Quick! Describe rags for me. What are they? What are they for?
Now try plastic bags you have already used. What are they? What are they for?
Above, one of my tapestries woven on a fiber warp with a weft made entirely from plastic bags.
This is not, technically Sakiori, which is rag weaving that was done by Japanese “peasants” for about 200 yours, until the mid 1900s when those with less economic resource could obtain fiber. Sakiori is weaving clothing made from rags. It was repurposing of the most fundamental kind. It was done by those who had to, were forced to, go without.
Standing in Trader Joe’s the other day, I had a conversation with the manager about eggs. I could tell you the whole conversation (it was that interesting) but I’ll say only this: at our Trader Joe’s they have a lovely selection of eggs whose prices have not changed since the inauguration. The supply is refreshed each morning and each consumer may purchase only one dozen.
I told him I was grateful for the eggs but that on the days (weeks) we didn’t have any, I was using applesause and doing other substitutions. He marveled at my ingenuity (I think mostly because other folks just complained to him about eggs), and we both agreed it was good to get creative in case one had to go without.
A pile of strips from rags, made ready to weave, and some donated yarn (saved by a knitter for about twenty years who never used it then gave it to me).
There are a lot of things we can go without. Like eggs, for example. But there are many things that we cannot go without like love, kindness, beauty, creativity, adaptability, intelligence.
We’ve been taught in this culture to think that we cannot bear to go without _______ (please insert the thing you buy and feel you most need). Could be coffee, chocolate, oranges in January, organic greens, or two dozen cheap eggs. But let’s do a little play on words. Going without means we go OUTSIDE of ourselves to make sure we are okay.
A friend said to me recently: “I can’t find anything to feel good about when I look at what’s happening in the world. I was trying to find something to make me feel better and all I saw was bad weather, bad men, bad choices and a bad future.”
You know those Japanese “peasants,” before they began weaving rags to make beautiful clothing, wore clothing made from rough wild hemp that produced uncomfortable and unpleasant clothing. In other words, those rags they used, the leftovers, the throw-aways, from the clothing of the wealthy (originally created from much finer material than they had been able to access), were an improvement.
But imagine if one of them said, “We have nothing but rags.”
Remember my first question: what’s a rag? What are they for?
This is the tablerunner woven from those scraps and yarn you saw above. It’s available in my weaving shop.
If rags are only for throwing out, if plastic bags are only for throwing out, if world, national, community or personal problems are only for complaining about…we have lost access to our creative genius, our beauty-making ability, our deepest gifts within.
When my friend said what she said to me (not that I could not relate, of course!), the thought that immediately came to me was: “If we look to the world around us to find out if we can be happy, peaceful, joyful or have a good day, we will not be having very many good days.”
Then, there is going within.
In other words, we wake up and decide how we feel based on within-ness, not withoutness. We wake up and decide how our day will go based on what we have within us, not based on what the world has for us.
My piece, “The Great Mother,” (this is the Great Mother archetype I’m talking about not being a great mom), woven from cotton yarn and scraps of fabric upcycled from old dresses.
Viktor Frankl, a survivor of the holocaust, author of "Man’s Search for Meaning,” and a neurologist and psychologist, created a miraculous life based on the creative genius of going within. When, in a concentration camp, he had nothing (a lot more nothing than missing out on some eggs or not having access to nice fiber for weaving), he found an eternal wellspring within.
Within.
By all accounts he had nothing that would give him either reason to live, reason to love, or reason to hope. “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way,” he wrote.
I pray that none of us endure the unfathomable going without that he and such a legion of others did. But for whatever going without we each must face, in little and large ways, may we all have a much greater going within.
Making beauty from rags. Finding our creative genius in hardship. These things not only help us “get through the day,” but enable us to lift others up, empower us to do the most good, give us divine ideas and bring out our brightest light, our truest colors.
“True Colors,” a very Sakiori piece, woven from fabric scraps and upcycled yarn.