I came across this animation at Patricia Bralley’s excellent blog, where she has it under the title ‘Addiction, Ego, Pain’. Of course, we don’t know what the scarf is made of… but it seems to me that another good title might be,
“How to tell when you really need Hexagram 40.”
That was FANTASTIC! Thanks for posting. I have been in the hell process of moving from one state to another – both in location and in the mind set it takes. Having to let go of a lot – trying to hold on. I am surrounded by boxes. And blah blah blah. I’m exhausted. I just took a moment in my undigging process to look at some of my email and saw this video. Ouch! Tripple ouch. What ever this video is about, I can related to it in every way you can imagine. ?
Adele’s last blog post..John Cage – Music of Changes and I Ching
Me, too. Especially to her tremendous ingenuity in finding ways not to let go.
This seems to be a popular theme at present:
http://thetimefinder.com/finding-time-by-letting-go-and-letting-change-happen/
Very dream like, not sure I’d have made the connection to addiction unless it had been pointed out to me. Wonder what the significance of her taking her chair to the very edge of cliff before starting to knit was.
Absolutely terrifying! She chooses (fairly randomly) a pleasant place, on the heights near – but seemingly not dangerously near – a cliff-edge (surely where we are all situated?) for her to exercise her considerable skill.
Skill can become obsession. A scarf is one thing, an ability to stop, cut the thread, say “It is done”, and move on. Instead, we see the huge weight of what we can create under such obsession and the apalling moment that we realise that what has been created is heavier than our ability to stop the downward pull of gravity. Even then, we cannot give it up and tie ourselves into its fate (knitting in our own hair – expressions of rational strength/spiritual inspiration) until it consumes us and we disappear into the depths.
Relieved of course to see her survive – there’s still hope. But then she finds the scissors! It starts innocently enough with trimming a few nails, but where will it end?! Too horrible to contemplate.
If only she had taken time out to consult the I Ching, it would at least have interrupted her obsessive knitting, and she could have asked what was the point of the knitting, was it her purpose in life? Would consulting the I Ching then have become her new knitting?
I think we can knit anything. I can knit obligations like nobody’s business, and don’t even mention to-do lists. (“Now, to get a done I need to do b, but to do b properly I first need to sort c out, and I mustn’t forget to spend a daily hour on d, e and f… knit one, purl one…”) And arguments make hefty scarves, too, with one ball of wool knotted to the next with reasonings like, “She mustn’t be allowed to get away with that” or “I can’t let him keep thinking that about me” or “they’ve forced me into a corner.” Clickety, clickety…
Yeah, it’s the keeping at it constantly that gets her into trouble. Plucky woman though – she survived it. I hope she finds the harp after she gets finished with the scissors. Probably could have used some 40 at some point, yes. Or some 63. It’s not the end, you know? But there is that sense of having arrived, temporary though it might be.
Mm. Now I’ve watched it again, I’m joining David in getting a little anxious about the scissors.
That makes three of us, so we constitute a movement. Now she’s going to ‘cut through things’ instead of ‘putting it all together’. But the attitude’s the same. I think it’s a good snapshot of Apparent Change. But at some point, after she goes over the cliff enough times with enough varieties of ‘equipment’, isn’t she bound to arrive at a sort of Buddhist ‘the endless round of rebirth into this world of suffering’ experience which will get her to see herself or wake up?
(Who knows? But at least the knitting needles are already liberated.)
Yes – the film isn’t called knitting but “The Last Knit” so the knitting needles have indeed been liberated (lovely point Hilary). Still terrifying. How did she separate herself from her obsession – by ‘tearing her hair out’? Just to get back to what? She looks around but sees no other possibilities but to use the scissors, perfectly innocently, to pare her nails. She can now trim her hair, she can remove the knitted (oh dear) dress and pick away at the stitching to create a new ball of wool, but what then. No needles. Would she then experiment on herself? Is she a candidate for self-harm, a particularly female syndrome.
Would she cut off her nose to spite her face? As Kurtz says at the end of “Heart Of Darkness” – : ‘The Horror! The Horror!’
I don’t know, the Last Knit would mean it is her last chance and she lives through it. After that, damaged by the fall but visibly relieved and wondrous, she picks up the scissors and starts to groom herself finally-she looks like she could use some self-care. It can be read that way-that’s at least true in my experience, it may not be right for others.