april 5, 2012

tonight, i read the preface to purity and danger by professor mary douglas. wow, is it ever dense - and packed with delicious ideas! i'm already loving it, even if it sometimes makes my brain hurt with the complexity of the arguments. (it's a good hurt, believe me! :P)

in particular, i was drawn in by the analysis of the collective complicity that creates taboo. (taboo being one of the main things that i'm interested in deconstructing for myself in reading this book - notions of moral contamination as well as physical/bodily/environmental contamination and how they relate to risk):

"taboos depend on a form of community-wide complicity. a community would not survive if its members were not committed to it; their concern shows in oblique warnings not to undermine its values.... the people can believe because they collectively want to believe. the extent to which mutually supportive collusion may be inherent in all belief is still open. the study of taboo impinges inevitability upon the philosophy of belief. the taboo-maintained rules will be as repressive as the leading members of society want them to be.... criticism will be suppressed, whole areas of life become unspeakable and, in consequence, unthinkable. but when the controllers of opinion want a different way of life, the taboos will lose credibility and their selected view of the universe will be revised. taboo is a spontaneous coding practice which sets up a vocabulary of spatial limits and physical and verbal signals to hedge around vulnerable relations."

tingles! this text was published in 1966, but it didn't sell many copies for the first decade. not until people started becoming disillusioned, en masse, with state-sponsored control, the impositions of religion and caste and race and class - and fascinated with the mechanisms of (a) how we learn to be pure and proper, and (b) how to unlearn. which is, i think, a kind of mending - kicking out the intruders and occupiers that squat in our minds and hearts and think of us as merely links in the chain of belief that support their hold on power: "don't bite the hand that feeds you (lies)."

if we're going to talk about germs and the dangers inherent in transmitting them, which is one of the things on my mind as i read this book, it occurs to me that a certain kind of clean body or clean mind or clean house means that you, theoretically, have access to acceptance of the power-holding few. the righteous! and, ostensibly, as a respectful adherent to the rules and taboos that are espoused by leading members of society, you might be so lucky as to gain access to the power that those leading members of society hold. behave, and you will be rewarded. at least, that's the implicit promise of belonging.

the tabooed fear of our wild, hairy, dirty, lusty bodies often keeps us from making our own unfettered choices about love, want, hygiene, fashion, gender and many other impulses and modes of self-presentation or conduct. the feeling of impending wrongdoing or dirtiness or shame hovers and is incredibly persuasive. after all, it's been around since we exited the womb. the intense danger of it all looks over your shoulder and thinks for you: "oh, i wouldn't do that if i were you. what would _____ say??" we all have someone or something that could fill in that blank, which is why the fear-mongering works. other people's values live in us as warnings.

it takes an incredibly tenacious mind and spirit to shut out the fear of consequence that rides in with freedom of action. aka: "...the dangers and joys of being out of place." (in the words of one reviewer of this book). the story goes that, in acting like you belong, you belong. and if you believe you belong - even if that reality doesn't extend beyond your own mind - you're far ahead of most people on this planet. the danger of being a shunned outsider is a powerful antidote to freedom, wouldn't you say?

so, how do we mend the borders around our individuality and access true freedom of choice, despite taboo? how do we turn around the fears of a free body, a free mind, a new truth or reality if we haven't lived that? and what of the taboos that have a place in our psyches as a way of preventing universally agreed-upon harms, like indiscriminate murder or children being abused? sometimes exposing the structures behind unwanted taboo is enough to break down the sphere of influence it holds in your universe. and then there's the dangerous and joyful process of stepping into the wide open world, finally free to act. still as a part of the social environment and a broader community, but freer. here's to that.

april 4, 2012

the only mending that's happening tonight is a long sleep on these muscle relaxants. here's hoping tomorrow is a better body day!

april 3, 2012

tonight was supposed to be a cute and fun little project. i planned to mend this cat toy, which has a rubber handle that you use to fling it across the room - to the delight and rapt attention of the kitten types.

i'm sad to say it's my first mending fail. but, instead of moving on to another project and pretending that it didn't happen, i thought i would just post the results.

i had this clever idea - to stuff the rubber handle back in using a chopstick and then secure it with my trusty nail polish - one of the hardest diy femme glues around! but, unfortunately, the rubber didn't like the nail polish very much. it disintegrated at the attachment points on both sides.

maybe i'm in a really contemplative mood, but it made me think about toxic bonds...how some things - or people - combine in such a way that irreversible damage occurs and can't be repaired. in the end, the damage must simply be acknowledged and abided until the damage is less acute or, perhaps, more integrated.

so, there you go: from cat toy to contemplation in record time :)

april 2, 2012

tonight, i watched part one of the "mythos" lectures by professor joseph campbell.

in these lectures, he discusses (in part) how the reconnection to myth and an understanding of the subconscious can help to mend a fractured sense of self and purpose and, as a result, give us a sense of place in the world.

there was lots of interesting material in the first lecture, but what stood out to me most was a point he made about illusion and compassion.

before discussing this point, he presented us with a common enough scenario: being confronted by the unexpected truth of a person in a relationship. he asks, in this moment when illusion is broken, how can we turn passion into compassion so that we can enter into a new level of intimacy and truth with that person instead of allowing the connection to the person to be broken along with the illusion?

shame and the fear of the shadow self play into our dishonest or incomplete portrayals of ourselves. the presence of that fear and shame is often why the deeper, more complicated truths about ourselves are left until later - sometimes creating illusions about who we are in the minds of our loved ones. we're afraid of parts of ourselves; afraid that our relationships won't withstand the revelations that are necessary to undertake in order to become truly "known".

it's something we've all confronted, and it's a very valuable question: how do we turn passion into compassion when an illusion is shattered - especially when it's one we hold particularly dear? how do we address illusions and acts of dishonesty so we can maintain connections rather than severing them?

april 1, 2012

tonight, i'm doing a simple mend to one of my favourite pairs of argyle socks. green and brown and white with gold thread! love them! and they match perfectly with a certain argyle sweater of mine, which has an equally charming deep-plunge neckline.


this matchy matchy thing is a fun game.

as you can see from the before pics, these socks, while still awesome, have seen better days.

i could have done a neater mend, but the edges of the holes are frayed - i needed to grab more fabric than i expected to make sure the stitches were well-anchored and stayed put.

i'm excited to have these socks back in rotation!

march 31, 2012

today was the one-year anniversary of my bike accident.

these were the jeans i was wearing when it happened. i was able to get the blood out eventually, but the holes remained.

before the accident, these were my favourite jeans. i wore them practically every day for about a year. i remember, when i was in the treatment room of the e.r. getting stitched up and glued together and having all kinds of painful, undignified things done, my friend lili called out from the hall: "were they able to save the jeans??" *laugh* she's always known how to make me laugh in the weirdest moments.

i'm going to mend these jeans for my mending post tonight. exactly a year later, these jeans have made it through, and so have i. i've worn them on my old body, and i'll wear them on my new one. there's something about patching them up that feels like making peace with what's happened. or at least bridging the two realities.

most holes can be patched, i think. mended, if not fixed. it just takes a while to gather what you need - including the love and tenacity to put one foot in front of the other until you've found a way to face things and do the work.


there's been lots of emotion leading up to today - even more than you'd think because of all the pain i've been going through lately. i've been taking good care of myself, though, and trying to be patient with the pain and my limitations.

then, today, there was this sudden shift. i woke up feeling rested, and i had no pain. i wasn't even limping. after walking around the house for a few hours without problems, i started to believe i might actually have a whole day with no exhausting pain! i'm sure you can imagine how giddy-making it would be to step up onto a stair, shifting your full weight onto your injured side expecting pain, and nothing happens! over and over! nothing!!! whee! :)

i went for a walk in the beautiful sunshine without a cane, and no problems there either! it was amazing. what a gift - especially on this day, which feels like a big milestone. thank you thank you body for this relief. even if the pain comes around again a million more times, i'm still grateful for this sunny day full of relief and relaxation and joy.


i've been trying to figure out why i stayed up so late tonight. all night, really. it's like i'm holding vigil. last year, it was around this time of the morning when i finally got home from the hospital. just before dawn and getting light out. i really needed to sleep that night, but i couldn't stop thinking about life and death and chance. how fickle and changeable it all is and how little we actually control. i figure you might as well ride the kind of ride you want while you're here, don't you think?

march 30, 2012

a cute little mending project tonight as a pick-me-up before i start the weekend. this underwear is a nice cut and a fun colour, but pretty worn out. i thought i would spruce them up with these cute little homemade heart patches.