wooden:  little figures, carved and polished, faces, forms, blends of beasts and humans, goats, snails, outlaws, kings, some creatures that nature never saw, some paths of evolution nature was never brave enough to take.  every day it seems it would find some of them rearranged, like they were pieces on some chessboard as big as the house (bay windows, light) without squares or rules except whims of inclination.  different shades of shavings of wood on the floor moved as they walked, as a door opened and moved the air.  she explained to him soon after he started living with her, that the art at which she excelled had little to do with the carved figures, with knives and the smell of wood.  it was moods, states of mind, that she shaped and carved and cultivated in herself.  not that the wooden figures were meant to express anything, the only connection between the inward and outward work was association, symbol, and only for herself.  she was, and I slowly learned to become, a conoissure of moods, tiny shades of difference in consciousness, how it filtered and tinted the light that fell down through into known experience and sense.  the difference was that she had a carved record of these things, she could choose between them, hold them in her hand.