Wednesday, July 28, 2010

needles and felt

Today we started sewing felt creatures. Nora sewed for the first time - she asked for thread that would "camouflage" with the light blue felt with which she is making a spider. I had her sit in front of me as I showed her how to move the needle through the layers. She lasted for longer than I imagined, and between the two of us we stitched half her creature closed. It will be an ice spider and she wants it to really stand up so we'll need to give it wire legs.

Russell is making a green -ooze cyclops. The design he made has such a nice, masculine protective feeling though, I felt slightly comforted when cutting it out for him along the lines he drew, when carefully matching up the margins and pinning the fabric in place. He calls my creature "triple blob," but to me it has become a symbol of abundance, something like a pea pod filled with bodhichitta. Would it hurt if I enclose a mantra within it, but which one? Or maybe I'll embroider an om into each of its sections. It is nice when the syllable goes beyond novel orientalism into the resonance it may have been in India 2,000 years ago, a syllable that replenishes light in a world where shadows and confusion so frequently press in. Maybe here, in this stuffed toy, OM will press out, affectionately. And each time the needle goes through the felt, the devotee is bonded to the samaya, the sangha, the dharma, to the yidam and guru (physical or not), and each pass through represents another moment when the delusions on which all unkindness and judgement are based are recognized as baseless.

Om derives from Aum, "The syllable is taken to consist of three phonemes, a, u and m, variously symbolizing the Three Vedas or the Hindu Trimurti or the three stages of life ( birth, life and death ). " It is thought of as containing blissful emptiness, and some believe that Amen comes from the same root. Based on the triple time signatures as mentioned above Om calls to mind the Hebrew tetragrammaton, the description of the unnameable limited to "what was, what is, what is to come." Aum. YHYW. Is it true?