The Flirtation of Eve

Writing about a crochet hook led me to the original sin.

When my brother asked me to write a magical realism story starting with a single object, I picked the tool currently in my obsessive everyday use: a crochet hook.

I start with an explanation on the complexity of crochet, and then remember that I need a piece of the magical in this realism, wherein something extraordinary happens and no one is truly fazed by it. Therefore, I move onto crocheting the extremely unlikely: moss.

As most of my writing with a prompt goes, it starts off as stream of consciousness. I have no plan on where this is going, and yet I find myself back at the literary mythical beginning of our Judeo-Christian culture: Eve.

Obviously all I have on me is a crochet hook. Did you know it’s nearly impossible to build a crochet machine? Something about 47 axis of movement where on a knitting machine you only need 4. Knitting machines have been around for centuries, the first way we coded.

I sit on a rock and pick up some moss and start to crochet that. I chain them together because I no longer want to use yarn made of plastic under a different name (acrylic). I want to make myself a top because I know it’ll look good on me, especially because I’ll look like Eve.

Eve and the snake were flirting. Well, Eve thought she was flirting with the snake, but only the snake knew that Eve was actually flirting with the possibility of uncovering hidden knowledge. The hidden knowledge made her cover up, not out of shame, but out of privacy, in that even the God that made her was not allowed unlimited access to her. The knowledge of choice is sexy. It would have been unethical to hide it from Adam too, even coward that he proved to be.

I can’t decide if I’m going to double or half-double crochet. The pattern I’ve already memorized calls for half double stitch, but maybe the double will give me more room to fit in fungi, the roots of the mushrooms. May the fungi find themselves on my body prematurely so they can look forward to the taste of my skin in death. It will not be as fresh, but they don’t care. They will eat me regardless and relish in it.

After my paragraph about Eve, I didn’t know what else to do with her, so I went back to crocheting, and what will be my ultimate end: mushrooms.

I like both of the ideas these 270 words hold, but I know I need to develop them separately for now, and I wanted to focus on and expand on the potential of the concept of Eve flirting.

I kissed my darlings goodbye and cut the first two and the last paragraph, leaving me with 87 words:

Eve and the snake were flirting. Well, Eve thought she was flirting with the snake, but only the snake knew that Eve was actually flirting with the possibility of uncovering hidden knowledge. The hidden knowledge made her cover up, not out of shame, but out of privacy, in that even the God that made her was not allowed unlimited access to her. The knowledge of choice is sexy. It would have been unethical to hide it from Adam too, even coward that he proved to be.

I could have expanded this into a short story or longer, but I enjoy 100 Word stories. I have fun with how limits paradoxically encourage your creativity: what can you do only in the space provided? Hence, I needed to add precisely 13 more words, and question my reasoning for every single word.

For those 13 words:

- I wanted to add a sensation, as in the audience being able to feel the action that affects the five senses. I like to relish in the sensation and physical feeling of having a body. As the story of Eve is so centered on eating the apple, I focused on the tongue.

- I added “the bitersweetness of knowing” as the other side of “ignorance is bliss.”

- I cut phrases into single words, such as “it would have been unethical” to “Ethically.”

- I cut “the knowledge of choice is sexy” for being too obvious, something that the audience can reach on their own. I almost added “having a choice is sexy” but decided not to for the same reason.

Finally, in the last 18 words, I expanded on Eve covering up out of privacy, not shame. I wanted to question the Christian God that our culture (has many excuses for) on whose holy book the culture is “based” on, the millions of deaths excused in the name of him, starting with the expulsion of Eve. My own beliefs and values are asking: why would a naked woman want to be watched by a masculine god who is “caring” for her?

Early sects of Christianity, such as the Gnostics, argued that God didn’t put the tree in Eden, but for the majority of today’s Christians that would imply that God is not all-powerful and omniscient. Therefore, to keep to the rules of the mythology, God put knowledge within reach and was upset when she ate it. Why would he be upset that her first action was covering up?

The Eve I wrote about covering up was not about shame, but about having the informed consent to have the choice to cover-up. (Even in writing this explanation, I started the previous sentence with “My Eve,” but realized that this would ruin the purpose of Eve being her own being.)

Again, emphasizing the bias of my own beliefs and values, I do not imagine her regretting receiving knowledge.

Eve and the snake were flirting. Well, Eve thought she was flirting with the snake, but only the snake knew Eve was actually flirting with the possibility of uncovering hidden knowledge. The apple hit her tongue and the bittersweetness of knowing made her cover up, not shamefully, but out of privacy, in that even the God that made her was not allowed unlimited access to her. Ethically, she fed it to Adam too, even as the coward that he proved to be. She did not regret the wrath of a god who only wanted to watch her in a garden.

We are a culture with a complicated relationship to free will, but I believe most people want to have control over the decisions in their lives. We can take all the advice and influence we want, but in the end we want control over our own informed decisions. Eve’s first choice only has the misfortune of being labeled as the original sin.