r-e-c-i-p-r-o-c-i-t-y

big props to das linoleum for being so funky and rad to actualize this fantastic idea.  all i did was copy and paste, so drop das  a line if you love the thought, and check out the etsy page. you'll only find inspiration, folks. gift giving - this should become and annual event in blog-land, right?

reciprocity

 

reciprocity has been a struggle for us these days, with the farm, kid, illnesses, being preggers, and other totally wimpy excuses.  we all need a gentle nudge to get our act together every now and then, and remind ourselves that being decent community-minded folk takes little effort.  consider yourself served.

let me sum up the below: you read it, if you want to participate you comment on my blog, and i send you a handmade gift.  i'm guessing my PIF handmade item will be a silk screen t-shirt, but it could also be some knitting.  keepin' ya on your toes. do comment y'all! participation is key!    ...read and enjoy. 

The Gift.

Dear [whoever reads this],

they usually do these things and call it the 'snowball effect' but really it's not so much about passing on than about giving back (and passing on and giving back and so on). Reciprocity: it's that principle based on networking – on connecting and linking up, on creating relationships between nodes and vertexes, and finally growing them into networks and matrices. 

Some would probably prefer the more elegant term: rhizomes. More elegant, yes!, but also burdened with fewer connotations than 'the network' and 'the matrix,' both of which can bring about all kinds of unwanted associations, including Hollywoodesque performances, eerie worlds of exposed social life, or mind-boggling algebraic formulas. Rhizomes are botanical, not mechanical, and they are so full of life as only the mildly entangled and wildly exploratory, sprouting and germinating roots of plants can be, pulsing and palpating as they are in the dark soil of this egg-shaped terrestrial planet. 

Of course, there is also the philosophical kind of rhizome. Famous thinkers with minds that have more folds than those of most other earthlings have made rhizomes into a philosophy and then turned that philosophy into a model for society. They say that a rhizome is really … nothing we have thought of before, because it has no beginning or end. And most of us are probably tempted to say that something without beginning or end is not really much at all, is maybe nothing or, if anything at all, it is nothingness. But these philosophers have found a way out of it: if something misses its beginning and its end, all that’s left is the in-between, right? So there you go: the philosophical rhizome is an interbeing, an intermezzo. So say the people with many-folded brains.

I tend to stick to my roots though and so I prefer the biological rhizome, because that interbeing is always a being, it always is. Full of life, nodes, vertices, lines, links, connections, relations. 

Coming back full circle then: with gifting, the nodes and vertexes are we, and the links are established by the gifts that travel along the lines connecting us. Metaphorically speaking, but in some sense this is also quite real. There are telephone lines, there are tubes through which our packages fall into collecting bins at the post office, and so on. Now here is the deal for participating in that gifting- and passing-on-rhizome: it’s called a PIF = Pay It Forward. This means: if you would like to receive something handmade from me (well, okay, it’s going to be a small lino print), simply leave me a comment. And Pay It Forward means that if you get something from me, you do the same thing on your blog for three others. It's the principle that counts: r-e-c-i-p-r-o-c-i-t-y.