Awkward, yes, awkward. You never know what will trigger you. Today we went to a wonderful presentation of an exhibition about cloth and people’s memories. It was so rich. How people keep fabric things because of the memories and because of how they cloak you with more than warmth. They cloak you with love.
It made me sad to realise that I have no things with memories attached, or very few. I have Dad’s honing steel, Mum’s sandalwood fan, Mik’s Camino shell. I guess that’s my three dead loved ones, and that’s good, but I just miss the wealth of memories in things. Mum’s embroidery, for example. It hurts. There is nothing I can do about it.
Mik’s shell, Mum’s fan, and a few other things.
The other day I bought from a shop, two shells. Imagine doing that. I never would have. Shells were something you picked up on a beach and, with them, carried home the memory of that day or time, and of the people you were with or the solitude, or your interaction with, and immersion in, that liminal space between earth and sea. But I have none. I have no shells with memories.
This grief of loss is getting harder, not easier. I guess that, now that I am settled, my psych has time for it to come up and be looked at. Painfully.
Oh well. Moving right along.
(some of my old fabric pieces. Sadly the photographic files have also been corrupted, hence the lack of quality)
.. .. .. ..
The Butcher’s Steel
When I lost my heirlooms
from Echidnas Don’t Live Here Any More
my nephew gave me
his grandfather’s honing steel.
In all of the years of its time, this steel
knows my father’s hands the best.
His hands, long gone.
I hold it in my hand like my father did
feel the cold of steel, the warmth of wood
a touch of love.
At the table of my childhood
he prepares to carve, slides the knife
down the steel, swish swish swish swish
the rhythm of it in my mind even now
as keen as the blade is keen
as keen as the faces around the table
as keen as the dog’s eyes.
It slices through time like the knife
slices the meat
cuts the fibres of the muscle
of some affable animal
with liquid eyes.
Oh yes, it had eyelashes that it batted dumbly.
It had a velvet nose and a heart as red
and as beating as yours.
It was as lively as the creatures
that will consume you
when you are meat.
Each of the keen children around the table
already knows this truth, as my father serves
with carving fork and knife.
Gravy poured, the vegetables are placed
according to the needs of each body
and its red and beating heart.
And now, all this time later,
All of those hearts still beat
except for his.
But here with the butchers’ steel
in my hand
is his.
.. .. .. ..
One of the reasons that I don’t blog very often is that I don’t have energy. All of my energy has been used up with fire recovery. (Cudlee Creek Fires, 20 December 2019.) I think it’s called trauma. I did very well at the beginning of the recovery. I could get on with it. I felt that I wasn’t as concerned with what I had lost as I was with going forward. I guess it was how my psych survived at that time. Indeed, it was how my body survived at that time.
The reality is, I am living with that loss every day, though many days are beautiful, and there begins to be lightheartedness sometimes. I am in a very good position with a beautiful sturdy and safe house. These days I can even call it a home. We fill it with things and it is warm, comfortable, and comforting. It doesn’t house the single embroidery that my mother made, or any shells that I collected, but it has lots of things that people have given us, and they all hold memory. Not that I can remember exactly who gave what with every piece, but the overwhelming gratitude at the generosity and care of humans will never fade.
But I do have this poor photo of Mum’s embroidery.
The world has moved on to other disasters, disasters too numerous to fathom, and I’m ashamed to say, too numerous for me to engage with in any meaningful way. I had plenty of energy to fight for The Voice (I am still devastated about that) and I have plenty of energy to be with people in my immediate environment who are hurting. But the wider world?
My energy is limited because I am still wounded. Well, who isn’t? What does one do about woundedness? Mostly, I’ve been ignoring it. Or rather, I have not been sharing it because I think, surely it bores people? It bores me.
After the fire, I blogged. It was a means of communicating with a lot of people at once, of getting things out of my head, and of giving what I had to give. People expressed gratitude that I did, because it gave them insight into what so many people were going through.
But after while I thought that it was just self-indulgent to share my discomfort. Perhaps it is still self-indulgent, but isn’t that what an artist gives, their interactions with life so that others may share them?
Anyhow, it is still what I have to give. Sometimes the insights that I receive as a result of this self-reference are interesting I think. Anyhow, read if you want. Don’t if you don’t.
Underlying insight today? Simple. That love is the most important thing. You can increase it more easily than a bank balance and you can sew it into fabric.
Belinda Broughton 