Beyond Braiding

I wonder if you might join me for a meditative meander beyond braiding hair — a familiar act of gathering flowing (even unruly) hair and weaving it together so that it is tidy and less likely to unravel — into less quotidian and possibly less literal manners of braiding.

I’ve invited you, patient reader, into my queries and contemplations of the many means of combinatorial creativity that appeal to me. Obviously design, architecture, construction, landscaping, and gardening are the most familiar subjects of Rosslyn Redux. Less obvious, perhaps, are love, marriage, family, and the adventures that Susan and I court. And then there are the poetic, storytelling, artistic, and creative experiments: haiku and free verse poetry, photography, illustration, collage, watercolor painting, encaustic, live performance, etc.

Over the last couple of years I’ve come to see braiding as an important method of combinatorial creativity. And beyond braiding in the most familiar and literal sense, I’ve begun to recognize braiding as a metaphorical mentor (or mentoring metaphor) in my quest to share our Rosslyn story. By braiding I’m referring to the act of combining distinct ingredients by interweaving ingredients — not stirring cream into coffee before watching the sun rise nor mixing cement, sand, gravel, and water in a wheelbarrow before shoveling concrete into a form — into a matrix at once agreeable and sustainable. In a well executed braid the individual strands remain distinct, but together they combine into a more attractive, durable, and stronger whole. 

We are all braided together, like strands in a rope, strengthening each other as we intertwine. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

Whether hair, family and friends, conversation, ficus tree trunks, the intertwined channels of Library Brook, or the layered and meandering stories I tell, braiding proves to me again and again how essential each strand, how essential the force(s) of creative tension that draw (and hold) the strands together, and how a well executed braid outshines and outperforms the sum of its parts. Through context and connection the individual strands sometimes attain meaning, beauty, and strength.

As “braiding” proves an increasingly potent part of my Rosslyn Redux composition,… [I’ve been repeatedly reminded] to delve deep into the layers and strands, to rigorously search for accuracy and authenticity, and to embrace the interwoven texture of the story I’m telling. (Source: Enough Words… Action!)

Since 2001 Susan and I have been braiding a life together, and since 2006 Susan and I have been braiding a home together. For nearly as long I’ve been collecting Rosslyn’s diverse strands, sometimes endeavoring to weave them into a whole, but more often allowing them to tangle. Curiosity and adventure have fueled my combinatorial creativity. But it’s time to move beyond braiding bits and pieces. It’s time to better balance the creative tension, to untangle the strands and tame the flyaways. It’s time to pull together the pattern, to combine the ingredients into a braid stronger than the sum of its parts. And, much as rehabilitating Rosslyn had seemed idyllic, even romantic, at the outset, it required far more organization, discipline, perseverance, and endurance than we could have imagined.