Dear family, friends, and Internet strangers,
Content warning: dental procedure.
It’s been a weird few weeks for me. I had minor periodontal surgery at the end of May that has made eating challenging, and I was worried about messing up the parts of my mouth that were healing.
Psychologically, the first several days post-surgery were taxing. If I messed anything up, I’d have to go back in and let them stab me in the mouth again, but mouths are full of infectious agents and a tongue that wants to poke anything out of the ordinary, which, to me, made the odds of messing it up seem high.
Physically, recovery wasn’t bad and didn’t hurt much at all, thanks in part to NSAIDs, acetaminophen, and Ed’s willingness to go to the store in search of foods I could handle.
I did very little for a few days, because it was difficult to eat enough and because rest is supposed to be good when healing. And since the periodontist joked that I get a “healing award” at my post-op this week, I think I did a fine job.
I’ve also left my comfort zone a few times in the last few weeks to go do things I don’t normally do, like sketching/drawing in public places.
All that to say, my brain has been in a weird space and I’ve not been writing much. Normally I’d have completed a new piece of artwork for our church’s annual summer art gallery, at least, but I didn’t have it in me this year to finish something, and I’ve submitted some older pieces instead.
What I have been doing is finding myself interested in some hobbies and things I’d put down for a while, including visible mending.
Visible Mending
If you’re not familiar with visible mending, well, it’s exactly what it says on the tin. Instead of trying to hide the fact that a piece of clothing has been repaired, visible mending uses patches, embroidery, and contrasting threads to, as others have put it, “celebrate the mend”.
I remember becoming interested in visible mending as a way to rescue my favorite sweatshirt. I knew I lacked the skills to perform invisible mending, but I wanted to know if I could get away with something less challenging. (This is a story that comes up in my hobbies more than you’d think. I get curious about something, but it sounds too hard, so I look for the supposedly easier version and end up sticking with that, at least for a while.)
I stayed interested because visible mending became my way to generally reject our throwaway culture. I began to see mending as an outward sign of an inward desire to repair rather than discard.
I realize that there’s a level of “time privilege” involved in repair when goods are made cheaply overseas. In our upside-down world, there’s a level of wealth involved in the assumption that I have the free time to patch our clothes, versus buying cheap replacements. And I know when my calendar and to-do list are filled to overflowing, anything that creates extra work can feel burdensome.
I have also discovered that sometimes, one hole is simply the harbinger of the entire garment falling to shreds, as the fabric is, in fact, wearing out all over the place, not just one spot. I’ve learned I need to stop and evaluate the garment before repairing it. Not everything can be saved by someone like me. Maybe it’s time for it to become the patches for something else.
But when I have the time and the clothes seem worth fixing, there are reasons—mostly philosophical ones—that I want to try to do so.
It’s partly about sustainability, because the world cannot handle fast fashion forever (much has been written on this complex subject, and you can find a lot with an internet search). I’d like to get better at repairing more than clothes, to stop more things from going to landfills; Ed’s really good at fixing non-textile stuff.
Mending is about ethics, and rejecting modern slavery, because a brand-new t-shirt that costs you $7 means the people who were involved in the production of both the cotton and the shirt itself were not compensated anywhere near appropriately. Something made well, with a better supply chain, is more obviously worth repairing and will typically last longer anyway.
Visible mending, like kintsugi (the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold), is about art, and art woven together with stewardship—taking care of what we are in charge of, which I wrote about a little in February—fixing and making beautiful what is in our little jurisdictions.
And as I said above, it’s about rejecting the idea of a simple throwaway culture. People don’t just throw away clothes that have holes. We buy disposable things, we avoid reducing and reusing if it’s more work, and sometimes we throw away relationships that need work. I observe that a throwaway culture throws away people, too.
Here’s a weird connection: patching clothes, like paying the periodontist to patch my receding gums, is a way to acknowledge that something is worth maintaining. To repair is to say, “I cared enough to help.” As much as I want my mouth to look normal (please, no visible mending there), I don’t mind celebrating a repair in my clothes, announcing its presence with contrasting colors and a visible patch, to say, “I care, so I repair.”
Artist and author Makoto Fujimura, founder of Culture Care Creative Inc. and IAMCultureCare, explicitly ties the act of mending to the redemption of the Gospel. Like a bowl repaired through kintsugi is a work of art that is more valuable than it was before it was broken, we are not simply “repaired” when Jesus redeems us, but actually made new.
In truth, it takes a skilled artisan to repair elegantly something that is very torn or shattered. But it is possible—as Jesus pointed out, what is impossible with humans alone is possible with God (Matthew 19:26). The lost and shattered can yet be made new.
I’m not trying to convince you that you must patch your clothes. I don’t have a particular point to this letter, except that this is the kind of thing I think about. This is why a t-shirt Ed bought me a while ago has little patches on the bottom, and why Ed’s shirts often look the way they do. And it’s a suggestion, perhaps, to think about more than what you see.
A suggestion to look for the ways we say, “I care enough to repair,” whether with clothes and other things, people and relationships, culture, or something else, and to consider why it matters when that happens.
If you’re now interested enough to want to try, or just see, some visible clothing mending, do an internet search for “visible mending” or “sashiko repair”. Lots of tutorials are available for free.
If, like me, you appreciate a book, a fun starting point is Visible Mending: A Modern Guide to Darning, Stitching and Patching the Clothes You Love by Arounna Khounnoraj. Find it on Amazon, ThriftBooks, or somewhere else. No affiliate links here; get it wherever you like.
Writing Updates
Well, I’ve written and edited less this month due to my aforementioned periodontal procedure. Please floss and, as my periodontist says, don’t brush your teeth like you clean the floor; be gentle.
I did work a little on my novel before said surgery and, of course, finished this Substack letter.
Get Lamp Documentary - Free at the Internet Archive
I recently discovered that a terrific documentary on text adventure games (e.g., Zork) called Get Lamp is now available for free, because they sold out of DVDs and this was the director’s choice for continuing its availability. Thanks to Jason Scott for this generous decision! Get the whole thing at the Internet Archive: archive.org/details/GET_LAMP_The_Text_Adventure_Documentary.
If you don’t know what text adventure games are yet…find out!
Fair warning: it’s not like a YouTube link; you’ll need to download the ISO files and probably download and install VLC software to play it. As I recall, the film is worth a little hassle.
A Movie I Enjoyed While My Mouth Was Healing
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984): The afternoon of my periodontal procedure, as soon as I was home and on the couch, I re-watched Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, an older Studio Ghibli/Hayao Miyazaki movie. It’s strange and slow, but so interesting—imagine putting insects outside instead of smashing them, but the insects are as large as buildings and don’t really give you options. I also started digging into the special features and poking through a related art book I recently bought.
I’m curious about the manga by the same title, also created by Hayao Miyazaki, but it sounds like the overall worldview is bit dark for me. Like Studio Ghibli/Hayao Miyazaki’s 1997 film, Princess Mononoke, and like the game Final Fantasy VII, another product of Japan released in 1997, there’s this underlying idea that it doesn’t really matter if humans survive, since we’re the ones causing the environmental problems in the first place. Obviously, I disagree with that whole concept, but I’m terribly attracted to well-made stories even if I disagree with the worldview behind them.
That’s it for this June! If any of this was valuable to you—interesting, useful, or beautiful—share it with someone:
To truth, love, and adventure,
Rae
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