Unleaving

As I've been working with eco dyeing and leaf printing for the last month...

my thoughts have continued to return to Gerard Manley Hopkin's poem:

Spring and Fall: To a Young Child

Márgarét, are you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves, líke the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah!  ás the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you wíll weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

The child Margaret is sad about the autumn leaves dropping from the trees (unleaving), and the poet appreciates her innocent sorrow, but knows that other sorrows  will eventually cause her to weep.  Death and loss are part of the cycle of nature, and in the end, with each loss it is ourselves for whom we mourn.  

As I outlined the leaves on the eco prints, I kept thinking about the term "unleaving," and decided to make an Alzheimer's Art Quilt using leaf prints and the word "unleaving."

Memories fall away from our loved ones as the colorful leaves fall away from trees in autumn. Our loved ones recede from us gradually...

  Unleaving.

As their memories ebb, the singular, distinctive persona also fades because experiences, memories make us all who we are.  The unique individual, the person we remember even if they no longer remember us, begins to disappear, to retreat, to unleave while the body remains.   And, yes, it is ourselves for whom we grieve as we contemplate the loss of a parent or loved one.  

The habotai silk on which the leaves are printed was dyed in a leaf dye pot, a variety of leaves went into it.  The muslin was dyed with rosemary (just long enough to knock down the white a bit) and so was the cheesecloth which covers portions of the quilt like a web.  The beads represent the brightness, the uniqueness of the memories that are being lost.

I think I'll make another quilt or two before registering this one, and oh, I have one left over from September that I hadn't quite finished when I mailed in the others.
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I've been reading again, after a month or more of a pretty dry spell in the reading category.  I've ordered a few more bargain kindle books from Amazon and have an order of real books that should be delivered soon, but I need to get to the library!


What's on your agenda today?  Any good book suggestions?