The Truth About Memory

My last two completed January projects were started when I lived in south Austin, and since I moved out of there in October 2009, these finishes are a long time coming. This is my third finished small quilt, one of a set of four quilts in progress about thoughts I had while I lived in Austin about the fragility of life. Due to various circumstances, I spent a lot of time living with that thought, and eventually decided that I wanted to try to make things that expressed aspects of that theme, to give some sort of voice to how I thought about it all.

This quilt is called The Truth About Memory. For me the fragility of memory is wrapped up in the idea of the fragility of life. When you lose someone, there are pictures and belongings, but what you really have is your memories. It’s the same with our own pasts – as we move through the linear progression of life we lose pieces of who we used to be and create new pieces, and our memories are the layers that create the present.

technically, this is looking back through time …

The trouble is that memory is fragile, just notoriously faulty neural pathways. As a long-term journal keeper, I know how unreliable memory can be. I can’t tell you how often I’ve realized my version of a memory is wrong, or the details are glossed over, the years were switched, I forgot names and places. Some events disappear. Illness, age and stress all contribute to this ongoing distortion and loss. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes not so much.

these little lines represent confusion …

This quilt is meant to represent pseudo-linear memory. The silk is primary experience/event memory, and shows how recall is sometimes good and sometimes twisted or incomplete. The embroidery is little memory threads, a glimpse, a noise or smell, small anecdotes, fuzzy scraps of information, or simply pathways linking one stream of memory to another. Lines twist, appear and disappear at random.

This visualization is a combination of what I think when I hear about “neural pathways” plus my personal experience of unreliable memory. Also shown is that I realize my clearest memories are those with emotional ties. For example, my first memory is from age 14 months when my brother came home from the hospital. I remember being out in front of our house looking down at his little face. It’s just one simple picture in my mind, but 34 years later it’s still with me.

hand-stitching on the back of the binding

So what’s here is real memories that are essentially indecipherable to anyone but me, because I doubt anyone else thinks of it quite like this.

Details: The backing is oatmeal linen with appliqued strips of pieced kimono silks. The embroidery is DMC variegated pearl cotton in one of the peach/brown colors (4124 maybe? I lost the tags) and ivory. It’s machine appliqued, hand embroidered. The binding is machine sewn on the front but the back and corners are hand-tacked.

The cat is now sleeping on top of it, so I guess she approves.

Summer Tastes

One day a week, usually on the weekend, I take a big chunk of time to do some project. Since it’s mid July and there was no late freeze, there was but one thing I could do last weekend. Drive to Stonewall, Texas, and get freestone peaches and fresh tomatoes. Day trip! So my project started this way:

There were 40 peaches.40 tomatoes. 8 jalapenos. 10 onions (none of which made me cry – I have epic powers of resisting onion). Some other stuff. All in all, I canned 11 quarts of peach salsa (and Jeff and I have already eaten one). I used the recipe I used last time. It was the only type of peach stuff I canned this time. I didn’t really think my tiny kitchen could handle more than one recipe – although it’s amazing what I can fit in there. Besides, the peach salsa was inarguably the best stuff I made two years ago.

I nearly ran out of jars. I think I only have three left, and they’re quart jars. I think I might make pickled okra in those, since I just got a heaping large bunch of okra from my mother-in-law’s garden. Honestly, after getting over the initial fear of OMG CANNING NO ONE DOES THAT I  discovered I really kind of like preserving food. It’s not that hard (unless you go the pressure canning route), and it’s sorta fun to make a huge batch of something. Still, though. When I tell people I actually make jam and can stuff, I often get a remarkably shocked response. Not many people do this, it seems.

Yeah. Me. In a kitchen. In my Slow Food apron my aunt Miriam gave me. With sterile equipment. And a gallon+ of hot salsa. And a hot stove. In July. In Texas. In a kitchen without air conditioning. That’s why my whole face is red. It’s not why I need a haircut, however. That’s because my hairdressers keep disappearing or quitting the profession, and I really can’t stand finding new ones.

You like how I made my sink into a counter with a baking sheet and a towel. Necessity IS the mother of invention!

Food is wonderful. And one of the best things about peach salsa – it’s really pretty when it’s done! The taste of summer.

The peaches are flowering!

I mentioned I took a trip out to Fredericksburg a couple weeks ago.  The peach trees out near Johnson City (source of the peaches I got last summer and canned) were blooming, and I took a bunch of pictures. Peach blossoms are very light, delicate, airy things.  The trees themselves are small, maybe about 6 feet high and spread out a lot.  In a farm they’re all pruned so there are these tidy rows of short little trees.  Anyway, they were really pretty, so I thought I’d share some pictures I took.

It was very early spring-like out there.  Dark earth, brilliant green with a few early touches of flower color.  I’m still hoping for the best, but it looks like this year’s crop of wildflowers is going to be on the small side.  We’ve had a terrible drought here the past year.  I know people love the warm, sunny weather, but I can’t imagine it’s great if you’re a grower of things or managing our public water supply or in charge of the lakes and rivers. I like rain and thunderstorms, and I’ve missed clouds.

Of course, I’m going to get another box of peaches this July. And I’m going to skip the jam because I want to make a lot more salsa this year, and can more tomatoes. Want a jar? If you do, tell me and I’ll make you one. And I’m going to try to make some other stuff, more tomatoes, I don’t know what else as long as I don’t have to use a pressure cooker.  I keep thinking maybe sauerkraut and hot sauce, too.

I have actually used most of what I canned. I’ll have to tell you about that later. It was very exciting, in a really dorky I-obviously-didn’t-have-to-do-this-when-I -was-growing-up-and-oh-my-god-my-tomatoes-are-still-good-months-later-that’s-so-amazing kind of way. The sourcing and production of food is often a magical and completely unknown process to city/suburban kids. We assume all stuff grows in cans (just kidding, but you see what I mean).

So. Peach blossoms. I kind of kept wondering if they tasted good too – but forebore to eat any. Sometimes flowers are poisonous. Where I grew up there seemed to be lots of poisonous flowering plants (and bugs and animals), like oleander, and so I never just want to eat stuff. Probably a good thing. I also learned to identify and avoid poison ivy. Also good.

So I’ll be there at that farm stand this summer. We’ll do a before and after, if I remember