Collage 667

Trish Crapo
from page 589-590, volume 2 of original text
collage, magazine images, rice paper, hand-made paper, journal entries
made 10/25/11
Pevear/Volokhonsky translation page 1081-1083

"She did not know it, she would not have believed it, but under the seemingly impenetrable layer of silt that covered her soul, thin, tender young needles of grass were already breaking through..."

For this collage about the shifting of Natasha's grief I tore up journal entries I'd written and scribbled over back in 2008 after the deaths of my mother and my sister, three months apart. Sometimes the things we write in the spur of the moment grow, like these needles of grass Tolstoy conjures, into something else -- a poem or a story. Other times the writing itself is a process that helps us cope and we don't need to preserve it intact any more. Here, I liked the idea that my old journal entries could be compost for the thriving green shoots of Natasha's soul.  ~Trish