Category: Big Thoughts
Saturday, Jan 7, 2017 | Art, Big Thoughts, Peace, Politics, Spirit, Stand, Word of the Year |
artwork by me, concepts by Iain McGilchrist
I will be brief, of necessity.
The concussion is taking its time to heal and screens seem to cause the greatest difficulty. Email is next to impossible, and I cannot compose at length on-screen; please excuse my absence here and elsewhere. In fact, I am approaching this as a gift rather than a curse, and I am writing often in my notebook, and drawing, and reading off the page. I am living offline. This could be a new year’s resolution. But I don’t do new year’s resolutions. Instead, I choose a word of the year.
Last year’s word was PEACE. I loved the word. I used it often. I needed it, but also I lived it. In a sense, my approach to this concussion has embodied my understanding of peace, as I’ve lived it. I haven’t fought what’s happened. I’ve been at peace (largely) with the changes it has necessitated. I’ve been grateful for many small wonders every day. For some reason — maybe concussion-related — I’ve been more sensitive to small changes in light and noise, in ways that I stop and appreciate. Today, I watched as the dim afternoon light that was falling across our dining-room table rippled in rhythm with a helicopter that was passing across the sky, out of my view; I couldn’t’ see it, but I could hear it, and I could see the pattern of its disturbance in the light.
Yeah, that’s probably due to the concussion.
My word of the year for 2017 is STAND. I announce it without fanfare, because the clock is ticking (literally; I’ve put a 10-minute timer on this post).
I’ve chosen STAND because it chose me. Here’s why, I think. This year ahead seems likely to be one that will call for protest, and for taking a stand. I am not brave, as I have said before, and this is not a natural posture for me, but I believe that as a writer and artist my work is to stand for something greater than myself. I believe that my stories, my efforts, must come from a grounded place, and that in order to create I must be solid inside myself “like a plant is solid in the ground.”
artwork by my 14-year-old daughter, words by Rumi
Time’s up. If you’re doing a word of the year, please share in a comment, below.
xo, Carrie
Wednesday, Dec 21, 2016 | Big Thoughts, Teaching, Work |
Today I would like to tell you about an article I read in The New Yorker. I would like to tell you, without resorting to cliche, how the article struck a chord in me; but I’ve just used the phrase “struck a chord in me.” (Having spent far too long trying to think of a better phrase.) The article, “Lessons from My Mother,” was written by James Wood, a lovely, reflective piece about, as you’ve guessed, his mother, who passed away not so long ago. His mother was a teacher, beloved by her students, a force to behold in the classroom, charismatic, quirky, entertaining, empathetic; and yet she disliked her job, even hated it, or so James Wood thought, when he was a child. Upon reflection, after her death, he came to believe that his mother strongly disliked teaching, and yet was powerfully, “helplessly,” drawn to the profession, that it was her true vocation, even if she was tormented by nerves and anxiety as she prepared for her classes. It was almost as if she had a form of stage fright, or crippling self-doubt, which she dealt with by preparing relentlessly, obsessively (locking herself in the bathroom to cram before classes). Yet she never quit teaching. She threw herself in.
Deep.
Why did this essay — or more precisely, this tiny tangent within the larger essay — strike a chord? For a chord was struck, strongly, and not just because I read the article standing in the bathroom, as I read most articles (no one bothers you when you’re standing behind a closed bathroom door, as James Wood’s mother could have told you) — it was his mother’s insecurity, her lack of confidence, that drew my attention. I keep returning to this insight, like it’s a revelation: that a person doesn’t have to love or even like what she does to be drawn to doing it; that a person may not love or even like her vocation, the very work she’s meant to do.
I’m drawn to doing work that makes me nervous, anxious, that taps on my insecurities like it’s tapping on rotten roots, especially when I’m preparing for it. I think we have a cultural obsession with loving what we do — as if the ultimate Life goal is to strive for work that only rewards you with good things, in which case, anxiety or nerves are giant red flags — you’re doing the wrong thing! Look elsewhere! Reading about James Wood’s mother gives me peace of mind. A person may fear doing the very thing she is put on this earth to do. A person may fear that which draws her like a magnet. But a person still recognizes her purpose, and her duty, and simply gets on with it.
xo, Carrie
Tuesday, Dec 20, 2016 | Big Thoughts, Confessions, Dream, Winter |
The dark is luminous when I walk the dogs, early. I forget to dress the little one in her pink sweater and she shivers and hurries along the paths carved between snowbanks. We slip and skid and crunch over packed ice. Morning has not yet broken. Night is a form of protection. It hides us from ourselves.
We sleep and dream, and we travel in our dreams.
In my dreams I sort out the riddles of my immediate future. I prepare elaborate plans. I wake, convinced these plans have been set in motion, convinced I’ve solved all problems.
When I walk the dogs, early, it is like the dreams are still within me or upon me, as night surrounds me. I am completely myself, the dreamer.
The dreamer has always lived in me, and I in her.
“I feel sorry for you when you read the newspaper, Mom, because you always seem so disappointed and so sad.”
“I’m not disappointed, exactly.”
“It’s like your beliefs get crushed, over and over. You’re too optimistic.”
“I’m hopeful. I think I can have hope without being naive. I’m sad and I have hope.”
“Morning has broken,” I say to the child who is still lying in bed. I sweep open the curtains. There is morning, breaking on our skyline, which is segmented by the roofs of apartment buildings. There is morning, streaks of pink and orange splitting the dark.
Must everything be broken, even morning? What do these words mean?
The day floods the dreams. And so begins the stark, bright march through the hours of consciousness, of schedules, of time marked, and meals prepared and eaten, and chores and errands ticked off the ever-lasting list.
Morning has broken, like an axe splitting the frozen sea inside. Something must do the job. Can my dreams come with me like shadows, attached to my feet, weighing nothing? Can I do everything I want to do, now that I am awake?
xo, Carrie
Tuesday, Nov 22, 2016 | Big Thoughts, Confessions, Peace, Spirit |
I am not brave.
All around me, on every side, I see people taking a stand, even against storms of anger and doubt, willing to throw themselves into the fray, defending their beliefs, being harassed and called out and challenged. I see people whose belief is powerful enough to carry them through the storm, they can ride their belief like a winged creature. What would it feel like to believe in something, in anything, with such conviction? I am not brave. I do not have the courage of my convictions. I am ashamed. I stand on nothing, I have no inner core of righteousness, no ballast in the storm, I seem to be blank where I should have rage, faith, outrage, certainty. I have no certainty.
My parents divorced when I was an adult. This was harder than it may have seemed, because as an adult, shouldn’t I have been capable of forming opinions and being strong and rational? I was not capable. I remember pacing in my kitchen, trying to make a very specific decision, and knowing that any decision I made would hurt someone I loved, even the decision to make no decision. Any decision or non-decision, any action or non-action, would be interpreted as taking a side, declaring allegiance, and all I wanted to do was to love both of my parents for who they were, separately, without causing harm to the other. All I wanted to do was to give them both the benefit of the doubt, which is an odd phrase now that I write it out. Pacing in my kitchen, I recognized that whatever I did or did not do, whatever I said or did not say, I could not repair what was broken; I was insignificant, that was part of it, but also, a broken thing could not be put right by the single perfect action of a third party. The realization released me, to some degree. There was no right decision. There was only doing what one must and living with the consequences.
This happened almost a decade ago; but the same paralysis strikes me now whenever I step in between two differing points of view, whenever I become involved in conflict. How can I fix this, how can I help?, quickly turns to, how can I hide myself away from this?
Do no harm. How I long to live by this mantra, no matter how impossible.
Yet I think, I do, that brave people have to be willing to disturb, to trouble, to shake the trees and shout from hills. And maybe this causes harm. Certainly it causes disruption and conflict and pain. It has to, because what else brings about change?
I am sorry. Forgive me. I am not brave.
xo, Carrie
Wednesday, Nov 16, 2016 | Big Thoughts, Meditation, Spirit, Yoga |
I am standing in warrior one pose in kundalini class, in Kasia’s sunny studio, my hands held in the air like fists, and at her command I am kicking my back leg up and through like a ninja or judo expert, neither of which I am. The music is guttural shouting — har har har har har in the throat, finishing with a strong shout: har! Our fists punch down and our legs kick forward.
Eyes open.
The tree in Kasia’s backyard is bright orange and red and I am loving the shouting and kicking and punching, not because I’m angry, not because I have any fury to kick or punch through, but because it feels good to shout and kick and make known my presence on this earth. I don’t know what this kriya is for, that she’s chosen for this morning’s class, but I decide it is a kriya to rip out the walls of fear and hesitation and doubt — self-doubt — and cause a great wellspring of courage to flow forth into the universe, into the flamingly beautiful dying leaves, the crisp blue sky, the chilly wind, the room full of privileged white middle-aged women (and one man) chanting and kicking and rendering themselves vulnerable to mockery.
I see that. I see that, too.
I kick. I punch. I shout. The guts feel good on the shout. The foot plants after each kick with steadiness and purpose.
After this we will sit for awhile and meditate and the word awaken will fight with the word dream, and I won’t know which I crave more.
xo, Carrie
Tuesday, Nov 15, 2016 | Adventure, Art, Big Thoughts, Spirit, Teaching |
Soon, I will teach my last class for another term. Because I am a sessional lecturer, there is no guarantee I will teach again. But I would like to; I would like, in addition to the introductory creative writing course I’m teaching now, to teach an advanced course that combines writing and drawing and collaboration, and demands serious commitment, a heavy workload; at the end of the course, everyone would have made a book (illustrated, but for adults).
Here are the questions this course would address, and engage with:
“What is creativity and where can I find it?”
“How can I get into the creative flow?”
“How can I stop procrastinating and do what I want?”
“Is creativity something I can practice? Can anyone?”
(In the above exercise, captions are paired with random illustrations; this is an example of an exercise one might do in my imaginary course.)
Last month, I spoke to a writer’s group about time management, and the question that arose most urgently was: How do I stop procrastinating? How do I get started? Which led into an even more complicated question: How do I get into the creative flow? Is this something you can learn and practice?
Yes, I said. You can practice getting into the creative flow. You can learn.
I believe this to be true. But in answering the question, last month, I got stuck on the how. And so I’ve been thinking about it, or my unconscious mind has been thinking about it, ever since. It isn’t just about discipline. (It is somewhat about discipline.) It’s about trusting that you can access something, fall into something, step into something that is unseen and unknown, without knowing or seeing it in advance. Can this be taught? I would like to try.
xo, Carrie
P.S. The course would be based around Lynda Barry’s Syllabus. It would be an unabashedly Lynda-Barry-styled course, even though I am a low-key Canadian who possesses not even a tenth of Lynda Barry’s charisma, and even though I am a writer not an artist; I believe the material would rise above my personal limitations.
