Transitions

by Margie Gale

In the beginning, learning to flex, stretch, roll over, crawl, stand, walk, reach out and touch what only your eyes were exploring.

Learning words, symbols, gestures and other means to share with others what you feel and experience. Kaleidoscopes of color, sounds, life abounding inspires you to create, to expand, to be fully alive and present.

The need to survive and be independent in a gray world of conformity moves in like a dust storm blinding the eyes, blocking the words, slowing down the motion, trapping you in the mire called civilization. You experience the rise and fall of the paved way.

Dreams become memories.

You see a loom. You see a threading, hear a treadling and feel you can control the weft.

Fill the warp with all of the colors you see even if you have to dye them. You start with tabby but learn to harness over and under using shafts, heddles and all kinds of new tools to spin what you see and feel — weave your own destiny then share it.

This is the ancient language before Babel, richer in so many ways, communicating heart to heart, mind to mind and spirit to spirit.

You think maybe this is what folk tales try to communicate when they speak of spinning straw into gold. The weaver’s path leads you to a guild where you experience the heartbeat of creation that generated the surface designs, complex weavings, tapestries of different textures, vibrant colors, variations on spacial organization. You have left the petty pace behind and feel reborn to live again! Guild on!