Consider the silence. The peace of stillness. In this empty city, things fall. I can hear the crack of a breaking beam. But above me, stars wheel where perhaps there were none before. I stand in flux, in this city. Poised on the brink of decay, of reclamation, of turning into something new. There is no silence here. And the stillness is not as complete as you might want. But the city and I, we make do.
I have been reading books by Susan Gordon Lydon. She talks about knitting as a spiritual practice. While I object generally to the word spiritual, there is a lot of interesting stuff in both Knitting Heaven and Earth and The Knitting Sutra. I remember when I was just getting out on an abusive relationship that plagued me for three years, I taught myself to crochet from books and the internet. Mostly I just wanted to make things, and the initial investment for crochet is minimal. But I remember spending hours puzzling out stitches and making my first batch of hats and scarves. I found peace in it. I would compare it to a meditation, rather than something spiritual. But at the end, you have both peace and a cool thing you've made.
I've noticed I've kind of been turning into a craft evangelist lately. In particular, I used to have a friend with chronic pain issues. I still wish he could have found a craft to help him deal with his pain. I've heard lots of anecdotal evidence that people who can focus on something in that way are better able to deal with the pain they're in. And also, how often do we just sit quietly with ourselves anymore? When you're making something you are forced to.
