Yarns and Words

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

I wrote this for my Writing for New Media class but I truly enjoyed discovering this new way of writing I developed over reading AA Patawaran's Write Here, Write Now: Standing Attention Before My Imaginary Style Dictator. Also, I was watching "White Chicks" for the first time and had to stop midway because I had the urge to finally write this.

Yarns and Words

By Eingel Calayag

Writing is to me as a hook is to yarn.

I am a string of thoughts. Tightly interwoven, built to be a ball worth of possibilities. Assorted with different color and created to a certain type of softness, fuzziness, structure, and length.

Indophil, whose yarn is tight, refined, and created for projects of intricate detail, remind me that I am a person of planning, organizing, and in-depth thinking. Always paying attention to the little things. The heaviness it brings also determine how much potential it has. Milk cotton, whose yarn is as soft as a gentle touch on the fur of man’s best friend, allow me to dream of familiarity, sentimentality, and softness. It brings me back to the days I felt like I could touch the clouds. Although expensive, we must admit that happiness comes with a price.

Then, there are yarns handmade. Humanly built from something else. A worn-out t-shirt can be cut, reshaped, dyed, and balled into yarn. The imperfect length. The tattered cutwork. All the heart that came into making something anew. In this yarn, I know I can take what I have, change it as I like, and still feel the need to learn, relearn, and try again.

What I am is yarn ready to be crocheted. Writing is my hook. The only way I get to be something is when I write about myself. As I interlock every chain, adjust my fingers to how tight or how loose I want my thoughts to be written, the stories of my mind begin to make sense. I chain over and over until the yarn becomes words. The words become meaning. The sentences start to form bigger thoughts. Paragraph after paragraph, we make ends meet. Sunset after sunset, the eyes do not wince. But it flickers. Between chains of thought and the passing of days, a story gets told.

The most terrifying part about being the maker and the yarn at the same time is knowing that there are no boundaries. I cannot cut in the middle and skip a length as I please. The yarn does not decide if she does not want a part of her into the project. And that’s okay. Because a string of yarn alone does not make sense. But that one portion of the yarn mixed with the rest of the story is what makes a project tantalizing. All the parts, no matter how terrifying or exhilarating, makes up the whole piece. Creates the entirety of the story.

Writing is my hook. It is just a tool. But sometimes, I blame the hook. I blame the hook more than I blame the yarn. Because there are several hooks from 0.01, 1.0, 2.5, 3.5 and so on, but some hooks can never be enough. I switch from 3.5 to 2.5 and the crochet still isn’t what I want it to be. Some hooks are easier to handle than others. A few of them slip the knot easily. Others, you need to push in with force. But in the end, I can only blame myself. The hook alone cannot make beauty. Makers still need to adjust to the hook to get the project as they want it. As goes with writing, it is the tool. But it will not perform itself unless I do the work.

Often, there will be days that I won’t know what I’m doing. Wanting to recreate a project midway. So many regrets that cannot be changed. A lot of singles, doubles, increases, and decreases just to get there. In frustration, no matter how far I’ve already gone, I sometimes pull the string back and take it all away. I start from the beginning. A fresh start is better than continuing from trash. Or maybe not trash. Just something that I don’t want to do anymore. Oftentimes, I begin to wonder if I will ever finish a project at all. Because every time I try to make something out of nothing, I feel like I’m the only one that is going to make sense of it.

Though in my defense, the best part about both crocheting and writing is that I don’t have to think about anybody else but myself. Both are solo pursuits. The only person I feel the need to impress is myself. From the string of my thoughts to the actual string on my hands, one thing stays the same. I get to control what I do, what I don’t do, what I would like to repeat, and what I would like to do only once. I decide how I lock in my story. I decide where I end my final chain.

Writing is to me as a hook is to yarn. I make sense through writing. I am destroyed by words. I am created through words. And in words, I lay my life.