Silence is the presence of everything
My word of the year is SPACE. What I didn’t expect to find within this word is its companion, SILENCE. Silence can be a challenging state to sit within. I don’t always want to hear my own thoughts so clearly, or recognize the distracted and tumbling, tangled nature of my own interior life.
We spent last week, the last week before school started, at the cottage that belonged to my stepmom, and still feels like hers, even though she’s been gone for more than a year now. We love going there, love being there. It’s been a gift to have this place in our lives, and the kids have memories that go back, now, 11 summers. It’s the kind of place that has become a touchstone, and returning is a kind of pilgrimage. Returning is a measure of time passing. While we’re there, though only for a week at most, it feels like we’ve always been there and will always be there.
You can only get there (easily, practically) by boat. About five years ago, Kevin developed an inner ear disturbance that’s triggered by boat rides, and each year the after-effects would last longer and longer (months, even), so for the past two summers, he’s hiked in on a path that literally no one else uses. It’s overgrown. It takes him about an hour and a half. And this year, it was occupied by swarms of insects. He arrived at the cottage looking like a wild man. He wasn’t sure he could manage the hike out, but on Monday, he and Rose trekked the path again, to save his brain.
The corollary to his necessary hike is that I’ve had to learn how to drive a boat (not high on my list of things I wanted to learn how to do). We do what needs doing to get us to this place.
There is plenty of space at the cottage. Space for the kids to play. A big lake for kayaking and adventuring, alone or together. Star-gazing at night. Shelves of books. Late, lazy mornings. Late-night all-family card games. We never seem to need anything more than what we’ve got. Even when meals get creative, by necessity.
Space, silence. Quiet.
I tuned out from the news, from podcasts, from the internet almost altogether. But I did listen to one podcast, On Being, on Sunday. The title was: Silence and the Presence of Everything.
Isn’t that something? How the themes of our lives get tied together by invisible thread? I’d been worrying about space and silence. Silence as a negative. Silence as too much space for my mind to listen, anxiously, to itself.
Silence. Presence. Everything.
“Silence and the Presence of Everything” was about listening. Not active listening for a particular thing you expect to hear, or have been told to listen for, or pay attention to. Listening to what’s there to be heard. Listening without judgement.
An interesting thing happened at the cottage. I managed to write a bit every afternoon, when no one was paying attention; no one even really noticed. What was strange and thrilling was how I would fall into the writing (fiction), almost as if by drifting toward an idea. An image would surface. I would let it drift. I would be resting or sitting by the water. And some small fragment would drift toward me. And then I would get up and write. The writing felt similar to listening.
It didn’t feel active. It didn’t feel forced. It felt like I’d tipped sideways into another time and place and body, and I was just there.
Now I’m here, home again. Dreading a root canal tomorrow morning, but otherwise glad for a day, today, in which I’ve done exactly what I want to do with all my new-found, new-made space: I wrote. I’d gotten up early to exercise with friends and by 10AM when everyone had left the house and the laundry was underway, I felt tired. So I meditated/napped for 10 minutes. And then I got up and wrote. I told myself: Remember to meditate/listen/nap before writing. Drift into what you’re about to do. Listen. It’s okay if listening turns into dreaming. Let yourself drift.
Space = silence. Silence = listening. Listening = drifting. Drifting = door opening to fictional world. Step inside. Space = writing.
Also, space = rest.
I’ll write another blog post (maybe) about what it feels like to let go of the need to pay attention to a particular something, and just be. It’s almost the opposite of striving. I’m such a striver. To be without purpose, listen without demand; it eliminates the task of waiting. It makes silence okay. Drifting toward mystery. Because mystery is okay too.
xo, Carrie
None of your business: a mantra
Saturday morning. Nowhere to be, nothing to do. Reading the paper, talking to kids, braiding someone’s hair, letting the dog in and out and back in again. Drinking coffee.
A flash of an idea for a new project skitters through my mind. I see myself, on a morning when the children are all in school and I’m alone, sitting at this same table, notebook open, exploring the idea, following the surprising places it could take me, just like I did at Lynda Barry’s workshop.
A counter-thought arises instantly: What would be the point?
Virtually every day, this tiny interior voice of judgement natters anxiously inside my head: What’s the point?
This morning, almost as instantly, a rebuttal: None of your damn business. Just do the work.
“None of your business.” -Lynda Barry
I think, in some profound way, this mantra is the foundation of Lynda Barry’s workshops and teaching; it’s why I knew I needed to go back again this summer, to drink from her clean, clear well of wisdom. You can waste a lot of time not making the perfect thing you think you should be making. “At a certain point, the question of good or bad becomes obscene,” she says. Placing value and expectations on the thing you are making, a something that communicates in images, that communicates, period, is obscene. Further to that, it’s not up to you to decide.
This is a hard lesson to absorb. And ever-useful.
What is this thing I’m making? What does it mean? What does it matter? Is it good? Do I like it?
None of your business. None of your damn business.
The thing you’re making is its own separate entity. It’s not you. It’s alive in its own way. And it can only exist if you make it. So make the flawed something that wants to made. Get out of your own way. What’s the point? None of your business. Repeat as often as needed.
xo, Carrie
I’ve been away
I’ve been away. Now I’m back. I feel filled up, and in a laidback frame of mind, and body. My posture seems more generous, my thoughts move more easily toward making space for others, rather than pinging with desperation about the lack of space this might leave for myself. I also feel a little bit worn out, and tired, but not exactly anxious about this state of affairs. It’s a manageable level of tired, the kind that can be remedied with an afternoon nap (note to self: take one).
I was in Rhinebeck, New York last week with Kevin and our youngest. We camped. Kevin and I attended Lynda Barry’s workshop. We wrote, we drew. We played tennis and basketball. We played cards. We farted with alarming frequency, because of the food, which didn’t convert anyone to veganism, I’m afraid; rather the opposite. On the rare occasions when cookies were served, or chicken, the joy of the diners was palpable, as was the greed; at one meal, my own husband turned into a cookie hoarder and ate so many, he felt sick.
I read a freshly written story out loud on the last morning that felt like it was both mine and yet weirdly not mine; maybe it belonged to the collective imagination.
A list of the wildlife we saw: a cicada coming out of its shell; a large black rat snake (almost stepped on it); deer (several); groundhogs (many); a beetle much bigger than my thumb (in the washhouse sink); chipmunks and squirrels (of course); we also smelled a skunk outside our tent, and heard the scritching of tiny paws on the walls all through the night.
Back home in Canada, I spent the weekend at a soccer tournament. Our team went all the way to the finals, playing through pouring rain, ridiculous humidity, and hot hot heat. Somehow we also had a regular-season game to play on Monday night, about an hour outside of town. By which point, everyone was hurting, including yours truly. (I need a root canal, but that’s another story.)
This is the first fall I won’t be teaching in six years. My approach toward September seems measurably different this summer — I scratch and paw at the absence of anxiety, admiring it, wondering if this is what ease feels like, and will it stay and play?
xo, Carrie
Reunion
I just want to say: she’s home, after a month away (and no communication flowing in this direction, although I made sure to write her a letter once a week, not to try to guilt her into replying, but because I got a kick out of crafting updates on lined paper in black pen, and having them hand-delivered by friends who were driving to pick up/drop off their own kids at the same camp). (Side note 1: Writing letters should be revived as a far superior, more personal, funnier means of communicating than email or text, but realistically, it only happened because she didn’t take her cellphone. Side note 2: Imagine a month without your cellphone … would that be paradise or hell?).
Anyway, I missed her. I realize this is but a taste of the stage that is coming, of greater separation from my children and their lives; but I really missed her. The house never got around to feeling quite right. Even when her absence wasn’t front of mind, it always felt like something was missing, or lost, or misplaced. (Side note 3: Do parents get used to this? Side note 4: I don’t really want to get used to it …)
So having her home is a tiny piece of bliss.
xo, Carrie
I want to scream, not write
Erase, and try again. Erase, and try again.
I sit down at my desk to try to write, wanting to scream. Maybe that’s the problem. I want to scream, not write. I want to rant, not write. I want to tweet my rage, not write.
On Friday, my dad and daughter and I drove to Princeton, New Jersey for the funeral of my dad’s uncle, my grandma’s younger brother, who passed away in June at the age of 93. He and his wife had been married for 68 years (makes our 20 sound like a drop in the bucket!). The drive was long, but Dad brought lots of snacks, and we enjoyed the conversation and the scenery. Friday night, rather late, we had dinner in downtown Princeton at a Turkish restaurant, a feast that included a surprise delivery to our table of fresh-baked pitas, which we dipped in house-made hot sauce. We were tired, but we were happy. Flora and I stayed up late watching Friends. On Saturday morning, we breakfasted at the hotel with Grandma and her younger sister and her sister’s husband (who live in Argentina), and my aunt and uncle, who’d all travelled together from Indiana. It was fun. Grandma took one look at me, and sent me back to my room for a sweater (she was sure I’d be chilled due to the A/C), and then led the way, and organized the seating, which should tell you something about her character. She’s 97! I wanted to shout to the room in general, because, honestly, no one would ever guess it.
We dressed up, went to the memorial service and interment, sang, prayed, heard beautiful music. Met relatives. Visited.
Went back to the hotel to change before more family time that afternoon. Turned on the TV. News of a shooting underway in El Paso, Texas. Turned off TV. Pushed news out of mind. Changed, drove to a quiet tree-lined street near downtown Princeton, the home of one of my dad’s cousins. Feasted on a magnificent spread of appetizers. Went for a walk with Flora. Met more relatives. Visited. Listened to grandma and her sister and sister-in-law tell stories. Laughed. Feasted on a magnificent Argentine meal prepared by my dad’s cousins. Argentine music on the stereo. Red wine. Grandma having to be forcibly stopped from helping with the dishes.
Back at the hotel, Flora and Dad and I visited with Grandma in her hotel room. I returned the earrings I’d borrowed from Grandma. It was Grandma who asked whether we’d heard about the shooting. “He’s evil,” she said. She meant Trump. If you knew my Grandma, you’d know that word was not one she would use lightly. The ferocity of her emotion surprised me, even if I was feeling the same.
Flora and I spent the rest of the evening goofing off, wandering the hotel, making ourselves tea, tried to stay up late again to watch Friends, but fell asleep instead.
When my alarm sounded at 7AM, I turned on the news, using my CBC radio app — news from Canada. “Almost thirty people killed in less than 24 hours in mass shootings in the United States …” I thought more people had died of their wounds in El Paso, but no — there had been a second shooting overnight, this time in Dayton, Ohio, a city not an hour from where I grew up. The shooter was killed by police within the first minute that he opened fire, but he still killed at least 9 people; this is the scale of damage that can be done with an assault weapon, and in a world where anything made any sense, it would be evidence to silence the “good guy with a gun” theory forever.
In the breakfast area of the hotel, the news of both shootings played on the large-screen TV. The hotel’s guests were visibly disturbed. The feeling in the room was something unlike anything I’d felt before. It wasn’t shock. It was bewilderment, horror, shame. This keeps happening. This is not an anomaly. This is the new normal. How can this be?
Nevertheless, we had a fun, sociable breakfast with Grandma and everyone else. Briefly, though I don’t think we wanted to go there, the conversation tilted to the causes of this violence. White supremacy. Gun culture. Trump. Racism. White evangelicals — how could they support Trump? But even within our group there was no unity on the solutions. Maybe there are too many solutions, rather then too few?
After our goodbyes, we packed up for the long drive. About half an hour north of Princeton, we drove past Bedminster. It was only later that evening, at home, when I was scouring news sites for opinions and information, that I saw Trump had given his statement (paltry, weak, vague) at his estate in Bedminster, New Jersey. I said, “We drove right by that monster this morning!” And then I thought, good grief, that word rolled out of my mouth unprompted. Do I actually believe he’s a monster? If I call him a monster, what does that make me? And I felt as if rage and hatred was a hole down which I did not want to spiral. Yet I couldn’t turn off the news. I kept scrolling and scrolling, looking for some kind of answer to questions I couldn’t even form. I stayed up till my phone battery was almost dead, at which point, I left my phone downstairs because I knew if I brought it up to bed, I’d never sleep. Would the shootings have affected me in the same way if I hadn’t been in the States when they’d happened? If I hadn’t felt that collective bewilderment in the breakfast area of a Hampton Inn on Highway 1 near Princeton, New Jersey?
This can’t be healthy — and by this, I mean this obsession with the news, in particular this news (though I’ve also been obsessed, this summer, with news of climate change and melting ice, and the murderers, teenagers, crossing Canada, who haven’t been seen for two weeks, whose motives seem linked with the nihilist beliefs of these American shooters). Should I turn it off? Hide my phone? Do I struggle to turn it off because I’m addicted to the feelings of rage and horror this news incites in me?
I feel a need to respond, and not with tweets or rants. To protest. To be an activist. To try to change the way things are. To work to make a better world. To identify possible change and bulldoze toward it. But I also feel very very tired. Overwhelmed. Bewildered. It’s too much. Enough. Do something!
But what? What narratives am I creating? Isn’t it my job to respond with narrative? A narrative is purposeful and directed, but the news confuses me. A confused mind cannot create narrative. Somehow, I have to un-confuse my mind, and also my spirit.
xo, Carrie