dancing weaver

My name is Gratitude. I am a weaver on Lombok. See the mountain hiding in clouds? It's Rinjani.

My village is at the bottom. Walk past the village co-op sellling cloth and sarongs. Turn right and go down the alley. Keep going.

You will pass women working. They wash cotton, hanging it to dry. Others are dying colors.

You will hear the sound of woman singing and looms clacking.  We are a community of women weavers. We do what we love. You can follow me on FACEHAPPY.

trade sex for security

He sat at an Indonesian warung, a cheap food place offering white virgin rice, spicy chilly, egg, green veggies, tempe, tofu, deep fried crackers, on the other side of the Berlin Wall.

Smokers called it the Berlin Wall because they could smoke away from the inquisitive prying eyes of parents and administration moles. Desk jockeys in green plaid. Hot and sticky tropics. He’d escaped from the tyranny of noisy educational sad robots trapped in their futile expectations of perpetual childhood.

An illiterate village woman piled her trash near a grove of banana trees. She lit a fire. Roosters, hens and chicks scattered. Smoke curled around a man pushing his chipped blue plywood cart loaded with plastic dishes, cheap cloth, simple tools, brushes, mops, bags, hats, and basic household goods. Rolling wheels through neighborhoods.

Cumulus clouds gathered momentum.

Nearby were yelling village people. A tall thin woman teased her 4-year old monkey boy child.

Pregnancy was her ticket out of hell, loneliness and misery.

In world villages you traded sex for security. Father ran away to impregnate new victims. A mother tormented the kid. He cried. She laughed at him. She created a mini-monster. A boy who hated women now and later. He was dependent on them for food and affection.

In the future he’d kill her with a sharp machete. A mother and daughter uttered primal grunt sounds. A mother combed her daughter’s hair scavenging follicles for nits and lice. Protein. Human evolution.

Crying children. Perpetual distractions. Emotional zombies, minus seven. Time=death. Life is a temporary condition.

slideshow V2

couldn't you find something more inspiring, more complete, more enthralling, more enlightening, more honest and truthful and symbolic with eternity and infinity dancing arm in arm amid facades of dust, debris, fake columns, broken air conditioning units, shafts of light beaming down from heaven, guilty confessionals, abstract helmets of deadly imaginary sins like evil, gluttony, sloth, greed and so forth than an incomplete catholic church 1.5 hours north of jakarta, indonesia near a private elementary school where bells tolled, Hey here's the new super efficient and totally amazing Squarespace Slideshow V2?

perhaps.

bali Aga ikat

Katut knew kamben gringsing.

It took five years to weave the muted colors of reddish brown tones, eggshell and dark blue or black colors into a piece of magic cloth. In the beginning his mother gathered sunti roots and mixed them with indigo to make dyes. His father made narrow back strap looms from trees.

The women spun cotton cloth by hand. According to tradition the yarns were soaked in candle nut oil and wood ash water. They were stored for 42 days in an earthenware jar covered with a checked black and white cloth. The strands were dried for 42 days and covered with open hibiscus flowers to protect them from witches. 

Warp threads were woven up and down. Weft threads woven left and right on different frames for dyeing. Geometric stars, small crosses and flowers were woven into the threads and a very careful matching process tied or bound the different threads together to form intricate designs and patterns. 

Kamben gringsing patterns contained combinations of 14, 24, 37 or 40 fields to make healing garments for men and women in Tenganan. Katut knew there were over 20 basic designs of the cloth. His mother’s main concern was how the cloth was used in the village.   

She told him a story as they walked toward the mountain.

“The word gring means 'illness' and sing means 'not' she explained. “It is the most important social and sacred cultural symbol for the people in our village.”

Katut listened and understood kamben gringsing was their way of life. Kamben gringsing created a social identity, a relationship for their people. Ikat protected them from impurities and danger.

It allowed them to make transitions across boundaries in life’s journey. The villagers used kamben gringsing when they participated in rituals and rites of passage from birth to death.

International Women's Day

Greetings,

To honor women this day, every day, everywhere, here are some cultural images.

Nature is what you are. Culture is what you can be.

Metta.