The Threads That Weave Me

Abstract

Fig. 1: A Start.   I could write or I could weave.I could write or I could weave…Write, weave. Weave.Then a colleague and friend says to me: why do you weave?I weave to put myself back together again.I weave  the pieces of me that are shattered and broken.I weave because the rhythm, flow, feel, pattern and solidity comforts me.I weave because my body tells me to.I weave to breathe more slowly, more deeply.I weave because the threads that create the strands of my life need a language.…   This article reflects on my relationship with weaving and what it offers to the remaining threads of my life. Weaving is embodied, procedural and experiential: it is personal, cultural, and spiritual for me. It is a language that allows me sacred time and space, whether by myself (although I’m really never alone) or with other people. It is an extension of my breath, from my body, in co-creation with earth and sky that manifests as a solid object in my hands. It was when my colleague suggested I write about why I weave that I realised such reflection could help me tap into knowledge. Nithikul Nimkulrat says that knowledge is generated from within the researcher-practitioner’s artistic experience. The procedural and experiential knowledge thus becomes explicit as a written text and/or as visual representations. … With the slow pace of a craft-making process, the practitioner-researcher is able to generate ‘reflection-in-action’ and document the process. (1) For me, knowledge becomes an embodied state of being while I’m weaving: while my hands move, my body grounds, my heart calms, my mind detaches from thoughts, letting one flow to the next, as I watch one stitch lead / follow the next. Until the row becomes the spiral becomes the base becomes the basket. Each stitch documenting my reflections in the process of weaving the whole. The regenerative aspect of this process has been powerful and impactful for me because of my relationship with time and space, my relationship with my Country, my relationship with people, my relationship with sovereignty. I don’t have the words to describe how weaving allows me to embody a relationship with that tiny little spark of creativity in me, so I weave it instead. I see that spiral fractal in everything around me. Weaving, for me, has become a way to listen to them speak. The spiral centre of each round woven basket is my favourite part. I love spirals. Fibonacci sequence. Golden Ratio. Fractals. I’ve heard stories about how some people can look at a specific symbol or drawing and immediately transform their reality from reading the immense wisdom it held. I can only imagine what that must mean and feel like, but when I look at a spiral, anywhere, in anything, I can see through space and time differently. I imagine that must be what our DNA looks like. I feel an immense sense of connectedness when I see that smallest spiral circle core. Reflection in action. I believe we carry our Ancestors in our DNA, or maybe they carry us. I believe this ancient beautiful land we are on was carved out by the Ancestors. Human, non-human, and more-than-human: I see one now. As I write this. On my Country. In my nest. I live in a nest amidst the hills. And so, when I weave, I weave myself into that nest. Freja Carmichael writes: “whether old or new forms, First Nations fibre practices are grounded in histories and knowledges that run deep and interconnect across the lands and waters. Our many nations inherit specific fibre traditions relative to Ancestral, spiritual, environmental and historical contexts all of which are interconnected with culture” (44). While I weave nests, baskets, bags, mats, to my west sits an ancient volcano. An ancient creation ancestor.  She called to me in my dreams although I did not know why. Fig. 2: An Aerial Shot. When I weave with my bare feet resting on earth, I feel the pulse of electromagnetic energy, while the warmth of the sun renourishes my face and skin. I feel my heart rate slow, my breathing deepens and my body relaxes. Andrea Hinch-Bourns writes: wherever we are, we can sit down upon the earth, let the dirt run through our fingers, take off our shoes and squish the dirt through our toes, and if we listen carefully, we will hear our ancestors talk to us in the language of our people. This knowledge is contained in all of us, through what is referred to as, ‘blood memory’ … and ‘molecular or cellular memory’ … . This intuition is carried within all of us regardless of whether we are connected to our culture, speak our language, or live somewhere other than our communities. It is something innate, powerful, which draws us together as a collective people. (20) I gather a few individual raffia strands and press them closely together, wrap them with another thread, and reshape them from single strands into a firm spiral base, like the spiral energy at the base of my spine. Grief and love curl themselves through my body and into my hands. I exhale the emotions out and inhale the scent and sounds of my Country, imbuing the threads in my hands with the gratitude that tracks up my back, along meridian points, like the movement of those Seven Sisters embedded in the landscape of my body. I sit straighter, breathe and remember.  Weaving can shift my consciousness into a different state of being, allowing me to imagine even more. Such a place, a state of mind, seems to be filled with the potential to transform. In recent years I have, at times, physically, mentally, and emotionally been unable to speak. I don’t like talking, but the act of weaving feels like a conversation, one in which I am involved, wholeheartedly. A conversation that holds potential to transform. Whatever that might look like. The image below of 12 baskets speaks of a three-month conversation I experienced with a group of people, who individually and as a whole grounded me with reciprocity.   Fig. 3: 12 Gifts. Aboriginal peoples in Australia have been weaving since the beginning. Please don’t make me attach a linear number of years to that, it’s just not going to align with the spiral base of my basket. In their research exploration of the insider-outsider experience in research spaces, Radley, Ryan, and Dowse “describe weaving as method and cultural process as our individual strands weave together with collective ways of knowing, being and doing openly and freely” (414). They extend the work of Chew, and articulate how the metaphor of weaving as a cultural practice conveys “a model for planning and decision-making that acknowledges ancestral wisdom”; it is, for them, “an intangible knowledge process, narrative, belonging and knowledge transference” (414). They emphasise that the Western notion of “metaphor” does not necessarily convey this conceptual, and I would add embodied, framework. In trying to articulate what weaving is and does, means for me, I have to access my whole being – cognitive, experiential and embodied. At the spiral centre of it, I have to be creative, and creativity is a direct connection to the divine. Country is a physical and metaphysical manifestation of divine source. Tapping into my creativity taps me into my Country and my Ancestors. When I’m tapped in, I listen better, and when I listen better, I recognise other connections and communities around me. The different strands of each community, human, non-human, more-than-human, at first seem unconnected and separate, but these more-than-metaphor threads co-create a basket or nest with me. The final physical object I can touch, feel, and hold in my hands is my cognitive unconsciousness manifested in a more-than-metaphor object. Shay Welch states that cognitive embodied metaphor theory posits that how we conceive the world is a function of our embodied interaction with the world and, as such, most of our depictions, linguistic representations, imaginative operations, and abstract thought are metaphorical with respect to our spatial-locomotive-sensory activities and experiences. That is, most Western theorists reject the idea that metaphors are embodied, that they have meaning and are meaningful. (28) When I hold the threads of raffia, when I shape them, bend them, bind them, and strengthen them, I am in co-creation with the world around me and in me. My internal and external landscapes manifest the nest that holds and nurtures me and I, in return, love hard on it. Gregory Cajete, a Tewa man, states that the metaphoric mind is the oldest mind: connected to the creative center of nature, the metaphoric mind has none of the limiting conditioning of the cultural order. It perceives itself as part of the natural order, a part of the Earth mind. Its processing is natural and instinctive. It is inclusive and expansive in its processing of experience and knowledge … . Because its processes are tied to creativity, perception, image, physical senses and intuition, the metaphoric mind reveals itself through abstract symbols, visual/spatial reasoning, sound, kinesthetic expression, and various forms of ecological and integrative thinking. (51) Weaving has taught me to calm my mind and body, reconnect with my heart, and centre peace in my soul. While most of my weaving has been done without other humans around, any sense of loneliness and isolation is eased by my Country: by the galahs, the magpies, the cockatoos, the crows, the wrens, the clouds, the winds, the sounds, the stars, the air, and the earth. I no longer ever feel lonely, even when I am alone. In co-creating the nest in my hands with the nest I am nestled in, I weave myself back together. Māori researcher Linda Tuhiwai Smith writes: the project of creating is not just about the artistic endeavours of individuals but about the spirit of creating which Indigenous communities have exercised over thousands of years. Imagination enables people to rise above their own circumstances, to dream new visions and to hold on to old ones. It fosters inventions and discoveries, facilitates si