Dear Pippin

Pippin, trying out some decorations.

Dear Pippin,

I think we’ve FINALLY come up with the pieces and parts that will make up our routine — our very first liberty freestyle routine! — in Luke’s Christmas show.  It is such an honor that he invited us to perform, and I want us to make him proud! Choreographing this routine is tricky, though, because in my brain everything goes perfectly according to plan, but in real life, transitioning from one thing to another is tough— you either take a while to switch gears, or you get a little overly rambunctious and make one of your signature springy runs around the arena.

I’ve made a few trips to JoAnne’s and Michael’s, looking for a few Christmas-y things to decorate you with.  After some trial and error I’ve decided on red poinsettias: elegant yet festive! They look stunning and they’re so bright they even make the rest of you look less dirty!  Now I’m just trying to figure out how to get them to stay in your mane without flopping over or you trying to shake them out.  We will definitely need a trial run.

I bought some spray glitter and some jingle bells too!  But maaayyybe that’s too much?  I won’t know until we try it all out together.  And I said I wouldn’t get myself a new outfit, buuuut I saw that red taffeta dress at Anthropologie and knew it would be perfect— it matches your poinsettias!  I can even wear it again at other non-horse events, so it doesn’t feel like quite such a splurge.  When I was in the dressing room the attendant asked if it was for a special occasion and I told her I was in a performance. “Oh?” she said, “What kind?” It felt so strange to say “I’m doing a routine with my horse for a Christmas show,” — who says that??!! — but I explained and we chatted for awhile.  Turns out she had horses when she lived in England. She asked where she could get tickets for the show— it would be so fun if she came!

I will say, I’m a little worried that you’ll be nervous the night of the show.  Luke says over 150 people already bought tickets — yikes! — and even though it’s your home and we are in that arena every day, it’s never been filled with sooo many people and chairs and spotlights and clapping.  Ooof! You have to pay attention to me and trust that I’ve got your back, my little friend.

In the end, though, I don’t think it really matters what winds up happening, and I have to remember that. You’re a unicorn after all, and everybody loves a unicorn.  We’ll look fabulous together in our matching reds, and as long as the Christmas spirit shines out from our hearts and brings even a small amount of joy to all those people, that’s what matters most.

My new red dress.

Figuring out what color combinations to use for the presents we’re using as props.

100 Days Update

100-days project © Claudia Retter

At the end of March I thought it would be fun to try my hand at a 100-days project (read that post here).  A writer & artist whose newsletter I subscribe to launched her own 100-days project as a way to mark time during her cancer treatment. She invited anyone to join her with a project of their own.  I thought I’d give it a go with some sketching.

Ooof I knew i wouldn’t make it through, but there’s something to be said for forging ahead anyway. And so I think, did I doom my efforts from the start by not really believing I could do it?  But I think it’s more that I had a faulty plan B. I thought I had built in a failsafe: On days when I didn’t really feel inspired to draw, or if I put it off until waaayy too late at night when I was too tired, I was allowed to draw stick figures or even just make random marks on the page.  It didn’t have to be a “sketch.”

The trouble was that I couldn’t bring myself to do that.  I envisioned the rest of my book filled with stick figures and halfhearted doodles and it just filled me with dread. Why spend energy agonizing over drawing something just to fill a self-imposed quota? So that was the end of that. It felt soooo satisfying to let it go.

I will say though, that when I open this little book to the 16 drawings I did make, I feel really proud of myself. They marked little moments in time, and it makes me happy to see them.  My first sketch was of leaves I saw in the snow while walking on our land in Vermont for the first time. I drew the neighbor’s barn through the trees. The view across the road.

Three leaves in the snow.

Barn through the pines.

There’s a doodle of an idea I have for an art project. And a sewing project. And a drawing of things in the blind school art classroom.  There’s also the Walgreens bandaid that covered my covid booster shot— I drew that late one night when I was scrambling for something to draw, and I thought it was ridiculous at the time but now I love it.

So I guess this project wasn’t for nothing.  No, I didn’t finish my 100 days, but it wasn’t a “failure” — whatever that even is.  I liked keeping this tiny notebook with me, and it makes me wonder about carrying it around again without the pressure of a daily quota.  It’s different than a journal.  Maybe it’s a sketch or maybe it’s ideas for a project.  Or words about something.  A place to remember the small-big things when they appear to me.

Bob, the papier mache robot at OSSB

Paper fish at OSSB

Walgreens bandaid

Tinker Mountain

Three years ago I went to the Tinker Mountain Writers Workshop at Hollins Univesity in Virginia. (Annie Dillard wrote Pilgrim at Tinker Creek about that river!) After attending a Saturday writing class in New York four years ago, I spent time working on pieces at home, but I wanted to spend some time with other writers again. I never felt that a traditional “writing workshop” was for me — all the horror stories of personality conflicts and people tearing each other’s work apart — why pay money for that? For someone just starting out at this, what a creativity killer.

Tinker Mountain’s programs, though, sounded so much more supportive, and I loved my week there. Plenty of quiet time to write but also a great group of people to share work with. Covid shut down the program for the next two years, and I might have been the first person to sign up when they opened it up again this June. Due to the cancellation of the creative non-fiction class I’d signed up for, I wound up in a fiction one that turned out to be exactly where I needed to be. I suppose that regardless of what genre you’re working in, the things that make good fiction also make good writing in general, and it was all relevant. I felt so inspired listening to classmates read their writing, and was absolutely honored when someone said that the piece I read felt like a magic carpet ride (thanks, Jane!)

The fields at sunset.

After a day of writing and class and reading and talking to people at dinner, exploring campus was my favorite thing to do. It filled up my well. The Hollins grounds were summer-lush, with soup bowl sized magnolia flowers and rocking chairs on shady verandas, a tucked away garden and a full moon (Margaret Wise Brown wrote Goodnight Moon here!) I found a piano in a dance studio and played in the middle of the night, I went for sunset-moonrise walks. I found a bird’s nest made of pine needle mulch and strips of crepe myrtle bark.

I found an inch-high ceramic ghost that some pay-it-forward soul left on a trash can for me to find — a handful of these friendly spirits turned up around campus and all I can say is: THANK YOU, I was not having the best day that day due to some worries at home, but finding this little ghost turned it all around. I carried that tiny guy in my pocket for the entire rest of the week.

Bird’s nest

My dorm room.

Tiny ghost.

I made new friends whom I know I will see again, and I’ve been smiling as I write this whole thing. This spring I was pin-focused on finishing up the blind school project (which I still need to post about), but Tinker marked the start of my switch to summer, to writing. I’m back at the page, and I thank Tinker Mountain and the Greater Columbus Arts Council, who generously provided funding to help make it happen.