Come on-a my house, my house I’m gonna give a you
Peach and pear and I love your hair ah

Another of my habits is keeping track of my favorite paragraph in every book I read. I often copy them in my journals. Last week I liked this one, from Amy and Isabelle.

“There was all sorts of unhappiness in Shirley Falls that night. If Isabelle Goodrow had been able to lift the roof off various houses and peer into their domestic depths she would have found an assortment of human miseries. Barbara Rawley, for one, had discovered in the shower the week before a small lump in her left breast, and was now, as she waited for arrangements in Boston to be made, in a state of panic the proportions of which she never thought possible; for alongside the dark terror of waiting for the future (was she actually going to die?) was the private realization that she had married the wrong man: her husband, lying next to her in their dark bedroom while she spoke quietly of her fears, had had the audacity to fall asleep.”

It is snowing today, and I am going out to breakfast with my girl. We will have chai and quiche, and chat next to the fire before she heads off to Middle School, where the big worry is whether her best friend is actually going to kiss her boyfriend of one week, or whether it is at all fair for her to be the only sixth grader on the volleyball team, especially since she is tiny, it is so unfair we can hardly believe it. And that boyfriend, well, her friend went to the movies with him on Saturday but her parents had the audacity to actually go too and watch them while there, how gross is that. Nobody has any privacy anymore, and that is so unfair, and on top of that homework is boring.

All is well in Superior, Colorado.

©2010 Jill Berry Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Now I am working on a tiny map of Port Townsend, where Artfest is held. Might get it done in time for Vendor’s night. Mostly I am making maps because I love to do it, to pinpoint my place in the world. I am not on this map, but am just southwest of the X.

The sun has gone in and out of the clouds all day. My agenda for the day has been satisfyingly accomplished, and I have hours to go! It was productive and peaceful here in the Oyster Bay Cottage. Looking forward tot eh sunset, and the high tide rising.

©2010 Jill Berry Blog. All Rights Reserved.

The last few days have been pitch dark inside me. Not only is it seriously frightening to see what one small moment can do to a vivacious person you know, but next, it could be me. I do not want to continue any of my bad habits in the chance I could avoid this. But then, how do you avoid something that makes no sense at all?

In the meantime, I am filled with gratitude for whatever force granted me the ability to work in out for myself in art. This morning I made a map of Nancy’s head, or perhaps my head, thinking about Nancy. And I found a book I made, that I think needs finishing. In this book I used the black on black painting techniques that I use in my Magical Midnight Stories class. Sometimes it is necessary to paint on black.

Today I am grateful for my drive to create, for the healing that happens through that drive. I am grateful for my health, and my hands. I am grateful.

©2010 Jill Berry Blog. All Rights Reserved.

This is a canvas, painted with plaster and stamped with metal letters. I painted it with sumi after it was dry, then sanded and  scratched back some areas. Meanwhile, I painted and stamped art tissue, then collaged that onto the canvas. It seems to me to be some combination of Rome, the Cosmos, and Star Trek. That must be where I am.

As usual, I am in the middle of reading two or three books, one of which is Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day. This is a rich book of sparsity, of an economy of thought, movement and full repression of emotion. The lead character,  Stevens, barely experiences his own life, so driven is he to serve. He is the head butler in an English manor, that is the entirety of who he is. Yet, this is what he says to one of his reports.

“Miss Kenton, if you are under the impression you have already at your age perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.”

He refers to her skills as a servant, but I prefer to cast that part out and forgive the fact that this sentence ends in a preposition which we know is just plain wrong, because there is a cord his words struck with me. This week I have not actually been stuck in the idea of myself or my children as perfected, but perhaps worse, defined.

“(insert name), if you are under the impression you have already at your age defined yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.” Being defined does not appeal to me. I want to be amorphous, fluid, at the ready to vanish into the background or fill with neon lights. I want to surprise and be surprised. All my efforts at making my life make sense, have order, have been actually the opposite of what makes it rich. A bit less on the surprise side would be okay with me, and as for the rest, I hope to gain an appreciation of chaos. Right now.

©2010 Jill Berry Blog. All Rights Reserved.

For years I waited and watched lists of returning vets to see his name. Twice I have visited the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. At the long black wall I find his name and see his status. MIA. He is one of 2266 soldiers still unaccounted for in that conflict. Imagine the families living with that. 

I have kept the bracelet all these years, and have long wanted to do something to honor Roger. Then Kim Rae Nugent  asked me to contribute to her book and one of the projects was working with a maze. The idea came to me right away. What was more a maze than Vietnam?

The book is a box, a sort of temple covered with papers I painted. It is intended to look geographic and cosmic, as he is somewhere, we just don’t know exactly where.

Inside are five panels. The US flag is overlaid with a map of Vietnam on the first. The second is Roger’s name on the wall in D.C. The third is a map of approximately where he went missing. The fourth is my bracelet with his name on it, and two stories. The top story is the military account of Roger’s last known day. The bottom story is what I was likely doing that day, when Roger disappeared protecting his men.  

In the center is Roger Cobb Hallberg and his military biographical information. The helicopter is like the one that came to rescue him, and did not find him.

I remembered Roger yesterday, and today, and I will tomorrow. My dream would be that somehow every single MIA is accounted for. Every single one.

©2010 Jill Berry Blog. All Rights Reserved.