One day a weaver, distracted by sorrow over the death of her child, unknowingly let
the shuttle slip, leaving a slight aberration in the cloth. Later a foreman
inspecting the cloth saw this tiny flaw in the weave. He took a photograph,
blew it up, and made a flag that aggrandized the flaw. Every day, he walked
past the weaver waving this flag and taunting her. After a while the weaver
left his shop. She found a new place of work with a woman overseer.
Days and weeks and months and then years rolled by until her
sorrow no longer overwhelmed her. But she had not forgotten why she left
the former shop. How could she forget? The flag with her aggrandized error was
emblazoned in her memory.
One day she went to the overseer and said, “I know a way
that we could put a sort of pattern in the cloth we weave that would make our
product quite distinctive.” She demonstrated how by dropping the shuttle ever
twenty threads, the cloth took on a sort of glow from the repeated ‘flaws’ made
by the weaver. The woman overseer was thrilled with the sample she was shown and asked the weaver to train all the weavers so they could make this very distinctive cloth. Over time the material woven in that shop became prized for its
unusual luster.
Meanwhile the originally flawed cloth made its way into the
world and a dressmaker bought it. When she examined the cloth, she found the
flaw. This did not bother her for she was a very good dressmaker and she saw
immediately that she could make of it a pleated skirt that would hide the flaw
beneath a fold of cloth. The whole piece of material was truly beautiful and
she was proud of the skirt she made.
The pleated skirt was purchased by a woman in midlife who
had some knowledge both of weaving and of the ups and downs of life. One day as
her hands smoothed the beautiful cloth a finger felt the tiny flaw. She smiled
and began to sing. “Now I know the weaver who made this cloth! Like me, she has
known sorrow and how it seeps into one’s soul. From now on, whenever I feel
this tiny alteration in the cloth, I will celebrate this woman whose life I
share.”
Years passed and the owner of the pleated skirt died. Her
family came and in sorrow packed away her clothes and took them to a resale
store. One day an artist entered the shop, looking for something interesting. She found
the pleated skirt because the beauty of the material caught her eye. Examining
the skirt, her gaze fell upon a shiny place hidden beneath a fold. Indeed, the
former owner had rubbed the ‘flaw’ so often during her long life that the
texture of the cloth had softened in that particular spot.
As she paid for the skirt, a smile came to the artist’s
face. She whispered to herself. “Ah, the shiny area is the bindu. This is the
tiny place from which my new creation will be made. This will be the center of
a massive flower whose beauty will rock the viewer. Starting from the shiny
spot, the folds and creases I make in this extraordinary cloth will catch the
light in special ways. How lucky I am to have found this amazing cloth. I
wonder who the weaver was. She must have been a sensitive woman to have woven such exquisite material.”
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| Travel and textile book by Karen Beck and Joshua Hirschstein. |
