The end? The beginning?
In a way I’m starting this blog at the end. Since the beginning of March this year, I’ve been engaged on a year-long project called “A Year of Waiting”, where I aim to collect up and mark all the time I spend waiting for public transport. Each time I wait for public transport, I knit, adding to a long, narrow strip that gradually increases in length with the accumulation of waiting time through the year. I change colour each time, so that each individual block marks one waiting time, ranging from a narrow couple of rows for a 2-minute wait for a tube to a lengthy piece marking the half-hour (or more) waited for a night bus… On each occasion, I also note down where I am waiting, the means of transport, my destination for this particular part of my journey, and the time. My plan is (was) to display the piece when finished with these annotations, contrasting the visual representation of time with the precision of numbers and detail. The piece was to have been finished on 28 February 2010.
On Monday 30 November, at approximately 8.30 pm, the bag containing the knitting and the accompanying notebook disappeared from my bag in the short walk from the bus stop to my home. It’s possible that it dropped out of my bag, but circumstances lead me to think that it may have been taken (there was someone walking very close behind me at one point). Of course, the bag would have had no value (that I can think of) to them. So I have checked with the bus company, phoned the council cleaning department to find out if it has been picked up by street cleaners after being dumped, and put up posters in my road asking people to contact me if they’ve seen it. So far, nothing…
My question now is what to do about all this. I am really quite devastated by this loss – what started as a small project really grew and became important to me over the year, and I was looking forward to completing it and working on ways of showing it. Part of me wants to restart the piece straight away, but I know it won’t feel the same. I have tentatively begun thinking about making a performance about the loss, which would not replace it but might at least mark it in some way. It’s early days, I know, since it happened, and there is (I hope) still a possibility that it might be returned (in the meantime I’m still keeping records of my waiting…) But I feel a need to do something with/about this.
Does anyone else have similar experiences? All commiserations and suggestions welcome…
