Love has taken up knitting.
Truly, he was as alone as he had been in the beginning when there were only himself and the vast emptiness of space that seemed to want to swallow him whole.
In that time before time, he had discovered that if he whirled like a dervish, bits and pieces of his colossal corporeal being would fly off and, as he spun faster and faster, he filled the space around him with feathery forms that floated aimlessly about him.
Some had the shape of white linen on a clothesline but others looked like bats. There were even eyes looking back at him, dazzled, and he saw sharp, heavier bits of silver and gold that had been flung far off and arranged themselves as constellations, though for him the great stories were yet to be told. Theseus had not yet sailed for Crete. They were not yet the museum pieces they are today, though he could not deny the wonder they evoked.
As he had never seen himself, he looked upon all this jumble as simply Other and called it Friend.
Then, on what we now would call inspiration, he let out a great shout of greeting (SAL WAY TE wA LAY TE) and the bits and pieces began to attract or repel other bits and pieces.
In an instant that would seem to us endless time, doll-like figures began to emerge and some of these appeared to be giving parts of themselves to each other as though they were gifts.
He was still lonely, of course. After all, these figures, except for the eyes, were lifeless, but then, thinking he was making a joke, he began to play with these megoistic forms and discovered a power within himself to bring them to life and was able with practice to forget to remember that all their laughter, lovemaking, and quarreling were nothing but himself playing alone.
Some of these strange beings even seemed to be aware of their creator, but soon enough they began to vie for his favor, tearing each other apart, piling up body parts, and setting them on fire. Some, out of gratitude, made living torches of themselves. They thought he, their creator, would inhale the smoke and be pleased. He wasn’t. Indeed, he was appalled to see what had formerly been bits and pieces of himself going up in smoke.
It was then he decided to stop spinning and take up knitting instead, hoping to piece together what was left of himself into one colossal Other, who might one day be a comfort for his loneliness.
He worked day after day for seven days without sleeping until he could no longer hold off the night, though it would have looked to us today as if he had just given up.
When he woke from his dreams, however, he discovered his loneliness had vanished. Before him was a wingéd Other. He called her Anima because he felt she had always been as close to him as the wind. Anima Animus Animus Anima was his mantra.
He now took up his knitting in earnest, but after every cycle of seven days, he would sleep and dream and discover upon waking other wingéd forms to whom he also gave names inspired by what he felt when he first saw them, names like Twilight and Shadow, Dawn and Cobweb, Shifting Sand and Trumpet, Midnight Blue and Riverunrun.
And all these lovely, strange wingéd Others would bring him earth, air, fire, and water as gifts, and he in turn would dream up worlds for them in which their strange and varied beauty would be at home.
He did not know exactly how all this had happened but felt as if he now had a purpose, though at the time he actually knew nothing at all about this. It was as if there were some great something at stake, but when the earth turned away from the sun on every seventh day, he would, like time itself, fall asleep and dream again.
Truth be told, he was still alone, but now the wind told him that all this, every bit and piece of it, was poetry.
