A Found Prayer Flag
Everyday beauty, stitched together
A Found Prayer Flag
Words by T. Mallie. Found poem by E. Howard
Today was an artist’s date of sorts: I went to San Francisco facilitated an in-person meeting Depression Support Group (I've been attending on Zoom). Twelve of us met at Mel’s Diner -- the event went effortlessly: required no organization whatsoever. But a person doesn’t really know that in advance. In case anyone would be interested, the email address is dbsasf@gmail.com. Boston attendees like the San Francisco meetings, and there's attendees from England, as well as the expected Californians. The Cherry Chase yearbook layout designer is a diehard procrastinator. The team tried to meet once a month at my house October through February, but we accomplished nothing except that the layout designer tried to create additional projects (otherwise known as distractions). May 12th, press date, and the Cherry Chase yearbook is a foolishly large project. So, it sucks to be them. I need to finish up a few photos this week. (There were other photographers who always intended to join us but never got around to it.) This is my 15th year at Cherry Chase Elementary; I might graduate this year! Tomorrow, I have a job interview so we will see how that goes. If I am selected, I become supervisor of 30 Sunnyvale school crossing guards. Bad news: it's a split shift. Good news: I can still exercise and nap in the middle of the day. I sent an art project update: Did it push out? I showed the background to my Glimmers in the Cultivation of Recovery from Childhood Trauma project, and I showed a second image where I layered the background with the foreground image to see: will the idea work? One might view it by visiting the Google Groups repository.
April 29th, National Poetry Month.
Today’s poem was made possible by my friend, Mallie.
Recently, Mallie and I have been working together in a group in
’s workshop “Finding Water” — an exploration of Julia Cameron’s book on the art of perseverance.I hope Mallie will forgive me sharing her art in progress and email as a found poem/prayer flag.
Mallie and I have been friend since 1990 when we met at the Iowa State Daily. She was a photographer and I was a writer, so I guess things haven’t changed much since then!
This found poem was also inspired by Mike H. in my Monday evening writing group led by my awesome friend
.Originally I was going to write after a poem by “acclaimed” American poet John Ashbery (who Mike H. thinks is overrated).
Then I read the following in Ashbery’s Poetry Foundation bio, and decided not a bit more ink needs to be spilled on this poet:
“Ashbery’s first book, Some Trees (1956), won the Yale Younger Poets Prize. The competition was judged by W.H. Auden, who famously confessed later that he hadn’t understood a word of the winning manuscript.”
Mallie was a much co-conspirator.
To learn more about prayer flags (or make them yourself!), check out the project on Susan’s website.
Thanks for the shout-out!