Saving Stitch

They don't talk about me much. Or at all. I'm pretty sure the old poets never once mentioned me in their epics. No, it's my brother who has always received the attention, and really- who can blame them? He's beautiful, my brother. Beautiful and terrible, with wings that block out the sunlight, but you don't even notice because you're being blinded by the radiance of his face. His passage leaves people wounded, broken and bleeding, and still they cry out for him to return to them. Oh, please don't think I'm harboring any bitterness! I'm not, honestly- it's not my way. He can't help what he is any more than I can help what I am. He lets fly his poisoned arrows not just because it's what he does- it's what he is: Love. Love, Love: terrible and beautiful and inevitable. People have tried to resist him- but they all fall, in the end.

And after he has abandoned them I come along, and they resist me as well. I come with my needles sharp as arrows, with my thread soft as feathers; I come to sew up the holes punched in their hearts, but most of them don't want what I'm offering. That's the poison, I guess, affecting their minds. But just as my brother is a relentless hunter, I too am patient: an unparalleled stalker. Sometimes it takes me years, one tiny stitch at a time, but in the end very few can resist me forever. But they hate me for what I do- the one who cleans up the mess Love has left behind. And maybe that's why no one ever sang any songs about me. They'd rather have the glory of Love than the quiet soothing of my healing fingertips. They don't understand that without me, without the strength I stitch into their hearts, they will never be able to survive my brother's arrows. They think that what I do devalues what they've felt, and never stop to think that what I do makes it possible for them to feel it again- to feel it forever, without the anguish. No, when that final arrow pierces them, and stays, they give all the credit to him, and none to me.

But that's alright, because I don't do it for my own glory. I do it for theirs.

(Bits)

***

(A word about the relevance of today's photo- it made me think about the drilling force of love, which gave me the funny mental image of a modern Cupid using a drill to make multiple, neat holes into people's hearts. And I thought about all the holes that have been drilled into my heart over the years, and how much it sucked at the time, but that I always managed to heal up [more or less] eventually. Which made me wonder about who was doing the patching up...)


(A word about the illustration- this is actually a variation on a sketch that I did in my one of my sketchbooks a couple of years back... which in turn was part of a series of stitching women that I did. I popped out tonight's entry and it reminded me of the sketch, so I thought I'd revisit it. This new version was done pretty quickly in pencil, but I'm pleased with it nonetheless...)