Weekends, I’ve been spending quite blissfully, drawing and writing in preparation for the creativity course I’m teaching at UW this term. I’d planned to blog more often and in more detail about this course, but it feels like a fragile and unique undertaking that needs to be protected from scrutiny, the way that creative projects need to be protected from scrutiny, lest they crumble beneath the weight of judgement, of what they’re supposed to become.
A creative undertaking can’t really be expected to become anything at all. It just needs room to grow, the way a baby can’t be expected to become anything in particular, though we might imagine in the infant’s freshness a future filled with everything we would want for our beloved. But it isn’t up to us to fill the infant’s future for it; only to give the child room to grow, and food and light and attention and care and love.
This is beautiful moment in my life. I can’t describe it better than that, but I would like to remember it, somehow, to remember the sense of purpose and calm I’m feeling as I move through the hours of my days. There are specifics to grab on to, to help explain what is happening (early morning exercise, reading books for pleasure, writing days, vegetarian suppers, family meals, biking in snow, productive & inspiring meetings, bringing The Shoe Project to fruition here in KW, meditation, yoga, music, cartooning), but beneath these specifics is something deeper, and I think it’s forgiveness — that I’m recognizing that my imperfections and errors are not shameful, but merely human, and as I would forgive others for their imperfections and errors, so I remember to forgive myself. Life feels both serious and light; not something I can put my hands around, but whose mysteries I’ll feel compelled to track for as long as I’m able.
I feel at peace with my calling, such as it is, to collect and record.
I feel at peace, and determined. At peace and resolute. There isn’t much time to do what we’re called to do. There is and there isn’t. So I’m doing it while I can.
xo, Carrie