Gala day in the Park.....

Trading Cardboard Stories for Stranger's Stories....
Good Stuff!

And this is what was in the bottom of the tube....

Friday Night's Sharing....

For three hours, we camped out on the sidewalk....sharing our little Hippie World with a street full of strangers...
It was another night in the Artisan Alley....
The laughter and stories of passers-by becoming the spirit filled music of the night...

And when we got home, and emptied the Cardboard Story Box Tube....these little trinkets were left for the stories we shared....

A random stack of this weeks cardboard meanderings...

The night my Mascara ran....

Friday night ticket stubs and stories

It was almost nine o'clock.  We had most of the tables packed up for the night...and Ray was trucking it all out into the steamy street....another Friday night of storms and stories...

And then I saw them, in the almost empty garage....The woman with the dark, deep, eyes and the young girl with the quiet smile.  They headed straight for the only table we still had standing...the table with the cardboard story box.  The woman tilted her head, carefully read the instructions, and in a soft voice asked..."Is this for real?"

I smiled....and answered...  "Yes, take your time, and if your find the one meant for you, take your sign".....

I didn't watch them.  We know now that flipping through the signs, reacting, choosing....even walking away, should be private.  But I felt them, as they came closer to me.  The woman asked hesitantly, if I wanted to see the sign she had chosen....and
I smiled, and tipped my head again....

She was holding the cardboard tight to her chest, and she slowly turned it to me, and whispered "Thank you".......
"I'm a widow, now".....
"This means the world to me...."

And then she folded the little sign back, close to her heart, and walked away.....

I can't imagine what prompted me...to even paint that sign, with the drippy words,  the big brown eyes dusted with lashes, and the little crescent moon...
but I may never forget the words...
"My Mascara ran away with the Moon"......

Love Grows.....

In a Sea of Cardboard...

Singleton Hippie Art Linocut on Cardboard

I held on until my fingers ached,
until I thought letting go and giving in would be so much easier than holding on....
The Shutters flew open...
and rocketed up, up, and away...
wooden signs skim-boarding down the new river....
tables flipped over,
glass broke...
I heard voices...
in the distance,
and right beside me...

And then it was over....

We were drenched,
and bumped and bruised,
but OK.

Our neighbor was wadded up in a pick-up-stick pile of metal tenting....
Another was blanketed under the heavy canvas....

The Microburst had made her point.

On this Friday night,
these Old Hippies needed to go home,
peel out of our clothes,
enjoy a cold beer
and
save sharing cardboard stories for another night....

Today, in the raw sunshine,
We hand pulled a linocut print of a sweet mermaid....
on a stack of hand-me-down cardboard....

We already swam in her sea...............................

There's no such thing as an Empty Box....

Daybreak.  And Ray flies over the little bridge, pedaling through the morning sounds, following the Sunrise to home....And the boxes spill from the rickety little bicycle basket onto the deck...

This morning's finds....




I'll strip the sides off and wait for him to come home again to start painting....in tandem...the next little batch of  random cardboard stories.

And tonight,
When we get to Artisan Alley,
we'll fill the little pink box with a rainbow of words....And see which ones have wings....
Which ones reach out....to someone...
And
for a tiny second...
make a difference.

We'll watch for laughter, secret smiles, slow trains of thought....
And
we'll embrace the reactions of the strangers
that,
for just a moment,
we've known forever......

Our First Night Out...

This is before we had the Pink Box.....the wind would rattle it's fanny to the sound of the Drums and signs would blow everywhere....Funny, but looking back....this was the coolest.  Folks sat on the concrete drive-way plundering through the stacks of signs....spreading them out like graffiti fans on the sidewalk....

We had a lot of explaining to do.  People reached down the tube.  Stared at it.  Read it and stared again.  And then we told them what to do....

"Find a sign you think is cool, grab it...and drop whatever you like down the tube"  "It doesn't have to be money.  Just talk to us the way the sign speaks to you" 

That first night at the Moon Circle, we drove an hour home before we climbed out of the truck and emptied the tube....

We don't drive as far most nights, now...

But the heart thrill is still the same.  We tip the tube over...and smile.  There are love letters and trinkets.  Worry stones and change.  A rock  brought back from a hundred mile hike is carefully wrapped in tissue.  A handmade pyramid.... dollar bills with love notes scribbled on them. 

We wonder if the people our signs touch,
know how much they've touched us....