Consistency and scarfs
I spend a great deal of time thinking about image consistency, which is the act of looking at an image and asking: what has this image done outside of what I asked for or showed? That's my job.
Consistency is the ability to keep things steady and recognizable. It is stable and familiar.
It is a comforting word, but it depends on which consistency one is referring to.
For example, is something consistently bad? Have you ever made a list of consistencies in your life? What would you like to keep consistent, and when should consistency be preserved, or flipped?
I like to think that my personality is consistent, and perhaps consistency build things, brick by brick, stitch by stitch, kiss by kiss, word by word, thought by thought.
And today I met Amelia to learn how to knit a scarf. We met at a café on Bloor where there were 3D machines running. I watched a printer building a small toy, the consistency of following patterns until a dragon was formed. It was something nice to see. It was not so nice to see the consistency of a very Canadian café: muffins and croissants that don’t even form layers, only a massive dough.
When Amelia showed me how to do the stitches, my brain collapsed a little. Her hands seemed to make movements that were impossible to understand - too many fingers moving too fast. But Amelia was patient, and also proud, because she wanted to be a good teacher. I started failing badly, but I stayed consistent, badly consistent—making the crosses with the needles: from right to top, then circling the wool around the right needle, then crossing again and pulling, in a way my vocabulary still cannot tell. I don't like this at all.
Again and again. Consistent.
I think now I have almost a quarter of a scarf. I’m not sure if I will be able to finish, because there are other things that need my consistency.
In the meantime, the moon is almost full, consistent with the calendar, consistent with the seasons, consistent in its gravitational pull.
Still, among all consistencies, there is the biggest one underneath and it's the same for all of us. Bah! It’s a consistency that screams at us every day, but we hardly pay attention. The consistency whispers in our ears, but we are too busy; when we pay attention, we can listen, and it says: there is only the present moment.
What comes in the next second, we cannot predict.