mindfulness

A group of ladies sat outside in the fresh spring sunshine spinning wool into yarn. Each wheel had its own charm and one, or sometimes two, treadles. Fluffy fiber transformed into even strands that wound onto their bobbins. They looked serene, relaxed…happy. “I want to do that,” I said. So, when I saw the name and telephone number for Amelia Garripoli, aka The Bellwether, I was ready. She was starting a new beginner spinning class the next week.

My first spinning efforts, like me, were tense. Terror showed up in the thread as it alternated between “not spun enough” and “spun to within an inch of its life.” Here I was with yet another “enjoy the journey” activities, darn it! 10,000 hours, Garripoli says, is what it takes to develop mastery. At my age, let’s see, that calculates to…never mind.

As I practiced spinning, I thought about my writing. I’ll get the obvious out of the way: while spinning yarn, I thought about spinning yarns. Buh dump bump. Cue groans from the audience.

Still, if you can deal with sucky drafts, writer’s block, and working in spite of life’s constant interruptions, then you are qualified to learn to spin. Having taken a few months off from writing, I just traded in messy drafts for messy yarn.

I could have just bought yarn in the store. Knitting should be enough, right? But no, I have to keep going down the rabbit hole. Maybe spinning a cleaned, carded fleece would be enough. But then…

I hadn’t planned to buy a wool fleece, but the bag of rich, deep brown fiber looked too delicious to pass up. It came with a photo of the sheep, for God’s sakes! I had gotten a glimpse of him lounging out in his field. I imagined turning his winter coat into one for me, and I salivated at the thought.

My teacher had given me instruction on fleece washing, but I decided to catch some YouTube videos to brush up. Turns out that there are many ways to wash a fleece, with plenty of adamant opinions about the right way to do it. I watched several and took the common denominators to heart. Namely, don’t turn the darn stuff to felt. This happens when we do “too much.” Too much agitation, too much temperature, too much handling.

Hey, it works, even when my teacher isn’t around!

I thought of an essay writing class that I took years ago in Houston. During my critique, people praised my work, my skill, my emotional connection…then asked me to revise it in such a way as to remove the circus tent poles that held the whole thing up. When I tried to rewrite it, it disintegrated into one long, boring mess. Too much handling. We writers have to find that balance, and we have to surround ourselves with people who won’t critique our work down to a pile of mush. Fortunately, while I can’t do anything about a felted fleece, I could reconstruct the original essay — which I then got published.

As I carded the fleece, it turned from globby matted fistfuls to smooth, soft hair, lighter in color than I expected, more of a golden tan. Each rolag, or rolled fiber taken from the cards, felt like fragile cotton candy. But would it spin?

I fed the fiber to the wheel, I felt something shift. I’d spun fiber that had already been prepared, but this was different. It was as though starting to read a novel from the beginning instead of jumping in at the middle. I knew it better. I had a relationship with the fleece. My work was still uneven and imperfect, but less so…and as I gently tugged on the fibers to lengthen them, I felt the rhythm of the treadle under my foot, the wheel turning at just the right speed, and the yarn filling the bobbin.

With each turn of the wheel, I felt my love of writing return as I longed to share the experience. I remembered each tender draft of a manuscript, messy and uneven. With yarn, it’s possible to add more or less twist where needed to create even strands. With novels, each draft brings improvements and new insights into the writing process. With time and patience, both the yarn and the writing smooth out.

Spinning is a form of meditation, and I see when my mindfulness disappears. All of a sudden my gorgeous strand of yarn has doubled in width, or the wheel turns in the wrong direction, causing my work to unravel from the bobbin. I stop, take a breath, fix what I can, and then go again, just as I do with my “regular” meditations. Our minds wander. That’s what minds do. All we can do is come back to the present moment.

The same is true for a manuscript. There are places where the writing sings, and then sentences where I say, “Huh?” Even after several drafts, I find places where my mind has checked out of the story and decided to explore other territories while I thought I was writing. The writer’s life requires patience and an ongoing return, return, return to the present.

Even in the end, the thread is never perfect. Yes, I can even it out and fix obvious mistakes, but in the end, homespun thread will never have the technical perfection of storebought. Mine won’t, at least!

Writing is never done and never exactly right. But at the same time, there is the time to let the book go out into the world, warts and all. A book is never perfect, never fully finished. The moment comes when the author must say, “Enough. Enough. This is the best I can do now.”

One day my fleece will be a sweater or a throw, something warm and soft and nurturing to the body. From sheep to sweater, I will know every aspect of this particular fiber. No other fiber will feel or act exactly like this one. It is my first, and it feels like a miracle. I feel the same way when I see one of my books for the first time. For all the imperfections, all the stumbles, all the struggles, there is a book in my hand, a miracle of cover and fonts and page numbers, with a story that only I can tell. From start to finish, it is mine, and perhaps it will fall into the hands of someone who will feel as though she has just donned a warm, soft, nurturing sweater to shield her from winter’s cold.

We removed the high-sodium foods from my father-in-law’s house last night. After months of begging and pleading, we realized that greater intervention is required. To that end, we replaced his processed foods with healthful, low-sodium, homemade alternatives. He says he wants to feel better, and this action may help remove the fluid that has entered his lungs, making it hard to breathe. We tell him we will help him with whatever is necessary–but he must decide if he’s ready for all or nothing. The halfway decisions–I’ll do this, I won’t do that–no longer work. “All” will bring some relief for the remainder of his days. “Nothing” will bring him to death, something he’s not adverse to at 80 years of age and living without his Beloved. Halfway takes him to death, but with potential for extreme misery and suffering.

All or nothing. We teach our children that with most of life, all or nothing brings a lack of flexibility to life. Find balance, we tell them, between work and play, between caring for others and self, between independence and support. We counsel them to find that Middle Way of equilibrium.

Politically, we make errors in judgment when we think we have to choose between jobs or the environment, for example. We don’t think that perhaps, with some good ol’ ingenuity, have both. We have seen how all or nothing thinking is paralyzing our government as sides polarize ever more deeply. We have forgotten the value of two political parties and of the checks and balances of our system, both of which create needed balance, in favor of partisan bickering and digging up obscure rules to stop the process.

All or nothing. Last night my father-in-law expressed concern that we were not living our own lives in favor of spending the extra time with him that he now requires. Yes, I have those concerns myself. My writing schedule has slid more than I would like, though I manage, like a stealthy lover, to find some time. I haven’t looked much at the garden this week, so I feel disconnected from my plants (something I will remedy today). I haven’t exercised as much as normal, though when I think about it, we’ve managed to throw in some walks, and yesterday I had a refreshing yoga practice. So no, I don’t think we are living all or nothing with our lives. We are finding a balance here and there. We manage.

What I understand, though, is that love must be all. Yesterday I spent the morning cooking…I had raided my father-in-law’s refrigerator to see what junk he was buying, in hopes of recreating what he likes in a form that does no harm. I put on some beautiful music and made the act of cooking a yoga practice. How present can I be? How much love can I stir into the food? How can I savor every moment of the experience, and of the remaining time, quantity unknown, that we have with him?

As I cooked, I found myself recalling knowledge I had somehow forgotten, that with mindfulness we can find a greater level of “all” than we think is possible. All is perhaps not a destination, but a journey we take as we deepen our capacity to love, to give, to live.

I can take this into my writing, too. That doesn’t mean writing all the time at the expense of relationships, but it does mean that when I do my writing practice, I can choose to be in the space of “all.” I can approach my work with greater joy and curiosity, remembering the love of it even in the days when books don’t sell or I become discouraged. Halfway does not work with health, love, or work. It brings us to that slow, painful, miserable death. Today I choose “all.”

The Zen of Wool

All or Nothing