Excuse me, but I must celebrate...

I FINISHED MY FIRST SHAWL!!!!!!!!!!!!

(ahem) Ooh, did I startle you? Sorry about that.

I'm really excited. I have always loved shawls, and have a fairly respectable collection of them. This one is really wonderful, it's a fairly simple pattern (the Grey Triangle Shawl from here (in the free knitting patterns section) but when finished, it doesn't look simple at all, but very lacy. I haven't been knitting a full month yet, so I'm really happy. I learned a lot too, amusingly, one of the things I learned was I need to trust myself a bit more. I thought I had screwed it up, but it's perfect.

Maybe pictures soon.

Jade(wheeeeee!)

Precious Time...

The weekends go too damn quickly. I heard a song tonight that caught my ear with these lines:
"All these burning battlefields are now behind us
Life has brought us here together to remind us"

I've been thinking today about firgiveness in more general terms, on a larger scale - wondering why it is we hold on so tightly to that which has hurt us, whereas the good, the neutral, and even the wonderful can slip through memory's grasp so easily. (Excuse me while I engage in some sloppy sociobiology) Perhaps it's a primal thing, that which hurts us can remove us from the running, so we have crystalline recall, to prevent pain reappearing. On one hand, that seems logical - but sloppy sociobiology usually does:). One the other hand...it doesn't exactly *solve* anything, now does it?

Ego has a large hand in it, I'm sure. If we're treated badly, it hits directly on our sense of self, our sense of who we are and what we are in the world. Wrongs done to us bruise this image, which on some level makes us question who we are; "Am I so low, that you would do this to me?" Bruises on that image last, because the creation of who we think we are in the world is such a painstaking, delicate process.

I've been reading a lot, since I wanted to rest my hands a little. A lot of what I'm reading about coming to terms with wrongs done require exactly the thing I've been trying to let go of wanting - clear understanding of motive.

I'm beyond impatient with myself over my attachment to this idea. I don't understand why Escobar happened, and I'm not going to understand. Period. (exasperated sigh) Now can I just move on? Really, it's just silly, in the worst way, my holding so tightly to wanting to know when I could so easily turn my eyes to where the fall landed me, and let the beauty of that steal my breath.

Oh. Oh. I get it now, in a blinding flash of the obvious. I want to know so badly because I want reassurance that I am *not* so lowly that I would/should/was treated that way.

Oh, this is funny. I want what I will not have, in order to obtain that which it would never, could never give me.

My grip loosens, just a little....

Jade

Well, you did ask...

For those that asked, pictures of the shawl are here, here,and here.. The third image shows a bit of saddness, the center line wanders off twice, it seemes my stich markers migrated. Honestly, I kind of expected at least something to be messed up in it, as it's *not* a beginners pattern, and hell to get a good look at while on the needles. I wound up starting from the beginning more than once. Well, more than five times, really. Still, I'm pleased, even though I expect that sometime soon I'll unravel it and redo it, as I really like the pattern. I learned a lot, making so many mistakes, and am even looking around for a more complex lacework pattern to do, as my current shawl is mind-numbingly simple, especially after this one. Oh, and now you know what I look like, too.:)
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A comment left in my last entry gave me the kick I really needed. It was suggested that while looking at the question "am I so lowly that you would do this to me?", I also look at "Do you feel so lowly that you would feel you had to do this to me?". A lot of my reading has touched strongly on the idea that when we have been hurt by someone we ought to give extensive consideration to why the person in question would act so negatively., and by doing so, our anger would lessen, instead developing into pity (loaded word, that.) and sympathy.

I've been avoiding that, I think. Why? Hmmm....I think that line of supposition gets convoluted. Lacking so much understanding of motive, I can barely glimpse why X would have felt the need to do what she did. You know, just now I realized there's a lot of saddness there, looking at it. If she had just come to me with whatever was on her mind, I'm sure we could have worked something out, anything out. Compromise is something I'm damned good at, negotiation, finding middle grounds are all skills I work hard at. So sad. I didn't have to go down that way.

I really needed to start thinking along these lines. Thanks, you.

Jade