A fabric is woven, woven with yarn,
textured or uniform,
singled or plied.
The yarn is twisted for cohesion,
stretched out from strands, drawn from a sliver,
cleaned, picked, sheared, unwound.
Fiber taken from the source.
The design of the fabric goes on paper.
Yarns are let off the beam,
threaded through heddles suspended from
harnesses that move up and down
to the motion of the chain.
Through the opening created the yarns
shuttle back and forth,
interlacing with others to create the
pattern of the cloth.
A fine mesh pushes the yarns forward
and fabric is taken up,
and wound.
And thus, the woven fabric
grows.
to
fall in love
with
two
men
was
NEVER
in
her plans
finally she has arrived
in the desert of writers & thinkers
of flyers & nomads
of those who crave to purify their souls
how it happened
Riding the train, my heart on my sleeve,
I wrote on a notepad, then tore the pages and folded them into my briefcase. By the time I got to the office I was over “it.” Fumbling through the briefcase later that day, I saw the pages and, with as little thought as it took me to write, crumpled them into a wastebasket. But the basket was made of metal mesh, so I un-trashed the pages and put them back in the briefcase. Months later, I came upon the pages again and cried all over again. More shocking than finding them was feeling so strongly about something I had written . . . that I had written it at all, and decided that perhaps I could make a story around them.
116,000 words later, those crumpled pages are buried in this novel, seamlessly woven into a body of discovery. Yet still, at times, when I re-edit or come across them again, I cry.
On my way to work, distressed beyond words, I was at the brink of tears when dropped off at the station, but I gathered my stuff, bought the train ticket and an apple strudel, and sat among my soon-to-be-fellow-passengers as if nothing was wrong. But pain seared, it was palpable. When at last I got to a window seat and tucked away my things, the dam broke. I can bear just about anything with the best of them, but not that day. And not only did I cry: I sobbed uncontrollably.
the reason
the outcome
What drove me to write a conversation between two fictitious people is a mystery to me. I continued sobbing, I’m embarrassed to say, while scribbling page after page, with no idea of what I was doing, aware only of the silence around me. I felt refreshed and put away the pad and all that went along with it, until months later when the pages resurfaced. Little did I know that giving them a reason for being would be the impetus for my writing, and that all the empty notebooks, and reams and boxes of paper in drawers and closets, were for that day and for every day since.
It is finished, but I am unsure it conveys what it is meant to convey.
originated | fall of 1997
begun | with fervor in 1998
published | at last in 2022
The ending was proposed by a stranger who gave me an option so logical and sensible . . . I used it.
a tale of redemption
