Size doesn’t matter. Practice matters.
I went to Mexico with my mom and sister once and we walked into this amazing shop where a ‘well-rounded’ man was beading. If you looked around the shop you would see floor to ceiling items beaded with some of the most colourful and intricate beads you can find. He was beading a necklace when we walked in. His fingers were as round as dinner sausages – like bratwurst – not a tiny English sausage you would eat for breakfast. It blew my mind how he could bead with such rhythm, dexterity, so smoothly and seemingly perfectly. My fingers were at least half the girth and I know I would fiddle around, drop beads, curse, shame myself, ask myself why I was doing this. Take a break and/or lose interest altogether.
I have no cultural ties to this work, so why would I do it? Besides trying to understand my own thoughts and feelings through a creative process… shouldn’t I do it because it draws me closer to something? Can I braid a trail of stories to my ancestors? What about walking paths of buried rivers? Will that connect me to my lineage and to myself? When my feet move do they plant down roots? I’m always cautious of stepping forward on a land that I’m not from, not a part of; an uninvited visitor to these lands.
Pre-cautious. Frozen. Over-giving. Invisible. Ancestors – timelines. Angels. Connection. Sigh.
My right hip-flexor is tensing. My thoracic spine curled and tense. It’s like my bones collapse around who I am. Fearful I’ll make a mistake. Fearful I’ll be too big. Too loud. Cast a large shadow.
where rivers are born 