For years, I thought about the stones.
BackBeads began with hematite on a flight to New York in 2000. I was 29, anxious about flying and leaving one life behind to begin another. I had brought my beading kit with me to keep my hands busy and quiet my mind.
Upon landing in Newark, I dropped that first lariat of cool hematite down the back of my shirt. The sensation of those stones against my spine immediately brought my attention into my body.
It wasn't that I thought the stones had some magical quality. It was simpler than that.
I could feel them.
My posture. My breath. Where I was in my body.
I didn't have all the language for it then. I just knew something about that physical sensation made me aware of myself in a way I hadn't been moments before.
Years later, I became interested in something else... the space between the beads.
When I make BackBeads, I knot space between each stone. Over time, that space began to remind me of the pauses we find in meditation. The breath between thoughts. Those little moments when we stop being completely caught up in what we're thinking and notice ourselves experiencing it.
Sometimes it's as simple as birdsong.
We can walk outside so caught up in our thoughts or emotions that we don't hear the birds singing all around us.
And then we do.
They were singing there the whole time.
Which brings me to something else that has also been there the whole time.
The thread.
Running through every bead. Crossing every empty space. Holding all of it together.
Maybe I've started noticing it because I've been thinking about what pulls all the scattered parts of myself together.
I've spent a lot of years practicing awareness, and I am coming to understand that being centered doesn't mean being calm all the time.
I can be centered in myself and be furious. Centered and grieving. Centered and wildly joyful. Centered and full of desire.
The experience can move through me without sweeping my centered self away. I can feel it without letting it get stuck and buried, only to return and derail me another day.
I am alive enough to feel all of this.
And the more I notice my own experience, the less detached I feel from everything else... other people. Lizards, squirrels, birds. Trees. Flowers. The ocean. Clouds. Stones.
I don't know exactly what that connection is just yet. I have my own thoughts about the soul and consciousness, but I don't need to have an answer.
I just like noticing it and enjoying the patience in letting it all unfold.
Maybe that's part of why I still love the sensation of BackBeads moving across my back after all these years.
The world can be messy. My thoughts can be messy. I can feel angry, afraid, distracted, excited, loving, peaceful... all of it.
Because I am here to enjoy this human experience.
And then cool beads roll across my spine.
I notice.
I sway.
Maybe there's music playing in my kitchen and I dance.
Not because everything is suddenly okay.
Because I am here to experience it all.
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