Weaving cyclical time - lunar/menstrual rosary
Somatic resonance of organic time
Thirteen years ago, I weaved this physical calendar from bone, stone, and metal.
A lunar/menstrual seasonal rosary living in my home entrance ever since.
This is cyclical somatic-time materiality: heavy and shape-shifting.
She can be chaotically lumped together, spirally or wavily organized, and even hung linearly.
This time has weight and casts a shadow of her own.
This is a ritual piece, a talisman of deep-time memories.
She awakens the sense of the organic, cyclical journey of expanding and contracting time.
She speaks in texture, memory, and rhythm.
Each stone and bone is a seasonal threshold—an opening to the next moment.
Linear time is where the past, present, and future exist in sequence, always moving forward and upward - a modern, patriarchal time, where the logic is always to move forward upwards, creating an addiction to progress and newness.
Circular time also has past, present, and future, but in an invaluable cyclical quality, besides being the organic rhythm of nature. Cyclical time has complexity and recurrence, circling between different phases of light and shadow - something that linear time avoids, always trying to hide the shadow.
Cyclical time is also fractal, for it happens in many dimensions at the same time. Although the matrix recurrence, each moment is unique. So, there is the solar cycle - the annual or daily solar cycle - represented by the seasons and hours of the day. The lunar cycle - from the full moon to the black moon and back again. And also the life cycle - through the phases of the virgin, mother, and elder, from menarche to menopause. It also materializes monthly through the ovulation/menstruation cycle. Not forgetting deep time cycles (cosmic or geological) or place-based rhythms.
The cyclical experience is an embodied, visceral ability to embrace change. Light and shadow are both necessary; they are relative and interdependent. The simple observation of the moon is important for reconnecting with cyclical time, a living experience of subjectivity and nuance.
The metal ends of the lunar/menstrual seasonal rosary represent the dark moon (menstruation or winter solstice), and the central bone bead symbolizes the full moon (ovulation or summer solstice).
This piece helped me to embody the deep somatic resonance of rhythm and time in the various phases, unlearning linear time.