How Michael Ondaatje changed how I think about Sewing

I tell myself I have been having trouble finding time to
sew, but that Is not exactly true. I
have trouble finding time to lose myself in sewing, and that is an entirely
different thing.

It came to me this morning, making breakfast, a task in
which I don’t tend to lose myself, that this is precisely what I am
missing. It is easy, with sewing, to
lose myself, to get all wrapped up in the task, which is perhaps the greatest
reason I am not a good 15 minute a day seamstress. A mere 15 minutes is enough that I am a
goner, that time disappears into the fog and I am sewing. I can’t escape that fog of steam, the rhythm
of the needle running up and down, the hum of the machine, the allure of
turning something flat and two dimensional into something else entirely. So I wait, not always patiently, until I can
steal away a little time.

In the past I have done a lot of sewing in the evenings, but
then I had a husband devoted to his work who often did not struggle back to the
fold before 8 PM and 10 and 11 were not unheard of. I still have the darling husband of course,
but he is home, and evenings are spent together more or at least it is looking
like that might become the routine – I haven’t completely settled down to it
yet, but I am in training, and he waits patiently. Knitting, which I love but which does not
engulf my attentions in quite the same way may benefit from this change in
ritual.

I have actually tried working in the sewing room (on sewing
not work – which still occupies the same space) but it has not gone well so
far. I don’t brook interruptions by life
as well when I am sewing, and finding interruption free time has been
difficult, except in the evening, but then I am torn by the competing calls of
my creative side and the love of my life. At the moment these primary forces are still in a state of negotiation.

But how is this morning different? How did I discover something I had been
missing? It was not the pan of chicken
fajitas, peppers, and eggs.

Blame Michael Ondaatje. I got up early this morning, but I was a little draggy yet and a little
stiff, so I curled up in a chair and continued reading my current book, Ondaatje’s newest, Divisadero. When I was interrupted it took me a little
bit to come out of that world – the world of the really good book. It is more than a story, it is more than the
beauty of the writing – there a quite a few writers who do one or the other
beautifully. But this craft of fiction,
where you can create an alternate universe almost in the telling of the tale,
that is a rare skill. I am not sure if
it is a skill or a gift. I suspect it is
both because even a gift must be honed and mastered.

Admittedly I had trouble getting into this book and I am not convinced that is
Ondaatje’s fault, but perhaps a symbol of my own fractured attention span of
late. The book is complicated and it
seems to weave together completely separate and unrelated stories – but then
again they are not (separate that is) just as life is separate and distinct but
not at all so. Everything intersects and
reflects and is echoed again and again. So now (and I am well beyond the half way point) I pick up the book and immediately
get pulled away from what I was thinking and doing into another room in my
mind, a room that at this moment seems to be reserved for this book. I turn the pages, open the mental door and go
somewhere else, only to be startled later when someone knocks.

And it struck me, later, standing at the stove, that when I
sew I either use a different part of my brain or I use it differently than I do
with the rest of my life and the transition back can be difficult – hence the
trouble with interruptions. It is like
some part of the circuitry has been put in some kind of “sleep mode” while
whole new systems have been opened up and turned on. But the process of shutting down and
reawakening my “normal life” mode is time consuming and sometimes harsh. So sewing, at least for me, is about more than just the making of clothes, although that is the most obvious aspect.  It is about art, and thought, and then to some extent about life itself. 

Of course in realizing that sewing makes me
think differently I also realize that sewing time is then even more vital to
keeping the whole mental machine going.

And although with realization can come resolve, resolve
alone does not reconcile the competing needs that life brings. I still need to work out a way to combine
sewing time, with living time, and work time, and also gym or exercise or at
least activity time, because the body must be kept as well maintained as the
mind and the creative spirit.