Winding Path

After my assault, the first time I felt connected to myself again was making a Pomo style basket in a workshop with Corinne Pearce (https://corinepearce.com/). It’s notable to me that these crafts – cordage, basketweaving, all crafts to make something to carry and connect – also begin with something turning, or spinning asymmetrically to make symmetry. These processes also helped this out of balance rape survivor return to my center.

Recently, I was spending time at a skillshare gathering hosted by Steph Rue (https://www.stephrue.com/fieldnotes/cordage-gathering), where she and friend Tanya Lieberman shared methods of spinning cordage from tule fiber in the Wintu style, and spinning hangi (Korean handmade paper) to make cords for jisueng (Korean paper weaving).

Steph later shared in a post to social media about writing a letter to her grandmother, and spinning the paper upon which the letter was written into a cord which she wore on her wrist.

Enchanted by this idea, I set out to something similar. I set out to write a letter to the man who raped me, but as I began to write it turned into a letter to myself. I wrote it on handmade paper.

Part of what I wrote read:

I remember feeling so cut off from myself, so lost, disconnected and I couldn’t see a way to return to myself. It felt impossible. Now, I cannot imagine not trying, that returning to myself has been a blessing, to be home again in my own soul. Yet I remember how distant and impossible it had felt-and that feeling was an additional kind of suffering. I can’t explain it, such a psychic wound of mammoth proportions, in which I still stood on my own feet, while the ground beneath felt as if it was constantly shaking.

I want to say this to anyone who needs to hear it – it is possible to return to yourself. It is not easy. I had to do the work, to face everything that made me uncomfortable or sad within myself. I had to look into my own darkness. I had to let my body feel the anger and grief for as long as it needed to.

But by letting myself feel these emotions, by embodying them, making space for them to be within me, slowly, led to them easing. They did not depart, but they lost their power over me. This was my winding path back to myself.

And as I followed this path, I reached a point where I could say to myself, Welcome home, body, mind, soul. It felt like such a relief.

Like Steph, I made cordage out of the paper, which was incorporated into this sculpture, which also uses Pomo-style basketweaving techniques as part of the armature. I’ve been thinking of calling this series, The Way of the Gourd. It’s title comes from a line in The Leaf and the Cloud, a book-length poem by Mary Oliver, in which she debates remaining silent verses speaking and using words.

Regarding the making of baskets, during Corinne’s workshop she spoke of baskets a form of wealth, but also gifts – the tradition is that the first basket you make you must give away. If you’re a perfectionist, that’s a nightmare. And yet, it’s also beautiful: for the Pomo, they leave a deliberate mistake in their work, called the dow, which serves as a portal to let the spirit in. So when you’re a beginner, and there’s lots of mistakes = lots of spirit gets in! But I’m also enchanted with the idea that this first vessel, so full of spirit, must be shared. The gift that is given is not the perfect, immaculate work, it is the earnest first step, the learner’s mind, the beginning.

Maybe when I made that basket I had such a need of spirit that it came to me. Since then I’ve given many baskets to friends; they’re less awkward that when I began, but still full of spirit. Yes the winding asymmetry was how I began my journey home to myself.