Photo: Mike Cottle-Tennessee Williams
My existential crisis continues.
I realize I have lost friends since I've moved to Michigan. My life is not long enough to keep them all. I have not continued to follow my friends' paths; I don't know what woods they find themselves in--I cannot take the same inroads to catch up. The grasses have grown up so tall and I can't whack enough weeds down, so I am going a different way.
In the quiet moments, when I am knitting to the hum of the refrigerator, I think about the few people I've known who have died. I wonder about them; do they raise a glass for me, wherever they are? Or are they now so far along their roads that they cannot look back and find me here, sitting in my living room at daybreak, catching yarn between my needles, flipping my skeins this way and that? While I wonder about them, I smile. I put that smile into my garment, and hope that my finishing techniques do them justice.
I think about my other friends often. What are they doing right now? Have I been replaced by newer, more exciting counterparts? Are my friends laughing or crying? Are they going on exotic vacations or fixing the roofs of their homes? Are they getting married? Perhaps some of them have become alcoholics. Maybe a few have broken up with longtime partners. Maybe some of them are extremely wealthy--maybe they are bankrupt. Does Maria still ride her motorcycle (ah, the long rides we would take in summer, the smell of cottonwood and baked asphalt in the Georgia heat, the shimmering skies above the hills, and the curves of Hwy. 118)?
There is only time and memory behind me, and only time in front of me. I am absent without my friends--my existence is only validated by others--the comings and goings of relationships. Otherwise, it would be only quietness. So, I am quiet for my friends, wherever they may be, wherever they may go, whatever memories they make.
I think I'll take up drop-spindling and watch roving become yarn, dropped to the floor, threading up like the Fates' linens. There, I will find myself, contemplating the simple act of time, spreading around my feet.
This next stitch, then, shall be for my friends. The one after shall be for me. The following one shall be for the world. Then I shall make a stitch in time, too.
