I’ve had a lifelong passion for prints and patterns. I’ve designed them, worn them, mixed them, and occasionally combined so many in one outfit that someone else might have needed to sit down.
I began making clothes using store-bought patterns. Eventually, I drew directly onto fabric with a pencil, ruler, and French curve. Reproducing the results was another matter.
Prints became an enormous part of my fashion work. They also played an unexpected role in my love life. I met Gary in Paris while waiting to visit a print studio.
I went looking for prints. I found a life partner. Well, not immediately. But that’s another story.
And then there are the patterns I’ve spent decades discovering in my journals.
Reading Between the Lines
I write almost every day. I’ve filled more journals than I care to count, and I have an endearing habit of repeating myself in ink.
I approach the same longing, question, irritation, or delight from a thousand angles, exploring every nuance until I recognize its essence.
I call that insistent little voice in my head my repetitive little beast. She has stamina. I suspect we all have one. Mine happens to leave a paper trail.
What I print on the page shows patterns in my life. Joy, discontent, love. The things that deserve my attention, and those I might be ready to leave behind.
I write the lines so I can read between them.
For more than a decade before I met Gary, I wrote about the romantic love I knew life had in store for me. Poems, declarations, endless variations on the same desire. I love, I love, I love. Now, where the hell is that man?
When Gary appeared, I didn’t recognize him as that love. But I knew he’d be significant in my life. He says he felt the same about me.
I hadn’t known what that love would look like. But I knew how I wanted it to feel.
Patterns in Print and in Life
Something similar happened with Mundancing. I’d written about starting a blog since at least 2007. The idea kept returning, wearing different outfits.
Then, in 2020, Gary and I moved to San Luis Obispo. I loved the ease of our days, the gentle community, the pleasure of being out in the world together. One day, I wrote that we’d been mundancing.
At first, I wasn’t quite sure what the word meant. I knew what it felt like. As I continued writing, its meaning poured onto the page. The word kept appearing in my journal, again and again. Soon, I was using it in conversation, too.
A couple of years later, sitting beside a lake in Montreal, I felt the familiar poke of my repetitive little beast. Now. Now. Now.
It was time to begin the blog. What would I call it? Oh, but of course. Mundancing.
Some things keep returning, knocking again and again, until I create them or open the door wide enough for them to walk in.
Oh, there you are. I’ve been expecting you.