Category: Big Thoughts
Thursday, Sep 5, 2024 | Art, Big Thoughts, Current events, Death, Family, Library, Play, Source, Space, Spirit, Summer, Work, Writing |
There is so little to say, and so much.
I want to express the ways in which I’m changing, the shifts occurring in my mind, and in my outlook—but it’s not entirely clear … I’m floating along a deep wide river. The way I understand my own identity is changing, changing, changing. For most of my life, I was focused on being a writer. And it became my defended self, a self that required defending because I had no sustained confidence in its heft or even its existence—prove yourself, said the voice in my head, over and over.
That voice has grown so gentle.
Now that voice in my head says, there’s more and more and more—more life, more love, more space, more time than you’d ever imagined. Soak it in. Float. Spread out of your arms. Watch the sky, the leaves and branches moving on the trees, listen to the wealth of stories pouring in. This generous world.
And how I wish and hope to be a generous being while I’m here.
Spaciousness.
I feel it within me, surrounding me, available at all times. So much spaciousness. A lack of pressure (not a lack of challenge).
How can I explain what is impossible to describe? It is not that I have more time, but that time itself expands to accommodate so many threads and layers and textures of experiences. When I am restless with my environment, the voice in my head says, be where you are right now.
And I breathe differently.
It is not always easy to be where you are right now. It might involve challenges like boredom or pain or discomfort. Yes. And when I am here right now those challenges shift and become otherwise—boredom may be a conduit to concentrated observation; pain may invite breath; discomfort illuminates emotion; love and patience and depth of understanding weave into the experience of being.
I have been learning this my whole life, with my whole body, which offers its sensations and movements and feelings to the interpretation of my mind, and which acts as a container for my spirit, that droplet of essence that connects me to all beings.
I arrived here on earth to learn, to soak in beauty in its rawest forms—taste, smell, touch, light and shadow, sound, rhythm, anchors to my place of being. I arrived with the desire to push my body to its limits (not always in healthy ways, but that’s part of learning). I wanted to feel everything. I wanted to experience everything.
The impulse to make things, to respond to and to express all of this wonder at the beauty of it all—that has also been in me since the beginning. I arrived here on earth with the desire to make things (and make things up). I learned to nurture that part of myself—I practiced observation, through writing, playing with language and grammar and imagery. And I learned that to record requires of me a bifurcated attention, attention that must split itself between observing and recording (and interpreting). And I continue to learn that sometimes, sometimes, yes, I do not want to record or interpret what is happening, I want simply to be in the happening. I want to be in it and learn from being in it.
This summer has been a summer of being, not so much doing, and very little recording or interpreting of the doing and being. Hence, very little blog writing. But not never. Why lean on never, ever? There is time, there is time.
I arrived here on earth to learn.
When I notice all the spaciousness around me, through which I move and breathe and live, I learn in ways that resist expression. I settle myself in deeper. Everything shimmers. Time expands. I am, you are, we are. Learning together.
xo, Carrie
Friday, Jun 21, 2024 | Art, Big Thoughts, Dream, Feminism, Fire, Friends, Fun, Good News, Job, Lynda Barry, Manifest, Organizing, Source, Space, Spirit, Stand, Success, Work, Writing |
The X Page performance, season 5, was this past Sunday: “We Belong.” Season 5 proved to be the luxury version of the workshop, with excellent snacks and food, great sound, professional lighting, and a real stage. It was also a delight to behold—the stories came into focus, and the performers were, each one, spotlit and magical as they offered their generous gifts to the audience (a full house!).
For me, this project is about the process. At times, it’s messy, it’s a big commitment, it’s demanding and occasionally frustrating, not to mention that it’s also an over-the-top ask: to write an original story, memorize it, take it into your being, and perform it on stage in front of a live audience. Many of the women complete this remarkable task in their second or even third language.
As with any intense project, the end, when it comes, feels abrupt. All this effort and excitement, nerves and energy, ramping up considerably as the date of the performance comes closer and closer—and suddenly, arrives. And then time flies. The production is over almost as soon as it’s begun.
One of the women said, as she was leaving the theatre, “No one told me about this part—the part where it ends.”
It’s true. It does end. There will be a cast picnic, and of course, everyone is welcome to join our online writing club that meets monthly to do a Lynda Barry exercise and read our freshly discovered stories to each other.
But yes, the process, this specific process, meeting this specific goal, with this specific team, and these specific individuals—that does end. A chapter closes.
Just like my peonies have bloomed and are now wilting in the heat. I bend down to breathe in their scent every time I pass by, but they are going, going, nearly gone.
What I wonder is—how will each of us be changed by our experience? (Not by the peony sniffing, although I’m sure that has an effect too! I mean by being part of the X Page workshop.)
I believe that I am changed in ways both subtle and profound.
In the hours after the performance, I became aware of an unfamiliar feeling in my body—fulfillment. I felt fulfilled. The feeling lingered, and it remains. I felt, I feel, like I’d done what I was called to do, done it well and to the best of my abilities, forgiving myself along the way for missteps, open to learning from everyone I met, and committed fully to the process and these people, individually and as a whole. I did not (do not?) feel anxious about what might come next. I felt, instead, sufficient. Fed, serene, blessed, grateful.
I was (am?) affirmed as a communicator—verbally and emotionally, as much as through the written word. I was (am!) proud to have been a part of such a special and unique project. It helped (helps) me to see that while writing has been a large piece of my identity, it is not my whole self, nor need it be. It may, instead, be a pathway or a door opening into a different way of being in the world, rich with overlapping communities, strong relationships, communal experiences, and my own personal values lived out in full.
What a gift. What generosity pouring from all to all. What enormous goodwill and care. Imagine a world where all would be encouraged and rewarded and admired for approaching each other with grace, with understanding. Imagine a world where we’d have the support and time and energy and emotional bandwidth to care for each other’s voices and stories as much as we do inside this welcoming x page space—I do. I imagine it. I want to practice living in that space, of grace, as often as I can.
I wonder what will unfold for everyone involved in this project. I wonder what threads they will take with them, what emotions and sensations will remain in their bodies long afterward, and what they’ll want, how they’ll be changed, as they step back into their lives, seeing themselves just a little bit differently, now.
xo, Carrie
Sunday, May 26, 2024 | Art, Big Thoughts, Family, Fire, Job, Lists, Parenting, Peace, Play, Sleep, Source, Space, Spirit, Spring, Success, Work, Writing |
If all your dreams came true, what that look like, can you even imagine it? I recently had fun ruminating on this question with one of my children, hearing what their dreams would be. They wanted to do more things; I was thinking about doing fewer…. Because if all my dreams came true, I’d need several extra lives.
This is a perennial issue for me. Come to think of it, it’s how I approach a buffet — I spoon a little bit from every tray onto my plate till its overflowing and incoherent, as a meal. And that’s how my life feels, sometimes, too. Incoherent, as a life. I get it on a micro level — I’m going to taste all the things! Yay! — but on a macro level, it’s exhausting. So many things to taste.
Projects have coherence (and I love them for it!).
But life doesn’t, really. Life is a series of overlapping layers that can’t be peeled apart. I’m playing all these roles, different roles in different locations and spaces and relationships; but am I not always myself? To be sure, it’s a changing self. Hopefully a learning self. Why then, do I need to learn the same lessons over and over?
What values shape my dreams and goals, and my beliefs and choices?
Maybe I don’t even recognize these values as my own, much of the time. Maybe these are beliefs that run through my DNA or that I’ve accumulated through being a human in the world. Here’s a theory, or framework, I’m considering: that there are (at least) three pools of values from which I draw, and they don’t necessarily agree or support each other (or my decision-making).
One pool is represented by my Grandma Doris, and her lifelong belief that a person’s purpose is to serve, no matter who they are, or what their skills and gifts may be. She served the church, and God; and I might have warped this value into a more secular iteration, but there’s a big part of me that believes whatever I do must be in service to something larger than myself — serving the well-being of others, preferably humbly, quietly, and invisibly, in order to strengthen the community.
A second pool of values is represented by the somewhat amorphous but powerful North American cultural fever-dream of self-reliance, earning a living, and being rewarded monetarily for one’s labours. Though I’m less attached to this pool of values, it’s a bit inescapable — also inescapable (at least so far) is my fear of being unable to earn money, of not being qualified or capable of earning a living. It’s the fear of being unable to provide for my family and for myself. Come to think of it, this is more of a DNA-level value system too. Our beliefs about abundance and scarcity (represented through money) are passed down generationally. In any case, I harbour a fear-filled desire for security and independence. (Note: a life of service does not provide either security or independence, so this value is in direct conflict with the previous one; and also with the next.)
Which brings me to the third pool of values: my devotion to and trust in art and the arts. My relationship to this one is super-complicated by my fidelity to those other values, above. I’m filled with shame at my own attempts at art-making. I know that sounds terrible, and maybe judgemental. It doesn’t apply, however, to anyone else’s art-making; just my own. I value and admire those who devote themselves to a life of artistic pursuit. I envy them too. (Maybe I envy anyone who gives themselves unabashed permission to devote themselves to their art.) Truth is, I’m probably also romanticizing this life in a way that is childish because it is child-like—because it’s a value rooted in my own childhood, when I devoured books and had the nascent notion that I would be a writer too. I believed, as a child, that being a writer would mean, well, writing and writing and writing—I imagined that devotion would lead to reward, and that reward would simply be to become very fluent in the art of making beautiful things. Beautiful books, I guess.
In some strange way, I think the imagery has remained in my mind’s eye, stubbornly unchanged. I admired (and continue to admire) the element of the mystical, in any artistic pursuit. How it couldn’t really be explained to anyone else. It would be a calling. The thought of questioning it as a calling didn’t even occur to me, as a young person. Yet I’ve spent the bulk of my adult life questioning it as a calling. That’s been the ratty old tired old thread that’s woven its grey little self through my life as a writer—a question of faith, maybe. A lack of faith?
Or, a question of where I should be placing my faith, and what values to trust, and on which to build the foundation for this incoherent slurry of experiences I call life? Do I place my trust in serving a higher purpose, like God, or a church, or community well-being? Or do I place my trust in the ethics of earning a living, being independent, and not being a burden to anyone else? Or do I place my trust in devotion to the utter mystery of trying to shape beauty from fragments of experience?
Can and do these values fit together? The joy in building community connections with the necessity of earning a living with the inexplicable need (compulsion?) to make things up, to live these other lives through invention, imagination—imagery.
How does it all fit together?
In practical terms?
In the choices I’m making and the things I’m doing (and not doing)?
My obligations and my joys are mingled: the activities that I long to balance, the people I want to nurture and not to neglect, the beauty I seek to perform and hold in my hands. If I try to untangle the threads, or even to count all the points of connection to others and to the world—which are my labour and my love—I am overwhelmed.
Yet, it does make sense, too. I just take one step and another. I text one friend and another. I cook one meal and another. I read one book and another. I write one sentence and another. I hang one item of laundry on the line and another.
I’m seeking coherence to this grand brief project called life.
I may not achieve it.
But I hope at the end of it, my mind will remember and relive on repeat not fear, despair, shame, but goodness and love and a great deal of laughter.
xo, Carrie
Friday, May 17, 2024 | Art, Big Thoughts, Family, Feminism, Fire, Library, Organizing, Peace, Reading, School, Space, Spring, Word of the Year, Work |
As much as I long to find just a little more rhythm to my writing life, damn but it’s taken the pressure off to work in a school library. Childhood is bursting with magic. To be with kids is to be in the presence of pure creativity. When I was a child, we would visit the Nashville public library for their puppet shows. I remember being utterly entranced by the puppets. How were they speaking? Who was making them move? They seemed real — in some fundamental way, they were real to my imagination.
Now, on a very small scale, I get to participate in magic-making with the children who come into my library — it’s homemade, it’s improvised, it’s nothing fancy, but even the smallest surprise is sufficient to spark delight, curiosity, questions. Children are not fussy; the youngest of them pay the closest attention to the tiniest details. If you’ve ever read a picture book to a group of kindergarteners, you’ve been blessed by the deepest attention you’ll ever hope to receive. “Oh, those aren’t raindrops, those are tadpoles!” “How did Curious George jump higher?” “Why did he let go of the balloons?”
On my story time bulletin board, I add characters or objects from books we’ve read. The seasons change. Nothing is static — things move around. Somehow, it’s more magical because it’s tactile. It isn’t digital. It isn’t online, or on a screen. It’s present with us, to be experienced and observed by all, as we gather in the same moment and place in time and space. We experience it collectively, from our different positions around the room, our different heights and ages. Like the magic of the puppet theatre, I don’t think this is repeatable, really, online. We don’t live solely in our minds; we live in our bodies, as sensory creatures.
In truth, however, my main job in the library is to maintain the collection — a tactile mode of interacting with this most beloved of mediums (beloved to me!): text and illustration bound up in pages. The sensation of handling books affects me similarly to doing a puzzle; it’s soothing and peaceful to create order.
As for the other hours in my days and weeks, I’m currently on a “spring burst.” I’m going to gym regularly to spin, sweat, lift weights, stretch, and take good care of this deep-into-midlife body (and mind). The X Page is entering its final month of preparation (!!): mark your calendars if you’re local. We’ll be performing this season’s stories on Sunday, June 16th at the Registry theatre in downtown Kitchener (more info coming soon). And my writing life is bursting with beautiful blooms too: seeing a dear friend’s book project come to fruition, editing stories, and dreaming up a new novel.
Come summer, I’ll have a two-month break from the library — writing sabbatical??? And time to repair, restore, relax, too. It’s been very non-stop. I keep thinking I’ll catch up, but there’s no up to be caught. The routine swings round and round.
My instinct is to maximize efficiency on tasks. But more and more, I’m focused on making space to maximize enjoyment, no matter the tasks. What do I love doing? Mostly, really simple things that are easy to call forth, that don’t require a lot of extra planning or resources. I love sweating and the rush of endorphins. I love meeting new people and diving in deep. I love collaborating, learning new skills, appreciating the strengths and techniques and wisdom that others bring. I love grappling with text, creating narrative sequences on both the macro and micro scale that maximize pleasure for an audience. I love eating supper with my family and hearing about their days. I love stopping to smell blossoms on trees. I love blasting songs on the radio when I’m driving alone. I love making magic — out-of-time experiences, opportunities for surprise — through the simplest means possible: a drawing, a story, a group exercise. I love taking care of people. I love cooking (but only when I’m not rushing). I love being outdoors, walking, biking, running. I love creating order out of chaos. I love living in my imagination, in my many imaginary worlds. I love to dream.
Nothing is ideal. I love that too, the reassurance of it. I mutter this phrase to myself a lot — “This is not ideal!” —- and not negatively, but encouragingly. I mean it as a form of freedom. Nothing about this is ideal. (And it does not need to be.) This thing you’re doing, this thing you’re creating, this solution, this story, this hard conversation — whatever it may be — you’re doing it to the best of your abilities; be reassured. There are many possibilities, many directions, many discoveries, of which you will try one and then another and another, testing things out forever and ever, amen.
xo, Carrie
Sunday, Mar 24, 2024 | Art, Big Thoughts, Books, Fire, Francie's Got A Gun, Girl Runner, Manifest, Peace, Play, Publishing, Source, Spirit, Success, Writing |
I’ve been thinking about a book of linked stories that I wrote around 2014-2015, immediately before and after publishing Girl Runner, the novel that at this point in my career seems likely to be my biggest hit, as it were. Girl Runner sold internationally, was translated into a number of languages, and people still invite me to come to their book clubs to discuss it (which means it’s being read, which is quite remarkable, honestly, for a book that celebrates its tenth birthday this year). In short, that book changed my life; but not in ways that I could have predicted, and I’m curious to re-read stories written in the aftermath of success, because what I remember from that time is that I did not feel successful. I felt estranged from myself. I was stressed and under pressure. I fully expected to build on the success of Girl Runner to publish more and bigger; but nothing came. It wasn’t that I was blocked—I wrote a lot—novel drafts, short stories. It’s that what I wrote wasn’t … well, it’s hard to say this out loud, but it wasn’t what was wanted.
I don’t know if I have a gift for writing, but I have a love for it, and a desire to do it—and so I write. For a little blip of time, a decade ago, I could imagine that the foundation was set, and I could spend the rest of my life writing and publishing books, and, crucially, making a living from that work. This hasn’t been the story, though; this hasn’t been the arc of the plot. I’m no longer grieving this as a loss; but I did, and I think a version of that grief is contained in that short story collection (which I titled Why Give Yourself Away?). Why Give Yourself Away was so unwanted, perhaps so unlikeable, that an editor made the assumption I’d submitted the manuscript in order to break a two-book contract. Yikes. When I heard that, a few years after the fact, it was real blow. Because I’d been serious—that book of stories was exactly what I wanted to write and to publish at that moment in my career. I’m not commenting one way or the other from this perspective—was it better for my career that those stories remain in my attic, or would they have been a worthy contribution to my overall published work? I have no idea. Francie’s Got A Gun probably wouldn’t have existed had that project been published, for the plain and simple reason that I wouldn’t have needed to write Francie—I walked through fire for Francie, and that’s something you only do when the need is obsessive and otherwise insurmountable. Writing Francie was a feat of endurance and single-minded optimism. Not hope—hope is softer and more organic, elegant. Francie exists because I was irrational in my need for her to exist.
(And perhaps I love Francie all the more for it.)
Nevertheless, those old stories intrigue me. I wonder what’s captured there—a mortifying self-pity? A Karen-like whine that the world isn’t bending to my will? Something’s in that collection that made an editor cringe. Yet I recall the stories in my mind as almost magical; maybe writing them was medicinal. It got me through. As writing always seems to. It gets me through.
What fascinates me about structuring a narrative is how crucial the unravelling is—the when and the shape of the viewpoint. Am I more ruthless when following a linear structure? I suspect so. Those stories were linear. The project began as an attempt to record in immense detail a single day, on the day that it was happening. The narrator (a version of myself) was unsparing to the point of cruelty to herself. But if I were to return to that narrator now, wouldn’t I see her actions differently? In returning—in recasting the structure as circular—forgiveness, gentleness, curiosity can’t help but creep into the perspective. I have kind feelings toward my younger self. Sometimes, I pause to thank my younger self for her courage, her wild leaps of imagination, her insistence on becoming, and for her mistakes.
If I am fortunate, I will grow old, I will become elderly, and I will thank all my younger versions of self for their persistence and doggedness and belief that everything they did mattered. No matter how small. No matter the visible result.
Think of everything you’ll do in your day that is unseen or unnoticed or unrecognized. Hold a few of these in your mind for a moment, cup your hands around the small actions, gifts and gestures. I did not know the answer to the question Why give yourself away? when I was writing those stories, but the question itself landed differently in my ear at that time. I thought I was giving away pieces of my life to fiction or poetry, or flaying myself open as a means of creating art, and you know, maybe I was, and maybe that’s exactly what it meant at that moment to give myself away.
I won’t rewrite those stories. They stand, as they were, of that time. But I might write a new book with that title. Maybe. Honestly, who knows? I circle, I alight, I take flight.
Why give yourself away? The question lands differently in my ear now—I hear giving as ongoing life-affirming generosity that returns to you a thousand fold, because now I believe that my self is formed of a deep well, a source that is infinite, and that source is love. Unconditional ocean-like, star-like love. “Not the sad edge of surf, but the sound of no shore.” I can’t always access this love, nor am I always in tune with it, but that’s okay. I’m moving in that direction; I’m circling it, in fact. The tree in Francie represents that circling motion—accumulation of experiences, young/ancient core protected and held by rings of capacity.
Why give yourself away? What choice do you have? What you keep, what you hold tightly and cling to, will wither and harden, or pain you for being unspent. The hours are brief, and what you give will be returned to you in another form that you likely won’t be able to see, but you’ll feel and know because those around you will respond to it. If what you give is harmful, you’ll know that. (And by the way, I believe that even if what you’ve given is harmful, by giving it, you’ve opened yourself to the possibility of change—to give is to transform.) If what you give is greater than yourself, you’ll know that too.
This is not about giving everything to everyone, spilling your guts or breaking boundaries: Love the self you are giving away, meet yourself in unconditional love, begin there and expand ever-outward.
Why give yourself away? Because it’s how you find your way back to your source. But that answer is a bit too long.
Because, love.
xo, Carrie
Saturday, Mar 16, 2024 | Adventure, Art, Big Thoughts, Fun, Good News, Peace, Play, Publishing, Source, Space, Spirit, Success, Word of the Year, Writing |
Contrast. What joy this word brings me.
Contrast isn’t about what’s better or worse, or right or wrong, it’s not about comparing one thing to another — instead, I think about vibrancy, colours, shadow, texture, depth and height, the common structures of my everyday, and how routines and patterns might be shifted to bring even more enjoyment, pleasure, delight to my mind.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Contrast too. My own taste matters in this exercise. What’s delicious for me, attractive, appealing may be off-putting, strange, and discomfiting to you. Maybe I’m not seeking a universal aesthetic. But I confess to wanting to communicate clearly with everyone I meet.
I’m thinking about writing, of course. All the more so, having spent the past four days writing, solo, at my brother and sister-in-law’s farmhouse. Unimpeded, I got a glimpse into my own eccentricities, and let’s just say, I vacuumed obsessively in between focused spells of writing and revision. I ate nothing but cornmeal porridge for the better part of one day. I read what I’d written out loud in wildly dramatic tones, and I talked to myself pretty much non-stop. Muttering about word choices, testing out dialogue, reassuring myself that the scrabbling break-in noise I’d heard was just a squirrel (a manic and possessed squirrel, hanging upside down and staring in at me from a window, sure, but still just a squirrel), that I could do this, I could finish this book, and that at a certain point a person should really take a small break and make herself a cup of tea.
It was delightful, in short.
And it was terrifically fun, and I found myself overwhelmed with gratitude and joy, that my “hobby” or “life’s-calling” (either work, quite honestly!) allows me to retreat from everyday circumstances and escape into an imagined world that seems to live and breathe and dance and shout and bend and twirl purely to bring me delight. I feel very connected to my child-self when playing in my imagination. And yet I appreciate the skills gained over years of practice that facilitate the ease with which timelines unfold, and structure ascends, and characters enter and exit and become.
The hope, as always, is that what pleases me will also please others.
It’s a pretty grand hope, when stated bluntly—maybe even grandiose. Delusions of connection—the belief that the contrasts that soothe my fears, break my heart, speak to my spirit, raise my blood, and make me laugh might do the same for you. That’s a writer dream, to be perfectly frank.
But if it doesn’t happen? Well, I suppose it’s hardly a tragedy, nor cause for giving up the craft! Surely, surely, my optimism assures me that I’ve made a thing that others will enjoy, but way down here at the foot of another yet-climbed mountain (let’s call it Publishing), I’m wrapped up beside a little fire of my own stoking, whistling a happy tune, because I’ve had the pleasure of making something. I’m laughing just to think of it! Such great joy in invention. And come Monday, I’ll be back in the library with the children, soaking up their energy, and being reminded (by them!) of how to live my happiest life: ask lots of questions, be where you are, give your attention to what’s before you, and keep puzzling it out and trying your best to make connections, and understand.
Home again, I’m carrying the residue of concentrated delight and invention, I’m fresh with the contrast—having been away, writing and, yes, finishing the book, and having returned, every hour seems, just now, precious and lit up with all different colours and emotions, aching to be enjoyed. It’s just so darn interesting to be in the world.
xo, Carrie
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