Layers

 

In that time between sleeping and waking, I lay suspended for a while this morning.  Not quite awake, but my brain had begun to tease at thoughts that have been in the back of my mind for a while.

Layers.  Layers of knowledge.  Layers of memory.  Teasing out connections.  Threads from one to the next.

I thought about how long and convoluted my journey through this life has been.  How my memories of thread go back, long before I should have proper memories.  So are they just dreams then?  My mother insisted that things I 'remembered' I couldn't possibly.  I was far too young when they happened for me to have 'proper' memories of them.  I must just be remembering stories I'd overheard.

But that's the thing.  If I only know the story, it is something I heard.  If I have the visual, the tactile, it feels like a 'proper' memory.

But is it a memory of this lifetime?  Or something...else?  

I am a firm believer that there is a textile gene  - of sorts.  That people who worked with thread survived better than people who didn't.

Archeologists are now saying that there is evidence of working with thread going back 40,000 years.  I figure it goes back even further.  You don't make fine, smooth, strong linen twine the first time you set out to do it.  But textiles disintegrate back into dust, so hard evidence is scarce.  We can infer it from imprints left in pottery, or carvings on sculptures (the so-called Venus figurines).  If some people braided their hair, they probably also braided beards.  If they were braiding hair, they were probably also spinning fibres.

'Modern' people pretend our ancient ancestors were somehow inferior in intellect, assuming that 'modern' technology makes us superior to our ancestors.  Ancient artifacts showing great skill in their making are 'proof' that we have been visited by 'aliens' because our ancient ancestors were too 'primitive' to achieve such excellence in metalwork, glass, and - if they still existed - textiles.

But textiles do exist.  Last night we watched a program on Egypt and one of the things they showed were textiles made 3500 years ago - give or take.  Fine linen, woven garments.  Paintings on tomb walls show gauze dresses and shirts and looms that were staked out on the ground that such textiles were woven on.  It wasn't our ancestors who were 'primitive'.  Their tools might have been sticks and string but they made amazing things with them.  It is not the tools but what we do with them.

So I think about my own personal journey.  I follow the steps back through time.  I remember so many things that steered me towards this day, this life.  I remember my mother teaching me how to sew my own clothing (age 12).  Embroidery.  (age 8?  9?)  Knitting. (age 5?  6?)  Also rug hooking.  For much of my childhood there was a canvas and bits of yarn cut to length to be knotted into the canvas with a latchet hook.  My little fingers fumbling, my mother patiently showing me again and again how to hold the tools, make them work.

But I also have another memory.  I think it comes from the time I was lodged with my father's brother and sister-in-law while my parents built our house.  I remember a string mop set on it's handle on the floor and me on my cousin's lap as she showed me how to braid the strings of the mop.  Over and under, over and under.  Again, fumble fingers, a voice patiently coaching me, her hands helping mine to make the braid.  My aunt pooh-poohing her effort because I was too young and she had better unbraid all those strings or else.

This is not a story I remember.  I remember the warmth of her lap.  Her hands.  The feel of the string as we worked to make the three strand braid.

And now, nearly 70 years later, I go into my studio, my happy place.  And I still play with string.