Category Archives: weaving

A Confusion of Shadows

(like a cauldron of bats, or a coalition of cheetahs)

 

3rd in a series of posts about the author’s experience

of Lewy body dementia

 

As an author, I never wrote from outlines or carefully crafted plots. Each book remained in flux as I wrote, balanced lightly in my mind, open to shifts in a character’s development or new paths to far horizons. Yet I always knew where I was headed and what I wanted to say. Alas, no more. Even writing a journal entry tumbles me into the wayward crosscurrents of a fraying consciousness.

 

People sometimes speak of women’s organic logic (as opposed to the linear logic of men), using words like spiraling, intuitive, archetypal. But increasingly, as I write even small posts like this one, I find myself moving through dementia’s bizarre post-logical inscape, where all patterns fade.

My efforts remind me of a befuddled spider struggling with an uncooperative web. Battered and ancient, she lurches from side to side, mumbling to herself as she lays one unlikely strand upon another. Much of her webbing falls away, its intended pattern vanishing through the gaps in her thoughts . . . words floating free of their mooring. Strands cross and re-cross at impossible angles, presenting only confusion to the reader. Yet somewhere beneath the chaos, a compassionate hand takes hold of the tangle, plaiting it into a rudimentary whole, and a pattern flickers through the ragged web—a glimpse of meaning as welcome as sunlight in the midst of storm.

I invite you to consider my web with me.

 

We all know the story of the frog sitting in a pan of gradually warming water until he quietly boils into dinner. This may be an outworn cliché, yet it  confronts us with a real peril of our human nature. Changes that creep up slowly can ghost under our radar. Only rarely do we perceive them as threats. When changes come slowly (they don’t even have to be subtle), or when the people perceiving them are unfocused and distracted, a shifting “normal” can erode into runaway catastrophe . . . Have politicians always been so venal? Has hate always been such a conspicuous part of American life? Didn’t New York winters used to be bitter cold? I can’t remember–is this the way home? Did I think to turn off the stove?

Lethargy has that kind of lethal potential for me.

Sometimes I wonder how I might’ve felt if my doctors hadn’t been familiar with LBD’s symptoms when I first had the sleep study. Would I have shrugged and dismissed my strange new life as normal aging? Would ennui have taken root in the mind fog? Putting a name on it does nothing to slow the disease, but at least it shows me what I’m facing. I possess a piece of data, a bit of knowledge, a light focused on the sly and slippery changes.

 

 

 

So what shall I do with myself as I confront this murkier-than-usual descent into the great mystery?

 

 

Dylan Thomas’ famous line, “Rage, rage, against the dying of the light,” is one option that everyone mentions sooner or later, as if such rage were a noble thing and a useful option.

But if you look at his whole poem, you’ll see that Thomas is talking about regret—regret for things his father didn’t do, for life unlived, and the rage he should feel. Yet a whisper intrudes on the poet’s advice: “Is this so different from a child’s rage at being carried off to bed too soon?”

 

So, should I rage? Or refuse regrets? I think I’ll pass on both. I can’t agree with the No regrets meme; too often it leads to complacency. I do have regrets, mostly for times when my spite made the world an uglier place. Those regrets are important to me. Without regret, I would never have confronted my unkindness, never turned away, and in some small way, Creation would be diminished. But wallowing in regret over foolish mistakes or pleasures denied corrodes the soul and makes a bitter tale for darkening days.

No, I prefer to hold in my tattering mind a passage from T.H. White’s The Once and Future King. I can still remember how it rang like a bell when I first read it in high school:

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you.”

 

So I learn what I can, even now. Not facts, or political scandals, or even devotional thoughts: facts and concepts soon disappear in the mist. Mostly I learn with my hands and vision—spiritual and physical—because  memory is strongest there. I still love to take photographs, although I fall asleep trying to process them. Last fall I foraged for woodland bounty to make gift wreaths. During the winter I experimented with sketching family portraits. Over the last few months I’ve been working on a series of paintings for my 2-year-old grandson’s room. The transformation from digital mock-up to painted canvas should begin any day now. Five years ago I never expected to pick up a paintbrush again.

 

I was an author, and I am no longer. I was once an artist, and now I may be again. I am a mother, a grandmother, a sister,  a wife, and a servant of cats. I was a daughter, and sometimes I remember to be an aunt. And, of course, there are things that never change: I detest hot humid weather and love the cold grace of winter trees; I have a feline heart, except for a well-hidden malamute shadow; and I’ve known since I was a preschool child that the Creator holds me in love and all Creation with me, regardless of the disasters we as humankind visit on our world.

Photo by S Dean

“I will never be further from you than your heart.”

~~The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat

 

** All photos not otherwise attributed were taken by CL Francisco

 

 

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Royal Purple Murex Dye

 

murexsimplesm3sm

Before discussing the Murex dye, I’m delighted to announce the 3rd of the 3 reviews received for Cat Born to the Purple: another 5 stars  ★★★★★ — this time from Self-Publishing Review! Go here to read the entire review.

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Empress Theodora in royal purple, 6th C
Empress Theodora in royal purple, 6th C

The term “royal purple” originated in the Mediterranean and Ancient Near East,  particularly during the days of the Roman Empire, when the wearing of a specific color–royal purple–was a privilege restricted to the aristocracy, if not the emperor alone. Royal purple was not the color we think of today when we speak of purple. Apparently it was an almost black violet-red color, said to resemble the color of heart’s blood/clots of heart’s blood. The word “purple” in Greco-Roman times, however, was used to refer to a whole range of colors, from pale blue to red to violet to the true royal purple. Deciding which of these many colors was intended in a given passage can be difficult.

But historians agree that the priceless near-black “royal purple” dye was made only from a gland of the Murex trunculus (more recently called Hexaplex trunculus) sea snail. Depending on the strength of the dye, the time submerged, the dye process, and the type of fabric dyed, the Murex dye could also yield colors ranging from pale shades of blue, green, pink, and violet, as well as the deeper tones. Other varieties of the Murex, particularly brandaris, were also used for dyes, but were considered inferior.

At present a whole separate debate is ongoing among Jewish traditionalists about whether the blue (tekhelet) tassels required by the Torah on the corners of Jewish garments should be dyed using Murex trunculus. Recent archaeological discoveries of fabric remnants from Israel’s biblical period indicate that the original tekhelet dye was probably made from one of the Murex family, if not the trunculus, but since the source of the original tekhelet has been uncertain for so long, white has become the preferred color for these tassels. Ruscillo’s research (see below) found that immersing wool very briefly in a fresh, unheated Murex dye bath resulted in very attractive blues of varying intensity.

Tekhelet?
Tekhelet?

The Murex trunculus sea snail lives in the sublittoral waters of most of the Mediterranean’s coastal areas. The sublittoral zone refers to the area of relatively shallow water permanently covered by seawater that is immediately beyond the intertidal zone (the area between the high and low tidal marks, where the shore is above water at some point in the tidal cycle). The Murex must be constantly submerged to survive, but it prefers shallow water, usually no more than 20 meters deep, in sheltered coves or lagoons. Where the water is calm and protected from waves the Murex may be found at slightly greater depths. It prefers mixed sand and rocky bottoms.

Sublittoral ocean zone
Sublittoral ocean zone

hexaplexThe Murex feeds in two different ways: scavenging and predation. When there isn’t enough dead material in the water, it preys on other sea snails, mussels, barnacles, hermit crabs, etc., by drilling holes and/or chipping their shells and feeding on the living flesh through the holes. Not an appealing creature, as predators go.

 

Murex spawning
Murex spawning

The ancients didn’t dive for the purple snails during the months between early spring and the beginning of July, because that was (and is) the Murex spawning season. Murex trunculus was harvested from the Dog Star’s first rising in the dawn sky (early July) through the winter months.

 

 

Phoenician merchants
Phoenician merchants

Since the only records we have describing the collecting and processing of “purples” are the writings of Roman essayists like Pliny and Vitruvius (whose reports were often more imaginative than accurate), archaeologists have had difficulty piecing together the details of the royal purple industry. Additionally, the Phoenicians–whose Murex dyes were most highly valued in early Roman times–guarded their dyeing secrets carefully. Only in the early 20th century did scientists begin to experiment with Hexaplex trunculus to try to reproduce the ancient dyeing techniques.

Artist's Reconstruction of Tyre before Alexander's conquest
Artist’s Reconstruction of Tyre before Alexander’s conquest

Deborah Ruscillo’s experiment, “Reconstructing Murex Royal Purple and Biblical Blue in the Aegean,” is by far the cleverest, and most innovative approach to this problem that I could find. By grossly simplifying her methodology, I might summarize it like this: locate an ancient Murex dyeing site where the Hexaplex trunculus is still thriving, and duplicate the processes suggested by archeological evidence and ancient texts, using tools as close to the originals as possible; where ancient wisdom fails, experiment with reasonable alternatives.

Ruscillo's baited pot & basket
Ruscillo’s baited pot & basket

Most of Cat Born to the Purple‘s technical details of Murex dyeing came from Ruscillo’s work. For instance:

  • Neither divers nor baited baskets/pots alone could have caught enough purples to supply a dyeing workshop of any size; they must have both been used together.
  • Adding urine makes the color more vibrant, although the Murex dye is permanent without additives
  • Boiling the dye mixture ruins the dye
  • Three days is the ideal amount of time for steeping fabric in the dye
  • The stench of the Murex, swarming wasps, biting flies, and hatching larvae make the dyers’ lives a misery
  • Dye on hands and nails takes roughly 6 weeks to disappear
  • Wool is the only fiber that absorbs the dye to create a deep, dark color
  • Neither the stink nor the color is reduced by washing; perfume would have been necessary to disguise the smell, even after washing and long periods of airing.

Perhaps her most amusing and understated remark was, “Pliny never made dye himself.”

Hypobranchial gland, live Murex
photo Kirsten Benkendorff

 

The dye comes from the hypobranchial gland of the Hexaplex trunculus, which secretes mucus for its mantle. The gland itself is pale, and must be cut out of a living snail (left), since the gland shrivels and dries shortly after death.

 

 

photo by kuvmamhlubhmoob
photo by kuvmamhlubhmoo

When the live gland is pierced and exposed to air, the mucus rapidly changes from clear to yellow to yellowish green, green, and violet. The photos to the right show a fresh live trunculus gland removed. The gland itself is yellowish, but the liquid is clear.

 

The photos below show a sequence from Pourpre filmed by pygmeejones. The timing and color may not be exact, since the snail in the sequence appears to be recently dead or the gland already ruptured in opening the shell, based on the green color of the mucus when the gland is first pierced.

 

Archaeologists have discovered what appear to be holding tanks for snails along the Phoenician coast, where Murex could have been kept alive in seawater until enough snails had accumulated to brew the dye. Since thousands of Murex trunculus would have been needed to dye just one cloak to the deep blackish color of the royal purple–and twice as many if Murex brandaris snails were used–there would have been a definite need for such tanks.

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Like most Mediterranean cultures, Phoenicians trafficked in slaves, and may have made a habit  of kidnapping unwary women and children in their ports of call. The citizens of Sepphoris rounded up by the Romans after the brief rebellion following Herod the Great’s death were sold to Phoenician slavers in Acco. No doubt because of the extreme unpleasantness of the tasks involved, slaves provided most of the labor in the Phoenician Murex dye industry.

The stench of the opened snails permeated the area of the dye workshops and beyond. Contemporary accounts described Tyre and Sidon as attractive cities, but stinking of the Murex dye. In almost every case where archaeologists have found the huge piles of broken Murex shells that identify a likely dye site, the piles have been well outside the cities.

 

crushedmurex
Piles of crushed Murex shells

Finally, Ruscillo asks one question that I never saw raised anywhere else: was ancient fleece stained with Murex dye before before it was woven (dyed in the wool), or was the whole cloth dyed after the fabric was completed? Her experiment showed that dying the unwoven fleece left a powdery residue of purple dye in the wool that filtered out and left stains on workers and work areas. The residue made an extra post-dye washing essential before the wool could be spun and woven, which would have required extra time and labor. Dyeing already woven fabric left no such residue, and also eliminated the problem of different dye lots of thread creating an unevenly-colored weaving.

For more details, imaginative and historical, read Cat Born to the Purple!

 

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