Zen of Sewing

These days I have taken to sewing...menial sewing on my tiny twenty year old machine-lines and lines of sewing-long, endless straight lines continuing on and on to the whirring of the machine, morning to night, pretty back-achingly non-stop for three continuous days. When I tell friends and family on phone "I am sewing", I get these responses,"you are so creative", "you are so industrious"-yet the work I am doing is fully devoid of creativity-and industry? well, it is work that is marginally useful, but immensely desirable in my present state of being. To focus on a straight stitched line speeding its course at the tipping edge of the fabric, while fingers guide the fabric pushing it along, requires a no-mind attention, awareness in just the moment, and the challenge of being in only-now; in other words, to do it well, is as zen a state as any I know-walking zen, sitting zen, sewing zen. I do not do this well, and I have a prompt signal-a line gone wavery, a fabric slipped away, a gaping hole where a line to infinity might have been...its like a whack of the master's stick, attention brought back, lines resumed, infinity again sought-my life is a journey paralleling the line that I stitch, as smooth and event less as that on the fabric-these days I have taken to sewing and taken it well-there is nothing else I would rather do.