Transformation & Hope - Parts 7, 8 & 9

 

For some unexplained reason once I started on the last 23 rounds that made up Parts 7, 8 and 9, I did not stop until I reached the end. It was not a flurry of activity, drop everything and get 'er done effort, rather a steady, methodical work that filled evenings watching baseball, restful afternoons after mornings of outside labor, and one day listening to the rain fall during a September vacation.

The work was easier - straight rows down four sides of the square which, once started on a single stitch pattern repeated itself from corner to corner. No repeats of four or eight or 16 as in the center circle and star work. No need to check check check the pattern. Quick and fluid the yarn slipped from the skein into the finished product.

I wonder now, with the quiet and calm completion of the blanket how I have been transformed over this last year, or if my easy hope has returned from where it has taken itself to hide.

Decidedly there is movement "across, beyond, through and on the other side of" many things: family celebrations; beginning my sixth decade; personal self-reflection and examination; creative endeavors outside this project; planting and reaping, editing and amending, tending our house, our place. Living the verb form of trans, where creation, building and devising reside, is natural to me: I do create, make, construct and devise all day long. This is my center, the me that ignites joy and maps my life.

The noun of form, however, is harder to examine. I have changed my shape - lost 25 pounds, let my hair grow, tried new pieces in my wardrobe. Our family is a different shape now with new people joining it. The old house is getting new windows; our field will bloom with 1,500 daffodils in the spring; more fences are coming down.

Has my character changed this last year? Undoubtedly. I am Sixty and I am uncertain how to be this new character of crone, hag, witch - not the insulting words, rather the complimentary nuances of the old meanings and origins: Crone - an abusive word meaning carrion, a dead thing, newly reclaimed as a symbol of mature female wisdom; Hag - a word applied only to women the origin of which is close to diviner or soothsayer; Witch - convoluted and confused throughout time and across languages, its origin containing hints of healer and holy, tinged with knowledge of herbs and healing. I also sense a new fragility in my psyche and body, stamina and strength.

There also has welled up, or let loose, anger and cynicism in me, a dark hope and expectation, as delusion runs rampant in the US and the world. The ongoing onslaught of political and military lies from two men on opposite sides of the world, intent on tearing us apart, prodding wounds and gloating over the bleeding for self-gain and perceived glory - authoritarianism raises its head above horizon close to home and is celebrated welcomed. 

These things these things these things sit like an ache on me.

The hope-that-hides resurfaces occasionally as I strive to live more from my core, my being, my center. I do not always know what this is, this center; however, I am finding it, feeling my way inward downward upward outward stretching to a lighter place.

And what is hope, really? An expectation of a good or better outcome? optimism? 

This year of meditation while transforming the light of the sun into a blanket warm compels me to deny these easy definitions. It is deeper, personal, rooted in my past, tied up in my present, a brief flame illuminating my future, lighting a way forward. Hope is not easy any longer, and this is a deep deep transformation. Digging down and out and up to grasp hope, that spark of light, requires strength and will, contemplation and fearlessness. 

Hope is work, and it is not easy.

Finished stats on the blanket:

Size: 60" x 60"
Weight: 3.25 lbs
Stitch count: 53,198
Start: November 2021
End: October 2022