Rabbit Holes

Today, with some Facebook friends looking on, I went down a rabbit hole of Huichol myth, religion, and art.

The Blue Deer

In Mexico, I had purchased a piece of string art with some handwriting (in Spanish) on the back. This morning, I sat down to translate it (via Google Translate) and got stuck (the handwriting plus the language barrier), so I crowd-sourced it on fb (https://www.facebook.com/sarahmbruce/posts/10210240004628813). With some help from Spanish speakers and their families, I made enough progress to start a standard Google search for the missing terms.

And so, I found a page (http://www.resurgence.org/magazine/article3314-huichol-indian-art.html) describing a man named Juan Negrin, who researched Huichol art his whole life and had written an article featuring string art like my piece, including a sentence that almost exactly matched mine.

It was a lot of fun along the way, including the conversations in real time on fb.

Mary Corbet

Fast forward about an hour.

I follow a blog-cum-instruction site called Needle ’N’ Thread, by Mary Corbet. (I highly recommend it for anyone who likes textiles and embroidery: http://www.needlenthread.com.)

Coincidentally, Mary’s post today was about, as she put it, “falling into little rabbit holes.” Having loved the famous Loreto Embroideries all her life, she had often wondered (as had the renowned Royal School of Needlework) who designed the original drawings.

Also a lover of Dante, Mary recently googled images from his works and came upon a set by Italian artist Tiburzio Ezio Anichini (1886–1948). Long story short, because she knew the Loreto work well and could see the similarities, she came to recognize that he was the illustrator behind the Loreto Embroideries.

Synchronicity

On our trip to the Mayan jungle in Mexico, we participated in a ceremony by a Mayan shaman, including a blessing for each of us. It was profound and moving and filled me with immanent optimism.

People tend to think that because I am an atheist, that I don’t believe in anything metaphysical. Not true. I don’t adhere to any of humanity’s religions, but I do believe there is more to our universe than is discoverable by science. I can’t describe it—by definition—but I believe there is a uniting power (I wish the word “force” had not been co-opted by Lucas) that is not a self-aware agent, necessarily, but rather a disposition or polity. It does not govern, it synthesizes.

Back in the olden days, I used to say that a coincidence is God making a rhyme.

So some overarching consonance is rhyming today, and whatever else I make of it, I enjoy the emotion of connectedness and I look forward to more rabbit holes bringing me to more wonderlands.