I started to lose myself, became even almost unaware of the drawing or the act of it. I saw the bird and the lines, the bird and the lines, began to fall into the bird, becoming it, feeling its existence, tracing that existence onto the paper, so that it was as if the pencil, the crow, the paper and myself were all parts of one thing. The crow sat very still, and it went on and on until there was no more to draw. And then I relaxed suddenly, realized I was exhausted.

Now I started with the needle and the black thread on the blue burlap, and I slowly stitched the outline, seeing the shape of the great black bird, moving carefully around it, knowing the curves and the points, and the thread, the material, myself and the needle also were part of one thing. And when the outline was done, I moved inside to the body of it, disregarding the details of eyes and feathers and shading, filling it in dead black, small, slow, painstaking stitches, seeing only the blackness, turning into it, becoming it, and I was the blackness and the blackness was everywhere and everything, nothing existed outside of it. Until finally, when it had stretched to the limits of the outline and I saw it was finished, the blackness diminished, dwindled until it filled merely the outline of the crow on the blue burlap, and I realized the strain that was in my eyes, the pain in my fingers, cramped for so long. I had to sleep, and it was so late I was seeing the dawn as I lay down, memory of the blackness still in my mind as I went to sleep, without dreams, a deep, heavy, black sleep.

The next day I hemmed the edges under and made a frame with pieces of kindling, tying the corners with string, and tacked the burlap to the frame. I hung it in the bedroom, beside the window where the stitching crow could be seen beside the willow, as the original had been in it.

Now there are many of these works on my walls. Some are drawings, some are needlework, and each one, when I look closely, calls up that same mysterious intensity of concentration, the same sense of being what I see. There are flowers and insects and birds, some of them detailed with shadings, unlike the pure black crow, for now it is possible to feel the unity with subtleties of colour. I see each of them; I am each of them. What is on these walls is my experience here; they are what has happened to me. I know that anyone coming in would not see that, but they were not done for the outside.

I had thought, before it came, that in winter I would grow plump, insulated within my body as well as within the cabin. It did not happen.