Weaving The Dream

It is a bright Sunday spring morning.  Bob and I take Duncan for our weekly walk at a nearby wildlife preserve.  The morning perambulation will be followed by a breakfast of blueberry pancakes and sausage cooked and served by Bob.

As usual, Duncan stops every few feet to sniff at bush and branch, and to leave his own pungent note.  Unfortunately, one of his off-the-path investigations nets him a cluster of burdock burrs in his right front leg.

Arrggh!  The thing we hate most!  Duncan is a collie with long hair.  And collies are sensitive, especially this collie, whom we adopted from a shelter after he had been left on a chain for nine months with minimal grooming.  Matted hair does not a happy dog make.

After ten years of loving and patient grooming, Duncan still whines, yips, and barks at Bob before, during, and after the extensive combing and trimming.  Even with a steady supply of treats.

However, he has learned over the years that it is a far, far better thing to let us remove the burrs as soon as possible before they become even more entangled.  Sure, we could just take a pair of scissors and cut the burrs out but then I am not sure the punk look is really in this season for collies.  So he will stand or sit with dog-saintly forbearance while we remove burrs, because we have learned the secret (No, not that Secret.  This has more to do with the law of detraction than attraction.)

The secret?  To not pull the burr away from the dog, but to pull the dog, or the dog hair, away from the burr.  By holding onto the burr and gently pulling the hair away from the burr strand by strand, the snarl comes undone and the burr releases its grip.  Pulling on a burr just entangles it in the hair even more and makes a dog growly.

This approach is similar to the one I use for dealing with tangles of yarns or threads.  Most people get a snarl or tangle in something, be it thread, hair, relationships, or creative project, and they just pull and tug and even yank, hoping that sheer force will bring the desired result.   Instead the snarls and tangles get tighter and more resistant and someone or something gets hurt.

As a weaver, who has had to untangle many snarls of yarns and even fine threads, I have learned that gently teasing tangles open from several angles will loosen the knots enough for me to follow a thread end back through to the source of the problem.  Pretty soon, voila, a nicely rolled ball of yarn instead of a nasty nest of knots.

Untangling anything, whether it is burr-matted hair, snarled yarn, a messy relationship, or a creative problem, requires a Zen kind of patience.  I have to be willing to sit patiently in the moment following the problem back to its source, loosening and separating the threads of thoughts, feelings, and actions, loop by loop, hair by hair, idea by idea, until things fall into place.

Untangling is a great meditative practice, and great way to approach a problem—if we can just slow down long enough.  The reward?  A ball of yarn that can be used instead of thrown away.  A relationship that is renewed.  A new approach or technique for creative action.

A happy dog who nuzzles you, tail wagging ecstatically, and barks, “Now where are those blueberry pancakes?”

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 1st, 2007 at 11:35 am and is filed under Creativity, Relationships, Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.