Thoughts on Things: Frayed at the Edges

When linen frays at the edges, it frays with all its heart. In fact, if you don't clean-finish the seams of the linen shirt you're making, the seams will begin to unravel with the first washing. Run it through the washer a few more times, and you'll soon have not a shirt but a froth of linen threads.

 

Fraying at the edge is what happens as you get older. As life tosses us around and around in its washer and dryer, our edges get more and more frayed. Distinctions are less sharp. Precision eludes us. Clear and well-defined thoughts become foggy and vague. Things we once knew like the back of our hand are now black holes in the mind. Our very brains are frayed around the edges.

 

Our bodies are the same. Bits and pieces of us begin complaining. The left knee creaks. Calcium deposits build up on this finger joint or that one. It's Arthritis While-U-Wait. The hair thins. Old tooth fillings begin to crumble. And let's not even talk about eyesight and  hearing!

 

So here's the question: Fraying around the edge: good or bad? To a young person, the answer is clearly "bad." What could be worse than losing your sharpness, your cutting-edge mind, your clear sense of purpose in life? Clarity is who you are. Fraying is for others.

 

Yet, if you continue to live, you will fray at the edges. Your faculties will dim. Blurring may occur.

 

Imagine a piece of linen of a color you love to look at. Now imagine washing and tumble-drying it a dozen or more times. See that stiff linen melt into incredible softness. It becomes an entirely different fabric. Feel how soft it is, with a "hand" that dissolves gently into your own strong hand. Yes, the edges have loosened and have turned into that froth of threads mentioned above. Both the warp and the weft are floating now, finding their own new way, taking a path the weaver didn't anticipate. Anything can happen. Let it fray, let it fray, let it fray.

 

Copyright 2007 Ann Tudor
www.anntudor.ca