Diary 18

RELATING TO RAIN
For centuries, cultural traditions and rituals have involved water as a cleansing agent. Ceremonial purifying and anointing uses water because most often, it’s rooted in the belief that water renews. Similarly, the images that Native Americans Indians first communicated with held profound spiritual significance. The rain symbol, composed of three half circles along a horizontal line, a few vertical lines underneath depicting rainfall, represents renewal and oncoming change. I’ve considered these examples as it’s been raining here the past couple days, as it’s raining right now. Sitting cozy in my candlelit bedroom, writing with the whooshing rain and smell of petrichor coming through my open windows, everything has felt charged with the potential of change; like the rain will cleanse and take away what’s no longer necessary, wash everything anew. Yet simultaneously, the air feels swollen and fertile. Literally- it’s clinging to my skin, my room feels more water than air. But for cultures and societies that rely heavily on agriculture, rain represents richness, fullness, fertility. The way I’ve been resonating with the rain falls between the belief that rain cleanses and takes away, but also enriches and produces bounties. What rivers out with the rain in the process of renewal makes room for growth, for fertility, for lush pastures on which to walk. I’ve been so invested in the ways other people relate to water, to rain, as I try to put language to the effect it’s having on me now, and it feels connective to know that these people have felt what I’m feeling, too. Cultures, religions, histories past have acknowledged the rain as cleansing, renewing, regenerative, fruitful. Though the last few weeks have worn me ragged, it feels like the rain is clearing space for something really, really profound.

LOOM KNITTING
When I was eight, my grandma gave me a loom knitting set. They were chunky, round plastic looms that came with a yarn pick. And I remember sitting with these looms in living rooms, bedrooms, kitchens, car backseats, waiting rooms, engrossed in the looping motion of knitting while yarn spilled into my lap. Not to get too technical, though I think this was a beginners loom knitting set, but the round looms I was using have only two key features: pegs and peg grooves. Pegs, are small columns with caps at the top to prevent the yarn from slipping off. Loom knitting begins with looping the yarn around these pegs to create stitches. Peg grooves, are indentations along each peg that aid in knitting. A separate tool called the yarn pick, which looks like a dental pick, slides along the peg grooves and lifts the yarn up and over each peg. Thus is the act of loom knitting. These processes served as a necessary distraction during violent years at home. The repetition knitting required allowed me to work like a machine, to turn my mind off and submit to the mechanical wills of my hands. I didn’t care for what I was knitting, either; I never sat down with the intention to create something specific. Though the form of the round looms naturally made scarves and hats, I don’t remember keeping any pieces. I valued the looms not for what they produced, but for the hands-on work they required, and the solace I found in that work. A visual metaphor- when I think about this time period, I envision an eight year old girl sitting amongst rubble; be it a junkyard or an abandoned construction site, littered with corroded lumps of metal, beer cans and broken glass, halved bricks, dry and dusty bones. And there’s this barefoot little girl, sitting in the middle of it all, with her loom and her needle, totally tuned out of the environment that she’s in. Unlike writing, which serves as a platform to explore my emotions and experiences by sitting further into them, knitting took me completely out of the present and put me elsewhere. I don’t know where elsewhere was, but it wasn’t "here.” And as a little girl in an abusive household, that’s all that I needed at the time.

NOTES FROM A WALK IN THE WOODS
-rainwater from the evening before has left a silky trail in the sand; marbled threads coming down the slope of the hill
-the environment soothes me like a cold towel on a fevered forehead; the air is cool and damp
-peeling eucalyptus trees
-conscious, deep breaths that feel akin to pulling weeds from their roots
-allowing mosquitos their greedy meals
-searching for this sentence from Helen Macdonald’s book Vesper Flights; “I was glumly traipsing through a small wood near my parents’ house musing on the shape of my life and finding it sorely wanting.”