Reflection: Stitching Meditation

It is from fiber that all living organisms are built—

the tissues of plants, and ourselves. Our nerves, 
our genetic code, the canals of our veins, our muscles. 
We are fibrous structures.

—Magdalena Abakanowicz

Stitching: it’s a rhythmic, repetitive process. Like taking steps. Like breathing.

Stitches are collective. One stitch out of context is merely a mark. Stitches together can form a line, or fill a space. They can tell a story.

Frequently, a pattern of stitches viewed from the back (the “wrong side”) tells a different story than the front view.

Stitching shows up in my art process a lot. 


It can provide a focal point…

…or enhance an evolving image…

…or it can be the line I use to create a drawing on fabric, by walking the path of the image one threaded mark at a time.

  

But sometimes I stitch just to be stitching, for the pleasure of it, with no end product in mind. I find it soothing.

Stitching meditation creates space. I can’t rush it. It helps me remember what it means to notice. What is true? I only know this moment of pulling this needle through this fabric. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Reflection: Leave the Roots On

.... Lie down, wounded

angel. I love you. I know there is

no tender palpable miracle happiness.

— Mary Adams, Epistles from the Planet Photosynthesis

Every once in a while, I become reacquainted with old notebooks.

My life is flush with them: sketchbooks and art journals, commonplace books of other people’s poetry, binders of old poems and nonfiction and school papers. scrawled journals chronicling nearly every developmental phase—the identity crisis we call “adolescence,” a bleak period of young adult depression, the secondary identity crisis known as graduate school.

There used to be journals from elementary and middle school, too, but I destroyed them years ago in a fit of 15-year-old embarrassment. I know better than to destroy old journals now, although I have sometimes been tempted to reach for a wide-tipped Sharpie to obliterate passages that make me cringe.

Sometimes, in retrospective reading, I admire my past selves. I cheer them on. I write them imaginary love letters detailing their unknown strengths. I wade through the murk of dilemmas from six years ago, or 16 years ago, and I feel deep compassion for that past-me who was so much braver and smarter and more creative than she realized.

And sometimes I wince at what I wrote, wishing I could do a bit of time-traveling to nudge my past-self in a better direction.

It is a blessing, these riches of so many years of introspection. It's a gift of instant perspective. It reminds me that if my here-and-now 34-year-old self can be so compassionate toward my past selves, there will also come a time when a more experienced me will offer compassion-in-retrospect to the self of my here-and-now. (Notice all the hyphenation. It’s a complex interrelationship that requires the mediation of hyphens. I am now the same self I always was and always will be… and yet, from another perspective, I’m not.)

The only thing that doesn’t change is the urge to document what’s happening. There’s not really a specific motivation. It’s not just about keeping a record for myself, with an awareness of how helpful it is to touch base with all of the old myselves. It’s not just a means of expression for difficult or confusing or overwhelming feelings. It’s not just because I would like someday to share some of these journals with my children, or to revisit them in difficult parenting times as a way to remember what’s hard about being four or 14. It’s not just because I want to leave as many marks on this earth as possible in my time here.

It’s also just because I am compelled to do it.

Many thanks to the Notebook Stories blog for featuring this post!

rationale.

There's nothing rational about it, this urge to be seen and heard. But in the logic of intuitive reaching, the clear call of what my heart needs to thrive, it's simple. So here it is.

I've always been a writer, in a far deeper way than I have always been an artist. Words were my first love, my first glimpse of power, my first understanding of how to shape an idea or an image. The containers for my writing have changed many times over the past thirty years. I've kept handwritten journals in bound books, lined and unlined, and in spiral notebooks. I've experimented with online journals and social networking and instant messaging. I've written literary email to close friends, sometimes epic in length, sometimes more like Imagist poetry.

And this is something different, at the same time that it is utterly the same thing.

Intention: To enjoy what is, and let go of the attachment to definitions.