Scarf

I'm not sure when I got this scarf. I think I might have found it at the Social Services League and thought that Dawn might like it. I liked the color, the patterns. It is just polyester but it feels silky and cool on my skin.

It had been laying around the house, tucked away, for a while. I put it into a white elephant exchange and it came back to me.

I added it to some other stuff for Science Club and a first grader made a parachute out of it, tying the four corners - with my help - to a container that carried an egg down from an upper story window.

I carried the scarf back with some leftover stuff back to my house. That's when I made this upside-down parachute. A couple of thin sticks. Some string. A little tape. I hung it from the pergola over the patio and watched it blow in the wind. It was right outside my study window.

I started taking some photos and videos. I sent some digital copies to a friend as a kind of digital card. She's studying textiles at KU. When she complimented me, this is how I responded.

"Thanks for saying so. I am lucky to have the time and the chance to work at things that interest and amaze me. There is some effort involved and I hope to be able to show something sometimes. It doesn’t have to be that much. Why am I not surprised that you would see something beautiful and interesting in those scarf photos? As Mr. Dylan says, “Buckets of rain, buckets of tears, I got all them buckets coming out of my ears …”

I watched the wind and the rain whip that scarf around in the darkness as I waited for my computer to boot. One corner is blown off the end of one of the sticks again. I don’t know what I can do with that, but I saw something. And I am sometimes amazed by people I never expected to meet. Don’t take this the wrong way, since you know I can be fascinated by thrift store scarves and mop heads on dirty coffee shop floors. "

Perhaps I should have said this: I can be creative, but in a way, that's not the first word that comes to mind. I didn't not make colors, or the wind, even the processes that made the scarf. I have tried to put some things together. To see what is beautiful and interesting in front of me. I'm good at making associations. But what really matters to me is how I associate things with people that I care about - sometimes only a little, sometimes a lot more.

Of course, the longer I have watched this thing, dancing in the wind, the more it became a small part of me. I was just playing. Trying to see what I could see. The parachute kept coming apart, getting tangled. I fiddled with it. I took more images. Some months went by. Here are some different looks at the scarf:

And in the rain:

And this composite taken with flash at night:

Here's a link to a video, with the scarf reflected in the pond. Sailing away

And here are the night sounds, recorded as a black video, with added flash photos taken at about the same time: 

Finally, I took the parachute down, and made a flag out of it.

And now for a few last photos - for now...

The thing is only a scarf. But after playing with it, sharing it, watching how it catches the light and the wind, the night and the rain, it's still just a scarf. But this scarf is now associated in my mind with so much more. Sometimes I touch it and hold it up against my face. Sometimes, it leads me into recollections of people I care about. So much of what I care about cannot be seen directly, after all. 

I'm not just thinking now of Dawn or Emily or Bailie - but I did think about those women as I played at my little art project - just catching a thrift store scarf in thin air. In so very many ways, people inspire me to look at what is beautiful in the world around me and I then think about how I can show them what I seen. 

And the color of this scarf is so very pretty to my eyes.