Floatwork

Weaving is full of countable elements, which makes it especially cathartic for someone with arithmomania (points to self). I’ve just bought what will be my last book for a while: No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai, a story about a man grappling with alienation from himself and from others. I’m laughing because there’s a clear tension here between structure and total collapse.

One of the foundations of modernity is the creation of generalized rules and categories, measurement being a key example. I remember my weaving mentor once told me: MEASURE ALL THE TIME!

I can’t help but think of emergent forms of measurement, like the Sámi concept of parankusema, a unit of distance roughly equivalent to six miles. The term literally translates to “reindeer’s piss,” referring to the distance a reindeer can travel before needing to urinate. Other units are equally imaginative, if not absurd, such as the fathom, originally defined as the span of a person’s outstretched arms. Now is a good time to think about zero or nothingness.