What We Sew

In the current version of my life with its inefficiencies and endless unfinished book projects, home improvements on hiatus, music in my head, itineraries and symphonic lapses... it occurred to me to attend to the small of pile of 'things for mending' I keep on a bench in the bedroom.  I am surprisingly able to thread a tiny-eyed needle and one by one I attempted to manage missing buttons, small legging holes, cloth strap repairs, unravelling sweater edges, etc.  There was something not just satisfying but 'connecting' about it.  I thought, of course, of my mother, who sewed and knit with great mastery and excellence.  She taught me-- patiently and humbly, with that sense of one woman handing down generational secrets of the sex.

My mother's sewing box-- like a kind of doctor's bag filled with threads, needles, patches, ribbons and bands... pin cushions, and most memorable of all-- the darning egg on a stick which resembled a rattle or Caribbean percussion instrument.  With this she deftly repaired holes in socks; my father had several pairs hand-knitted by mothers and in-laws during the war-- argyles and striped... woolen for warmth and insulation inside his cold paratrooper boots as he marched or jumped into surf and swamp. Why, I would ask her, do new and few and pew not rhyme with 'sew'? I am not smart, she would tell me.  You will be smarter. 

Who repairs socks these days?  My son often disposes of them after sports; I used to buy them in huge packs of a dozen.  I don't have a 'darner'.  My mother was given an old Singer machine-- one of the ones with a kind of foot treadle.  She never got the hang of it, but preferred to hem, baste and hand-backstitch in what I can only recall as something approaching perfection.  Those nights by her side-- with my girls' painted wicker basket and the colored spools-- well, they felt so 19th century, in a good way.  And it is not coincidence that my recent sewing evening was close to Mother's Day. I felt her presence more strongly than usual, as though she was approving of my feminine task, and the metaphorical resonance of a needle and thread, like a kind of penance.

Recently the discontinuation of the penny was announced; like many things these days, more trouble than worth.  We had our little banks as children; mine was a kind of ceramic doll-head-- very 19th century, with the porcelain hair done up in a bun, the coin slot in the back, and the topknot itself a pin cushion.  So my bank had a duel use.  Sometime in the 70's I went to my mother's house and retrieved and dumped the bank; they were all wheat pennies... quite old... I have them still, in a box here... waiting to be devalued, I suppose.

Our lives in those days were filled with things-- things had the properties of people, in a way... we looked at them , we took them to bed, we spoke to them, we passed them around.  To make a telephone connection, one had to pick up a heavy handle, rotary dial a bunch of numbers, extend a curly cord a foot or two and sit, close to the wall jack, speaking in one end and listening with the other. 

In the 1960's and 70's, women in the city often had an answering service.  When you left your apartment, you dialed in and somehow magically the operators would receive your calls.  When you returned you'd phone in and they'd read out the messages.  You had a little relationship with your operator; mine was Grace-- a different woman at night, but Grace knew everything.  The cost of this service was small; you''d send a monthly check and they'd clip the hand-written message sheets together in your bill.  Besides her perfect cursive, I had no idea how tall Grace was-- old or young, black or white. 

One could easily go a day now without actually speaking to anyone... our lives are so enmeshed by social media and all of these time-consuming communication platforms.  I have only a few friends who make telephone calls; we still have landlines although these get little use. I work at a gallery Saturdays; it specializes in vintage mid-century French design.  People are most fascinated when the furniture is staged with period objects.. old radios and televisions... it seems that much of our nostalgia revolves around objects.  Our former lives were filled with things-- notebooks, pencils, rulers, book bags, stuffed animals-- scrapbooks and photographs, postcards and stamp collections-- souvenirs, dolls, shells, rocks.  

I worry about losing my memory; my mother lost hers, could not identify many of the photographs she loved to pour over in her album.  My sister cruelly destroyed mine, effectively wiping parts of my own memory by removing associated images.  I wonder when I will forget my grade school teachers, the seating order, the classroom numbers... my childhood dogs who haunt my dreams.  It will happen, one day.. or I will not recognize my own neighbors and friends.. I will forget song lyrics and confuse Beethoven and Mozart sonatas... 

As addled as she was in later life, my mother did not forget how to sew. I wish I had more of the skirts and dresses she hemmed with such skill, the knitted sweaters and the vests, for warmth.  She sat at the piano, at the end, surprised by the sound of the notes, and for seconds her fingers formed chords, but then it all disintegrated.

We had these handmade rag dolls-- one side was a sleeping face, and the other awake.  We'd change their bonnet in the morning, as kind of wake-up ritual, and put them to bed at night. I wonder how many children will save their obsolete pennies in a porcelain bank, will learn to sew with needle and thread and will be able to identify a darning egg.  For a couple of hours the other night, I created a 'mended' pile and felt accomplished in a way-- my stack of repaired patched leggings and tights felt like a kind of badge.  My mother might have nodded her approval.

So many things have been lost along the way-- left in other countries, missing or stolen.  I know as we age we do not log the things we forget; they simply disappear without ceremony or conscience. This terrifies me... who will remind me of what I no longer recall? My mother wore a thimble; I never mastered the art of using one.. kind of like playing the bass with a pick... I still have a thumbpick Johnny Winter gave me once... another of these tangibles that seem more meaningful as life goes on.  One watches celebrity possessions being auctioned for vast sums these days... even clothing.  It seems when human company becomes less available, things provide comfort... connection. And some of them, like the poor penny, while non-functional, do not die. 

I have no daughter to whom I can hand-down my dwindling skills.  My son will not pick up a needle and thread and remember moments. We do have some hand-made souvenirs and old photos-- paper ones. My old rag doll still sits on the bed in which he has not slept for decades. She has a clearly sewn heart beneath her old clothing; it serves. 

Not Vegetarian

As a needed literary palette-cleanser I picked up a Murakami novel. I'm beginning to outgrow certain books... or expecting more than I get.  Murakami is always admirable for trying... one often reads for the mystery factor... and he is literate and understands music, art... it's reassuring and good.  This time it was Kafka on the Shore... my expectations were different (the title, lol) but it was okay.

For months I've been waitlisted at NYPL for a couple of Han Kangs... The Vegetarian came last week and I devoured it in an evening. Maybe it was the still-lingering taste of Murakami, but I was underwhelmed. I felt like I'd been there, I'd known these people-- all of them, with their issues and a sort of projected character-narcissism I can't help attributing to the writer?  I am sinning here, I know... but with my limited years of life, diminishing by the moment, I feel annoyed when I am disappointed.  Murakami.. how can one compare (?); but his ambition never fails to impress even when he is less successful. And his characterizations-- well, they are so much less pretentious.  If I had bought this book, I would have felt duped. Apologies to the Nobelist.

A story in the Times today about an eccentric tough professor--  a kind of hoarder... who upon her death left sizable sums of money to selected students.  It felt meaningful, and in the context of recent relentless meditations on death, wills, afterlife... it was a kind of solution. Obviously, being memorialized with a New York Times post-mortem story had its own merit.

The river of death continues to flow past me... the mounting losses among friends, and the utter failure to honor these people who touch us so profoundly... and become a small paragraph-- a post, a broken heart meme... what can one do, without becoming a professional mourner?  Aside from the Pope and former presidents, funeral rituals have become less stringent since Covid.  One adjusted to the idea that a gathering or service would perpetrate more death, and postponed.  Reading history-- whole civilizations were characterized by the way they handled burial and afterlife philosophy.  What one leaves behind has ever-increasing longevity as opposed to the meagre years we are given here.  Not even an eye-blink in the monstrosity of time.

I was forced into a major discussion this week with a teenager who had decided he'd had enough education, and college would be meaningless.  Go ahead, I said... I mean, there are pictures of everything... does one really need to read the captions?  It's useful... and the richness of everyday existence is really measured by the resonance of experience-- how a song reminds us of something.. a piece of melody-- the way some assortment of trees calls up a Monet image or vice versa.  Art-- something not always understood... the process, the pieces.  How will you know about what came before? How will you know what there is to know? Dead writers are not often reviewed in daily media... but they are the foundation.  They are my intellectual family... my teachers. 

Once the actual experience of death is comprehended-- terrifying and unknowable-- it is the eternal obscurity that is depressing.  What we have been, what we have done-- it's just so temporary and unimportant in a culture which deifies the moment-- instant fame. No longer 15 minutes-- it's more like 15 seconds. One wonders that these monstrous people like Sean Diddy Combs are proving evil more memorable than goodness.  They receive enormous media time... and what is goodness?  Pope Francis became a kingpin... we are fascinated, but we go on sinning and wasting time and failing to rescue opportunities.

We cannot save people... The Vegetarian author knows that. I had a longtime best friend who suffered various mental illnesses and I acknowledge I grew tired of being sympathetic. It was exhausting watching her refuse food and company when she was one of the most artistically gifted people I'd ever known.  Part of it-- I was furious at losing my BFF who was better than I was at drawing and maybe singing.  And I adored her. But the option of choosing a kind of death in life seems so selfishly anti-humanitarian.  Not to mention requiring an enormous amount of medical and psychiatric attention. 

Personally I have befriended darkness and process this as a kind of shadow without which there is no light. I have disallowed mental illness but subscribe to psychological variety in the extreme.  I want to see art which explores these channels without shouting about it. Without promotion there is no exposure, I suppose. It is the paradox of this culture which prioritizes marketing above product... which monetizes just about everything... and defines success in amounts. Our heroes are in a way half baked... some of them suffer from the guilty pleasure of fame but many just continue the glam-squad lifestyle and continuous partying.  Maybe it is the new 'B-side' of creativity-- alternating phases of production and then celebration.

I keep returning to the classics-- I am obsessive and worried about my lapses... my failures to discover important things that are no longer popular or even in libraries.  The printed word-- it's so important. Currently I am reading Colm Tóibín's The Magician.. another digression before I start my next difficult 1200 page opus.  It tells the story of Thomas Mann... really just leads one to the writer himself... I wonder if he is read as widely as the Tóibín novel was in this decade.  

Daily obituaries remind... one must memorialize oneself I suppose-- this is the appeal of instagram?  That one's 'legacy' is copious and therefore significant?  And if one is undiscovered, is this worse than death?  There's a universe out there... an infinite, incomprehensible chronology... ever-expanding like the ratio of death to life. Until we have done ourselves in... all of us.  All of the art-- from cave paintings to Stonehenge to the $4 billion-dollars-worth of paintings sold at auction last week.  All of the books... the beautiful buildings-- the Sistine Chapel.  We can all sense goodness... it doesn't necessarily make us famous, but while we are living-- this tiny gift of time-- we can make something, we can leave a mark.  And we can 'not-fail' the ones who came before us, who sit patiently on library shelves, waiting... collecting dust, tottering on being remaindered in the next generation... Eek. Amen.