Needles and Fibers, Niva Bar-Shimon

An entry hole and an exit hole. 

Wounded fabric. 

A bleeding path of trailing thread, torn, or lost along the way. 

Hole after hole. 

The needle rises and falls, at times brushing close to the face, at times far from it. Sometimes it vanishes behind a screen, and you can only guess from where it will return. A practiced hand finds, through the fabric’s dense weave, the next stopping point. The other hand, less skilled, is startled by the sharp flicker of pain. 

Stitch upon stitch, at even, shifting intervals, drawing close, pulling apart, letting the fabric ease between seams, opening itself to a glimpse within, revealing tufts of stuffing. 

And again, and again. Exhausting. Straining the hand, the elbow, the shoulder. The wider the loop, the deeper the ache. Then suddenly, the thread runs out, demanding a pause, a reset: another attempt at rethreading the stubborn eye. The thread refuses, frays, sends out unruly strands, moistened with spit, regathered.

Tightening. Knotting. Wrapping. Transitioning. A mistake, and the seam is undone. Disappointment. Regret. 

A knot that slips free collapses the long, patient labor. A thread tangled in itself forms unwanted knots. 

The neck stiffens. Eyes well with effort. The pin-cushioned forearm gauges the fabric’s resistance. 

And a fiber meets the needle elsewhere. This time, it is a different needle, unimaginably sharp. 

It wounds the wool, a binding wound, grasping, gathering, fastening, sealing, fusing. It wounds the hand too, joining it to the woolen skin-work, turning it into a tender workspace. The needle rustles with shifting tempo, at times focusing on a single spot with precise effort, then wandering wide, scattering breathless punctures across the surface.

It returns again and again, relentless. It presses, reshapes the material, stiffens it, sculpts it, molds. This fabric is not born of any harmonious weaving of warp and weft. It is condensed chaos. Fibers twist and snake, threading in and out. Again and again, they tangle within themselves until they can no longer recognize their form, turning from soft to coarse, from knotted to aligned, from free to captive.

They carry, in their core, a faint memory of what they once were, before their sudden collision with a barbed-loaded needle. One moment they floated, nearly weightless; the next, they cling to one another in their shared calamity.

Niva Bar-Shimon: tkwsniva@gmail.com

Translated by Yaron Regev