I stitched Helen Garner’s dream of the bravely, doggedly flowering bush on to some very thin strong silk then made a red flower with red felt, red silk, red waxed linen, a red button, red glass beads, a grape vine tendril painted black and a weathered seed inlaid with red thread.
“On the lip of an abyss roaring with dark wind stood a tiny bush that bore an intensely red flower. The bush grew right on the very edge of nothingness, and yet somehow its roots were holding. It had a grip that no wind could disturb; it thrived there, all on its own, this modest little plant, and while the abyss yawned beside it, it went on bravely, doggedly flowering.”
Helen Garner “Notes from a Brief Friendship” 2011 p46 “Everywhere I Look” 2016
“Sometimes it seems to me that, in the end, the only thing people have got going for them is imagination. At times of great darkness, everything around us becomes symbolic, poetic, archetypal.
Perhaps this is what dreaming, and art, are for.”
Helen Garner “On Darkness” 2015 p152 “Everywhere I Look” 2016
Helen Garner and Michael Leunig have helped me make some sort of sense of the world over and over since the early 70’s
a page from Michael Leunig’s “Wild Figments”
making this small red flowering thing is a form of prayer…
seeking beauty in the dark
this weathered seed was washed up on a beach like a refugee …
the roots have let go, the brave red flower is riding the wild winds of these dark times
It's Crow Time 
Beautiful, Mo. I, too, love Helen Garner and Michael Leunig.
(((Cathy))) the power of words told with deep soul and heart
Mo this is more than imagination……….this is sheer beauty………….
(((Martine))) you mend the world with such deep heart and soul
The first thing I flashed on to as I read this was the NZ Pohutakawa which has a red bottlebrush like flower that one can see growing from a crack in a cliff face..just hanging in the air. Shows a real determination to survive. Prayers come in many forms and & thank you for sharing both of these today.
I’m looking out for the purrfect gnarled wind bent branch to tie it all together, Metrosideros is a tough street tree here in Sydney & may well have that perfect branch!
The tenacity expressed in Helen Garner’s words and your creativity in the face of adversity is inspirational.
self soothing behaviour… like a sick cat purring when the pain is too deep
thank you
namaste
Beauty, art & prayer seem all the more important in the last days. Something to hold on to.
a lifeline
All the while since the astounding election I’ve been hanging on – communicating love and kindness for the most part – expressing grief through poems and others works…then Leonard Cohen died and I spent some hours with “The Tibetan Book of the Dead Narrated by him and constructed a blog with the whole film
Then last night I went for a brisk walk around many blocks past midnight and when i reached Madison Square I turned to take a photograph of the Empire State building lit up Red, looking like a fist giving the finger and blazing like a fire
Then I wept and slept.
Vale Leonard Cohen beautiful poet, fly free
thank you!
making some sort of sense of our broken world
We pray together, words falling from our lips and our hands … thank you for showing a way to seed the world with hope
(((Liz))) these are dark days, seeking beauty in our broken world to misquote Terry Tempest Williams
thank you Mo, I haven’t been here enough lately.
(((Jude))) inspired by your “just going” through the thicks and thins of it all…
thank you, beautiful, all of it x
the power of words and the calming of stitch