Breath and Weave It

I answer phones for a tele-health company. I’m not trained to handle the human emotions on the other end of the phone. I’m trained to put them in touch with someone who is. But usually, I’m the first port of call for someone taking that vulnerable step towards another. The days can be big. Let me rephrase that. The days are always big. Cancer patients, Husbands whose wives won’t touch them, individuals unsure of how to answer when asked ‘Do you feel at you risk of harming yourself”. Even in the gentlest of calls, each moment begs for your full presence. Each moment counts. And so, by the time I finish the day, I’m tired of moments counting. And counting moments. I just want to nestle into myself. Fall into ease.

I began this role about a month before Sydney encountered her second lockdown. Before the Delta variant spread through her divine inner city tentacles. When people were finally relaxed enough to return to their comforting woes and complaints surrounding their jobs, their home lives, and their inner turmoils. When enough people, enough of the time simply didn’t think of Covid constantly.

When I was offered the job, I had just pulled into the driveway of my new home on the edge of a quaint beach-town. My partner and I moved here in an effort to build a life we actually wanted. Not one built on habits and inherit norms. We craved simplicity. I said yes. I could be free by Monday. It was a 2.5 hour commute into the city each way, but I’d be working with people in a manner that felt different. Intriguing. Perhaps more useful than my usual retail and bar tendencies.

Two and a half hours of sitting on a train and watching the world go by. To the introvert, its a delicious concept. To the rest, a mind-numbing experiement. To both, it's never what you predict it to be. I hoped for time spent in books and gazing out at an ever changing scenery. And that it was. But it was also sore backs. Fingers itching for a screen. Triggered by a coach-full of blue lit faces.

And you well know the temptation. There is no faster way to mush your brain into action than that fine black screen. A stream of tantalising, teasing, disorienting information. I won’t talk ill of it here. Our screens provoke enough shame already, and in turn we hide away in dimly lit corners with the things. But one hazy morning, my screen presented me with an embroidery kit. I’d charged it to PayPal with a swift password before I’d finished my coffee. A decadence, I thought. And when it arrived some 24 hours later, something switched in me.

I opened the box. Read about 20% of the already bare instructions and begun working with these new toys before I learned the language for them. Wrapping cloth around hoops. Threading ‘rope’ through ‘needles’. Leading this with that. The first piercing of the cloth was both felt and heard, and then felt again. I pulled the needle and thread away from its base - the very sound reverberating soothingly throughout me. The soft hum of fabric on fabric. Again, I thought. Do it again. I did. Stitch by stitch. Moment to moment. Following a printed line. Following a quiet mind. A room turned quiet. A heart swelling a little.

When I meditate, I usually have this intention of losing identity. Melting into a space that is not married to a sense of self, time or place. A space of just being. And it’s an effort. I try at it. But embroidery had me with ease. I made time for it. Like an affair I snuck about with. Before breakfast. On my lunch break. On the train. A few stitches in bed. I had become this weird embroidery fiend and I leaned in whole-heartedly. Cushion covers, caps, and jeans where suddenly playgrounds. Any bare fabric, an imaginative date.

Art for me has always been meticulously planned. Even in my most improvised moments. The work had been planned. Embroidery somehow alluded that beast for me. My hands would reach for a needle, a thread of hue, and just - move. Heart in action. And so the love letter of weaving threads and fabrics is one that is difficult to deduce in language. But in that way, perhaps her most comforting quality. Much like our lives that can feel too complex for language, but are still somehow thread, intertwined, and weaved together. Effortlessly. Inexplicably. You to me. Him to her. Past to Present. Our realities and beyond. Perhaps that is the point of our precious hobbies. To make space for all that cannot be spoken. To make space for whatever has not yet had space to be.