Reflections on Ever-changing Interconnection

I am a beginning knitter. Actually, my sister taught me how to knit and purl when I was twelve years old. I did not keep at it very long, and I never completed a single project. About a year ago I picked up knitting again and began to find the meditation in each stitch. As I rode the ferry to and from a meeting in Seattle yesterday, I found my hands rhythmically moving in the spiraling figure-eights of my second project this year. I was not as focused on each stitch as I was on the movements from row to row. When I felted my first scarf a few days ago, I watched as stitches slowly disappeared into the fuzzy terrain of the felt-in-the-making. My project changes from moment to moment, each stitch adding length. My body is in the moment and movement of each stitch, but my brain is in the progression from row to row, inches to feet of knitted fiber.

- - -

This is just like my writing. I do not think about every alphabet letter I write; I focus on the word I am using, and the sentences, paragraphs and pages that are formed. When I sit down to write, I am focused on an idea or image I want to convey. And I am reminded so very deeply this morning, about how the words are not the idea or image itself; words are the pointers, the indication, the symbols. Like a map is not the landscape itself, writing is not the actual idea, story or image. My hands type the words hitting plastic keys (or scrawl them on the ink-filled page), but my mind is moving quickly to the larger ideas or stories I am feeling in my being. No matter which words I string together, I am creating something new and representational of whatever is in my head, my heart, my being.

- - -

In the middle of journalling about these ideas of interconnectedness this morning, I took some photographs  as the sunrise began to lighten the sky, waxing into an orb of bright metallic orange, and quickly fading back into a lighter but clouded-over morning. Each moment of the sunrise was beautiful…and fleeting. All these landscape changes occurred within fifty five minutes. The differences between the first photograph and the last are not striking. It seemed, as the sun glowed strongly, that the day would brighten into sunshine, if not warmth. But, no; while the darkness of the night was shaken off at sunrise, the daylight that has arrived in its fullness is a blued white – not bright or sunny, no hint of the shiny rust-colored ball that appeared to levitate just above the horizon, then slowly vanish into the unknown. 

9 Dec 7:03 AM

 

9 Dec 7:45 AM

9 Dec 7:58 AM

Exploration of interconnection:  The scarf cannot exist without the individual knitted stitches, nor the manuscript without the alphabet. The sunrise is part of an ever-changing landscape with no finale or endpoint. For me, each of these is a manifestation of my interconnection, as it shifts and moves in fluid cycles and patterns. Interconnection breathes; it is momentary as well as constant. Whether I pay attention to the details (stitch, letter, orangey sky); the process (knitting, writing, sunrise); or the fabric of the whole (scarf, essay, landscape day); interconnectedness exists. I can find symbols of my interconnection everywhere. And, it is really hard to pin down because interconnection is an idea, much like these words and images on the screen which are mere representations of the unseen yet palpable feeling of interconnection that weaves my life, our lives, together. 

All blog photographs taken by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted.