Thursday, December 10, 2015

patching the holes

When I was a kid in the first and second grade, it was not unusual to see other kids wearing patched jeans to school.

Levi's made a good, tough pair of trousers and most of us wore them to school, but, kids being kids, there was wear and tear, mostly at the knees. Moms, in that time, knew how to sew and did so, patching the holes as they appeared: No point in wasting an otherwise perfectly good pair of pants.

And the patching wasn't chic as it is in today's throw-away times. It was practical. "Fashion" was yet to come.

And so it is, I sometimes think, with my mind these days -- patching the worn and wearing holes in the tapestry; reconnecting dots that others may see as obviously-connected dots. The gaps get bigger as time passes and the patching process becomes more necessary or, as I increasingly sense, not necessary at all: The connections aren't really all that assured in the first place.

Again I am trying to write a newspaper column, to connect dots in such a way that others will know what I am talking about. My free-association is not necessarily anyone else's, so there is some sewing necessary ... to make it all seem connected ... even if it isn't ... or is.

It takes more and more energy to patch these jeans. Maybe I could just go naked.

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