Stitch Therapy.

This hand-sewn book by artist Emma Parker stopped me in my tracks this morning. Its embroidered pages depict some of the more difficult emotions we experience in childhood: rejected, corrected, excluded. Its photos, transferred to cloth, are faded and grainy; its haphazard red threading brings to mind the ink of a teacher's pen.

Says Emma of her tools of choice: "I work frequently with thread and cloth as I love the metaphors they offer. Textile-related words and phrases such as 'unraveling,' 'knitted brows,' 'patch up,' 'hanging on by a thread' and 'repair' come to mind when describing aspects of the human psyche." She writes, "Art making is a ritual, maybe a little 'magic' even...[through art] I feel that there is the potential to change poison into medicine."

Find more of Emma Parker's work on her website and blog, Stitch Therapy.

See also: Daré all a Lucé, a series featuring vintage photos poked full of holes to disarmingly magical effect. It's one of my all-time favorites.

Recommended Reading / 33.

Every Monday, words to start the week. 

This week, from The New Yorker: a portrait of Chloé Roubert, a full-time, self-proclaimed "pigeon scholar." At 31, she's learned much about the species that she's eager to share — that they have excellent eyesight, for example. That they can be entered into pigeon-specific beauty pageants. And that "like many New Yorkers, [they] are bagel-eaters, immigrants, and scavengers, and are put off by new high-rises that are inhospitably spiffy." Find the essay, written by Betsy Morais, here.

Four more, just because:
-This sign language interpretation of Eminem's "Lose Yourself" is amazing.
-You, too, can be a cloud reporter. (Thanks, Tina.)
-Loved learning that the design of the Rubik's Cube was inspired by water. Says its inventor: "In the mid-1970s, I was teaching design at the Academy of Applied Arts in Budapest. I was searching for a way to demonstrate 3D movement to my students and one day found myself staring into the River Danube, looking at how the water moved around the pebbles. This became the inspiration for the cube's twisting mechanism. The fact that it can do this without falling apart is part of its magic."
-And lastly, from Miles: "Do not fear mistakes. There are none."

More recommended reading, here. Have a happy Monday! Photos by Julia Robbs.

POV: Steps.

POV ("point of view") is a series that addresses many of the same themes covered in my Equals Record column: growing up, saying yes to adventure, learning to embrace a quarter-life crisis. While my previous column focused largely on ideas, POV focuses on moments - glimpses, glances, tiny stories.  

I took a friend’s baby daughter to the park earlier this spring, on a morning too cold for bare legs. I covered mine with a sweater and spent an hour drawing chalk rainbows and winged horses at the eye level of an 18-month-old.

Though she’s not yet talking, we communicated fine: when I said the word “swing,” she pointed; when I mentioned a helicopter, she knew to look to the sky. Then, there was a rustling in the bushes beside us — a gentle pecking, the flitting of paper-thin wings. Bah, said the baby — the beginnings of bird.

Non-Career Advice: Chris Prioleau.

Non-Career Advice is a series that asks people - young, old, and in a range of occupations - for words of wisdom unrelated to work, career-building, dollars, or getting ahead.

Chris Prioleau / Writer 

Also: Critical thinker / avid chill-er / amateur clairsentient  

Age: 28

Change happens — let it. "At the end of Outkast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, there’s a stripped-down song called “A Day in the Life of Benjamin André.” It tells André 3000's story — how his life has taken him in so many different directions and how he’s changed along the way, and there’s a parable he sets up at the end that means a lot to me. He talks about being given an old car as a teenager and giving it all his time, because it’s all he thinks about — and then the following summer, he’s not interested anymore. He wants something else.

To me, that’s a reminder of how much we change — and that what’s important to us changes, too. I remember years ago, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted. I knew what city I wanted to be in, what school I wanted to go to, what kind of writer I wanted to be. Years later, I got to a point where I’d completed those goals and I'd become that person  — but what was truly important to me by then had nothing to do with any of those things. As 3000 says in the song, my wants and needs grew.

Just like you encounter all sorts of different people in life, you’re going to encounter all sorts of different selves. That’s scary, but it’s exciting, too. There’s another rap song that I could reference now, by 2 Chainz. The chorus says: “Live long enough / it’ll happen to you.” I like that — nothing about you is permanent. So many things, good and bad, are going to surprise you. That’s a wonderful thing."

--

Thank you so much, Chris. More from the Non-Career Advice series, here. 

Recommended Reading / 32.

Every Monday (or in this case, Tuesday), words to start the week. 

This week: striking self-portraits from a series Polish photographer Karolina Jonderko calls Self-portrait with my Mother. Each image shows the artist dressed in secondhand clothing that once belonged to her mother, who died in 2008. "Some say that what one wears is a part of creating one's identity," she says. "My mother, all her life, wore clothes that she hadn't chosen."

Each outfit, put together based solely on Karolina's memory, is accompanied by stunning snippets of remembrance. Of the azure dress pictured at top left, she writes: The departure day. Crowd on the platform. I am clasping my mum's and sister's hands. Suddenly I am rising. It's my mum passing me to my dad through the compartment's window. I am followed by two suitcases. My mum and sister somehow join us. It's crowded and stuffy and like that for the next 14 hours. However, 2 weeks of seaside holidays are a worthwhile prize. Mum has prepared sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes and tea in a 'Wyborowa' vodka bottle; we have 'Happy Minutes' (a children's puzzle magazine in communist Poland). She loves the sea. She travels lost in her thoughts. I think she can already smell the sea and hear the waves and screeching seagulls. Her blue dress may be made from cheap material, but it doesn't crease and dries in 2 minutes — perfect for such journeys.

Read more, here.

A few more, just because:
-"Equality, that's all we're voting for."
-Gems from poet-turned-art-critic John Ashbery.
-Ceviche, rarebit, and other breakfasts from around the world.
-Beautiful words from Russian composer Stravinsky: "I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it."

More recommended reading, here. Have a wonderful Tuesday.