First and foremost, and great big THANK YOU for those folks that came out and supported me on this glorious Saturday. And what amazing weather we had, so very joyful….
One thing that I find when my hands are busy, my mind wanders. I think about many things: dinner, plants that need watering, fish that need feeding, etc, etc…I watch, or listen, to music, YouTube, Netflix. I think that I just like the sound of voices in the room with me. Sometimes the distractions are welcomed, sometimes I just need to turn it off and hear my own thoughts. I heard about something that’s new to me, but has been around since the 1990s. Then it was published in an essay in the New York Times in 2015 by Mandy Len Catron. It’s The 36 Questions That Lead to Love. It’s a series of questions that explore whether an intimate connection can be made between strangers. It presents itself in 3 sets of 12 questions that become increasingly personal. I read through them and found that they are not that easy to answer. They seem a bit simple, but simplicity does have its complexities. One of the questions that made me think is “If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future, or anything else, what would you want to know?” That really made me think. The answer I came up with is nothing. There’s nothing that I think I would want to definitively know. Sure I’d want to know if I’m walking into danger, if my very life is is on the line, yes, I want to know. But, I am the person I am because of the lessons I’ve learned from life’s challenges. I would’ve wanted to know the heartache that homelessness brought, but that falls under the desire to know if I’m walking into danger. But other than that, life’s tests has made me me. But what about life’s joys? I don’t think that I’d want to know before hand either. Learning the truth about myself is part of the journey, making mistakes is apart of life, wanting or needing to know the far future would suggest that life is written in stone, and I don’t always think so. The missteps, as well as the joys, are my learning tools, tools that I get to share. And not just tools, but my memories, the very wrinkles in my brain and forehead, the many thoughts that I get to recall because it gives me pause in certain situations, I may not have wanted some of these experiences, but I’m at times I can feel almost grateful for them. Ultimately, they affirm my humanity, and that’s a precious thing.
The only thing I would want to know for sure would be for someone to go back in time and tell my younger to self hang in there, and that you truly matter.
On a separate note, the top I’m wearing in the photo I made. The choice to use fabric for the construction of my journals came from sewing my own clothes. I had A LOT of fabric scraps and pieces left over, bits that were too beautiful, as well as extremely wasteful, to just throw away. I’ll post more in the future. It’s based off of a favorite blouse of mine that got ruined by bleach at the laundromat. I carefully took it apart, and use it as a sewing pattern.
I make patchwork clothing and patchwork journals. Life is good!
Thanks for reading.
Jos