So grateful for your courage, Sarah, in sharing the intensity of your rage (and thereby validating my own). Blessed be the messengers. Your creations are beautiful.
Love this!! I can identify with the anger, but really enjoyed the sharing of the pathways that funnel the anger….and the photos at the end were a chef’s kiss!!😘
I didn’t realize how angry I was until I wrote it. Or rather, until my husband read it and started slowly backing away from the box that holds all my crafting tools…
Sarah, I love your writing & your humor. As I read your words, I feel like I am traveling with you on a new adventure. We have huge pine trees surrounding our home. I always wondered what I could do with all the pine needles that cover our drive and yard in the Fall. Now I know & it will help ease today’s anxiety. Can’t wait for your new book!
Beautiful and painful, what you have written. Incidental: Eliot wrote an introduction for an edition of Huckleberry Finn. It is a marvelous piece, and the river runs through it.
I have it as a PDF and could send it if there’s a way that wouldn’t be intrusive, but there appear to be a couple of PDFs on the web, which may be more convenient. The edition with the Eliot introduction was given to me in the early 50s and has lived with me ever since.
This makes me cry, which is a tribute, not a complaint. As for me, I used to write and write and write (and teach) but now I knit and knit and knit and knit, hoping to knit some beauty back into the world, hoping to create some enduring artifacts for my loved ones, hoping to fashion some patterns back into the chaos, and because I love to feel the yarn going through my hands. As a professional historian approaching my 68th birthday, I am appalled and broken by so many of the terrible things that have happened in the last few years, and are now happening at warp speed, but not least of all by the cruel threats now being posed by this vile "administration" of thugs to the National Archives, Library of Congress, national historic sites of all sorts, museums and other cultural organizations which strive to preserve the historical and cultural records and products of our past, essential for us to even have a future worth living. So I go out in the street to protest as often as I can, give back to my family and community whatever I have to offer to try and hold them together, and I knit and knit and knit.
This time is agony for historians and conservationists. It’s one thing to know it’s coming, but another to live through it. And unfortunately, the denial spread by propagandists insisting that “Garland will stop it” or “The Dems will win” led to a lot of folks not preserving valuable work in time, because they were falsely assured that it would remain safe. Anyway, keep reading and keep knitting! It is putting beauty back into the world and it helps balance that which is being taken away.
You're wisdom is so valuable to me! I will strive not just to be resilient but to put beauty back into the world as a balance. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Remember the Phoenix. They cannot take away our lessons, memories or love. The Age of Aquarius, we will rise past this. Genocide will be only a word in the history books. We, are the visionaries who see and will guide the future. 💕
Thanks as ever for this, Sarah. As someone who's studied, learned, played, and taught vernacular traditions (music and dance) for the past 50 years, I am grateful for the wisdom of Elders and of those who came before, particularly those minoritized and victimized who vowed to survive in the face of this nation's bottomless greed, ego, and cruelty. For 50 years, I've said to students, "This is the music we'll play After," because it's music, dance, storytelling, and vernacular wisdom not dependent upon books, grants, funding, or permission. I thought it was going to be the music and dance we'd share "...After Peak Oil," or "...After a world war," or "...After we come to our senses," but instead it's the music & dance we'll share--in secret, if necessary, like the Maroons and the Irish Hedge School Masters and Chinese Mountains & Rivers monks--after the fascists are victorious. And we'll still be playing and singing, while they rise and after they fall.
What gifts you have for transmuting the ugly reality we are living in. Photos, baskets, weaving, rock collecting, music making in song and words. As a kid with my ear on the console speaker, I wished for colors. I see colors now in your words and your voice. Be strong for us.
Sarah having followed your work obsessively since I first encountered it sometime around 2015 I can sense the fragility woven into this exquisite writing. I can only send you my kindest thoughts and agnostic prayers. And to share the atavistic pull to ancient crafts that need a hand to be realised. I walk the shores of a beloved river and beach and pick up seaweed and manically create cordage to make what? To tether kindness and goodness to the world? The bind the monsters who think nothing of slaying children? Or simple to link myself to my beloved place by crafting with the bounty on the shore. Who knows. We do what we do in these times. As always thank you and take care.
Totally understandable that you’re feeling “worn from warning“. I’m so glad you are using your remarkably diverse, creative skills to cope. Please please please take good care of yourself. We need you.… If you ever decide to auction any of your pieces for charity, I’d buy one of your baskets.
"I wove a cloth of rage, and when it was finished, I held a cloth of memory." This line stopped me in my tracks and made me tearful. Such exquisite, furious writing Sarah - thank you so much and please do take care of yourself.
Also, on a lighter note, I was reminded of a quote I saved a while ago to potentially use in my art journal: "stab fabric, not people". I've been waiting for the right piece to include it, thinking I might need to create that very soon.
Same, I had tears welling in my eyes from that line as well. It was like it went straight past my brain and was read by my heart. This piece was truly masterful.
I’m weaving and basket making and knitting a lot these days. All day long I say”bet he doesn’t know how to do this” The simplest things he has never done. Artless motherfucker.
When millions of people are reaching for an answer, a solution, something to *do* as the future they know is coming unfolds like a Spring storm front off the Rockies, thank you Sarah for putting it into words. And... giving us the answer.... make art, create, build something that matters to those you lose most. Seek out those with the same values and fears and in creating something together: a vegetable garden, a new book club.... whatever it is. We need to know we are not alone... because the noose will take the place of everything and everyone we love, if we let it.
If anyone is in UK and near to Portsmouth Cathedral this Thursday to the first weekend in March, we are running an exhibition of Ukrainian children's art in the Nave.... this is my solution to the noose....
Would love to see that exhibition... On my first trip to Prague last November, seeing children's artwork from Teresin broke our hearts and bolstered our resolve.
Thanks! I think bringing something into the world, something not reactive, is a good thing. It can be a craft or an essay or a song or anything at all. Just original, outside the confines of what the government wants to prompt.
Beautiful - your crafts and your words. And what is art if not an act of defiance? Certainly beats indulging in despair and helplessness. Thank you for sharing these with us.
Art is absolutely an act of defiance. You can tell because the oligarchs are trying to destroy all art, even mainstream popular art like HBO. Anything thats good, thoughtful, and American.
So grateful for your courage, Sarah, in sharing the intensity of your rage (and thereby validating my own). Blessed be the messengers. Your creations are beautiful.
Thanks! I’m hoping the images offset the fury of the words. But the fury is there, as it is with so many.
No reason to offset the fury. Amazing that making art enables you to carry that much of it without being burned alive by it.
Well said, Nina
A beautiful weaving of words and emotions.
Thank you!
This is the most beautiful, intimate, and haunting piece.
Thank you!
Love this!! I can identify with the anger, but really enjoyed the sharing of the pathways that funnel the anger….and the photos at the end were a chef’s kiss!!😘
Thank you!
Such a gorgeous essay, with fury transmuted into beauty.
I didn’t realize how angry I was until I wrote it. Or rather, until my husband read it and started slowly backing away from the box that holds all my crafting tools…
I didn’t realize how angry I was until I read it! Thank you for this beautiful angry piece (or angry beautiful piece).
Sarah, I love your writing & your humor. As I read your words, I feel like I am traveling with you on a new adventure. We have huge pine trees surrounding our home. I always wondered what I could do with all the pine needles that cover our drive and yard in the Fall. Now I know & it will help ease today’s anxiety. Can’t wait for your new book!
Thank you!
Beautiful and painful, what you have written. Incidental: Eliot wrote an introduction for an edition of Huckleberry Finn. It is a marvelous piece, and the river runs through it.
Oooh I want to see that! And thanks
I have it as a PDF and could send it if there’s a way that wouldn’t be intrusive, but there appear to be a couple of PDFs on the web, which may be more convenient. The edition with the Eliot introduction was given to me in the early 50s and has lived with me ever since.
This makes me cry, which is a tribute, not a complaint. As for me, I used to write and write and write (and teach) but now I knit and knit and knit and knit, hoping to knit some beauty back into the world, hoping to create some enduring artifacts for my loved ones, hoping to fashion some patterns back into the chaos, and because I love to feel the yarn going through my hands. As a professional historian approaching my 68th birthday, I am appalled and broken by so many of the terrible things that have happened in the last few years, and are now happening at warp speed, but not least of all by the cruel threats now being posed by this vile "administration" of thugs to the National Archives, Library of Congress, national historic sites of all sorts, museums and other cultural organizations which strive to preserve the historical and cultural records and products of our past, essential for us to even have a future worth living. So I go out in the street to protest as often as I can, give back to my family and community whatever I have to offer to try and hold them together, and I knit and knit and knit.
This time is agony for historians and conservationists. It’s one thing to know it’s coming, but another to live through it. And unfortunately, the denial spread by propagandists insisting that “Garland will stop it” or “The Dems will win” led to a lot of folks not preserving valuable work in time, because they were falsely assured that it would remain safe. Anyway, keep reading and keep knitting! It is putting beauty back into the world and it helps balance that which is being taken away.
You're wisdom is so valuable to me! I will strive not just to be resilient but to put beauty back into the world as a balance. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Remember the Phoenix. They cannot take away our lessons, memories or love. The Age of Aquarius, we will rise past this. Genocide will be only a word in the history books. We, are the visionaries who see and will guide the future. 💕
Thanks as ever for this, Sarah. As someone who's studied, learned, played, and taught vernacular traditions (music and dance) for the past 50 years, I am grateful for the wisdom of Elders and of those who came before, particularly those minoritized and victimized who vowed to survive in the face of this nation's bottomless greed, ego, and cruelty. For 50 years, I've said to students, "This is the music we'll play After," because it's music, dance, storytelling, and vernacular wisdom not dependent upon books, grants, funding, or permission. I thought it was going to be the music and dance we'd share "...After Peak Oil," or "...After a world war," or "...After we come to our senses," but instead it's the music & dance we'll share--in secret, if necessary, like the Maroons and the Irish Hedge School Masters and Chinese Mountains & Rivers monks--after the fascists are victorious. And we'll still be playing and singing, while they rise and after they fall.
After.
What gifts you have for transmuting the ugly reality we are living in. Photos, baskets, weaving, rock collecting, music making in song and words. As a kid with my ear on the console speaker, I wished for colors. I see colors now in your words and your voice. Be strong for us.
Thanks! I'm not feeling all that strong at the moment though. Ten years of this takes a toll. But it comes and goes…
Sarah having followed your work obsessively since I first encountered it sometime around 2015 I can sense the fragility woven into this exquisite writing. I can only send you my kindest thoughts and agnostic prayers. And to share the atavistic pull to ancient crafts that need a hand to be realised. I walk the shores of a beloved river and beach and pick up seaweed and manically create cordage to make what? To tether kindness and goodness to the world? The bind the monsters who think nothing of slaying children? Or simple to link myself to my beloved place by crafting with the bounty on the shore. Who knows. We do what we do in these times. As always thank you and take care.
Totally understandable that you’re feeling “worn from warning“. I’m so glad you are using your remarkably diverse, creative skills to cope. Please please please take good care of yourself. We need you.… If you ever decide to auction any of your pieces for charity, I’d buy one of your baskets.
Thanks!
"I wove a cloth of rage, and when it was finished, I held a cloth of memory." This line stopped me in my tracks and made me tearful. Such exquisite, furious writing Sarah - thank you so much and please do take care of yourself.
Also, on a lighter note, I was reminded of a quote I saved a while ago to potentially use in my art journal: "stab fabric, not people". I've been waiting for the right piece to include it, thinking I might need to create that very soon.
Thank you!
Same, I had tears welling in my eyes from that line as well. It was like it went straight past my brain and was read by my heart. This piece was truly masterful.
I’m weaving and basket making and knitting a lot these days. All day long I say”bet he doesn’t know how to do this” The simplest things he has never done. Artless motherfucker.
Yes he is! And I’m not even sure which one you mean because they’re all artless motherfuckers
When millions of people are reaching for an answer, a solution, something to *do* as the future they know is coming unfolds like a Spring storm front off the Rockies, thank you Sarah for putting it into words. And... giving us the answer.... make art, create, build something that matters to those you lose most. Seek out those with the same values and fears and in creating something together: a vegetable garden, a new book club.... whatever it is. We need to know we are not alone... because the noose will take the place of everything and everyone we love, if we let it.
If anyone is in UK and near to Portsmouth Cathedral this Thursday to the first weekend in March, we are running an exhibition of Ukrainian children's art in the Nave.... this is my solution to the noose....
That is good advice! Thank you
Would love to see that exhibition... On my first trip to Prague last November, seeing children's artwork from Teresin broke our hearts and bolstered our resolve.
Chris bring us to your hometown... we shoe these paintings wherever we can... to help the children
Wow…stunning piece of writing, thank you
As a fellow maker of small objects, I am sending you so much love. I feel creating these little treasures is an act of rebellion.
Thanks! I think bringing something into the world, something not reactive, is a good thing. It can be a craft or an essay or a song or anything at all. Just original, outside the confines of what the government wants to prompt.
Great piece capturing the anger that is appeased by creativity. The images are lovely!
Thank you!
Beautiful - your crafts and your words. And what is art if not an act of defiance? Certainly beats indulging in despair and helplessness. Thank you for sharing these with us.
Art is absolutely an act of defiance. You can tell because the oligarchs are trying to destroy all art, even mainstream popular art like HBO. Anything thats good, thoughtful, and American.