"The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around." Vonnegut

I've been doing quite a bit of reading, of thinking, and of drawing...therefore, a lot of being alone. I found myself writing this today:

I guess life is a road, and in traveling that road you sometimes find yourself on a path that seems un-invigorating and monotonous. You think back and forward and you wonder how things could really feel any different--no matter what part of the earth your road is on. You realize the reality of your reality. You realize that you exist and you are walking. You are tangible and you are experiencing the experiences. Life is actual--it is real, and the fact that it seems un-invigorating is sort of daunting and hopeless. But it gets better. Then it gets bad again, and that's the cycle. Sometimes the cycle happens in a day and sometimes it takes a few weeks.

My reality got better today with the discovery of Esperanza Spalding. This lady...oh this lady. She's got it. I'm mesmerized.

"lucky me, lucky mud."



I like the thought of mud.

"Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me..." Thoreau

So many people don't like to be alone, but I think that's when you really find out who you are. You are limited to conversation with yourself, and you are forced to face yourself. The time is yours to act, think, wonder, experiment, explore, say and grow in whatever direction and way with no outside eyes peering in at you. It's a time for you to make up your own mind without the distraction of what they think. It's a time to delve deeper, to rethink thoughts and to pick at old resolutions. It's a time of discovery. Many people don't allow themselves this time. Perhaps that's why so many people seem like a singular blurry mass. Of course, it's all about balance, everything is about balance. A person needs a period of being immersed in society to balance the time of solitude. For me, when I'm alone the clutter of the constant information thrown at me in social situations slowly clears and my thoughts are able to seep back fully and wholly. When you are alone, there is nothing there to judge you...except for maybe the moon.



She's there, peeking at you. I went to Tybee to watch her rise a couple of days ago. It was too cloudy at first to see, but eventually I was caught off guard by the faint hue of orange seeping through the thick blue grey clouds. It's hard to describe the joy I felt, it's strange how much joy I felt, when I saw it. My hands clenched and I started laughing out loud. It felt good to feel that happy. She's a rock of reassurance and spending time with her rejuvenated and motivated me. I left feeling completely content and satisfied.




While I sat on the beach and looked towards her I noticed that as she got higher, the golden reflections on the ocean intensified. I started trying to describe it to myself and realized that all I could think about were artificial objects to compare it to. It's hard to relate something to an existing thing that someone will recognize, when the thing your trying to describe is like nothing else. But I started to write and this is what I got "I'm looking at the reflection of the full moon on the ocean. It's the color of fire and nothing. They ungulate between each other. They are slithers and clumps gliding and colliding into and out of one another. They move in a slow rhythm that comes towards me. The fire is continuously reaching for me but never arriving. It just keeps coming and never stops but never fully makes it."

it was a good night.

slow ride

The slow route seems to be the most rewarding. It's interesting how life sometimes forces you to slow down. Because of my inability to put air in bike tires with a manual pump, I had to walk home last night. As I did so, I passed a large rectangular ground light...aka an insect graveyard. As I passed it I heard some clinking around, so I turned back to investigate. And low and behold... it was a cicada :) I'd never seen a live one after it has molted. It made me smile. So, I rescued it from it's burning demise and took him home with me. He was a lot smaller than I've known cicadas to be. As we walked home he crawled over my hands and up my arms. I took him upstairs and drew him. As he hung out on my finger I felt a pinch. I turned him around to see that he was piercing me with his straw mouth. He thought I was a plant and was trying to suck out my sap! At that point I learned that even with his seemingly broken wing, that he could fly. I observed and read later that cicadas are TERRIBLE flyers. He kept running into EVERYTHING..but always landed back on me. It was real sweet, obviously it meant nothing..or that he could feel that I was warm..but it was still sweet.





Also, my cowbutts made the SCAD website. awesome.

Oh Wyoming.

It's been a really long time since I've posted anything. I've attempted to a few times.... but I just come up blank. The end of this last semester has been decorated with quite a few self-conscious uncertainties in multiple aspects of my life. But it's also been sprinkled with great times, loving friends, and wonderful experiences...so I guess it balances out.

One thing is for certain, and I know I dote on it a lot... I really miss Moose, Wyoming and all that comes with it. Many of my most favorite people are there together right now enjoying those magical and breathtaking mountains...and I yyyeeeaaaarrrn for it all. Despite the fact that in a little over a month I will be in London and then later South France, when I think about Wyoming I literally feel nervous and weak with want. It's such a weird thing.

To be inside a labyrinth of ginormous masses of earth, on a path which seemed to always lead to a secret water filled bellybutton....where the earth became quieted upon arrival and accomplishment was felt whole heartedly....secrets were shared between a few strangers who'd soon become life long friends. Pasts were shared, lows and highs, aspirations and regrets, but most importantly, the present was shared with the same vigor and amazement. Those feelings I got were so unbelievable, and to know that the breathing life beside me felt the same thing....It's just hard to have words for how it makes me feel now. Wyoming has pushed me so hard, it has taught me so much, and it still touches me every time I see a slight rise on the flat earth, or an elk or a moose, or snow, the moon, ice cream and coffee, cowboy hats, the color sage or anything similar, tree sap, burrowing ants, a lake, baggy pants, bluegrass, pbr, black birds, artichokes, rice crispy treats, and harrison ford...the list could go on forever. That summer will always be with me. breath. On to the next one!

right?

Change is good. Newness is exciting. And I'll be ready when its time. It all just takes time.


bellybutton.

Hi, I'm Ikat.

First person narrative of a textile. GO.



Hello out there! It's good to see you all the way from Canada. No, I'm not originally from Canada, I'm from Central Asia, but we'll get to how I got here later. First, I should introduce myself. Worldwide, I am known as Ikat, but my people call me a special name, they call me Abr. Abr means "cloud like" in Persian. This name describes me well, because once I am fully grown and constructed my epidermis is formed by various fuzzy or hazy edged shapes.

I should tell you a little bit about myself. I was born somewhere between 1880 and 1920, that's quite the year gap, but I guess they lost my birth certificate. Anyway, I'm a silk warp faced ikat of red, yellow, blue, white, green and black. I have a pattern of diamonds and other geometrical shapes and lines that run vertically. Originally the artisans who developed my patterns would chose motifs from the thousand year old artistic tradition of pomegranates, tulips, rams horns, and things like that, but later these motifs became more abstract, relying more on color effect; I think that's what happened to me. Red was a very important color to my people, it represented life-blood and vital energies (Harvey 59). After I was constructed, my people, the Uzbeks of Central Asia, made me into a chapan. A chapan is a type of coat, so that makes me wearable! My owner was male, although sometimes I'd see my cousins on females. I'm quilted with a cotton print lining. I often get company because I'm worn with other coats when my owner wants to show how wealthy he is. Years before I was born, my ancestor ikats were only worn by the ruling class; the sumptuary laws prohibited the lower class to wear us. But, by the time I was brought into the world, I was able to see my fellow ikats worn by anyone who could afford us. We were considered luxury goods, status markers, tribal indicators, commodities, and often used for bride dowries. Many women wore us for ceremonial reasons, such as birth, circumcision of son, family feasts, holidays, and as a covering for the family who bought her in marriage (Gibbon). Still, even more of my cousins became wall coverings and decorations. I'm not exactly sure where we all came from. I heard once that we're all from somewhere in East Asia. Our oldest ancestor was found in Nara, Japan and was probably made in China.

Now's the time I should explain my conception and birthing process, so let's get started. Like I said, I am Ikat. Some might argue that my initial conception started with sericulture and the harvesting and spinning of my silk warps and wefts, so I'll start there. Silk, as we all know, started in China, but after a few hundred years the secret got out, and my people in Central Asia got wind of it. So, my little creator, the Bombyx mori egg, was delivered to a home in Uzbekistan, where the lady of the house put him and his brothers and sisters into a pouch and tucked them under her breasts for warmth and incubation (Harvey 57)! Once hatched they formed into caterpillars and spun a silk cocoon. The male Uzbeks reeled the silk out of the coccoon, but it was the job of the women to spin the silk into yarn. Here's where the process of my uniqueness begins! The yarn that was used for my warp was wound with crosses, and then divided into livits. I was then tied off so that I wouldn't get tangled, and was brought to the nishonzan, who applied dots of charcoal ink on my warp bundles to indicate the patterns of where and where not to dye me. The process of constructing ikat patterns were sometimes inspired by the old tradition of the soothsayer who would pour a drop of oil on the surface of a bowl of water and watch the spread of the oil to tell the families omens in the patters, and thus you have the ikat pattern; or like I mentioned earlier, they relied on traditional motifs and abstractions of those (Harvey 41). So, once marked, the parts of me that weren't supposed to be dyed by a particular dye bath were bound tightly to resist the dye. Finally I'm taken to the ranguborchi who dyes me for the first time! Like most of my cousins, I was dyed a pale yellow first. Next, I was washed and dried so that the color would set, and then re-bound and dyed the next to darkest color (Harvey, 94).

It was so long ago, that I can't remember if I was dyed with natural dyes or synthetics. See, around that time, synthetic dyes started to immerge and be utilized, but because I am faded now, and from the contrast of the reds on the printed lining of my chapan, I'm going to say that I was dyed with natural dyes. I do, however, remember that I was dyed in a dye workshop. The dye master had about four helpers there that day, all relatives of the master of the workshop, and they were all working on my cousins and I. The red in me was from madder root; the pale yellow that I mentioned before was from the tiny flowers of a Senecio plant that was collected in the spring and dried and ground; the black is from pomegranate peel boiled with iron filling, and the blue is from indigo.

Finally we have come to the where the magic happens, the weaving! This is where I come into my maturity and fullness. This is where my vibrant colors and patterns come to life! I remember this process not being as complicated as the dyeing. I was transferred to a new workshop where I was woven on a horizontal warp-weighted loom with shafts and treadles. The ishtibar is the person who supervised my weaving. Once all set up on the loom, my weaver, another man, wove me in a simple tabby weave with a white cotton weft. My people call my type of ikat weave adras. Because I'm warp faced, which means that none of the weft used is visible, you cannot see the cotton I was constructed with, but only the warp which brings out my beautiful patterns. Once off the loom I became formed into a chapan, like I mentioned earlier. A woman cut me into pieces with a knife, not scissors like they do now, and hand sewed me together (Gibbon). She didn't worry about aligning my patterns; in fact, she considered it to heighten the visual buzz (Glueck).

So that's how I came into this world and fortunately am still in it over one hundred years later! You're probably wondering how I'm still here. This is going to take some explanation of my people and the area where I spent my utilized life. I mentioned earlier that I'm from Central Asia; more specifically, southern Uzbekistan. That whole area was sort of a melting pot of cultures because of the trade route and all of the nomadic tribes roaming around from place to place. The Russians were also there too at the time, they took over for a bit. My owner was a wealthy merchant. He wore me in the winter months much more than in the summer months. It was a nice time; I always had a few cousins to share his body with. When my owner died, I was left out of the burial. That's when I started my rambling journey to different hands; I even ended up in Russia for a while. Eventually I was picked up by a nice man who took me to where I am now, Canada. My home is now a case in the Opekar / Webster Collection at the Textile Museum of Canada. It gets sort of lonely here, but thankfully I have all of those wild memories to keep me company. Plus, a few drawers down is a lovely khalat, a women's overcoat, from my same region, and I think she likes me.


Bibliography
Dubov, Igor. Music for the Eyes. Belgium: Responsible Publisher, 1997.

Gelder, Lydia Van. Ikat. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications. 1980.

Gibbon, Kate Fitz. "Ikat: Costume in Central Asia." Ornament 21 (1998): 56-60.

Glueck, Grace. "From Central Asia, Exotic Textiles as Trophy Clothes." New York Times, March 5, 1999.

Harvey, Janet. Traditional Textiles of Central Asia. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996.

slemac

Look at how great those guys are. How could you not want to be their best friend.

I eat a lot of dark chocolate these days.

Yesterday I had to work all day. Since I couldn't be home with my family enjoying some amazing FOOD, and playing in swimming pools with my little cousins, running on the levee with other little cousins, picking clovers with still more tiny cousins, play fighting with my brother, and giving Cecilia an infinite amount of kisses, I might as well have been at the Lady and Sons...right?

So, I went up to this table of three older ladies and talked about hoecakes. Old ladies can be pretty awesome, specially the one that dined in her mumu. But she wasn't among these ladies. Anyway. One of the three started to compliment my hair and how curly and great she thought it was. She asked me if it was natural (that same day I actually got asked if I was a mixed girl because of how curly my hair is), then she asked me how I get it cut.

Then I told her I was letting it grow out from shaving it.

Then all three of the ladies got quiet and had really straight shocked faces for a second.

It was real great. and funny.
Later that day I talked to the same three ladies about salt and pepper and seasoning food before you even taste it. Apparently if a person seasons their food before tasting it, it's a sign that they are set in their ways.

Here are some camels.