Words can be used to create all sorts of pictures, yet the image I see most vividly, in this moment, when I think of words, is a net.
I see the cord or thread and the knotting, simple or intricate patterns, holding ideas loosely in their arms.
More than that though, I see the gaps.
All those gaps .
So many gaps . Too
many gaps . Too
many to count .
The thought that so much meaning could slip through those gaps terrifies me. The task of weaving my own net overwhelms me.
The tighter I weave, the smaller the gaps become, but the gaps are still there, they can never be completely filled, and the beautiful intricate pattern of negative and positive space is disappearing before my eyes.
I am no longer weaving a net, but making a basket.
THE SOLID WALLS OF THE BASKET ARE ALL THAT CAN BE SEEN.
There is no room to let the air in, noroomtobreathe.
The basket has killed the net (it might have been accidental, but there’s no getting away from it).
The basket is heavy and clumsy and blind. It can only see itself.
It can’t see past itself to the world that surrounds it, the world that quietly and gently supports it; that holds the space it occupies, weaving in and out of it.
Unlike the net, it cannot capture the vastness of the landscape. The potential connections it could make. The basket sits and waits for something to come to it; to be put into it. The net flows and merges with its surroundings, it drifts and explores.
Ineedtobreathe
Instead of being scared, I need to embrace the net;
to find the freedom in it rather than only fearing the gaps.
And…
I need to accept that I am a basket weaver and embrace that…
Sit with it…
Shut out the world and explore what I am holding, when I am holding.
The net could hold a stone.
If it was strong it could hold a heap of stones,
but break down those stones into grains of sand and they shower through the net’s weave like waterfalls.
I like to make solid, simple, familiar, comforting forms.
Things you can hold on to; things that draw you to touch and hold them.
Maybe basket weaving is my antidote to the flow of waterfalls raining through the net?
I have always been instinctively drawn to solid-walled vessels.
And so I sit with it…
and see what happens.
