My gift to you this Christmas was to weave a virtual blanket, one embellished with meaningful words and ideas – a coverlet to assuage the ennui and stresses of modern life, one which covered the positives and negatives of mankind, a kind of protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil as well as the damage done by deceitful politicians, greedy pharmaceutical companies and teenagers who steal Kias and Hundais …you know, one of those literary tour de force pieces that you copy and send to relatives.
As with all weavings, virtual or otherwise, you need a strong, basic outline, as in the fiber version, the warp, threads that hold the fabric together or, in more philosophical terms, moral and ethical beliefs. Somehow amidst the two gigantic rolls of Costco wrapping paper, my notes on the essential fibers of life on earth got lost. I was thinking of things like individual genius and community consensus, but then figuring out which side of the double-sided wrapping paper to use confused me. I tried concepts such as compromise, compassion, caring for God’s creation, remembering peoples’ birthdays and to always lock my car door but three wrapped boxes without tags challenged me to figure out what was in the boxes and to whom they were meant to go. Still determined, I began to make a list when the bell telling me that the dryer had finished rang. The dryer is in the basement and my list on the second floor.
As for the weft threads, those culturally designated designs such as the degradation of women and children or treating animals as if they had no souls, well, I was in the midst of crocheting chemo hats and the yarns that I chose for that project made me think again about what to explore as the wickedness of humankind vs. the goodness I find all around me. Which and how much of each seemed to be determined by whether I watched the evening news.
Again, I began to make a list of the kinds of things that display or distort the basic goodness of human life, represented as the warp threads, but the doorbell rang. It was the guy delivering my Walmart groceries. Seems like this time I had to produce verification of age since I had ordered, get this …Alka Seltzer Plus. What? What in the world would Walmart or any other company think I would do with Alka Seltzer Plus. My husband had a bad cold. So? How could I weave that into the weft?
I cleared the deck, got everything in order and began to write and weave again about the horrors of the Middle East wars when a dear friend dropped in. and don’t I love that … a friend who drops by, a good thing, something that belongs in the warp threads of life. Then there was the cookie baking and the arrival of my new recumbent exercise bicycle which needed to be assembled…and …
Maybe the warp threads would better be focused on all of the exceptional people as individuals and members of groups who strive to make life wonderful. I began that list when one of the cats threw up…instigating a lot of odd interest by her fellow felines. What next?
It does seem that my attempt at literary exceptionalism is a failure. And so, as in Christmases past, I share again, the poem Finlandia, a poem which covers both warp and weft of my virtual blanket as well as the basic message of Christmas which I share with all my heart for you:
This is my song, O
God of all the nations
A song of peace, for
lands afar and mine
This is my home, the
country where my
heart is
