tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794032828760249355.post5569083950813542302..comments2023-04-09T13:30:18.262-07:00Comments on Nagualli: Cecilia Vicuña, from "Word & Thread," trans. Rosa AlcaláJose-Luis Moctezumahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17685224878488330658noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5794032828760249355.post-57791884224471937782014-02-12T08:37:02.945-08:002014-02-12T08:37:02.945-08:00To speak is to thread and the thread weaves the ...To speak is to thread and the thread weaves the world. * In the Andes, the language itself, Quechua, is a cord of twisted straw, two people making love, different fibers united. To weave a design is pallay, to raise the fibers, to pick them up. To read in Latin is legere, to pick up. The weaver is both weaving and writing a text that the community can read. An ancient textile is an alphabet of knots, colors and directions that we can no longer read. Today the weaving no only "represent," they themselves are one of the being of the Andean cosmogony. (E. Zorn) * Ponchos, llijllas, aksus, winchas, chuspas and chumpis are beings who feel and every being who feels walks covered in signs. "The body given entirely to the function of signi- fying." René Daumal A textile is "in the state of being textile": awaska. And one word, acnanacuna designates the clothing, the language and the instruments for sacrifice (for signifying, I would say). * And the energy of the movement has a name and a direction: lluq'i, to the left, paña, to the right. A direction is a meaning and the twisting of the thread transmits knowledge and information. The last two movements of a fiber should be in opposition: a fiber is made of two strands lluq'i and paña. A word is both root and suffix : two antithetical meanings in one. The word and the thread behave as processes in the cosmos. The process is a language and a woven design is a process re- presenting itself. "An axis of reflection," says Mary Frame: "the serpentine attributes are images of the fabric structure," The twisted strands become serpents and the crossing of darkness and light, a diamond star. "Sprang is a weftless technique, a reciprocal action whereby the interworking of adjacent elements with the fingers duplicates itself above and below the working area." The fingers entering the weave produce in the fibres a mirror image of its movement, a symmetry that reiterates "the concept of complementarity that imbues Andean thought." * The thread dies when it is released, but comes alive in the loom: the tension gives it a heart. Soncco is heart and guts, stomach and conscience, memory, judgement and reason, the wood's core, the stem's central fiber. The word and the thread are the heart of the community. In order to dream, the diviner sleeps on fabric made of wik'uña.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com