Different Slant

 

When I began weaving this combination, I wasn't confident that it was a good colour choice.  

The warp is a turquoise and cyan, threaded randomly, the weft a kind of periwinkle.  The day I started weaving was grey and dreary and dull, and the colours also looked dull.

But intellectually, they *ought* to 'work', so I carried on, given the dreariness of the day.

As I wove, the colours began to meld more, the periwinkle began to show more lavender and by the end of the first towel, I felt that after wet finishing they would be fine.  OK, if not fine, then 'ok'.  And I have lots of warp on the loom and lots of yarn to use up so even if they weren't 'great', I could settle for 'ok'.

My ipad takes pretty good pictures, but sometimes it has trouble 'seeing' colours accurately and this was as close as I could come.  

The 'right' side of the cloth will likely be the other face with the turquoise/cyan being the main colour, the periwinkle will be the design line that undulates across it.  Or maybe not.  Perhaps it will be this side.

Mostly in these warps I've been using the warp emphasis side as the main colour, but at least one has been turned so that the weft is the dominant colour.  

It depends.

And sometimes you just have to get up off the loom bench, shine the light from a different direction and gain a different perspective, in order to be able to see.

A whole lot like life, honestly.

We all live in a bubble of our reality.  We assume everyone else lives in the same bubble.  But they don't.

As a child I read, copiously.  As a young adult I took a running leap and got myself to Sweden, had 'adventures', experienced a different culture - several of them, in fact.  I paid attention to the news of the day, knew there was a war going on (yes, another decade, another war), knew that oil/gas was a finite resource, understood the detriment of dumping phosphates and DDT into the environment.  Stopped using products that damaged the ozone layer.

I assumed that we would do better once we knew better.

Seems I was wrong.

But I also live in a privileged situation, as a white woman in Canada.  I have universal health care, which means I'm still alive after a series of unfortunate adventures with my health - plus I'm not bankrupt.

I have a level of comfort I had no right to expect due to another unfortunate circumstance, but which left me financially secure to a level I never anticipated, having been a starving artist most of my life.

As a 24 year old, I understood that learning how to weave was very much a survival skill and if society goes toes up, people like me would be valued because I could make cloth to keep people warm in the cold climate we have for 6 months or so of the year.

And it still is.

But now I'm old, so I'm doing my damndest to teach others.  Just in case.  Because you never know when the next natural or man-made disaster will strike and the level of comfort we have now, here, in Canada, can rapidly disappear.

So when Public Health Officers began telling people to 'do your own risk assessment' when it came to an airborne virus, I was well versed in running the odds.  Because my reality bubble is porous, and I can see beyond my privilege and understand that bad things can, and DO, happen to 'good' people.  And I am not immune from bad things happening to me.

I have also studied history, was well aware of the Black Death(s) in Europe (not so much in other parts of the world, given Canada is pretty Euro-centric in terms of historical references) AND the influenza pandemic in 1918/19.  I truly thought that enough people were familiar with *that* pandemic that there would be little resistance to wearing a mask to reduce the spread of a deadly virus, that might not actually kill you but leave you with lingering deficits, much like polio and other of the viral diseases.

Surely people could see the danger and the very simple precautions that would protect them.

Seems I was wrong.

OTOH, I have worked hard to let people I know what needs to happen, and I am in a privileged position again to push others in my personal physical sphere to do the correct thing.  Wear a mask.

I don't know how long I can hold the line, and frankly?  I don't want to be the barrier to people 'living their best life' when that means exposing themselves to a real and still present danger.  I am tired.  It is taking all the energy I have, currently, just to keep going.

But a little voice reminds me, I need to keep teaching. After three years of cutting back, cutting back, cutting back, there is little left to cut back and what I am left with is writing.  Perhaps the occasional Zoom presentation.

I have several things on my desk I have been procrastinating about completing, but this week my focus will be to do as much as I can and get them off my desk by week end.

While I have been avoiding doing those, I have been letting the essay collection simmer on the back burner and hopefully when I come out from under the current deadlines I will be able to start plugging away at the essays.

My hope is that once I get truly started (one essay is done, the introduction needs to be re-written with a better 'slant', a better 'perspective') that the essays will roll off the ends of my fingers fairly quickly.  I have beta readers lined up.  The latest update to the ipad presented me with an app that I can use like a whiteboard and then *save* my diagrams so I can even do more of the graphics myself.

It seems the universe is nudging me towards doing this next Big Project, so I feel like I have little choice but to follow the nudges and pokes.  Whenever this has happened before it has always felt like a command, not an option.

And the essays are, indeed, all about a different slant.  A different perspective.