Category: Peace
Thursday, Jul 16, 2020 | Big Thoughts, Confessions, Current events, Family, Fire, Friends, Manifest, Meditation, Peace, Space, Spirit, Word of the Year, Work, Writing |
When I think about the word balance, a word I’ve considered maybe somewhat irrelevant or inapplicable to my life, what I’m beginning to sense or feel, as much as understand, is that I am always in transition. I almost never arrive anywhere, and certainly don’t stay. I exist in flux even while viewing myself as being a creature reaching toward, aiming toward, permanence.
Yet I am human, mortal, entirely impermanent.
Rituals exist to pin down significant moments; because the moments in my life run together like water. But what I’m glimpsing in the word balance is a peace in accepting this state. I’m seeing the fluidity in my being in all of existence, in the way time moves, and that I move in time. I’m seeing that I am of my time, immovable from the history that surrounds me even if this history will not remember or know me, especially.
During the lockdown, my work was not deemed essential. Because it isn’t. I am not planting vegetables or stocking shelves or administering tests or researching cures or triaging patients or caring for those who need special care. My work has been on the page, and in the home.
I’ve had time. And I’ve noticed that, given the time, I can write and imagine in a bigger way than I had before. I’ve noticed, too, that I continue to feel anxious, to experience existential dread, to float in the brine of my own small shames, to wish often to be better than I am. That has always been with me, will always be with me. Feelings come and go and come again. I’ll always have feelings, mixed up and catching me off-guard and demanding my attention. It’s my response to the feelings that is changing.
Can I live with discomfort? The answer is yes.
Disappoint myself or disappoint others? Sometimes the choice is pretty stark. Sometimes you can’t square the circle. Sometimes — often, really — you cannot please everyone, and by trying to do so, you please no one, least of all yourself. What is your inner voice whispering? Does it hurt to hear it?
I’m trying out an experiment. I’ve come to believe that I don’t have time to do most things, let alone all things. Just write. Cook. Read, research a bit. Yoga, run. That’s it. A little bit of housework. Parent, pay attention to my kids. Be a good friend. That’s it.
Whether it brings me anything, doesn’t matter. It’s the ego wants things brought to it. This is my river. Is it service enough to just write? I don’t know. But I’d like to find out. Or try.
Time to unfold, unfurl, spread out. What’s the rush?
What am I hurrying to discover? It all comes to light in time.
xo, Carrie
Thursday, Jul 9, 2020 | Art, Big Thoughts, Confessions, Current events, Manifest, Peace, Space, Spirit, Writing |
Noticing something, as I sit at my desk on this hazy hot afternoon: some days I feel like speaking and other days I do not. Some days I need to absorb information and other days I’m prepared to synthesize material into something else, to pour it out. Some days are wordless, other days alight with language, tumbling into sense.
Today is a reflective day, an observant day, a day when tears rise easily, and my brain is making connections almost riotously, but also chaotically. I’m hungry, absorbent as a sponge, alert to the world around me, but somehow unable to smooth everything I’m feeling and seeing into a scene, an act, a verse.
Fly buzzes against the window screen.
Two men argue loudly across the street. I’ve put ear plugs in, but still I hear them.
It is necessary to be quiet, to collect, to listen, to be attuned to the inner reaches of things; to everything its season. Two days ago, I wrote for hours in a trance-like state, emerging late in the afternoon feeling like I’d lifted the top off my head and aired everything out. I floated for hours afterward, certain I could call this bliss to come again the next day with the proper application of ritual. But it didn’t happen. Today, such bliss seems even further away as I trek between appointments and prepare for tasks I do not wish to do. Such is the flux of life itself; be kind to yourself, I say (speaking to myself, as well as to you).
As I drove home just now, listening to news and weather on the radio, enjoying the brief whirr of air conditioning, I thought: today you are absorbing, collecting, waiting, and that is okay. You have some important decisions to make. You need to give your mind space, not press so hard on it. Words, sense, shape can’t be squeezed out on demand like paste from a tube.
So let yourself do what today calls you to do: Attend. Prepare. Clarity is coming. Let is unfold in its time.
xo, Carrie
Friday, Jun 12, 2020 | Big Thoughts, Birth, Confessions, Current events, Death, Manifest, Meditation, Peace, Spirit, Work |
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
While leading a recent yoga class, my friend Kasia said, These are beautiful times and we’re lucky to be alive right now.
I appreciate that perspective.
It’s easy to get bogged down in how hard everything is. How the things that used to be simple to do now require pre-planning and masks and protocols. How our bodies can feel like disease vectors. How familiar I’m becoming with my own physical manifestations of anxiety (tight chest, buzzing brain, inability to alight).
But I don’t deny that what Kasia says may also be true: that these are beautiful times and we are lucky to be alive right now.
Because change feels possible. Because it feels like we’re seeing with new eyes. Because we are freed from what it was like before to maybe figure out how we can make what comes after better. Because our own strengths and weaknesses are more visible. Because we need to know what’s broken in order to fix it. Because we can’t keep building on the same broken foundations. Because we’re being forced to identify our core values, our reasons for being, and what we really care deeply about.
I’m not pretending this is an ideal time to live through, or a fun time. I’m not pretending everyone’s equally affected, either. It’s a scary time, a discordant time, a time when we’re required to hold dissonant information, and altogether too much of it, in our heads all at once.
The interiority of this time has freed me to write a lot. One day, during a meditation, I heard the words create and destroy used together, and my brain suddenly couldn’t peel them apart. It was the strangest thing. It was like the two words, apparent opposites, had fused in my mind. Create/destroy. I saw how interconnected those states of being are, so tightly bound that, in truth, one cannot exist without the other. We tend to posit that one is good and the other is bad. But if both belong to each other, that duality of judgement is rendered inconsequential.
In every end, a new beginning. But also, in every beginning, an end. To make something is to unmake something else.
Create. Destroy.
When I write, I create/destroy.
We are in create/destroy right now. Is it a beautiful time? It’s not a time of symmetry and balance, if that’s what beauty means to you; it’s a time of extremes. Our house is very quiet. The world is roiling. But if beauty means potential (no matter how far from realization), if beauty means truth (no matter how painful), if beauty means invention (create/destroy), then now, right now, is beautiful.
These are beautiful times and I am lucky to be alive right now.
xo, Carrie
Saturday, May 30, 2020 | Big Thoughts, Confessions, Current events, Manifest, Peace, Space, Spirit, Work, Writing |
May Reflections
- What felt good this month? Honestly, writing felt good. Specifically fiction. I was able to sink even more deeply into the new routine and spend many hours each week day working on the 16th century novel. It felt easy, purposeful, and like I was entering my own personal escape pod. I can tell it is a balm for my spirit, so much so, that it’s really all I want to do, with little breaks for sitting in the sunshine watching wildlife in the backyard. It felt good, also, to ask my family to do a bit more cooking. And it felt good to refrigerate the sourdough starter during the heat wave and take a break from baking bread every. single. day.
- What did you struggle with? The news. The grim evidence of neglect, inequality, injustice, always present but gruesomely exposed by the pandemic. I know it’s unhealthy to crawl into bed and scroll through that newsfeed of horror, finger-pointing, invective and cruelty in search of the occasional lively bit of joy (like Sarah Cooper!); but I still haven’t removed Twitter from my phone. On a small scale, I struggled with the growing sense that I’m becoming more socially awkward and introverted, to the point that small talk feels almost painful. I haven’t been to a store, or any public and enclosed space, really, since mid-March, and I’ve only driven once since March 13. Once! I’m not struggling with that, rather I’m struggling to imagine returning to a time when I wanted to go out and do things. My social skills are on the decline. I’m becoming attached to my bubble!
- Where are you now compared to the beginning of the month? This is hard to assess. It’s ever more clear that the re-opening process will be slow, at times painful, and that no one really knows what they’re doing or where exactly we’re going. I’m less hopeful than I was a month ago, maybe because the unrest convulsing our neighbours to the south would suggest that they are on a desperate, chaotic, increasingly violent trajectory. And we live next-door. How can there be healing in the absence of justice? This may be a fire that burns out quickly, or it may be a hinge for transformation; or it may end in tragedy. But there is a void in leadership, the emperor most certainly has no clothes, and what frightens me is that tragedies seem to happen in slow motion, but also with a sense of doomed inevitability. I hope I’m wrong. Despite all of this, or maybe because of it, I’m feeling ever more centred in and committed to my discipline as a writer. There are questions that can only be answered through art, which opens us to deeper questions, to pause, to empathy, to challenge, to greater attention.
- How did you take care of yourself? I talked out loud about things that were bothering me, including confessing my own shortcomings. I tried to do so in a way that was honest but also compassionate. I helped organize some fun family events, to give us things to look forward to this past month: fake prom, birthday celebrations, special meals. I asked for help when I needed it. Also: exercise, sweat, braids, incense, turmeric tea, weekly sibs night, Dead to Me, podcasts, sitting outside in the sun, and joining my church’s congregational prayer on Sunday mornings, online via Zoom.
- What would you most like to remember? The quiet of our bubble. The calmness of our house. All four kids in the kitchen, talking and laughing. Running club. The fuzz of green turning to blossoms, to full-fledged leaves. Discovering that our back yard is a nature preserve of bird song and busy creatures. I will remember us sitting around the table in the evenings, lingering over supper. I will be so happy that we had this extra time together.
- What do you need to let go of? Wow. I’ve sat here a long time trying to sort this out in my mind. My gut response is: “I need to let go of worrying that I /we will be changed for the worse by this.” That confuses me. But it also makes a lot of sense. (related: see my answer to #3) I see the pandemic / lockdown as a stripping away of many things, as a great silence and pause. But what roars up when the silence ends? I don’t know. I worry. I think I need to let go of certainty. I need to accept the discomfort that attends this fragile human state of being. I need to let go of “before.” On a personal level, this pause is a chance to notice where the current is pulling me. I’d like to let myself be pulled. And let myself go there, even if it challenges my value system and notions of worth. But — I don’t want to let go of my responsibility to others, nor be lulled into inaction, safe in my bubble. (Damn, this is a convoluted answer to what should be a simple question….)
xo, Carrie
PS What do you need to let go of?
Wednesday, May 20, 2020 | Backyard, Current events, Kids, Meditation, Peace, Spirit |
There are a few items on my must-do list every day.
Make my bed. Get dressed.
Eat a good breakfast.
Go outside.
There are items that are on my almost-always-do list, like exercise, stretch, and eat supper together as a family (much easier to accomplish right now, that’s for sure).
But go outside. That’s a must-do. It’s on the list even though some days I have to remind myself to do it. Most of my tasks, at present, revolve around the kitchen and my office, with stops at the dining-room table and various locations around the house to pick up laundry. Go outside! I remind myself.
Or the day will not be complete.
Yesterday, I went outside and sat on the back steps. Are there more birds this spring? Or do we just notice them more?
While sitting, quietly, and doing exactly nothing else, I noticed a chipmunk darting around the patio. Soon, I realized it had a hideaway in a tree stump nearby. And then I discovered it had a friend, perhaps a baby chipmunk. I decided this was the mother chipmunk, as I watched her interact with the baby, who kept poking its head out of the hole in the stump, only to be pushed back inside by mama chipmunk.
I don’t actually know anything about chipmunks. So I could be interpreting this all wrong. But watching their interactions was delightful. And everyone enjoyed my report on my chipmunk friend at the supper table (more interesting than a report on the laundry or the sourdough, that’s for sure!).
So this morning, I went back outside and sat on the steps, in hopes of seeing my chipmunk friend again. There she was! This time, she stayed partially hidden, camouflaged by the myrtle that grows around the stump. I could see her eye and snout as she sniffed the world. Delightful!
This afternoon, my youngest joined me on the back steps. He wanted to meet my chipmunk friend. At first, it seemed she would not appear, but suddenly, there she was, darting around the patio. She froze, seeing us, and did not move a muscle. “Pretend you’re not looking,” my son said. We averted our eyes, and sure enough, freed from our attention, she darted into her hole.
We didn’t see her again. Instead, we watched the birds: two robins hopping around the yard, a cardinal dropping by, a sparrow. And other birds we could hear, but not see. After awhile, we decided to tour the yard to see all the flowers. Delightful!
If you say to the world, Please fill me with delight!
The world will reply, Go outside!
Don’t do anything, just sit there.
xo, Carrie
Tuesday, Apr 28, 2020 | Confessions, Cooking, Current events, Family, Fun, House, Lists, Manifest, Peace, Space, Spirit |
A friend said she’s noticed she’s not feeling so anxious anymore. I think this is true. We’ve travelled into the boring part of this experience. The part where we still don’t know what exactly will happen, or when; but the novelty, such as it was, is gone. And a dullness, a bleh feeling prevails.
But.
Hey!
I’m continue to enjoy at-home yoga, riding the spin bike, baking bread (it’s so easy), and gathering to eat supper together every night. The things I look forward to in a day are pretty basic: food, food, food; sometimes I even look forward to cooking the food.
I’m writing (fiction) quite a lot. That’s lovely.
I try to get outside for a walk every day. It’s validating (as a parent) to see the kids develop their own routines and healthy survival strategies. Jogging. Homework. Baking. Quiet time. Naps. I try to lie on the couch with a book a few times a week.
There is very little to report.
Nevertheless, at supper, I like to go around the table and find out what everyone did that day. I spend large chunks of my day in my office, so even though we’re all together under the same roof, I’ve missed things. I like how leisurely it feels, chatting around the table at suppertime. We’ve nowhere special to get to. After supper, the kids do the dishes and Kevin and I walk the dog around the block. And it isn’t hard to find ourselves saying: well, this part is pretty nice.
The kids don’t like when I report what would have been happening on any given day. So I’ve stopped. What’s the point of being sad about something that isn’t going to happen? Anyway, we’ve given ourselves a few things to look forward to in May. 1. My mom’s birthday: we’ve got plans to bake a cake. 2. Prom. We are doing prom, just us; everyone has a role, and mine is DJ!! The theme is “Starry Night.” The chaperone (Kevin) is going to have to keep a sharp eye on Kevin — if anyone’s going to spike the punch, it’s him. 3. Our eldest’s birthday. It’s a big one (19), so we’ve got plans to turn our living-room into a nightclub.
However, we aren’t making any such plans for June. According to one teenager, it’s too depressing to think of still being stuck with one’s family in June. Basically, we get through this one day at a time.
Like we always have, except now we know it for sure.
In summation: less anxiety; more boredom; even more bread. The days, they blur. Drifting awake this morning, I thought it was Sunday. Definitely not Saturday, I told myself, Sunday.
Friends, it’s Tuesday.
xo, Carrie
