My day isn’t going particularly well, so I feel that I need to take a pause, yes, right in the middle of my unhappy and unproductive working day, and write about the practices and things that keep me afloat at times like these.
Water: looking at it, listening to it, swimming in it
Walking
My children
Natural world
Writing
Music
Breathing, especially breathing through vulnerability
Reading books
Exercise
Being held (something I don’t really get)
Drinking (not in the meaning alcohol, just the action of sipping carbonated water, or tea or just plain water)
Things rarely happen as I imagine them in anticipation, except for this time they did. Saturday morning in La Tasse Verte with a coffee and print-out copies of my readings for the Indigenous Spirituality course. Spontaneous trip to Biodome and breathless joy of being there, among the anemones and birds and sturgeons.
I am having a hard time adjusting to the shortening day, so when I set out for my Sunday evening walk to the forest, just as my kids settled to watch Pirates of the Caribbean for the first time, it was to let to get to the lake before dark. I realised it halfway and reluctantly turned back. It did feel easier this time. I smiled getting better of letting go. I walked back to the Clearview entrance, a little disappointed, but feeling light about making the right decision, and as I emerged from the forest onto the field I saw her looking at me. Big, almost full, pale yellow, low on the purple evening sky, framed by the old apple trees, like eyelashes, it looked as if she’d been waiting to reveal herself to me. If you asked me, I wouldn’t want to be anyone else or in any other place, than I am.
Universe is God’s self-portrait. Octavia E. Butler
So, looking at it, what is God like?..
Funny
Sensitive, even sentimental
Determined
Resilient
Resourceful
Cruel
Generous
Quiet
Fragile
Beautiful
Magical
Like red patches of evening light on the smooth trunks of the young maples. Like a soundless flight of the barn owl in the woods at dusk. Like the soft carpet of moss and lichen on the solitary boulder. Like songbirds flying south. Like red maple leaves falling on the layers of last year’s fallen leaves. Like …
I have never been good in setting boundaries. I have always left work encroach on my life, stealing minutes from me, while my children, my interests and rest waited. Now I let life encroach on my work. I leave 15 minutes early to pick up my children, I add 5 minutes to my lunch walk, I step out to stare at the sky or touch the grass. Of course, I discover that life gives back. It is a giver. It gives back in energy, clarity, concentration, calm, purpose. The more I let it take control, take over my schedule, the more free, creative and patient I feel. Work can only take until there is nothing left. Even the work I love dearly and care about takes and keeps taking. Life gives.
Trees are getting visibly yellower, oranger, redder. Night is encroaching upon the day. I do my evening walks in the twilight. Tonight, I was doing it in a company of a handsome silvery moon. A waning or a waxing crescent – I can’t tell. I am now thinking of the moon as the grandmother, no doubt under the influence of Haudenosaunnee stories. grandmother accompanied me on my walk tonight, I loved catching glimpses of her over the roofs and in the bald patches between the trees.
This is the first time in my memory that I am feeling good after organizing a big event. Usually, at times like this I am in dopamine withdrawal – simultaneously exhausted and racing in my own head, reenacting every conversation, my every gesture, berating myself for being too loud or too much or trying too hard to be liked. Today, I feel different. I feel present, embodied, unashamed and unafraid. Unafraid of what? Of being seen, I guess, of being liked or appreciated, of being deserving. I finally felt, looking at how I showed up and how I am that I like that person, I enjoy being her, I can’t wait to see what else she has in store, what she will give to the world. What an amazing feeling.
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.
Chief Seattle, Suquamish.
On tonight’s walk, I saw a turtle, a chipmunk, a cardinal loosing his feathers and a great number of spiders sitting in the middle of their webs. I looked at spiders with curiousity. It’s interesting how once we realize that we are all connected, curiosity takes over fear and disgust.
It’s not even ten yet and I am going to bed to honour my weary body and all it has carried in the past days.
The world is full of painful stories. Sometimes it seems as though there aren’t any other kind and yet I found myself thinking how beautiful that glint of water was through the trees.
Tomorrow is my therapy appointment. In only three session I have learned to check with my body and the way it reacts to different triggers. Today I learned that grief lives in my chest, right in the solar plexus. It makes me feel short of breath, as if my lungs are failing me. By the end of the day, it rises in a dull ache at the back of my head. It squeezes me from inside – I feel smaller. It makes it hard to talk, to swallow, everything tastes awful. All I wanted today was a hug. To feel someone’s warm body next to mine, holding me. There are so many people I could ask for a hug and so few of them are in physical proximity to me. There are so many people in physical proximity and none of them is emotionally close enough for such gesture. I couldn’t wait to pick my kids from school, so I can hold their little hands (my son’s hand is warm and still a little chubby, my daughter’s long-fingered, slender hand is perpetually cold) and hug them. Someone said today that it must be difficult to parent while grieving for one’s friends or country and I realised that parenting is the easiest thing to do right now, because it’s the only one that makes tangible sense.
Oh, and something else, I think I started hearing my own voice. Not the alter-ego voice accusing, belittling and picking me apart, but my own voice telling my story.
We’ll have to be very careful how we allow our needs to shape us.
Octavia Butler. Parable of the Sower
There are so many things to carry. Some are small things, some are big, ugly, unbearable things, some are distant, guilty, brittle pieces of someone else’s burden. Together, they make a load. A swarm of angry bees in my head. A reason why a cool sunny day seems dim and an Air quality index 2 air seems unbreathable. Everything is ok, everything is not ok, there is no way to speak about it without sounding dramatic or seeking attention or… so, the best thing is to walk, to step carefully, to concentrate on carrying myself and all I carry inside me, carefully. The best thing is to care about someone, anyone – a child, a friend, an animal, a stranger, oneself.
So many small and big things: leaving my child at school today almost made me cry, the news about Poltava, the news about German elections, the utter fragility of absolutely everything. No, I am not putting anything on a scale. No, I refuse to compare and compete. A heartbreak is a heartbreak is a heartbreak. A heart is big enough to carry it all.
I thought Parable of the Sower would depress me further, instead I find it comforting. Or maybe I just got to a better place in the book. I like how true it feels – at the same time beautiful and utterly cruel.
I am thinking about Shesheshen, the shapeshifting monster. Although I disliked the book, I am grateful I read it. I loved the descriptions of how Shesheshen moulds her physiology to accommodate her needs and limitations, how she forms her body around her wounds – the metaphors no doubt borrowed from author’s therapy sessions, but nonetheless true. We all shapeshift our bodies around our wounds, we all are sensitive objects ready to break at any moment.
It is the start of the apple season – for the next month or so we will be biking to the Mont Bruno to pick up delicious apples as they ripen. The wet heavy heat is gone, the mornings are cool, the shade is even colder and now we welcome direct sunlight instead of fleeing it. Evenings are beautiful. I can’t get enough of the forest. I hurry there at every possibility – it is never enough, it is always enough, always more than I asked for. I feel overwhelmed with all this beauty, all this change, I feel simultaneously in it and outside of it. The one thing I absolutely hate right now is the thought of the coming winter.
Small Rebellions 