The Home Stretch

The thing is almost finished, sort of. I have all of today to work on it because Dan is doing all the bringing around of children work. I think that will be enough time to finish it. The piece is very, very heavy so my worry is now about how to get it on the tank without its own weight causing some rip or tear. I think it means leaving two open seams and lowering the sides down one half at a time. The people who will be installing the piece do not usually install art (who usually installs crocheted covers on water tanks?) so I will have to try to inspire them to feel concern for this thing and not just to get it done as quickly as possible.

For the past week or so, almost every night, I dream about the installation and all the things that could go wrong: the thing falls apart, a worker is blown off a ladder and over the side of the building, it just does not fit and everyone is standing around glaring at me for my supreme incompetence, etc.. During my waking hours I have been relatively calm and unstressed, but it gets out one way or another, I guess.

Today, a reporter and photographer from the NY Times are coming out to take pictures and do a story that will be in Saturday's paper (the Metro Section, so not sure if it will be in editions outside of the NY metro area). There has been a lot of other media interest as well. I am not sure how I feel about that - always at once seeking the limelight and wishing to stay in my little dark corner.

Here is a poem that I read recently that seems to speak to that, and much more:

From The Gift: Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master. Translated by Daniel Ladinsky.

You are the Sun in drag.
You are God hiding from yourself.
Remove all the ‘mine’ – that is the veil.
Why ever worry about anything?
Listen to what your friend Hafiz
Knows for certain:
The appearance of this world
Is a Magi’s brilliant trick, though its affairs are
Nothing into nothing.
You are a divine elephant with amnesia
Trying to live in an ant
Hole.
Sweetheart, O sweetheart
You are God in Drag!
-- Hafiz