ojo de dios

I'm happy to say I've finished a drawing project that consumed my life over the past two weeks, that I COULD have finished well in advance earlier in the year, but as I seem to be a creature who seems to function the best when feeling the direct flame of a deadline at my heels, I fell back into old habits hard and cranked out nine pieces in a little under two weeks. I think I averaged about four hours of sleep every night last week, it felt like undergrad again. But I did it (cue hearty exhale).

Saturday morning I tried to sleep in, but that didn't happen so I gathered up a few bundles of fibers, an "X" of olive branches that I had prepared weeks ago, and an old thrifted instruction book on the Huichol craft 'Ojo de Dios' or God's eye. I resolved to make one for myself to put to rest an old desire from third grade, which was the year in elementary school that we learned about Native Americans. For some reason my class was the only one out of four that didn't get to make those popsicle-stick-and-yarn woven crosses.

I'm glad, thirteen years later, I did it this way though. I'm pretty sure as a third grader the deeper meaning and significance of this project would go right over one's head - but who knows. I'd be lying if I said I felt deeply spiritual while weaving the God's eye, and I certainly did not have an extended prayer that I recited as the weaving formed. But I got the same contemplative peace in assembling the God's eye that I do when I knit - something about the repetitive motions and the gradual building of knots to form a larger whole is extremely soothing. I felt meditative and peaceful winding lengths of colored twine on the wooden frame, even though it was a relatively quick project. I finished the God's eye off with a knotted loop, and hung it above my kitchen door on the threshold of the living room.

It's a little odd to feel this small relief at having completed this craft that I had longed to do as an eight year-old and never really got around to until the pieces started falling into place. I wasn't consumed by the desire all these years either, it faded away and was nearly forgotten, but small steps - finding the Ojo de Dios book at the thrift store, having some dried out olive twigs from my tree at home, and seeing these natural fibers in the glowing colors of the sun at another thrift store slowly but surely pushed me towards the right direction. Seemingly unrelated, yet totally relevant to this fulfillment of old childhood dreams, was finding this large, whole cowrie at El Matador last month. Granted its gorgeous gloss is gone - whitewashed and eroded by the sea to look more like bone, but it is unmistakably a cowrie. And in the way that 8 year-old me would be so happy to know she'd make a God's eye down the line, 9 year-old me is thrilled that she found her own cowrie on the beach instead of buying one from the store. So here's to attaining lost childhood goals, all along the way to actualizing current, adult ones.