Sunday, July 12, 2009

"Hala" Means Poison or How to Ruin an Enthusiastic Post About A Friend With Your Own Heavy Shit

Grrl+Dog's installation is up in Sydney! Go take a look enjoy the colour and the incredible knitting that people all over the world have done to make this project happen. Quite impressive. Congratulations Denise! I hope you are enjoying the fruits of your labours.

She has another project in the works. Hee, hee. Maybe I can use up all my left over Vanna's Choice from The Knitted Mile. Hee hee.

Seeing Denise's photos was perhaps the first time I could look at a Knitta Please project and not get a little zing in my stomach. I have harboured some resentment towards Knitta Please for, well, far too many years. You see, they are almost always described as inventing knit grafitti or yarn bombing or whatever you want to call it. It just ain't true. I know of at least two people who were doing a similar kind of activity long before they came on the scene. And yes, one of them is me, and thus the little zing.

I had sent them an enthusiastic email right after I had heard about their activities in Texas with a link to my website, specifically my Canal Street project. I never got any reply but I was added to their mailing list so I guess they received it.

I know that it is impossible to control what journalists write about you and certainly being able to label them as "inventing" knit grafitti makes for snappier copy than "they were among the first..." so, no doubt, they have had little say in how they are presented up to a point. And yes, I will say straight out that I was jealous that they were jet setting around the globe doing cool stuff while I was working away at my drab little life.

Then finally, and I think I can finally say finally, I realized that the little zing said acres more about me than Knitta Please.

Samsara, hala, hala, as Ashtangi yogis say.

5 comments:

Stitching Upstairs said...

What is hala, hala. I know samsara. I guess I should say what is the translation of that phrase?

Stitching Upstairs said...

P.S. I love the Sydney Installation. Thanks for sharing. Plan to follow her blog.

Robyn said...

"Hala" translates to "poison"....oddly enough, the pose that we call "plow pose" in yoga is called "halasana", which translates to "poison pose". I don't know why it is called that. In ashtanga, the opening chant has a line "samsara hala, hala" - that's what we are getting rid of through yoga...the poison of samsara...

Unknown said...

i was going to ask, hala means poison in what language? and poison? as in one man's meat is another man's poison?
or in on budist teaching, you learn to turn poison into medicine (that that does not kill, only serves to make me stronger sort of thinking)

to poison (is it to harm, to kill? or someother nuance of meaning?)

you must kill the fallow field (plow it) to prepare it for harvest--some times destruction and creation are closely linked... (i am, when not knitting a word nerd.. few words have simple meaning.

Robyn said...

Yes, as I think you deducted, hala is poison in sanskrit. I like how you interprete it, especially in relation to how it is used in the line in the chant, and in post....