Sunday afternoon, Maria put on sale her new and exciting fabric painting, “Raven.” It sold early Monday.
The painting sold for $450. Maria is not one of those humble or arrogant artists. She is fiercely proud of what she makes but would be much happier if she didn’t charge people a lot for her potholders, quilts, pillows, and hanging fabric paintings.
She keeps her prices very low so people can afford them and is much more fearful of overcharging than undercharging. I admire her humbleness but have often suggested she undervalues herself. It is one of the things I love about her; she wants everyone who wants her art to get it.
That’s the point for her.
This is the great artistic dilemma: creatives want more money but don’t want to do what corporations do every hour: squeeze and screw their customers to get it.
Maria has no swagger in her. Everything she sells is a minor miracle to her.
The Raven project was complicated, and while I keep an arm’s length from her work, this one got into my heart. I’m deep into Ravens, and they are shocking me, taunting and challenging me to change how I see the world and its mysticism and mystery.
The Raven was a big deal for Maria; she studied this strange bird for more than a year, looking at drawings, pictures, and photos, listening to and watching the two Ravens who had taken up residence in our maple tree outside the bedroom and to others she encountered around the farm.
If I know Maria, they will soon drop down to see her and get some food. They are known for this.
Maria’s fascination for Ravens was infectious. I caught the bug.
I have suspected for some time that they are aware of us and are talking to me. It is well-documented that they can identify and get close to human beings and get close to them.
Almost every time I go outside, I see the two sailing over my head or hear them screeching to one another in their eerie way up in the tree. I’m starting to talk back.
I’m researching the Ravens, and the the more I read, the more fascinated and interested I become. I would never have believed something like what happened just a few short years ago.
I am sure they know both of us, listen to us and keep track of us.
Whenever we looked at the sky this weekend, the Ravens flew directly overhead. I rarely see them daily, but they were always there this weekend.
I envisioned them choosing who would get the Raven hanging piece. I just felt it.
I was picturing who they would choose in a dream the other night – a woman interested in Ravens and animals and birds.
She understood their unique gifts and behaviors and had been following them for a long time.
She read Maria’s blog and mine and followed Maria Raven’s writings and mine. She hoped she would get a chance to buy the fabric painting without reservations.
Uncharacteristically, Maria and I were at odds about this; we would discuss it for a long time. I’m a practical journalist type; I don’t believe in God, the afterlife, ghosts, or birds that can enter my soul and change it.
Maria and I keep evident boundaries around our work. I have no idea what she is making, who is buying it, or where it goes. She has no idea what I am writing unless I ask her to look at it.
Maria feels very strongly about her independence and space, and so do I. We each respect that in the other.
But she got the Ravens into my head a year ago. My interest feels spiritual and profound. I believe the Ravens and I have important business to do together. This is new and strange ground for me – unprecedented.
I grew up in New England in an odd Jewish/Calvinist family; we didn’t go in for talking to dead people or birds. I still don’t.
But the Ravens have gotten themselves into my head. Her Raven piece affected me greatly when I saw it last week.
I would have bought it in a second; I didn’t care how big or small it was or what it cost. I told her I was the kind of person who would want to buy it. Not everyone would. Determination is a Raven symbol.
Maria thought a lot about what to charge for her hanging piece. $450 is a lot of money for her but not much for many fiber artists and quilters to charge for the work and time she put into it.
What is a year’s work worth and a hundred treks through the woods?
Maria is most comfortable charging on the low side; she doesn’t want to exclude anyone and secretly believes ruin and rejection are just around the corner if she gets arrogant and forgets her strong bonds with her readers and followers.
The response to her posting the Raven piece on Etsy differed significantly from her usual experience; she was confused by it. Most often, her work never gets to Etsy; people buy it when they see what she is working on on her blog and pay her directly.
Maria has sold just about everything she has made almost instantly for the past couple of years. We are creatives; we don’t have much money or expect to get much money. In return, we get the life we want, a fair deal.
As writers and artists, we are used to that. But sales and donations matter.
Maria got messages from several people – four or five – instantly who said they were very interested in buying the Raven piece once she said she was finishing it; several people said they were sure they wanted to buy it, and some wanted to know more, like length, cost, and family opinion. For many people, $450 is a big deal.
It got confusing. Maria wasn’t sure whether to hold the piece or wait and see.
Within an hour or so, all of them messaged that they could not buy the piece for one reason or another. Maria never faults anybody for changing their mind about purchasing something from her; she is very understanding in that way, and she would never complain about them or get angry.
Life happens, and she knows that as well as anyone. People with little money have rights, too.
I didn’t fault them either; I have no idea who they are or their concerns and interests. It is none of my business. But the Raven was in my head. The piece was my business. I wanted it. I have only once asked to buy something Maria made; she said no. She would give it to me and did.
Maria had been sure one of these people would buy it. I was not so sure. It came into my head that the Ravens had particular ideas about who would buy it. It would be someone very certain about wanting it. Ravens go after what they want.
For some reason, I believed the Ravens were talking to me. Perhaps I was finally going over the edge. I’ve been crazy for much of my life, and this is not something I do or think about doing or believe can happen. I am a bit of a mystic. Amazing things can happen when I am open to them.
The Ravens had sent me a message, not in words but in feeling. In intuition and spiritually. I am sure of that.
They would ultimately decide who got the hanging piece, not Maria or anyone else, certainly not me.
The image they projected to me – I saw them flying over me at least a half-dozen times, and so did Maria – was of the woman I pictured buying the piece – clear, specific, and without concern or reservations.
This morning, the piece remained unsold on Etsy for five or six hours, not a long time for most artists selling things on Etsy, but a long time for Maria. She wondered if anyone would like it – this piece is unusual – as she tends to do with much of her work after making it.
I could tell she was getting rattled. She has invested enormous time, energy, and emotion in this piece; any artist would wonder if anyone would notice.
This all mirrored what I have been reading about Ravens and increasingly feeling about them. They were somehow involved. This up-and-down confusion was very much a Raven thing. So was the idea of the woman who knew she wanted it.
They are focused and challenging birds. They know things that surprise the people who study them. They have powers and insights beyond human imagination.
They know what they want and can be ruthless about getting it. They will steal, lie, confound their enemies, and work together or alone to get what they want. They are intelligent, loyal when possible, and eager to meet and know humans, or at least those they like.
They hate and punish dishonesty and hold long grudges when mistreated.
Today, after we put Minnie down, I took Maria to lunch (we saw the Ravens flying above on the way and when we got to the hot dog stand), and I did something I have never done.
I urged her not to sell the hanging piece or hang it on our living room wall. What a gift for meditation, I said. I offered to buy it myself, and she said that was ridiculous.
I had a powerful and strange feeling in my head and chest; this was important, I thought. I’d love to look at this piece when I meditate or seek inspiration.
Maria said she had been thinking the same thing. During our retreat weekend, she kept looking at the wall and thinking it would be wonderful to look at it.
Before we finished eating, she said she would take the Raven piece off of her Etsy Page. I was surprised. She wants her art out in the world, not hanging in our house.
As I looked up from the bench we were sitting on, I heard a Raven call loud and clear and looked up to see two Ravens again flying over us. Maria and I looked at one another.
At the same time, I had this sudden feeling telling me the piece had sold while we were eating. The Ravens were getting loud.
I grabbed my Iphone and went to Maria’s Etsy page. The piece was gone, sold. “It’s sold, “I said. “No,” she said, doubting this, “it’s not.” Then she went to her Etsy page. “It is sold,” she said.
What are you going to do? I asked. “Sell it, of course,” she said, reading the buyer’s e-mail. “And she seems so nice; this makes me very happy. It’s perfect.”
She was pleased, also relieved, I thought. She even said something rarely heard in the farmhouse: “You were right! It did sell!”
She said she would much rather sell her art and send it to the world. She likes to move on. She read the e-mail of the buyer to me. I got a chill. It was almost precisely the woman I imagined in my dream/vision that the Ravens wanted to see buy the fiber painting.
She was well-informed and clear as a bell. She wanted it, period. No drama.
The woman said she was a Raven follower who lived in nature and thought a lot about them. She said she had followed Maria’s blog work for months and the Raven project’s evolution. She read on my blog that it was finished. She hoped to get a chance to buy the piece. And she did.
She had already purchased it when she e-mailed Maria to say how happy she was to have it. Her message seemed solid and focused, like the Ravens themselves, businesslike and direct.
I was disappointed not to get the hanging piece into the house, but selling it felt right for both of us. I was happy for Maria and proud of her once again.
We saw two more Ravens as we drove to the farmhouse. They made a lot of noise and settled in our big Maple tree as we buried Minnie, our barn cat. We heard them calling loudly up in the maple tree. I answered them in what I thought was a raven voice (and thought how ridiculous I must look and sound.)
They kept answering me back.
Last week, while researching these mystical birds, I read a National Geographic piece that said this about Ravens:
“Recently, experiments testing the problem-solving capabilities of ravens have shown these birds have cognition on par with people and some other great apes. Ravens hold long grudges against cheaters and liars in their world.
For instance, a trademark of being human is the flexibility to plan for future events, such as saving for retirement or figuring out a meal for the following day. Scientists previously believed these behaviors were unique to hominids—humans and great apes—because no other animals, including monkeys, were thought to have such abstract thinking skills.”
Ravens, said the magazine, are now believed to have these skills.
In many cultures, wrote one researcher on a science website, the Raven is seen as a messenger connecting the realms of the physical and the spiritual. People have been drawn to the Raven as a spirit animal, especially if they value communication, intuition, and transformation.
Gulp. I am a firm believer in connecting the physical and the spiritual.
I have to admit that my head is spinning. I was correct in thinking that a certain kind of person would get the Raven piece.It was meant for some people to have it and others not to want it, and I believe I was also right in thinking that the Ravens connected the work with a person who ought to have it and truly enjoyed it: the physical and the spiritual.
That thought does not equate to or connect with anything I have been taught or believed in my 76 years. I will be thinking about this. Maria and I will be talking about it.
It took a Raven to get us to think differently, although that is still in progress for both of us.
I am learning as I grow older that there are so many things in the world that I don’t understand and that human beings don’t seem to want to know, especially about nature and the animal world. I know nothing when I of all the things there are in the world to know. The Ravens are going to help open me up.
I have learned in my spiritual work that when I open myself to it, miraculous things come to me and my life.
I know now that the Ravens are trying to teach me something, and I can’t wait to see what they want me to learn.
There is no age limit to growing and learning.
I’m happy for the good woman who will soon have Maria’s Raven hanging on her wall. It was meant to be.
