The Berber tribes of North Africa regard weaving as a metaphor for the cycle of life. As the weaver warps the loom, she is giving birth to the textile. While the weaver advances row by row the textile progresses from birth, through childhood, adulthood, and old age. Finally, the textile dies when the weaver removes it from the loom.According to the Free People, as the Berber refer to themselves, I live among dead textiles-they adorn my walls, they cover my floors, and they clothe my body.
I cannot think of my textiles as dead objects. I believe that as I weave, I am creating the textile, breathing life into it, and by freeing it from the loom, I am releasing it into the world as a living entity-the textile is born, or reborn.
A month or so after I returned home from the surgeries, I felt sufficiently recovered to begin working on the yardage I had dreamed of.
The bloody brain had affected my ability to think sequentially. I had trouble solving problems involving multiple steps. Will I know how to follow all the steps sequentially? My memory was affected. Will I remember how to perform the steps? Will my balance and vertigo limit me as I progressed?
I felt broken after the surgeries. I wanted to repair and rebuild. I wanted to weave myself back into being.