handstories

Can I hear me now?

 

    There was probably more time spent on the phone this week than in the last six months put together.  Several calls with friends and family.  Mostly ok to good.  Verbal skills are definitely going downhill with all of this isolation.

    The words that were exchanged are blurred together, much of the information forgotten, only the gist of feelings exchanged remain.  Details that used to matter so much now slip like silk.

    I feel like myself with cloth, and safe.  Possibilities fill the spaces of not knowing, instead of anxiety and imagined incriminations.  When it doesn't work, it's ok.  There's a knowing that things can change, be layered on, or be chalked up to being an experiment or experience, not a waste.  It's all time with cloth.

    It's swell to be in this relationship with cloth.  I'm still work at getting to this kind of kindredness and kindness with myself.

    I am getting better at listening.

Michael Orlandus Darrion Brown (1996-2014)

    A few weeks ago, I volunteered do more stitching for the Social Justice Sewing Academy, this time for their remembrance projects for victims of violence and their families.  When I signed up, the projects were just being formed, I really thought I was signing up to work on a lap quilt of a victim's clothing for their family.  Something cozy and comforting, but said I was willing to do whatever I could within my skill set.

    On Saturday a request to make a square in honor of Michael Brown came.  Michael was shot to death by a police officer in Ferguson, MO, he was just eighteen.  Upon reading the email, I was overcome, overwhelmed, and sure that I couldn't do it.  Also, on instagram, I had seen the first finished square for this project.  It was beautiful and expertly created- a photograph in cloth.  I really couldn't do that.  I replied that while I felt humble and grateful for the opportunity to participate, I was not sure I had the skills required to do Michael or the project justice.

    While waiting for the reply (which was lovely and encouraging), I began reading everything I could find about Michael.  At first, I was done in by stories of the shooting, but then found this NYT article and a few others that shared more about Michael's story. 

    What I kept coming back to is that he was just a kid.  Born two years before Blue.  Like Blue, Michael was born in May, was 6' 4", loved video games, music and hanging out with friends.  He had just graduated from high school, with plans to start college in a few weeks. 

    Earlier that summer he had called his dad and stepmom in the middle of the night to describe the after-storm clouds that he was looking at.  He said that he saw an angel in them, being chased by Satan and running into the face of God.  "Now I believe." he told them.

    So, with a mama's heart, I've started a square for Michael, and will try to hold all of this.

    Michael Brown was just a kid, who had hopes and an openness to wonders in this world.

 

deeper in

    Making my own woods.  The first tree.

    “Embodied knowledge . . . how do we cultivate that? And how do we trust it? I think that’s a big thing. How do we listen to it?

     . . . So, you have to kind of cultivate the space around you, where you can trust the thing that you can’t name.  

    . . . And so, how do you kind of cultivate a space that allows you to dwell in that not knowing, really? That is actually really smart, and can become really articulate? But, you know, like the thread has to come out, and it comes out at its own pace."

    -Ann Hamilton from her "Making and the Spaces We Share" interview with Krista Tippet's at On Being.