Love this post and I will definitely be making postcards again! Apparently I can’t post a picture in comments, but I made and mailed two in October. You might be interested in the book Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative. I found it kind of hard to get through, start to finish (which might be a me thing), but I like to page through it for gems.
I made an October postcard but haven’t sent it into the world. I’m looking forward to making some spiral inspired postcards…perhaps one of those will get mailed.
I think there is something mindful about the making/writing of them even if they are not sent. I am glad to know you did your October one(s), and I loved seeing your spiral start taking shape yesterday. Thank you for playing along.
your photo caption hit me like a brick, the five month mark of loss. i still want to reach out to you, stranger/not stranger, weaver of words that you are, with some magic balm to ease the pain.
when i opened my email this morning, the first post was from another substack writer i follow who is the daughter of an old friend. hers (at shangrilogs) is about a five month mark, too - those five of losing her sense of self in the care and feeding of a new baby.
serendipity.
yes, i did mail and craft a postcard for october, sent to australia. your spiral examples triggered memories of the 70s - and good gawd how can that now be a past era and my current age group? - in which i painted large rocks. one had the desiderata painted in a spiral on it’s broad surface.
i am fascinated by ammonites and so i choose snails over slugs. similar patterns. plus, i think i have a resident snail in my garage. it leaves iridescent trail maps on the step into the garage from the kitchen. there is not much food source in the garage so it’s a mystery why it visits. but hey, i see you…slimy interloper…
That you describe the slime as “iridescent trail maps” transforms the entire snail experience, Kathi. Thank you for that magical image. Thanks for reading and commenting. I looked up your friend’s dauther’s (very successful) substack, too. I love the rock with the Desiderata memory. That must have been quite a large rock, but I imagine it was beautiful. Those words are ones we all need to carry. Ammonites…. Wonderful.
Amy! I love this. Only read the first part about crabs and snails, but will return to the rest tomorrow. I kept thinking. “Is Amy going to mention Fibonacci sequence? My cousin’s grandfather was a pretty well-known mathematician and he did very important work with Fibonacci. And a friend of mine just lost her pet snail after tending to him for several years. He was named Gary. I miss him. xo
Thanks, Nan! I do mention it in the second part, which is the postcard spiral prompt — but I don’t dive into it, just a cursory nod. It’s good to have mathematicians in the family! I feel bad dissing the slugs, knowing you were familiar with a named one. I got feedback from others with a soft spot for snails, too. Maybe if I’d had a pet snail….. :). Thanks for reading.
I noticed it in the second part, and was happy to see it. Gary was a sweetie...if a slug can be sweet. He was much loved in a local community of FB friends. Everyone was sad when he died. Have you seen Marcel the Shell? I think that helped me appreciate Gary. I'm guilty of a real talent for anthropomorphizing! xo
Well, little crabs, at least you got to be in the spotlight for a little while, even if it was by accident. 😅
Coincidentally, I came upon a tiny snail here just yesterday, as I upended pots of sweet potatoes, grown mostly for the attractive vines but always fun to see if we get any appreciable harvest (answer: a basket full). We are all too familiar with slugs, which I like to say are unhoused snails, but their shelled cousins are less common. Imagine being able to just grow a bigger house, as needed?!
I love your circuitous spiral, your initially reluctant gratitude practice, and all that you have and are experiencing through that.
Like Kathi, below, I wish there were some way to ease the burden for you while simultaneously not expecting you to be done with it. There is no being done with it. Only the eventual ability to carry it differently. Does it help at all to be reminded that you're not invisible here?
I want to read the widow post again. Thank you for sharing it and for knowing that getting it down is part of your process.
lol. I am still holding on to the idea of them in ways they are not, but the hermit crabs really didn’t win anyone over, it seems, but I did find some really cute photos of them when poking around. I’ve always called them all slugs. The ones on the bushes here (most often spotted after rain as if they rise to the surface in the rain) are brown and dingy-bodied and kind of gross. You don’t look at them and think, “ahh, the beauty of the spiral.” I’m feeling glad in this moment that my slug experience is always shelled. Was the snail you found in the shell or stretched? I am glad you got a basket full of sweet potatoes. That seems like a reasonable outcome. I saw your sped-up food prep reel, too. Love that. —- Thank you for even seeing the extra post. I think I am carrying it well, but even that makes me wonder. Thank you for your thoughtful comment.
Our weekend snail was tiny (size of a pea) and hanging out in community with a bunch of slugs, on the bottom of a garden pot, stretched out and loving life!
During a lonely business trip in Florida many years ago, I got a bunch of hermit crabs and a little portable environment for them, and I took them back to New York with me. I loved those little guys, bought them shells, enrichment, everything I could think of. Eventually I learned these adorable critters are best left in their own environment, so now I love 'em from afar, like in that adorable pic!
How brave must slugs be to travel through the world with no protection at all? Even though their squishiness makes me a little squeamish- I do admire their fearlessness!
Oh Amy – The crab & snail mixup is hilarious! I absolutely adore the narrative of your imaginings and your unwillingness to surrender them. So relatable!
I love spirals. I love the mathematics and the geometry, although I am not by any stretch of the imagination a mathematician. Two years ago for a milestone birthday I went on an art retreat in Spain: we not only hiked to ancient petroglyphs, which laid out a labyrinth, but built our own labyrinth out of stone, using a tall stick and a rope as a human compass to guide the curves. We left it for pilgrims making their way along the Camino de Santiago. Later, I became obsessed with geometric art, and learned to draw triskeles with ruler and compass. I’m also fascinated by those inside out spirals common to Roman mosaics – you show one in the upper right hand corner of your six part sample: what’s that one called?
I’m going to take this prompt and use it to practice drawing freehand spirals with my left arm while my right arm heals. I like the idea of that impossibly awkward southpaw effort engaging the right side of my brain, as opposed to my typical highly-controlled right hand/left brain compass work.
Drawing a spiral, like walking a labyrinth, is a form of meditation. Aligned with breath, body and primordial relationships in space, it is a practice that calms and opens. Filling that space with gratitude is brilliant.
I share your sometimes skepticism of the “woo.”Sometimes this includes gratitude, especially given the commercialization of the concept recently. But all I have to do is remember getting sober 26 years ago, and I know that a gratitude practice can change a life – save it in fact.
These are apt prescriptions for dark times. Thanks for connecting me once again to something bigger, an idea and a practice that pieces together many parts of my disjointed life, potentially transforming fragmentation(despair) into kaleidoscope (vision/insight).
I know there are other places to reply, but I saw this one just now in the minutes before I shift to work, and there was a question. Fermat’s Spiral. That one was new to me (though not to you). It is puzzling in some ways and puzzling to draw, too, because it moves outside in, a circular vortex, before moving out again. (In my head.) Fascinating - but maybe not surprising - the geometric art phase. I could happily live without the precision, but I am curious about those who demand it. My spirals renderings probably made you twitch. The triskele was unbelievably hard to do (on iPad glass) even with a loose copy underneath for reference. I needed to do it all in one go though (to prevent some line messiness that would bug me even if I tried to clean and smooth), and I think I drew it a few dozen times. iPad (glass) lines are still often difficult to control (for me), and the wonkiness of that triskele was the embodiment of that. But…. I would never even bother with the compass and ruler. I love that you were part of a labyrinth construction. There is something so compelling about them…. Always. I imagine spirals will be hard as you practice the other hand, but I applaud the determination to begin using that hand…. It will be a journey in and of itself, watching mark and line and fluidity develop. I have no doubt you can do it… and that there is a giving in required. Thank you for your comment. (I can email you a mailing address, but you should not be feeling any pressure to fulfill anything as you heal anyway.) — I am not nearly as naive and clueless as I probably sometimes sound, especially when I put mixups on the page and stick by them. Far from it. I always appreciate your deep reading.
Ha ha many imprecise things make me twitch, but not your spirals! I collect Folk Art and have always been a huge fan of whimsy. I love the loose and imperfect; I just don’t let myself make it, usually.
Yes! The triskele and related forms are astonishingly difficult for something that appears simple. Just try drawing it as tracery with shading. I worked backwards from an example and made a 20-sheet vellum overlay to show myself the step-by-step geometry so I wouldn’t forget, and to help me figure out the best order of operations. It was a great puzzle to focus the mind in a time of high anxiety. Not sure such obsessiveness is great for me overall however lol.
Finally: Naive?! Never. Telling stories on oneself is a sophisticated form of redemption. And I am always moved by your intricate, elegant, unforced interpretations of the world we move through.
I am making the postcards, but not posting to social media these days (except to support other artists and writers). If you want to see them DM me your address – email or preferably, gasp, snail mail.
Your Substack portrait series is remarkable. I’m just catching up.
I also continue to be curious and delighted about your weekly diary comics. I may get there yet.
Well now I’m kicking myself… in this spiral postcard prompt, I missed the opportunity to make a “snail mail” joke. Woe is me! I may have to update the title.
Definitely snail, I love snails. I do not love slugs. Funny how a shell form can be added onto a slimy little body and suddenly I feel so differently about it! Thank you for your beautiful writing this week, Amy. I really enjoyed it.
I do find most snails cute creatures (although not black slugs, I think of those ones without shells as slugs but that's probably wrong), especially if you find one like that in the photo and wait for its little antennas to poke out and it starts moving again.
💕 I'm grateful for liking most animals and having had so many great experiences with animals as a kid, I do think that is the trick. Maybe also all the adorable illustrations of snail mail snails I've seen around cemented this.
Happy november spiralling towards winter. Keep writing.
That would have been a good approach for the hermit crab essay, right? Lol. Don’t feel pressured by the postcards or timeline. The spiral one will work at any point!
Love this post and I will definitely be making postcards again! Apparently I can’t post a picture in comments, but I made and mailed two in October. You might be interested in the book Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative. I found it kind of hard to get through, start to finish (which might be a me thing), but I like to page through it for gems.
So glad to hear about the postcards! Thank you for reading and commenting, Linda — and for the book recommendation. I just put it on hold.
Thanks for the book tip!
I made an October postcard but haven’t sent it into the world. I’m looking forward to making some spiral inspired postcards…perhaps one of those will get mailed.
I think there is something mindful about the making/writing of them even if they are not sent. I am glad to know you did your October one(s), and I loved seeing your spiral start taking shape yesterday. Thank you for playing along.
This is going to be a tricky haiku...
Two snails, dragging me
through the mire to find more space
a witch in the wheel.
I have finished the paintings on my cards, I need to collect a couple of addresses then let them go!
Then I need cinnamon rolls.
That’s the Haiku spirit :)
Thank you for reading and commenting - and I hope you get those addresses. Eat a cinnamon roll for me, too!
your photo caption hit me like a brick, the five month mark of loss. i still want to reach out to you, stranger/not stranger, weaver of words that you are, with some magic balm to ease the pain.
when i opened my email this morning, the first post was from another substack writer i follow who is the daughter of an old friend. hers (at shangrilogs) is about a five month mark, too - those five of losing her sense of self in the care and feeding of a new baby.
serendipity.
yes, i did mail and craft a postcard for october, sent to australia. your spiral examples triggered memories of the 70s - and good gawd how can that now be a past era and my current age group? - in which i painted large rocks. one had the desiderata painted in a spiral on it’s broad surface.
i am fascinated by ammonites and so i choose snails over slugs. similar patterns. plus, i think i have a resident snail in my garage. it leaves iridescent trail maps on the step into the garage from the kitchen. there is not much food source in the garage so it’s a mystery why it visits. but hey, i see you…slimy interloper…
thank you for writing, amy.
That you describe the slime as “iridescent trail maps” transforms the entire snail experience, Kathi. Thank you for that magical image. Thanks for reading and commenting. I looked up your friend’s dauther’s (very successful) substack, too. I love the rock with the Desiderata memory. That must have been quite a large rock, but I imagine it was beautiful. Those words are ones we all need to carry. Ammonites…. Wonderful.
Amy! I love this. Only read the first part about crabs and snails, but will return to the rest tomorrow. I kept thinking. “Is Amy going to mention Fibonacci sequence? My cousin’s grandfather was a pretty well-known mathematician and he did very important work with Fibonacci. And a friend of mine just lost her pet snail after tending to him for several years. He was named Gary. I miss him. xo
Thanks, Nan! I do mention it in the second part, which is the postcard spiral prompt — but I don’t dive into it, just a cursory nod. It’s good to have mathematicians in the family! I feel bad dissing the slugs, knowing you were familiar with a named one. I got feedback from others with a soft spot for snails, too. Maybe if I’d had a pet snail….. :). Thanks for reading.
I noticed it in the second part, and was happy to see it. Gary was a sweetie...if a slug can be sweet. He was much loved in a local community of FB friends. Everyone was sad when he died. Have you seen Marcel the Shell? I think that helped me appreciate Gary. I'm guilty of a real talent for anthropomorphizing! xo
Well, little crabs, at least you got to be in the spotlight for a little while, even if it was by accident. 😅
Coincidentally, I came upon a tiny snail here just yesterday, as I upended pots of sweet potatoes, grown mostly for the attractive vines but always fun to see if we get any appreciable harvest (answer: a basket full). We are all too familiar with slugs, which I like to say are unhoused snails, but their shelled cousins are less common. Imagine being able to just grow a bigger house, as needed?!
I love your circuitous spiral, your initially reluctant gratitude practice, and all that you have and are experiencing through that.
Like Kathi, below, I wish there were some way to ease the burden for you while simultaneously not expecting you to be done with it. There is no being done with it. Only the eventual ability to carry it differently. Does it help at all to be reminded that you're not invisible here?
I want to read the widow post again. Thank you for sharing it and for knowing that getting it down is part of your process.
lol. I am still holding on to the idea of them in ways they are not, but the hermit crabs really didn’t win anyone over, it seems, but I did find some really cute photos of them when poking around. I’ve always called them all slugs. The ones on the bushes here (most often spotted after rain as if they rise to the surface in the rain) are brown and dingy-bodied and kind of gross. You don’t look at them and think, “ahh, the beauty of the spiral.” I’m feeling glad in this moment that my slug experience is always shelled. Was the snail you found in the shell or stretched? I am glad you got a basket full of sweet potatoes. That seems like a reasonable outcome. I saw your sped-up food prep reel, too. Love that. —- Thank you for even seeing the extra post. I think I am carrying it well, but even that makes me wonder. Thank you for your thoughtful comment.
Our weekend snail was tiny (size of a pea) and hanging out in community with a bunch of slugs, on the bottom of a garden pot, stretched out and loving life!
It's akways the beautiful Fibonacci sequence for me. Love the sprial quotes.And the reminder about gratitude such a lovely blace to be ❤✌🐌
Thank you, Jetton. I appreciate you reading and commenting. I think we can all benefit from a gratitude reminder now and then.
Love anything to do with hermit crabs, which only made me love this newsletter more.
Yay, a hermit crab fan! Thanks so much for reading Suzan.
During a lonely business trip in Florida many years ago, I got a bunch of hermit crabs and a little portable environment for them, and I took them back to New York with me. I loved those little guys, bought them shells, enrichment, everything I could think of. Eventually I learned these adorable critters are best left in their own environment, so now I love 'em from afar, like in that adorable pic!
How brave must slugs be to travel through the world with no protection at all? Even though their squishiness makes me a little squeamish- I do admire their fearlessness!
That’s a good perspective, Melissa. Thank you for sharing the spiral image, too. Beautiful.
Oh Amy – The crab & snail mixup is hilarious! I absolutely adore the narrative of your imaginings and your unwillingness to surrender them. So relatable!
I love spirals. I love the mathematics and the geometry, although I am not by any stretch of the imagination a mathematician. Two years ago for a milestone birthday I went on an art retreat in Spain: we not only hiked to ancient petroglyphs, which laid out a labyrinth, but built our own labyrinth out of stone, using a tall stick and a rope as a human compass to guide the curves. We left it for pilgrims making their way along the Camino de Santiago. Later, I became obsessed with geometric art, and learned to draw triskeles with ruler and compass. I’m also fascinated by those inside out spirals common to Roman mosaics – you show one in the upper right hand corner of your six part sample: what’s that one called?
I’m going to take this prompt and use it to practice drawing freehand spirals with my left arm while my right arm heals. I like the idea of that impossibly awkward southpaw effort engaging the right side of my brain, as opposed to my typical highly-controlled right hand/left brain compass work.
Drawing a spiral, like walking a labyrinth, is a form of meditation. Aligned with breath, body and primordial relationships in space, it is a practice that calms and opens. Filling that space with gratitude is brilliant.
I share your sometimes skepticism of the “woo.”Sometimes this includes gratitude, especially given the commercialization of the concept recently. But all I have to do is remember getting sober 26 years ago, and I know that a gratitude practice can change a life – save it in fact.
These are apt prescriptions for dark times. Thanks for connecting me once again to something bigger, an idea and a practice that pieces together many parts of my disjointed life, potentially transforming fragmentation(despair) into kaleidoscope (vision/insight).
I know there are other places to reply, but I saw this one just now in the minutes before I shift to work, and there was a question. Fermat’s Spiral. That one was new to me (though not to you). It is puzzling in some ways and puzzling to draw, too, because it moves outside in, a circular vortex, before moving out again. (In my head.) Fascinating - but maybe not surprising - the geometric art phase. I could happily live without the precision, but I am curious about those who demand it. My spirals renderings probably made you twitch. The triskele was unbelievably hard to do (on iPad glass) even with a loose copy underneath for reference. I needed to do it all in one go though (to prevent some line messiness that would bug me even if I tried to clean and smooth), and I think I drew it a few dozen times. iPad (glass) lines are still often difficult to control (for me), and the wonkiness of that triskele was the embodiment of that. But…. I would never even bother with the compass and ruler. I love that you were part of a labyrinth construction. There is something so compelling about them…. Always. I imagine spirals will be hard as you practice the other hand, but I applaud the determination to begin using that hand…. It will be a journey in and of itself, watching mark and line and fluidity develop. I have no doubt you can do it… and that there is a giving in required. Thank you for your comment. (I can email you a mailing address, but you should not be feeling any pressure to fulfill anything as you heal anyway.) — I am not nearly as naive and clueless as I probably sometimes sound, especially when I put mixups on the page and stick by them. Far from it. I always appreciate your deep reading.
Ha ha many imprecise things make me twitch, but not your spirals! I collect Folk Art and have always been a huge fan of whimsy. I love the loose and imperfect; I just don’t let myself make it, usually.
Yes! The triskele and related forms are astonishingly difficult for something that appears simple. Just try drawing it as tracery with shading. I worked backwards from an example and made a 20-sheet vellum overlay to show myself the step-by-step geometry so I wouldn’t forget, and to help me figure out the best order of operations. It was a great puzzle to focus the mind in a time of high anxiety. Not sure such obsessiveness is great for me overall however lol.
Finally: Naive?! Never. Telling stories on oneself is a sophisticated form of redemption. And I am always moved by your intricate, elegant, unforced interpretations of the world we move through.
PS
I am making the postcards, but not posting to social media these days (except to support other artists and writers). If you want to see them DM me your address – email or preferably, gasp, snail mail.
Your Substack portrait series is remarkable. I’m just catching up.
I also continue to be curious and delighted about your weekly diary comics. I may get there yet.
Well now I’m kicking myself… in this spiral postcard prompt, I missed the opportunity to make a “snail mail” joke. Woe is me! I may have to update the title.
LOL
Definitely snail, I love snails. I do not love slugs. Funny how a shell form can be added onto a slimy little body and suddenly I feel so differently about it! Thank you for your beautiful writing this week, Amy. I really enjoyed it.
I do find most snails cute creatures (although not black slugs, I think of those ones without shells as slugs but that's probably wrong), especially if you find one like that in the photo and wait for its little antennas to poke out and it starts moving again.
💕 I'm grateful for liking most animals and having had so many great experiences with animals as a kid, I do think that is the trick. Maybe also all the adorable illustrations of snail mail snails I've seen around cemented this.
Happy november spiralling towards winter. Keep writing.
I am late to this and so will do November’s postcard prompt to start December and hope to get December’s done in December 😆.
I was hoping a hermit crab essay was writing something from the viewpoint of the hermit crab.
That would have been a good approach for the hermit crab essay, right? Lol. Don’t feel pressured by the postcards or timeline. The spiral one will work at any point!