Arachnologies

So I want to learn to knit.

Knitting is not that different from weaving or writing.  I can write, I can weave from Barthes’ braid & write.

But I cannot knit.

I can cast on, which all knitters I speak with say is the hardest part.

But I cannot move on to the next step – to create another stitch, another text.

Today, I realized why.

When I write, beginnings are always the challenge.  Whether I am writing a paper or an email or a journal entry or a piece of fiction, I have to conquer the beginning & move on to the next paragraph.

In desperation over my inability to move to the next row, I re-read Nancy K. Miller’s essay from “The Poetics of Gender”.

Arachnologies:  The Woman, The Text, and the Critic.

Just to prove to myself, that if I cannot knit, I can still read.

And Miller reminded me that “Arachne, the spider artist, began as a woman weaver of texts.”

As a woman, I can weave texts.

I will learn to knit.