End to Begin

By the lower corners I held the bag upside down, shook and shook. They drifted and landed on the floor. I separated big from small, then grouped by shape, ordered by dates. I laughed in pain.

I’ve been avoiding looking into this envelope in which I stored my doll patterns. Cringed at the thought of trekking through the jungle for the same doll torso I’ve made so many times I could do it free hand.

Whisked here by circumstances 2 years ago, I left every pattern behind. A new collection was created from scratch.

From then every version was kept, some worked better, some worked alright, and some just take up space. I kept them all.

Keep them all just in case I didn’t feel it in my body that version 5 was good enough. Which then pushes me to make version 6 whichm of course, still wouldn’t be good enough, but then I can start counting the work I’ve done from 1, 2, 3, 4, 4.1, 4.2…

I crushed them, those expired versions I know I’ll never use again. I know I won’t really know for sure. But I’ll have to risk it. Risk living with the knowledge that I could have but moved on anyway, and it’s a beautiful day.

Then I made the same torso, adding panels until it got bigger and sturdier, holding a small head with a big smile.