By Lichen
The United States has always been an atrocity, and we’re now living in the naked fascism that the systems of oppression this state is built on lead to. I know too much about history and the system I’ve lived in my whole life to think the odds are good for trans and disabled people like me. I’m angry and scared and overwhelmed with grief. I take action, it makes me feel safer and gives me a sense of agency that tempers trauma. I show up for my friends; community and mutual aid give me the means and will to live. I know the future I dream of, full of reciprocity and autonomy is still possible whether or not I make it there, and I know I will stay and fight for that. I also recognize I’m hitting limits. I can’t be in action all day every day. I need times of rest and leisure, time to be more than a marginalized body in resistance. Movies and pop culture have never offered me an escape, just more dissonance. I need something more ancient.
I don’t want to judge people for indulging in celebrity culture, mainstream entertainment, meaningless fluff, whatever. We’re all just trying to hold ourselves and each other together in the face of horrors our tender animal bodies didn’t evolve for, and find rest and comfort however we can. But so much more is possible! Our leisure, fluff, relaxation, rest, fun, don’t have to be in the letting go of our ideals, the mind-shutting-down to be numbed by the spectacle, the surrender to consumerism. We have so many more outlets for joy, fun, and pleasure in which we don’t simply ignore our reality, but create moments of the new world we dream of. What follows is just one of infinite visions of this kind of joy, my little offering for you to consider and add as a data point in the beautiful experiment of your own life.
In the evening I spin yarn with a drop spindle (one of the most ancient tools for making yarn and very easy to diy) or a spinning wheel. I cover my lap with a towel I wove and prepare wool to spin. The wool is from a sheep named Holly who lives in Santa Rosa and is tasked with eating invasive grasses, or wool from Black Mesa Solidarity Network, a network of Navajo families holding their ancestral land in Arizona. I spin the wool and dye it with flowers grown by my community. In a few weeks I have enough yarn to weave a blanket.
The process of taking fiber from its rawest state to an object of use and beauty connects me with other people, other species, the land I’m held by. It’s gratifying, fun, relaxing, and a place I can claim agency.
Weaving is a rhythmic, satisfying practice that helps me move through overwhelm and distress that can feel unbearable, a medicine of creation and autonomy that has helped me process complex trauma outside the carceral treatment settings where much of that trauma occurred. Of course it also gives me useful fabric that I use to make home goods and clothing for myself and others, demonstrating the possibility of community produced textiles independent of global trade and exploitation.
Sharing seeds and plant starts connects me with my community in another way. Our decentralized garden is made up of pots on balconies, small patches of backyards, and soil in the margins. And what a pleasure it is to point to the gradient of bright orange to butter yellow and name the corresponding varieties of Coreopsis and Marigold and the beloved friends who care for them, me, each other.
Spinning connects me to practices of creation that span millennia. I use a lot of wool because of its properties as a fiber and the stories I get to spin. Stories of local sheep living gentle lives, and of people resisting, persisting, and living beautiful, difficult lives in resistance to centuries of genocide. The act of spinning is soothing and intriguing, it feels like magic and looks like it. It’s also true that I simply can’t afford to buy significant amounts of commercial yarn, no matter how much unethical cost cutting the yarn company does. Acting on my ideals is the most effective strategy I’ve found for surviving and finding moments of joy as a disabled, mad, trans person in this world.
I take pleasure and pride in the process and the sources of the materials, the connections and responsibility I take for living at least a scrap of the life I dream of. Off the loom comes a blanket, and I give it to a friend.
To keep fighting we need rest, and we need pleasure. We need connection and joy. Sometimes I can turn off my mind and consume something detached from my reality, but often I feel the dissonance too strongly. We need respite from dissonance too, and the dominant culture can’t offer us that. For me, spinning and textiles offer a means of self-soothing and world building where I can shape my process to minimize dissonance and envision how textiles will be made in a more just and gentle society.
I want to live. I want you to live, and I want us to be free from scarcity and fear. Let’s fight for that, and as part of that let’s rest and make things that make us glad to be alive and feed our imaginations for the worlds we can craft now and as long as we’re here.