“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.” –Jonathan Swift

Greetings Dear Ones!

Ever since a pint-sized super hero in a Halloween costume came into my shop and asked me which I wanted more—“Do you wish you could fly? Or be Invisible?” I have been thinking about super powers in general and Invisibility in particular.

“Oh, I can fly already,” I inform him. “Flying is easy. Anyone can do it. I’d like to be invisible. Really Invisible. That’s WAY harder.”

His brow furrows. His face becomes a soap bubble of swirling colors and emotions.

“People cannot fly!” he bursts suddenly, insisting uncertainly.

“Oh, sure we can,” I say calmly. “We have airplanes, helicopters, rockets, hang-gliders, not to mention the most important and easiest way to fly.”

“What’s that?” he asks with rounded eyes.

“Your Imagination!” I say. He looks annoyed.

“But we don’t have wings,” he says sadly. Another Icarus…

“No, but we have bright eyes and super powerful imaginations that can swoop us to the top of any tree or house or tower, up into the stars at night. Anything we can see with our hearts we can fly to in our minds. Sometimes, I even go sit on the moon and eat some of the cheese there. It’s delicious. ”

He looks at me significantly, deciding (not for the first time) that some grownups probably shouldn’t be trusted.

He leaves with his mask, his sword, and his mother, who was getting some pants hemmed. He is invisible to me now but his magic remains—enough that the part of me that is a faerie dusts off her wings and flits about the shop for a while. She is immensely grateful for fourteen foot ceilings in the old mill building where we work. Within a minute, she’s popped out through one of the nine-foot windows and into the Blue Beyond. It’s a good time of year to remember we can fly—there are so many puffy white clouds that need to be bounced upon and so many turning maple trees on which to perch and survey the quilt of colors made by fields below. And it’s lovely and poignant to join a V behind the geese and follow them for a while…

Flying is easy.

Being Invisible is hard.

Being invisible is not the same thing as not showing up. Being Invisible is being so fully present that you go unrecognized, unseen, unfelt, unheard. It takes incredible skill and persistence to go unnoticed—to be so good at doing something that bystanders are only conscious of the Art, not the Artist.

The best compliment I ever receive about my work is “Wow! I can’t see what you did. It looks like you didn’t do anything.”

When I hear that, I feel like someone just gave me a huge bouquet of invisible flowers.

I love being invisible. According to the MIT Technology Review, “To become invisible, an object must do two things: it has to be able to bend light around itself, so that it casts no shadow, and it must produce no reflection.” I cannot exactly bend light around me but I can definitely step out of all the photos mothers take of their daughters in wedding gowns, making sure I am not even in the mirror with them.

On a metaphysical level, I think about “casting no shadows and having no reflection…” This is the essence of any kind of Good Service that accepts and includes EVERYONE. A “Sew-cialist” tailoring shop is no place for Shade! Invisible diversity means we cannot tell by looking what level of education or experience someone has, whether they love to dance or draw, their marital status, religious beliefs, military service, sexual orientation or what their favorite foods are (unless it involves mustard and it’s all down their shirt front). I can’t tell if you lost weight because you put yourself on a healthy meal plan avoiding “meats, wheats, and sweets” or instead binged on something regrettable from the back of the fridge (that should have gone to the compost pile) and gave yourself dysentery for a week. All I know is that your pants don’t fit and I can help. When you come back, they will wrap around your waist like an invisible hug, like “nothing changed” except now it’s Better.

One thing invisibility involves is the eyes. Eyes are the things with light receptors. Things that are invisible are imperceptible to the eyes but they can be felt with other senses—for example a good fiddle tune or the taste of Love baked into a home-cooked meal.

Yes, I enjoy being “Invisible.” I’m especially glad that some of my customers cannot see what happens to their wedding dresses when they are inside out and chopped apart, looking like an out of control bubble bath all over the table. Being Invisible can be safe and satisfying. I didn’t think to tell the wee super hero this, but the Super Power I really want to have is to have the kind of goggles that enable me to SEE what is invisible. Now, wouldn’t THAT be something? To See, truly see, what others mean when they say confusing things, to see the notes passing by over head in an mad pub session where “I know, I know” the tune but cannot seem to “find” it with my fingers.

A man called me this week and asked if I could tailor a suit for him. He wanted to know if he should make an appointment. I called back and told him yes, and explained how to use the website to book a time convenient for him. Then he called again to ask if he should bring the suit with him to the appointment. Wouldn’t it be marvelous if I didn’t have to say, “Yes, please! Unfortunately, my limited humanity prevents me from seeing the suit any other way. I do not have the super powers required to see a suit that is not actually present with you in the dressing room.”

Sometimes we get so used to seeing things that we forget to see them at all—like green leaves on trees, a mess that needs to be cleaned up, flowers, or a person holding up a cardboard and sharpie sign on a street corner saying “anything helps.” I’m trying to get better at seeing what (or whom) is invisible. I practice on simple artifacts like a sandwich I buy from the co-op at lunchtime. I see the hands that assembled it and go on a “Little Red Hen” journey from there. Who grew the wheat? Who threshed the grain? Who ground the flour? Who made the bread? Who thought adding sauerkraut to a hummus sandwich was a good idea? (it really was!) There is a mind-boggling amount of “invisibility” all around us once we focus on it. A sandwich could be just a sandwich or a portal to All that Is.

In the evening, as soon as I get home, I go to the hay loft alone to throw down another meal for my animal family. Up there, I see easily the invisible hands of Norm, the 83-year-old farmer, touching every twine as he loads the bales one by one on the elevator for me to catch and stack in the mow. I picture him cutting his fields, raking and baling, scanning the sky for rain each time he swings the tractor on a wide turn. His face is set in concentration but cracks like an egg into a wide smile at any excuse to be jolly. I see my dear neice, children, and friends stacking those bales, helping with what I call “Operation Field Mouse” as we prepare the farm for winter. Down below, Joe and Emma and MK are doing the summer clean out of the sheep fold, Roger is vacuuming up a shop-vac’s worth of cobwebs, and Former Me is neck deep in a pit, digging a new hole for the water pump. In the Silence, they are invisible…but their energy is deeply and dearly present.

At dusk, I wander the meadow edges and dance along the low stone walls with my eyes. I can see the oxen teams of long ago, the workers wrestling with iron bars to get the boulders in place. I can see the field hands in the apple trees, the housewife in her herb garden. I wish I could hear their songs, their jokes, their stories.

Time moves along like a fiddler doing scales with a metronome. Showing up daily, doing all it takes to be Invisible is tough stuff. Practice is all the hidden work we do so that our efforting becomes unseen—so that all that remains, if one has the super power to see it, is the Love that remains.

Be well, my darlings! Keep looking for Magic. It’s in all the Right places. May you be surrounded, always…

With Sew Much Love,

Yours aye,

Nancy