Angel Thirst/Angel Weaving

Last Thursday while eating soup at a local café I became aware of a table across the room where people gathered and spoke Spanish.  I realized I knew one of the people and was waved over to join the group.  My potato soup and my high school knowledge of Spanish became part of those gathered at the table.

We began our introductions and  I learned one of the members at the table had spent time in Argentina.  Argentina, these days, when someone even utters the word I become hyper aware. My younger daughter is presently in Argentina studying and I hunger for any thing I can learn about the country. I feel a connection to her simply by the magic of  the calling: Argentina.  Language can do this.   A word, it’s resonance, the sound vibration, can conjure and carry us.  And somehow the word becomes more than what is by utterance in the moment.

The tale woven at this table, in this cafe, on this morning, in Spanish, is the story of Yerba Matte and a bus journey. The sharing of Yerba Matte is a way of connecting with friends the man explains. In this story, there is one gourd and the Yerba Matte tree leaves placed in the gourd, one metal straw, and hot water to steep the leaves and brew the tea. These are the elements the story will build with. We learn, the tea is passed around with the same reverance as ceremony, and the sharing of Yerba Matte has form and rules in the same way a peace pipe ceremony has ritual. Every one drinks, and one never stirs the tea with the straw. We learn, even on buses the Yerba Matte is passed, and strangers hands and the gourd of tea meet.  Many lips hold the metal straw and sip and savor the bitter tea.  The man giggles when explaining on one bus, he saw someone  sanitizing the drinking straw by pouring hot water from his thermos onto it.  For  some reason we all laugh. This is the way of story.

Even though I don’t understand every word in Spanish I find myself charmed by the way the story is shaped.  The man’s hands gesture as he speaks. His facial expressions, and the hat he wares adds to the delight of every word.  His gestured cadence and scented Spanish builds the story, each spoken and unspoken detail fleshing the tale as he repeats aspects over and over, and the story grows.  The description about the story I have summarized here has taken a brief moment, a few sentences or so.. the story when told by the teller, was much longer. The man with the hat, transported us to a place where time thru story is woven differently. I was brought to this place thru words, sound, and gesture.  I was wholly there: I swayed on the bus and held the tea and passed the warm gourd to the next person. I felt the old metal straw in my mouth and tasted the strong acrid tea in my throat. Thru story at this table we all shared tea.

As I paint angels, I glimpse different aspects of time. The angels take me to a loom and I become a weaver. I lay down a broad color map on a grid and then flesh out my weaving one angel at a time. Each angel complete in itself the way a word is.  When together the angels form a sentences and finally a story. 

The angels teach me the process of story telling. Sometimes there is repitition and sometimes the repetition becomes a device for building the narrative and sometimes the repetition is boring.  Yes, the angel project is at times tedious: a very long story that takes patience and hearkens initiatory rituals that can take days. An elder once said to me when I asked her to teach me about the pipe: “To tell you that story will take me three days and you will have to travel to the place where I can tell it. The telling will even take more than me.”   

I move toward wholeness through tedium and the medium and elements I know: color, shape. and line. Each angel becoming a thread of the story I am piecing together. Each angel is a bit of woven cloth. Angel-by-angel I move into my voice with respect. I move into the story.