Tuesday, Jan 6, 2015 | Big Thoughts, Confessions, Exercise, Parenting, Spirit, Work |
One poem, good morning. I start with my hands on the keyboard. But nothing comes. Because I am not a poet?
This morning my alarm sounded early, but I woke just before and lay in the dark waiting for it, anticipating. Floss and brush. Dress. And before that, upon rising, drink two glasses of cool water.
Nina meets me outside. We drive down the street, a bit of a chat, a bit of a change of routine as the front door is iced shut at the yoga studio, so we walk around the ugly squat building through the snow and enter at the back, boots off. We say “bye” at the door to the classroom and enter and are alone, not side by side. Waiting in warmth for class to start.
The instructor says the words moving meditation, and I hold them, calmly certain that this is what I am doing. She welcomes the new year, invites us to consider what we want to open ourselves to, and also what we want to leave behind. My mind shouts: nothing! in reply, and mentally I see my storerooms and spare rooms and shelves and cupboards overflowing, as if I’ve just embraced the hoarding lifestyle, a hoarder of words and actions and routine and time itself.
And then I know, almost at once, that it is okay, that much will be let go. I ask myself to try letting go of the word Success, as the new year opens itself up. But I’m afraid to. There are aspects to success that I admire too much. I’m superstitious. Am I turning my back on luck and fortune if I let go of the word Success? Is that what letting go means? Or is letting go different, somehow, does it mean letting go of the burden of that word?
Success is not the same as confidence. It is not the same as faith. It is not the same as grace. It is not the same as the deep calm hum of life.
It is not the same as song. My birthday party was about singing and music and collaboration. Our new year’s party was about singing and music and game-playing and connecting in different ways, sitting on the floor, squeezed around the table, a bit messy, unadorned, fun.
Sacred. That word came onto the radio while I was driving home from physio. Physio came after yoga, shower in between, waiting in a long line for young women to finish their radiant luxurious showers. “You were fast,” said the woman in line behind me, who was still waiting when I exited the shower. “I am fast,” I said stupidly, having not spoken all this time; but at home I am not fast and I thought self-righteous thoughts while towelling off and dressing, thoughts about choosing the right place to indulge in radiant luxurious showering.
And then needling at physio, muscles popping and grabbing and twitching. She said: I’m causing a small trauma to the muscle, which causes blood to flow there, and healing. There is an analogy in this, I thought, as I lay on my stomach under heating pads and tried not to let the tickle in my throat turn into a full-fledged coughing fit, the conversations winding around me from the beds adjacent; I hear and don’t hear, I listen and don’t listen, I rest and don’t rest. Think of trauma as a means to heal. Think that without trauma the healing would be slower or incomplete, might never happen, that it is trauma that incites the rapid-response, the shock that draws attention and alters everything. That is what I hope for, in my muscles: relief, but also healing. But I don’t want trauma in my life; none of us do; there must be an easier way to let go.
Sacred, sacred. On the radio, on the drive home, slow in snow and behind a city bus. The man on the radio says the choices you make with your body are private and they are sacred, how you feel when you are doing things with someone else, how someone else makes you feel when they are doing things with you, that is your sacred space and only you know what you want or need. The subject is parenting, and teaching your children and teens about sexual abuse, misogyny, gendered culture, and practical and philosophical responses to those things, to situations they may encounter; 78% of parents never talk to their children about abuse in sexual relationships.
Have I? Must I? Age appropriately, of course.
I pull into the driveway and make a mental note, I bend before the washing machine sorting a dark load, I measure lentils into a pot, I cook poached eggs for breakfast, I skim the opening pages of the newspaper, I set the timer and rest for 20 minutes by the fire with the dogs, and I make a mental note, a mental note, to invite my two eldest to a conversation about abuse in (sexual) relationships. Which they will hate and resist and roll their eyes, groaning, oh mom, we already know this stuff what’s wrong with you. I mentally note that I will start by saying: this is pre-emptive, and this is not what I anticipate for you in your current or future relationships, but here is the way the world can operate, and here is how you can respond. If you see injustice or cruelty or harm, step in—the example given on the radio was of Katherine Switzer running the Boston Marathon before women were allowed to, and the male organizer of the race trying to tackle her to remove her from the course, and Katherine’s football-playing boyfriend stepping between them, protecting her, running with her.
I would say to my children: make that be you, whether you’re male or female. Take responsibility. Care for someone in pain or who is being harmed or hurt or threatened, do not exploit anyone or use anyone.
Last night sitting at soccer, watching Angus play his heart out. Pride in my heart, therefore. I realized that I speak ill of children sometimes, in sports contexts. I judge some of the players harshly, I judge their efforts and skills, measure, compare. I am not talking about my own children, but other people’s children, and that is mean, it is meanness, it is shameful, it is wrong. I want to stop, now, immediately. I took out a pen and wrote this pledge into the tiny notebook I keep in my purse: stop now, this stops now.
There in the notebook, I discovered writing I’d forgotten about, characters I’d been thinking about earlier this fall, times and places I’d wanted to visit fictionally, forgotten words. So. Keep writing, at all times. I sit here at the keyboard, on this good morning, and a poem now exists—yes, it is impoverished and ill-fitting and ugly in shape—but it is where before there was nothing.
The new plates are Kevin’s birthday gift to me. (This is the car that Aggie bought.)
Standing in the yoga parking lot, kicking snow off of “Aganetha’s” underside, I realized that all the work that I do is work that I want to do, that I enjoy doing, that I relish doing, that feels relevant and useful and that feeds me while I do it. What do I want to let go of this year? Meanness, ingratitude, unkindness, exclusion.
“They say it is better to light a candle than to curse the dark.” —Quotation I read on the wall in the back entrance of the yoga studio this morning, while putting on my big black boots (which Fooey wore yesterday to help Kevin put out the garbage—she said they felt so warm and soft; and they fit her; she is 9 years old). Yes, it is better to light a candle. Always a light a candle. But, I asked, too, reading the colourful flowing words on the wall, is it sometimes important to curse the dark? To call it out for what it is, rather than pretend it’s not there? It depends, I think, on whether the dark is changeable, or the dark is elemental. Some dark is necessary. There will be night. There will be winter. To curse what is natural and seasonal and implacable is to waste one’s energy. But some dark is caused by human evil, such as the darkness of measuring a child’s effort for no reason other than unchallenged, blind competitive instinct. I don’t say curse the dark, but call it out and name it for what it is. And then light that candle and light another and another, and don’t be afraid to keep lighting candles even if they sputter or get blown out.
xo, Carrie
Thursday, Jan 1, 2015 | Books, Reading, Spirit |
I’ve spent the afternoon by the fire reading Meet the Austins, by Madeleine L’Engle, likely for the tenth-or-so time. I hadn’t meant to spend the afternoon reading, but my nine-year-old asked for a book recommendation, and I came back to her with this one and Harriet the Spy, and she chose Harriet the Spy, so I picked up Meet the Austins. I knew I wouldn’t be able to read just a page or two. Sometimes it’s hard to pick up a book because I know how consuming it will be.
But there is nothing to do today, on January 1st. It is one of the quietest days in our whole year. We had a fun celebration last night, a houseful of friends and their kids, music-playing and games and good food and drink, up past the midnight hour, and today is for doing absolutely nothing other than what we want to do.
For me, that’s been lying in pyjamas reading a book and sipping cups of tea.
What I love about reading, and what is so unique about the experience, is that it opens the mind in a particularly vivid way. It elevates my thinking, even while I’m doing it. I can feel my mind opening on a number of different levels as I read a story. I’m empathizing with characters, experiencing an emotional response to their situations, I’m analyzing the structure and style of the text itself, I’m aware of what’s going on around me in the real world, and I’m thinking bigger braver thoughts about my own life and intentions and work. I’m considering why I write, and what I want to write, and why I tell stories, and what stories I want to tell. I’m thinking about the writer herself, Madeleine L’Engle, whose stories I’ve been reading for probably thirty years, and about what I know of her life and career. I’m doing this almost all at once, it seems. And all of this activity enlivens me, even while I’m lying in pyjamas by the fire, at ease, comfortable, relaxed.
And then I come here to this screen, and I write about it. What a fortunate life this is.
Madeleine L’Engle wrote mainly for children and young adults. Her books are full of philosophical questions, moral conundrums, acts of anger, compassion, and forgiveness, quotations from other work (Einstein and Thomas Browne, in this book), engagement with other forms of art. They feel to me like spiritual works. Oh, to write like Madeleine L’Engle. And maybe to live like her — or like her characters, in their rambling houses full of purpose and energy and music and good food and friendship and chores and order amidst the noisy chaos. (Maybe this is what I’ve based my ideal family on, all these years, without even realizing it…)
xo, Carrie
Tuesday, Dec 30, 2014 | Uncategorized |
This past year, I wrote a private daily meditation, semi-focused on my word of the year, which was success. In fact, my meditations were probably only on the subject of success maybe 1/25th of the time, and they certainly weren’t written daily, but they were nevertheless a satisfying outlet for the thoughts that needed time to mellow, or the stories that didn’t belong here on the blog.
I’m considering doing something similar this coming year, but writing instead a daily poem. I used to do this when I was a teen and into my early twenties. I wrote poems almost every night before bed, few of them publishable, and that wasn’t the point–the point was to put shape to the unspoken, to play with language, to settle my mind, to practice and learn and pour my day out.
Today, I gave it a shot. I haven’t picked a word of the year yet, so filed it inside this past year’s scrapheap of meditations. Writing in poem-form felt easy and free: free-er somehow than writing in prose. Maybe I was tapping into a stream of curiosity and playfulness that’s running underground at all times.
Here’s an attempt, though I won’t elevate to Poetry. It’s more properly named a meditation, a scrap of wondering.
Want
A man with sunken cheeks and lanky pale hair
Walks—strides
Across an empty lot, up a short ugly shaved hill and into traffic
Carrying what looks like a tent, bagged, by the handles
That man has had a heap of troubles in his life, I say
We wait at the stoplight and watch him in the rearview mirror cut through the line of cars behind us
He isn’t wearing any gloves! I mourn
But you say, He could get gloves if he wanted them
Could he? Where would he get them from?
They give them out at the shelters, you say, and you are probably right
If he’s not wearing gloves, it must be because he doesn’t want to be wearing gloves, give him that at the least, give him agency
Why would he not want to wear gloves? Why would he want to stride through live traffic carrying a tent, sheltered by a lightweight beige jacket with a broken zipper, his hair flowing down his back, his face falling in on itself, tanned and rough and toothless
What love and care has he known and who offered—offers—it to him and is it too late, far too late, to—
But I don’t know what it is too late for
I don’t know what could change the course of a life rivering chilled through traffic, only that it isn’t as small as a pair of gloves
Only that he comes across safe to the other side of the street and keeps on walking
Only that I want to apologize for the warmth inside this car, this car itself, its vanity plates, the loved child in the seat behind strapped in safely and saying, Who, Mom, who are you talking about?Sunday, Dec 28, 2014 | Uncategorized |
Knitting project # 1.
Make, make, make.
Receipt of knitting project # 1, on Christmas morning.
Give, give, give.
Receipt of knitting project # 2, on Christmas morning.
Dear Blog,
Tis the season to fall out of routine and into sloth, indulgence, mirth, and despair, seemingly overnight. The highs are high and the lows are low. I did not follow my own advice from holidays past, and suffered as a result. Eating, drinking, socializing, lying around in pajamas. It sounds so peaceful, so relaxing. And then the house is a disaster, and somehow I, too, am a disaster: pimpled, lank-haired, moody, tired yet restless. (Basically I turn into a teenager again, albeit a teenager capable of cooking up a turkey dinner for twelve.)
This morning I got up earlyish and met a friend for a walk/bitch session, then went to a yoga class, and therefore all is rosy again.
I can even face, with some measure of equanimity, the fact that today is my last day in my fourth decade of life. Which is a fancy way of saying that I turn forty tomorrow. I don’t feel old enough to be turning forty, but the calendar disagrees. When I turned thirty, I didn’t mind it at all. I was preoccupied, newly pregnant with my third child, and thrilled about that. I enter this new decade with less of a sense of purpose and occupation. Maybe that’s not true. But maybe it is. A decade ago, I was hip-deep in the care of small children and had published my first book. The path ahead looked clear and certain.
The path ahead looks less clear, less certain right now. I admit that freely, even though it unnerves me, a bit. It unnerves me not to know, exactly, what it is I intend to do or accomplish. It unnerves me to be out here looking around with a sense of freedom, wonder, and possibility. It unnerves me, but of course it also thrills me, intrigues me. I think my viewpoint for this coming decade is going to be broader, wider. I won’t be looking down into the faces of tiny, needy creatures looking up, with arms raised. We can talk about so many things, as a family, that we couldn’t a decade ago. We can consider, debate, plan, set goals. I can set individual goals, apart from them. They can set individual goals, apart from us. Or we can set goals together.
I figure I spent the first decade of life mastering the basics: to stand, to walk, to run, to talk, to read, to write, to get along with others.
I spent the second decade of life experimenting: with identity, with relationships, with my own morals and values and sense of self, with education. (I messed up a lot during this decade, for which I forgive myself; and expect the same from my own kids–the messing up, that is. It’s the only way to learn. I’m still doing it.)
I spent the third decade of life framing in my version of adulthood: continuing education, working toward a career, getting married, parenthood.
I spent the fourth decade of life shifting focus and experimenting with identity once again, as the children grew and I began to claim space and time for myself. Sometimes I think the best parts of my day are made up of hobbies, all of which began in the past decade: writing this blog, exercising, taking photos. I feel like I should call them something more profound than hobbies, but I don’t know what. They aren’t money-earning activities. Yet I value them more than almost anything else I do, for the stability and sanity they provide, which colours every other aspect of my daily life.
The fifth decade is a mystery. I want to imagine it as a really exciting decade, with momentum, experience, and confidence underpinning my efforts.
Here’s hoping. And here goes…
xo, Carrie
