Long Enough to Have a Shape

July thirteenth. At some point this afternoon the cord got long enough that I could hold up one end and the rest of it didn't just fall in a heap, it hung with a little logic to it. That's when I stopped working and took the picture.

It's been sitting inside the sketchbook since April of last year, one finished row, tucked in as a bookmark. I wrote a single clause about it in May when I was closing out a different post entirely. Not a plan. Just a noticing. Then last month I pulled it out on a quiet evening and added a second row, then a third, and wrote a short post about what it felt like to pick up something that had been waiting without asking anything of you. That felt like enough. But I kept coming back to the table, not obsessively, just, steadily. Tuesday and then again Sunday. A few rows at a time.

the cord, finally long enough

Today I counted the rows after I put the scissors down and I thought: this is the tenth image I've published on this blog. Which is a strange thing to have kept track of, except that I have been keeping track, quietly, since the first one, the collapsed bowl drawing, Thanksgiving morning 2011. The sketchbook open on the table. The letterpress chase. The holiday street. The vine shadow. Each one felt like a threshold, and then it became furniture, and I forgot I'd ever considered it. I don't know that this cord will become furniture. It might. It's long enough now to have a shape, which is more than it was a year ago, and that seems like sufficient news for a Wednesday.

studying the math of it