Raining Beads

A wardrobe accessory malfunction leads to a rainbow scatter.

Today’s post is a simple vignette, a funny moment unobserved. Things were awkward with a chance of falling beads.

“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Hello!

Who do you tell when something really silly happens, when the silliness bubbles up within you, and you just need someone to share in the random quirkiness of the universe? If you have an answer, take a second to murmur a small thank you. Make a point to send a text, write a postcard, or give a hug.

I rained rainbow beads this week, and it was funny, the kind of funny that kept on giving all day.

Nothing too deep today. No heavy-lifting required for readers. This story instinctively braided itself into something more nuanced, several threads snaking through space and time, but I am learning to hold back. I untangled things and put the other parts away.

I hate holding back. I continue to hear the strands. Funny how that works.

Also below, an update on the 100-day project, recent illustrated journal pages, Week 13 prompts, and more.

Amy

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Week Four of 100 Days of Contours

Days 22-28 of this 100-day series of contours with rainbow topography. This week is where it hits that this is a really long series. I especially need to find time to snap more photos. There were a few this week that have special significance, a few I really like.

Days 22-28 of this 100-day series of contour drawings with rainbow topography. A. Cowen 2025

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was condemned for eternity to push a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down, again and again. He was doomed to constantly start over, the mountain rising ahead, the top within sight, maybe, an end point he would never reach.

This week’s palimpsest, a layering of seven daily images.

A. Cowen 2025

Sisyphus’s story is one we often cite as an example of futility, of meaninglessness. We might also look at it as a story of perseverance, resistance, and resilience.

Everyday Color

I don’t wear multiple bracelets, but I do wear necklaces.¹

I wear several at a time. I wear a stack of necklaces.
I tend to leave on whatever I’m wearing. I just don’t take it off. I am not fussy enough to worry about whether or not it can get wet or is okay with soap or shampoo or lotion or Icy Hot or anything else. (I do sometimes grimace about the Icy Hot, but I do it anyway.)

I used to periodically change out pendants, swapping between a red enamel baby shoe, a rainbow whale tail, a gemstone cross, an opal inlay in a circle, a kaleidoscope of millefiori, and a few others I loved. I guess I had a thing for pendants along the way. But this last year, what I’ve had on, I’ve left on.

Knockoff Beads

I’m not the “clutching my pearls” type. I don’t own pearls. But I have been wearing a multi-color beaded necklace for the last two years. It was an inexpensive lookalike for something popular at the time. It was glorified plastic, but I absolutely loved it. It was a Christmas gift, bright, colorful, slightly chunky, whimsical, and smooth to the touch.

I almost always wear black, and the bit of color made me happy. I didn’t have to choose. It was just a part of me. It was part of the stack, tangled along with the others I wear non-stop.

I was guilty of reaching up and twisting the beads between my fingers now and then. I liked the feel of it.

The palette was deeper, but it made me think of candy necklaces, the kind we ate as kids.

Was. It was.

Invisibility is Key

This week, I drove to my monthly staff meeting. Historically, this is a meeting that leaves me feeling out of sorts.²

I drove an hour and a half for an hour meeting. I walked in and sat down, pulling a chair just outside of the wide angle of the camera. The last thing I needed was to see myself on the screen. I am more than twice the size of these people and acutely aware of it.

When I got dressed that morning, I grabbed an ancient cashmere cardigan from the dresser that is not mine. It’s thin, a muted peachy pink. I noticed it has blood stains, but I figured they wouldn’t show. I didn’t plan to take my jacket off. I tried the sweater on but then switched to the other one instead. It’s a pale blue, a color I never wear. It, too, has blood stains. I put it on over my staple black v-neck t-shirt and put my black fleece jacket on over it.

I am covered.

I’m not even sure why I bothered with the sweater.

Because it is my meeting day, I have on a bra.
I don’t feel like myself.
I really am out of sorts wearing blue.
This meeting gets to me.

I sit down, and the meeting hasn’t quite started when I feel something fall down my shirt.

As subtly as I can, I reach into my shirt and between the oversized v of my chest and discover a bright turquoise piece of plastic. Huh? I’m vaguely glad it wasn’t a bug. I casually drop it to the floor, wriggling my fingers nonchalantly as if casting off one of the hundreds of hairs that fall from my head each day. Maybe I put it in my pocket. I don’t even know now because I immediately felt something else fall in my shirt.

Playing it cool in a room with four other people, one of which I was meeting in person for the first time, I reach inside my shirt and emerge with another piece of plastic. This isn’t making sense.

Then I realize my beaded necklace is hanging slack, too far down on my neck.

It has broken.

I carefully close my fingers around the beads I can feel in the front and pull the necklace free. There are only a dozen or so beads on the strand. I casually tie the ends together in a knot and stick it in my bag.

Luckily, it is taking them longer than usual to get the meeting started.

There have to be a bunch of beads somewhere, I think. It wasn’t a long necklace, but it was beaded end to end.

I sit up straighter, lean forward a bit, and beads start falling down my back. It feels like someone has dumped tiny marbles down my shirt. As soon as the feeling registers, I hear the beads hitting the chair and bouncing to the floor.

I’m raining beads.

I’m still trying to deal with this without anyone noticing. I am sitting at the front corner of the table, next to the freestanding monitor. I am definitely not invisible, and yet somehow I am?

I surely look antsy.

I pivot a little bit in my seat to find that there is an entire pile of beads in my chair. I am sitting on a pile of rainbow-colored plastic beads. I can’t get past the idea that I have pooped rainbow beads. It is nonsensical in every way, and yet there is something bubbling up within me.

As surreptitiously as I can, I scoop these beads from my chair into my hands and stuff them in my jacket pocket. The ones on the floor are hard to see. They blend into the mottled industrial gray, but I pick up the few I spot. They seem so much smaller than they did on my neck.

When I get home a few hours later, I tell my son about my necklace breaking. I need someone to laugh with me. I need this to be more than a “you had to be there” story.

I go in to use the bathroom, and a few beads fall out. I walk into the kitchen, and a few more beads clatter to the floor.

I realize I don’t actually know if there are more beads hanging around. I look inside my bra, and there are maybe fifty beads wedged at the bottom. That really cracked me up, and I really missed having someone to laugh about it with. Some moments of absurdity need to be shared.

The next time I went to the bathroom, a bunch of beads fell out of the back of my shirt. Later more beads fell out of my underwear. When I was in the kitchen, making dinner, beads kept dropping to the floor.

I never had a My Little Pony, but I do have a soft spot for unicorns, and it definitely felt like some weird rainbow scat thing happened today. It was funny and whimsical and zany.

It’s an awkward monthly meeting for so many reasons, but this was a first. Even so, no one noticed. I’m so not surprised.

I missed being able to come home and share the story and laugh about it. I would have stood in the bedroom doorway and recounted the tale. She knew the players. She understood what the meeting always does to me. She knew I should have left long ago but understood why I stayed. We would have laughed. “Oh that’s great, Amy. Pooping rainbow beads.”

Weeks 10 -12 Illustrate Your Week 2025

A. Cowen 2025

Room for Individual Moments

Such simple things that are sometimes not simple at all:

1. Remember to make time to listen without talking louder.

2. Remember to let others have their stories without needing to overwrite them with your own.

3. Remember that there are many ways and many truths; yours is but one.

4. Remember that it is okay to not have the answers.

5. Remember that sharing isn’t a competition.

6. Remember that the middle road also goes somewhere.

Reframing

I watched The Pitt on HBO Max this past week. I watched the first bunch of episodes a few months back. It was really hard. So much of what I saw felt really familiar. I watched a hundred or so episodes of Chicago Med (my first time) in between then and now. I’ve gotten my med show sea legs again.

So I went back and restarted The Pitt because I wanted to see the hour by hour timeline. I didn’t know, initially, that the each episode represents one hour of a single shift. The season is a single shift. It has been interesting to rewatch with this in mind, interesting to see stories that I thought had taken days and realize that they actually were compressed into a span of hours.

I was drawing Wednesday night while watching, and Dr. Robby (senior ER doctor) said, “We have to believe that Sisyphus was happy.”

I miss a lot while I draw, but I heard that. Wait, what?

“We have to believe that Sisyphus was happy.“

I immediately stopped to write it down. First I grabbed my phone and looked it up to make sure I heard it right. In doing so, I discovered that it isn’t a quote from Dr. Robby at all. It is a well-known quote from Albert Camus, the final line, in fact, of his 1942 essay, “The Myth of Sisyphus.”

We all know the story of Sisyphus, but I had never heard that quote before, and it felt like a revolution. It felt complicated. It felt double-edged.

Taken out of the context of the essay (which is rooted in the absurdity of existence), taken simply at face value, there is something on the surface level that is curiously validating and vindicating in the idea that Sisyphus might have been happy. It is an interesting reframing of a story of being beleaguered and weighed down by the weight of the world and doomed to never get anywhere.³

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Weekly Bits and Pieces

Prompts for Illustrate Your Week - Week 13 (2025)

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Made It?

Thank you for reading along! I always enjoy your comments and invite you to chime in. Let me know what stands out for you, what you think after reading, or where we connect.

• Are you finding time and focus for a daily creative habit?

• What are the hurdles to feeling content with your creative projects?

• Are there topics you would like me to cover?

• What one word describes your current outlook on life?

Thank you for reading.

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1. Yes. That’s an abrupt start. Such is the nature of unweaving what was woven.

2. This is something I don’t write about. The context is semi-important to this small vignette, but I deleted almost everything. It is simply helpful to know the meeting is one I find awkward and, usually, disheartening.

3. I worry I can talk myself quickly into a circle and see this line as really problematic. It still feels like a line to keep in one’s pocket as one navigates the quest for personal meaning. This is not to say that I think it’s a line that should be used to justify tragedy, persecution, or the inequity that runs through our social structures. In our current political landscape, I can’t help but see how this kind of line could be maligned and used to justify a number of bad scenarios. As with so many things, it matters who says the words.