Ascent

This is the second time that I am writing this post.Moments ago, I composed it fully, pressed publish and then, like a sand painting, it dissolved when the WiFi at the café where I’m working knocked me offline.Fragments remain.The words Fierce. Determined. Decisive in capital letters. And the title, "Ascent", which I received as a gift when I opened The Book Of Symbols this morning.I am rebuilding that post the way one might remember a dream:I was climbing a rose covered wall carrying, in my backpack two dolls that I made with my own hands: Annika, named by my daughter; and the Wise Woman doll that I made, a year later, for my mother, when she had her breast removed.Lines drift back to me like memories: This year, my roses are spilling up and over the walls. And images: Of weaving, this thread over that; and knitting, twisting skeins of colored wool into forms on sharp silver needles.In that post, I promised that this year I am going to make things: Books, soul cards, workshops - and finish things: The quilt that I started last winter, cutting squares out of the felted remnants of sweaters, blue and green, that I accidentally washed and put in the dryer.This year, I remember writing, I am adding hearts cut from the dark pink Eileen Fisher pullover that met its end the same way last week.It was a good post. You would have loved it with its imagery of rebirth and escape, its colorful analogies, and metaphors.I talked about how yesterday, I added a second vision board – blood red in color – onto which spilled all the images and words that could not fit on the first, as my vision expanded and exploded.This year is going to be something special, I dreamed and wrote in that other post. Now, perhaps because I have written it twice, I am confident it will all come true.