Renewal comes in many forms
I’ve been drawing with my left hand. It feels like I’m asking an oracle to give insight into the hidden parts of myself, but really, it’s just my left hand, moving the pen with greater concentration and focus, and less pressure to make something “good.”
Renewal—of curiosity, of interest, of discipline—this is the working-at-home challenge. How to remove the self-induced barriers and step into liminality, slow time, enter the flow.
I think that entering into liminal space relies on a combination of factors, and it’s helpful to have different tools and tricks and modes of operation on hand, for when one method of entry loses its freshness. One habit that’s stuck for me: I sit for ten minutes, eyes closed, doing a body scan meditation, checking in with the state of my energy.
This is not a waste of time. More likely, I’ll waste my own time if I skip it.
My ability to sit in stillness and focus (aka writing) is directly related to my body’s capacity, and its connection with my mind. What’s the rush? I ask myself a lot. Usually, my restlessness is unrelated to an actual need to get somewhere else, let alone in a hurry; my restlessness is causing the sensation of needing to rush, not my reality.
I like to draw and paint after this meditation, because it’s really fun and freeing; after drawing, I write by hand in my notebook. And then I open my laptop and move onto whatever fiction-writing tasks / goals / priorities I’ve set for today. The writing itself is methodical—or my approach is; not that different from glueing spines and taping torn pages, except the landscape I’m exploring is more varied, and I’m more skilled at using the tools of grammar and structure and form than of tape and glue.
Outside the warm walls of my writing space, Life is bearing down on me and my siblings, and my own family and our extended family. It’s a familiar story to those of us in the middle of our lives—those of us who still have parents are seeing our roles flip into caregivers; and some of us have already said goodbye, and no longer have parents to care for. I’m still learning balance, if there is such a thing to learn. I go to the gym as often as possible to burn off the sadness (sometimes it’s rage).
I try to eat sensibly, get at least seven hours of sleep at night, and drink alcohol next to never. When do I let down my hair and kick up my feet and have fun? I haven’t cracked that code. Or maybe I find my release at spin class, and my friendships one-on-one. Spiritual care matters to me too, whether I’m involved in planning worship services at church, or seeking connection for my own spirit with the light that shines in and through all beings.
When in doubt, I do laundry. It’s soothing to work through the simple steps of that process.
Renewal comes in many forms. All ideas welcome.
xo, Carrie
Normal life
What if you cherished yourself, I asked my reflection in the bathroom mirror at school, one day last month. It knocked me out.
I’ve been doing art therapy this fall with a new therapist. During our first session, I drew myself as two distinct bodies, each on one side of a river that flows between them, separates them. The one self sits in peaceful meditation, untroubled, calm, gently smiling, eyes closed, inward-looking but attuned, while the other self gazes at her, lying on her stomach on the river bank, also looking somewhat relaxed, dangling one hand in the river, but she’s frowning, her mind full of muddled thoughts, trying to let them go by placing them onto leaves that are floating by.
What I could express to the therapist was that I longed to be the peaceful self on the other side of the river. She could think clearly. She was untroubled by change. She represented an ever-ness.
The therapist wondered: What if you were the woman on the other side of the river? What would that be like?
I laughed. I couldn’t imagine it. If it tiptoed toward imagining it, I sensed that the muddled self would spoil the peace of that other self simply by attempting to unite them together. It was almost like whatever was contained over there, in that self, would be spoilt by exposure to the rest of me.
It reminded me of a habit I’ve had since childhood. I withhold whatever is most desired from myself. It’s difficult to convince myself to use something that will get used up. A favourite tea, for example, will stay in the box and I’ll brew a different flavour instead. I save things, hoard them. Others eat or consume them instead. Or I tuck away something that I want to enjoy, and never get it out again. I enjoy it by hiding it away. For example, as a child I would hide my Easter candy in my drawer, not sharing it with my brothers, yet never ultimately eating it myself. I could never find an occasion worthy of eating that special candy. Because if I’d eat it, it would be gone. Better to keep it till melted together and spoiled than enjoy it? Strange, right? Interesting. Curious.
Immediately after that vision in the bathroom mirror at school, I went back to the library and scribbled down these words in my notebook:
What if you were the woman on the other side of the river? What would you be like?
How would you treat yourself? What if you treated yourself like a previous vessel? A sacred vessel? An honoured presence?
What if I honoured my presence fully? What if I trusted myself? What if I could just write like it was normal life and not an existential crisis?
Okay, friends. That’s a big what if, but I’m going there. All week I’ve written like it was normal life. It’s been so enjoyable.
xo, Carrie
when i write i feel, when i feel i write
the thing about writing is, the thing about being back into writing is that is opens me up and i feel things again or i feel more vividly because i have to, or because i wouldn’t be writing if i weren’t feeling so much it’s hard to say which way round this works
when i write i feel, when i feel i write
so i cry more—i’m touched by more—more touches me
is that true?
i don’t know for sure
but it certainly doesn’t have the opposite effect, writing certainly doesn’t close me off and tamp down my emotions and make me robotic or on auto-pilot though i can get distracted thinking about plot points and characters and what they’d be likely to do, even while i’m trying to have a conversation with someone else, i’ll say excuse me and run off to my notebook to scribble down a restless idea that flutters in and feels like it might flutter out if i don’t pay it attention immediately
mostly it’s this nearness to the surface that i’m feeling, like i’m poking my head above the waterline or being called just through the shimmering surface of things, up from underneath, and here I am, doing this thing I’ve trained my whole life how to do
and it’s not hard
but it’s also hard in ways don’t sound like they should be hard
it flows along, it carries me
and i have to surrender to it for it to happen
and that’s hard, not always, yet it is
and i have to feel such a shimmer of feelings they smear like an oil-streaked puddle on a hot street—why is the puddle streaked in oil? because we are pulling this raw material up out of the earth and selling it and burning it for fuel, even though it will cause our planet to warm to intolerable heights and our children’s children will suffer
but there’s all this feeling
just lying around, waiting to be felt
—not just rage, not just self-righteousness, not just schadenfreude, not just the hunger for poisonous evil to be put on display for our entertainment (that we want this flavour of feeling so much, that we crave it, the evil, the poison in the system, that is not good news for our species)
but we want to feel!
and sometimes it’s easier to feel what’s being sent our way in a deluge to bathe in—we could hardly swallow it, it’s too filthy and vile, there’s too much of it—but we can swim in it, dive into it, covered all over with the warmth of our own bad feelings running back and forth between us and the sea of sludge
like bathing in a solution that matches our own salinity, inside and out
comforting—
this other feeling, this cornucopia of feeling, this enters differently
it hurts, for one thing, even while it heals
there’s more of it than a person can handle but only because it’s so complex, layered and folded over and over so we have to unfold it for ourselves and put it back together again to understand what’s it’s doing to us, saying to us, where it’s pointing us
it craves release but also it speaks the truth, that we are sensitive creatures, stuck in our ways
no, a person might say—it’s a choice, you’re choosing it
how to explain, it’s not, not unless all the stuff we do, dumb, lucky, thinking, unthinking is a choice
i could no more stop myself from both feeling and desiring to feel than i could prevent myself from entering and creating stories, lines of text, rhyme and rhythm and images that call forth feeling it’s all of a piece it’s all the same loop
what touches our grief
what offers relief
what spills from my eyes and splashes on my shirt
we are all just meeting, it’s early, a character says in a story i was reading in the new yorker while lingering in the bathroom moments ago, before returning to my office. yeah, the other character agrees, and she names couples who all had to start somewhere, pairs of people they know, and then he says her son’s name, and she agrees but not as wholeheartedly, as if maybe she knew her son all along even before she met him, though he’s talking about himself meeting her son, not her; and us, he says to her, yes and us, and she doesn’t answer him but she looks to the horizon where the sun isn’t quite rising—they’ve gone on a road trip, like they promised each other they would do, and it’s been awful and it’s been tender
and it’s ending but won’t end here
it never does
the story slips into my layers and fills in a crack, opens another wider
and we are just meeting for the first time, or we once were, no matter how close we become, so who knows, who knows what will happen as we voyage older and older
before we slip sideways and our bodies return to unaminated material
and we leave, if such a thing is to be believed, that there is a separate we
we leave, as breath, we leave and where do we go and what we have done while we were here, together
if not feel way way way too much, an overflowing volume of feelings that we want—that I want—to put down on the page and show to someone else
i can’t stop myself from wanting that, or from doing that, because it feels so good, it feels like a loop has been closed, or a circle made whole, or a sensation has resolved itself into pure beauty
i guess
something like that
but maybe a lot less dramatic
except when it’s not, except when it’s exactly that dramatic
xo, Carrie
Dear school library,
Today is the first day that I’m not going into an elementary school (a library or a school office) in about three years. It’s wild to be out here and not in there. I’ll miss the kids in the library. I’ll miss them coming in and basking in the light of my attention. To thrive out here, I need to be sure that my attention pours onto someone else, something else, every day.
Why give yourself away? Because it returns to you, tenfold. What you give returns. So know what you’re giving, give with honesty, give what is true to your experience, and what you’d hope to receive.
Dear school library, thank you for re-tuning my focus. Thank you for healing my heart and mind.
At the library: I’ve learned better boundaries, I’ve learned the value of structure in trust-building, I’ve learned the importance of recognizing what’s holding me back (so often a blockage in my own mind), I’ve learned how to seek what I want. How to ask—wait, is this what I want? Or—how can I improve on this process? what’s not serving us? how can I set us all up for success? I know that I am part of a community, I am part of the larger world.
There are things that I don’t want to return to from my life and routines before this job.
Looking back, I see my own self-pity. I recognize a tendency toward self-inflicted martyrdom. If I could change anything about my past self, I would excise the self-pity. Tell yourself the truth! That’s what I say to myself often, when I hear myself tipping toward self-pity. I could pretend that it’s other people stopping me from speaking my mind; I could pretend that I have to work a “real” job because of financial concerns rather than it being a choice I’m making; I could pretend that I don’t have the time to write; I could pretend that an artist can’t be a “good person” and that’s why I don’t want to be an artist.
But I am an artist. Many people are, possibly even most people. (And why this obsession with being “good”? Still trying to figure that out.)
An artist is someone who seeks beauty and wants in some way to interpret it and preserve it and share it.
I’ve learned that it works just as well, if not better, to share my art with kids, to pin it to a bulletin board, to ask questions, to witness others who have found a voice in small part due to my being there to listen.
I’ve learned that it’s okay to want to publish—it’s one way a writer finds connection with the larger world, but it’s a way, not the only way, and that’s often confusing and the experience of publishing can feel really disconnected from the effort and play and experimentation that went into a project. So I like to think of projects differently.
I learned that every day there is the possibility that I will be connecting with someone else, in some way that feels meaningful to both of us. I hope for that, out here too.
Unconditional positive regard. I hope to walk with this into the world, into relationships, to the best of my ability, and when I can’t or when I struggle: box breathing, 5 breaths; a walk in the wind; music and watercolours; notebook, 5 minutes, what’s on your mind?; go to the gym; find a repetitive menial task; or cook a homemade meal and hope for lots of takers around the table.
xo, Carrie
I want …
This is a not going to be a polished post. I’ve been creating an inventory of my interests, needs, weak spots, strengths, etc., in order to articulate, or even just grasp or glimpse what I want to be doing with my days and hours — at this particular stage in my life, this time of aging and flux. So here is a list of goals, the aspirations that I am able to articulate and maybe, with hope and support and gentleness and time, move toward. I’m going to name this list as being things that I want, even though it makes me feel distinctly uncomfortable.
I want …
… a fine life
… relaxation and contentment
… ample rest, a quick and nourished mind
… sweat, adrenalin, endorphins, breath, balance, physical exertion, core strength
… treatment of pain, and ongoing healing for mind and body
… to model and recognize other’s choices that honour: presence, generative actions, creative play, fun and humour, healthy practices and routines
… strong rooted lasting friendships, to be a good friend (by listening, walking with, caring for, giving space to, allowing to be); to let my friends help me too, be honest with them, share my fears sometimes
… strong healthy bonds with my children and other family members, no matter my role (as mother, daughter, spouse, sister, etc.)
… to live with creative bursts without floating into self-indulgence and disconnection, without being self-serving
… to be someone people feel comfortable and happy spending time with; to put others at ease
… to inhabit and build inviting spaces where people get to be themselves, feel welcome to be relaxed, to come and go, rest, laugh, talk, eat good food (as at the cottage); cry, laugh; feel so held and loved—this is aspirational, but I’d love to be that person for others
… to conceive of, surrender to, and finish ambitious projects (like novels) – for the joy of discovery day by day, and for the sense of accomplishment when all the threads have been woven together; for therapeutic reasons, and to explore what’s underneath and otherwise invisible and unknown and mysterious within my soul and body and the collective life force, because it feels necessary and relieving and cleansing and satisfying and good, and because writing is my way in, the practice that I’ve practiced more than any other
… to not behave like a martyr or fixate on sacrifice; surrender is a different beast
xo, Carrie
PS The watercolour is my version of characters from The Day My Mom Came to Kindergarten, written by Maureen Fergus with illustrations by Mike Lowery, which I read to classrooms in September. Most every week, I add a new character to the library’s story-time bulletin board – from a book we’ve read the previous week. (See below.) This is a practice I’ll miss and be seeking to replace when I move on from the library job.
