Throwback to when I was teaching myself free motion stitching so that I could stitch the text of Pearls onto my unstitched wedding dress.
“What is happening?”
I say this about one thousand times every day. Adrian says it’s like living with a toddler 🤣. Actually it’s my way of getting myself to stop for a minute and possibly calm the chatter in my brain and reorient myself. (Also, I do like to know what people are up to, and it’s not my fault that my hearing is better than anyone else’s in this house and that I can usually hear most, but not all, of their conversations and if I have missed a crucial part then why wouldn’t I come into the room and ask, ‘What’s happening?’).
When I was doing the test stitching, I thought I would use some of these dodgy test pieces as gifts for my family. I thought they would be great in frames and be a cool family joke. However, when I showed it to my youngest son he said, ‘That looks like something the swot team would find on the wall when they broke into the main suspect’s house.’
So I just left the test pieces in my box of test pieces.
But geez.
What actually is happening? For my own context, when I’m looking back over these posts and re-reading them, today is the day after POTUS told the world that it would be okay if he built a golf course in Gaza. That’s not exactly what he said, but what he actually said is so hideous I can’t bring myself to type it out.
What is happening? And how long until we get to swipe right and tell ourselves, ‘All good.’? I know that we have to push back, but it is almost impossible to know what to do and how to act.
At the moment, I’m rehearsing ready for my upcoming Adelaide Fringe season, and I must admit that whenever I am rehearsing or going over lines I’m very often overcome by the questions: ‘What’s the point? There’s urgent work to be done. How is this helping?’
Something has been keeping me going. Partly the fear of being on stage and not knowing my lines, that’s definitely a motivating factor. But last night it kind of clicked to me. There is purpose in rehearsing.
One thing I think we need more of, and urgently, is less combative conversation. To talk to and with each other. To sit quietly, to listen, to let people explain themselves to us, and to explain ourselves to them.
And I guess this one way I can be part of that. By creating one more place for gentle conversations and connections. I mean, in the scheme of things it isn’t much and it isn’t enough. But it’s better than the alternative which is scrolling the news trying to understand what is happening. I can’t understand it, but I won’t accept it either.
