in magazines.

1. Find a shape in a magazine that you like, it can be a figure, or not, just something that you really like and can imagine using.
2. Create a stencil from it. Use an old file folder or if you have stencil material, use that.
3. Take some of the scraps from the past couple of collages and combine to make a background. Then use your new stencil to either cut out the shape from patterned paper, OR draw/paint it onto your collage.
4. Find 4-6 words that you harvest out of some of your scrap paper and make a sentence.

Good Luck!