01.12.06 - 6:11 p.m.

I am learning how to crochet. I have also purchased appropriate yarn and knitting needles and plan to learn to knit. I have no great ambitions to knit a cozy for the earth to keep it safe from solar rays once we've burned away the ozone layer, or even to make a washcloth, but a friend is a great knitter and crochet-er, has offered lessons at the office, and everyone is taken - thoroughly taken - by learning to knit/crochet. I go along to get along; more specifically, it's a nice way to be social with minimal pressure for me to come up with something to say to people with whom I have very little in common. I am not a good person, I don't remember the names of people's children, the birthdays of their pets. Stuck in the elevator with another human being, I make an offhand comment about the weather, and stand my ground. I am not nice; I try not to intrude, even when I want to intrude, just a little bit. The social graces are not my own. Sometimes I make the effort - its not that I don't believe in the effort, I believe, whole-heartedly, in the effort - but then I get bored and would rather spend my time noodling through more pressing problems, more interesting solutions.

Nevertheless, I have devoted myself (momentarily) to the fiber arts, and the fiber arts provide us all with a way to speak to each other. I am fascinated by the way my hands have already memorized the necessary movements, loop to loop the loop the loop of crochet. It reminds me of the stark, strange terror of my first turn behind the wheel of the car. I could not begin to understand how I could tame my mind and muscles to work together, anticipate the road, and turn the wheel in synchronous motion with one of our curving, crazy roads, following the river like a thoughtless lover - now close, now far. Now I drive - how novel! - every day, thoughtlessly, this wonderful, unbelieveable skill at hand.

So it has been with crochet. My left hand was wild, my pinky rebellious; I foresaw no possibility that they might work together to advance the yarn. I hadno control over the yarn and each stitch was a struggle, although that is already slowly changing, my body has memorized the feel of the thing, and the push-pull push pull of the hook through the yarn feels novel and industrious. I informed everyone of my terribly clever observation that crochet hits the same pleasure centers that video games manage to hit: an achievable goal, some wash of gratification. Perhaps I need to create more achievable goals for myself. Today, I will goof the heck off. Tomorrow, I will get nothing done - and then my pleasure centers would be bathed in cool and brilliant light, and I would be whole.

Nevertheless, there are some things I hate about the new office knitting/crocheting fashion. For example, the "charity" aspect of the situation. Person A wants to turn this into a "circle where we knit chemo hats." Given how quickly these ladies can knit or crochet a "chemo hat," I think that we could hat every chemo patient in the world fifteen times over in the course of three months. I made a joke, offhand, about chemo hats when I first joined the group. No - wait, it wasn't a joke, it was a statement and a statement born from personal experience. My mother never wore chemo hats, not when she was undergoing chemo - she wore expensive wigs from a local salon and cheap wigs from the American Cancer Society catalogue (they have a catalogue), and sometimes wore hats at home, but never wore them out. When she did, she usually chose baseball caps over other things, or at least a hat with a small brim that might do something to shadow her non-existant eyebrows. We did find the "wig room" at CAMC before she lost her hair, and picked up a free wig for her there, too, but we didn't take any chemo hats from the collection.

This is not to say that there is something wrong with making chemo hats, but perhaps time and/or money could be put to better use. Perhaps making one should not consider making "chemo hats" a high volunteer calling and solicit donations to pay for one's yarn. Perhaps one should consider it a hobby. If one wishes to save the world for dying people, one might volunteer for hospice, or offer to cook for a neighbor.

One of the women in the office, having learned the pattern for chemo hats, told me that making chemo hats would give her life meaning again.

I don't know what to do with that. I don't know how to begin to touch it. I can't whittle that down to the bone, but it makes me terribly sad. Go look at the moon and the stars, crazy lady. Read a book, call your grandchildren. Teach an adult to read, volunteer (!) as an VITA volunteer. Something, anything.

I am lost in a sea of IRS media-contact forms and chemo hats.