Weaving Lessons: Winding, Warping, Weaving

Winding

We started from examining
how thick the thread is.
We chose what color we desire.
We went on for hours
winding to make balls of thread.

We also started from saying
how excited we were this morning.
It mattered what we had for breakfast
or if we had breakfast at all.

Then we wind another thread,
talk about our lives.
‘How’s your boyfriend?’
‘Are the children eating parya?’
‘The sky is so blue!’

It is a hopeful day
without the promise of rain.
‘I use to keep small cuts of thread
in my mouth,’ auntie said.
She would spat them at their backyard, after.

Her grandmother saves the tiniest
length of threads and ties them together.
So it is not sayang.
We wind to make balls of thread.
When the day is about to be over

we are winding still.
Lest be known, today,
our own lives
took a rewind.

Warping

Leave the cotton

for the old people

to make pillows.

Just crack the kapasanglay

slowly, carefully

or you won't have a nice boat.

"Auntie, where can I get cotton?"

I was crowded with polyester,

acrylic, mercerized yarns.

"The Philippine companies got bankrupt

since we got this threads from China."

She's a good teacher.

At home, my nieces and nephews

are cracking Kapasanglay

carefully... for the puddles left by the rain,

and for their future 

nieces' and nephews'

pillows.

Weaving

I was told to 

make a sound

when tightening the pakan

with the balliga.

Auntie was told to

make a sound, too.

So she told me this.

Because, it is the custom.

More than a century ago

war was not bombs, 

not oil, not money in this land.

War was about seeking head.

Not just any head.

Make a sound, yes.

A warrior leaves his path

when he hears the sound.

- A woman weaving.

A woman.

He leaves. That path is love.

He takes another path.

Weave then. Make a loud sound.

You were known in this land, Love.

- Dumay

I am Dumay from the Cordilleras (mountain) region of the Northern Philippines. 

I write poems everyday so I could survive, so I could tell myself that I am living.
I write about the Cordilleras and beyond. I was born and raised here and I have no problem in dying here. The mountains is my source of inspiration. She is my muse.