mood indigo

This week I am going to dye a batch of fabric with indigo. I’m waiting for the right time. I’m waiting for the hours, blue hours, when it’s warm enough, when the light is good, when I can give the fabric the attention it deserves. It deserves care. This has been a bad week for care. Yesterday I realized I hadn’t slept more than 4 hours a night for nearly a week. There are things going on. I am sadder than I’ve been in decades.

Each immersion of cloth in the indigo bath, from which oxygen has been removed, each rest on the cedar bench for oxidization, these allow the dye to bond with the fabric. Linen works best for me, the dye penetrating its fibres, so that the colour deepens. Bonds of colour, bonds of affection: I work towards these. Sometimes the results break my heart.

Songs are like tattoos. Last week we were at sea. (I am sadder than I’ve been in decades.) This week we are working in our garden, writing, talking at length about the things going on. We saw Carmen on Sunday afternoon and came home in the dark. When I dye the cloth, my hands turn blue.

A slash of Blue —
A sweep of Gray —
Some scarlet patches on the way,
Compose an Evening Sky —

I have a long length of coarse linen with a swirl of fish batiked on it, not well, and it must have been the end of the dye vat because the colour is very pale. I will bind it up, wrap it in hemp string, and hope to deepen the blue. Deepen the blue until it is the colour of my own sadness and then I will make something with it.

Note: the poem is Emily Dickinson. Also you might hear an echo of Joni Mitchell.