What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
A Glorious Return Of / To
Announcement & ebook reminder
If you’ve already given to Barrington’s Discretionary last year or this year, you should have received my ebook (by email) on how I approach and plan my year, how I think about time and am in relationship with time. The feedback on this has been lovely and heartwarming, thank you!
You can still obtain a copy for now, as a thank you when you give any sum to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund, and I hope you enjoy and find lots of clues in there!
More housekeeping: You can subscribe to posts by email again!
If you aren’t seeing these updates in your in your email and want to, you can click right here, or scroll way down to the footer and click the orange RSS icon.
This will pop up a new page on Follow.It that lets you subscribe via email, newsletter, or RSS reader. They say “expect 50 stories a week”, and yikes to that imaginary number, once a week is the dream. (This is my glorious return after a month of brain-fog!)
A Glorious Return (of/to)
If you seek
The motto of the state of Michigan is “Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam circumspice,” which means: “If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you.”
I tell people this a lot, mainly to make them laugh. First when they think I’m making it up to be amusing, and then when they look it up and find out that I did not make it up.
That’s right, I am funny on the topic of many things, but not about Latin! Not about the motto of Michigan! Never.
Also, I have been thinking a lot about seeking. So there’s that.
Thinking a lot (about seeking)
Well, specifically about the phenomenon of you are seeking a something, but the thing or experience you want, need or wish for is in fact right there where you are (which it sometimes is).
And also how sometimes it is somewhere else, and you do in fact need to practice change your place, change your luck.
And how you can’t always know which of these is your situation. You mostly can’t know actually. Which is also funny.
Funny in a loud throwing your head back and cackling at the tremendous and hilarious cruelty of life in a very eastern European sort of way, if that makes sense.
Look about you
Either way, whether what I seek is here in southern New Mexico as I stand on my porch taking in the view of fields and trees, or in that pleasant peninsula, or somewhere else entirely, I have to make my way to the place of the pleasant peninsula.
I have been referring to this trip as Operation Circumspice (look about you).
Circumspice! It’s good to have a name for a grand adventure. I love naming, in general.
And this is a name about looking about you, which is related to perspective, to taking it all in, and also to taking inventory, which is a lot of what this trip is about.
While being present, which is where it’s at right now.
Presence
That’s a funny thing to say too.
Presence: it’s where it’s at! Literally.
You are here, now. Let’s be here, now.
(You Are Here.)
Add intrigue, add enticements
And, let’s be honest, I guess also I went with that name, Operation Circumspice, because it sounds so much more intriguing and mysterious and therefore enticing than You Should Really Go See Dementia Dad While He Still Remembers Who You Are.
Or possibly: Heyyyy Gotta Deal With Fifty Two Years Of Someone’s Accumulated Stuff.
A lot of very stressful names offered themselves in this process, haha, and I knew this was a situation that really wanted a good code word. Something grounding, something hopeful.
Look about you, babe. You are right here.
And: The thing you seek is available to you.
You Are Here
You seek something and guess what, where it is happens to be right there. Where you are. Here.
Truly a very funny motto.
Just look about you! You Are Here! It’s a peninsula, and it’s pleasant, I guess. Just what a person wanted.
Just the thing I was seeking.
Speaking of states
Speaking of states, I took a trial run road trip last month, a four hour drive to Arizona. I know a very honest mechanic and a very reliable tire person there, and they both confirmed that my sweet beloved Star Car is up for the grand adventure.
Mainly I practiced taking it slow and resting, doing very little. Drive a little, rest a lot, get one thing done, rest a lot.
A state of mostly resting. Prone state. A state of gentle recline. What is the motto of that state?
Fugue State
I say this a lot, but between Long COVID, concussion brain and ADHD, I get overwhelmed easily but mainly I just can get completely wiped out. It’s hard to know what will instigate a period of PEM (post-exertional malaise), or how long the recovery process will take.
So it was enormously reassuring when that trip went well with all of its built-in resting, and I managed.
Until I got back home, hahahahaha, existential Eastern European cackling again, and then my brain went on hiatus. Fugue state. State of not there. Not here or anywhere, just kind of blank.
State Of
The trip went well, surprisingly well in fact, but as soon as I realized I’d pulled it off, fugue state. Utter exhaustion. I was just WRECKED in an all-caps kind of way.
And I have just kind of been there, in the not-here, not-there, in-betweens of it all, for nearly a month. It is bewildering and frustrating, annd also it just is.
A blank slate state. Mostly in a bad way, not a good way, because it is scary when I can’t focus.
But also there is promise in the blank slate. Everything is new again. Reset! Restart!
Maybe the old things don’t work anymore but it isn’t time for the old things, it’s time for the new things. There is no back, only forging ahead.
State of mind / the state of a mind
“I understand very little of what’s going on,” my dad confides in me over the phone, for the third time in as many minutes, taking a quick break from trying to con me into breaking him out of the memory care place.
“Are you feeling anxious about that?” I ask, trying to get more information.
“No, no, not at all,” he says. “It will all get revealed later or it won’t.”
It will or it won’t
It will or it won’t. Look, a pleasant peninsula. It was right here all along. There it is, being pleasant.
All will be revealed later! Or it won’t.
Easy come easy go, as far as things revealing themselves.
A state of disbelief, a state of euphoric hope (places I also visited, briefly)
So I had all of this angst about the trip and my ability to even physically do it, and also about my own state of mind, and about the gap between my beautiful wishes and the painful reality.
And then something incredible happened, very much out of nowhere, something that lead me to truly believe that about 90% of my dilemmas were about to magically disappear, a miracle of It Solves Itself.
I experienced first moments of disbelief and then utter euphoria. How was it even possible that this beautiful, perfect solution had just landed in my lap, and how it had been landing, over time, it was even here before, but I hadn’t noticed until now.
What a world! The solution was right under my nose for years, and I did not see it because it was not the right time to see it.
I was flooded with blissful gratitude for how things had shifted themselves in such a way that I could finally see the thing that had wanted to be seen all along, and how I hadn’t even been seeking it but it came to me, anyway, like a gift, like sun shining through rain.
Ah the euphoria to crushing disappointment pipeline etc etc
Anyway, it was not that at all.
And I won’t go into what it was, because it turned out to be a lie, like so many other things. But wow it was so fun, having that gift of pure, sweet, surprising hope again, being a new resident in that state of awe and wonder.
A state of mesmerized by all the ways something can suddenly fall into place.
So I want to hold onto the beauty of that, the clue of that. Sometimes things can just work themselves out.
This wasn’t one of those times, but it reminded me of the feeling of possibility, even if it was kind of a con.
Etc etc
Learning the truth (a vital piece of information that someone had left out of the solution that had offered itself so beautifully and effortlessly) felt like waking from a really good dream only to realize it was just a dream, but it hadn’t been a dream.
It was all real, real, real life. It was just a lie.
A beautiful, just absolutely fucking glorious lie, and I fell for it because it felt so vital and alive, both magical and necessary at the same time, and because I really wanted it to be true. That’s a thing that happens.
I cried for a day, and then decided to keep it moving, because what else is there?
Lo que fácil viene, fácil se va.
Easy come, easy go. Etc etc.
Let’s keep it moving
Let’s keep it moving.
Moving from the state of The Loss Of to the Glorious Return (of/to)
Anyway, when I returned from my trip, all my daily rituals were gone, wiped away.
I stopped doing all the things that helped. It only took four days of being out of my home and my routine, and I had completely lost touch with every single thing that helps me function.
So now, each day, I invoke the superpower of A Glorious Return.
A Glorious Return is located within the relocating
Sure, there is no back, and some of the things that used to be the path might need to change. But the power of A Glorious Return is more about re-finding joy, re-locating comfort.
If you seek it, look about you, and also make it a little new, a little different, switch it up.
Sometimes the Glorious Return is very small, even symbolic.
I stopped cooking for a long time, and made my Glorious Return with a tried and true golden rice dish. Did five minutes of evening jog for A Glorious Return to rituals of winding down instead of staying up until midnight having anxiety about closing eyes.
Not alone
A wonderful thing in this world is if you are going through a heartache or dilemma, other people have gone through or are going through similar heartaches and dilemmas. Well, it’s not wonderful, I want better for everyone! But it’s wonderful to have the companionship.
My friends who also have a Dementia Parent share stories that feel achingly familiar. Other friends are going through similar experiences but with Schizophrenic Kid, or Partner Who Used To Care About Taking Precautions For Your Chronic Illness, and so on.
It is so hard and painful when someone who used to have a shared reality with you, to whatever extent, is now not anchored in consensus reality, or is simply in a very different one from yours.
Shared spaces and also the spaces we don’t share
On the Selected Shorts podcast, there was a terrific reading by John Fugelsang of the story The Wife On Ambien, by Ed Park, a very disturbing story, but Ambien Wife, who turns out to be not what you thought either, reminded me of this whirlwind of [what happened to our shared reality].
They’re on a different pleasant peninsula!
YOU ARE HERE. They are in a different You Are Here. It’s bewildering.
But also: there are other people experiencing this too, and you are not alone with that.
A state of things being not what they seem
Many things are turning out to be not what I thought. In a very “It ain’t necessarily so” kind of way, but also in a “Things are seldom what they seem / Skim milk masquerades as cream” kind of way. Ella Fitzgerald, Gilbert & Sullivan, my brain.
Maybe I am more mad than I realized about being conned, but I am not mad about the con itself, if that makes sense.
Of course it was appealing to have a solution drop into my lap, of course I wanted the joy-bliss and the excitement and the state of something to look forward to. Even if the solution turned out to be a delusion, because it was a lie.
Of course I was extra susceptible to this, in this state of trying to de-fog my head and find my way back into the sweet sustaining rituals, or forwards to something else. Here in the state of the big unknowns.
It’s okay, babe. You saw hope-sparks and moved towards them. I love that for you. I want more of that for you.
The bell
I was telling my wonderful friend about one of my dad’s latest and most remarkable delusions, and how I hope he sticks with this one, because it’s really good. It’s like the perfect cover story.
He sent me a bitmoji of him ringing a bell, with the words: NEW DELUSION JUST DROPPED!
New delusion dropped! Just ringing a ceremonial, celebratory bell for that.
And of course, I am the bell, I am always the bell. Bell is my middle name, literally. Ringing for hope, and sometimes ringing in a new delusion. Or ringing it out, bye.
What do you seek
QUID QUAERIS is a Latin phrase meaning “What do you seek?”, or: “What do you look for? What do you search for?”
I asked the person who lied to me about this, about what he had been looking for in the moment of the lie, and he lied about that too.
It is interesting to watch someone lie to themselves in real time. But also that is a little bit like the NEW DELUSION DROPPED bell. And also, like I said, I wanted the lie to be real and didn’t care in the moment about anything that might indicate otherwise.
So the bell is also for me
The bell is also for me.
And for my sadness, past and present. A void is a void.
A void is still a void, and losing love from an unworthy and untrustworthy source is still a form of loss, even when you know you are better off without it. Noticing how I keep dropping deep into that particular void-related wound. What am I looking for there?
Still, as always, a good and valid question. What do you seek? What do you want? What are you searching for? And what do you need, my sweet beautiful love?
What might help
That’s my other favorite question.
Given the Known Knowns: I get tired easily, I need to take things slowly, the rituals help but also they get rattled up when I am on the move, my heart is sad, everything is a lot, the world, etc
What might help?
For me, right now, it’s any amount of a Glorious Return to things that have helped before, possibly in a new way or form, possibly in small amounts.
Remembering to exhale. Doing that again.
Add compassion, add even more compassion
Applying a lot of compassion to my various states.
Practicing even more acknowledgment and legitimacy for all of it. Yes, this road trip is going to be really hard on me, and I’m doing it anyway apparently. Yes, my hurting heart. Yes, to tending. Yes, Loving Clarity.
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, this can be glorious too.
This has been my attempt at a Glorious Return to writing
It followed a long state of Stuck, which, as always, turned out to be a state of Perceived Stuck, which, predictably, was really about simply being afraid to name any of what is happening.
So I am naming the fear, and showing up.
Naming remains the bravest practice, and being brave sucks. But here we are, seeking the thing that is around us, seeking the seeking, laughing when it is funny, because it often is.
Laughter is the best medicine in part because sometimes it is the only medicine, or the first medicine. A glorious return to laughter, a glorious return to living, starting with naming what is, and finding something there.
Come play in the comments, I appreciate the company
You are welcome to share anything that sparked for you while reading, anything that helped or anything on your mind, ring a bell of your own. I am lighting a candle for all of it.
Or anything you’d like to toss into the wishing pot, the healing power of the collective is no small thing, companionship helps.
Whatever comes to mind (come to heart?), let’s support each other’s hope-sparks and wishes…
Thank you to everyone who reads, porch breaths, the winding path, the many clues that land when they land, receptivity, keeping on keeping on.
New ebook alert!!!
Aka fun bonus material on how I relate to time and map out my quarters for the year.
Anyone who gives to Barrington’s Discretionary this week (see below) will get this by email as a pdf!
A request
If you received clues or perspective or want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Between Long Covid and traumatic brain injury recovery, things are slow going.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing the many broken things.
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share this with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it and you so much. ❤️
Tiny monuments and what to do when the ambient panic is too much
Announcement & ebook reminder
If you’ve already given to Barrington’s Discretionary last year or this year, you should have received my ebook (by email) on how I approach and plan my year, how I think about time and am in relationship with time. The feedback on this has been lovely and heartwarming, thank you!
You can still obtain a copy for now, as a thank you when you give any sum to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund, and I hope you enjoy and find lots of clues in there!
More housekeeping: You can subscribe to posts by email again!
If you aren’t seeing these updates in your in your email and want to, you can click right here, or scroll way down to the footer and click the orange RSS icon.
This will pop up a new page on Follow.It that lets you subscribe via email, newsletter, or RSS reader. They say “expect 50 stories a week”, and yikes to that imaginary number, once a week is the dream.
Tiny monuments & what to do when the ambient panic is too much
Last time
Last time we talked monuments, and specifically the way that almost anything can be or become a stone or a post or a [something]; a think-for-a-moment.
Anything can stand in as a reminder of what we want to remember, or what we want to let go of.
And in that pause-moment of exhalation or contemplation, or just noticing the noticing — whether it’s a moment of stillness or it takes place in motion, there is something about marking the memory that matters.
Partly this and partly that
I had wanted to get into more examples of how something can become a monument, but partly there wasn’t time, and partly it wasn’t the moment.
And partly I forgot, because I am the person who writes about memory but doesn’t have memory, at least not in a reliable way.
Also, have you noticed, there is so much panic in the air. So much.
A breath for just noticing the ambient panic
Just a noticing breath. Maybe hand on heart, or hand on a steady surface.
We can remind ourselves (acknowledgement & legitimacy!) of how deeply normal and reasonable it is to be experiencing anxiety while existing in all the intense chaos of this world.
We could do a calming thing on the plane of the physical, the tangible. Hum it out.
Try covering your ears while humming it out. Shaking it off or dancing it out. Or exhaling repeatedly while shaking your head…
Shake it off like a puppy, or a goat, or a mountain lion.
How much of this belongs to me
Sometimes I find it helpful to just ask, “How much of this is really and truly mine?”
I only want to feel my own emotions, not the whole everything of the scattered collective.
If only 3-5% of the panic belongs to me, and rarely is it more than that, the rest can remove itself from my space.
Give it to the earth or the mountains or the sea, let energy return to loose particles of possibility. Or imagine this is happening, or could be happening.
Just checking in with myself
Is this mine, is this from now, is this helpful, is this something I need to carry?
And if not, then what would help with the ease of releasing, other than the noticing?
As you know, I love to combine techniques “in the hard” (anything physical, tangible) with techniques “in the soft” (mental, emotional, imagination, energy, the things that are hard to describe, the realm of not very measurable).
And so sometimes when the ambient panic is very high, I will do something physical (legs up the wall, pressing two fingers gently above my upper lip, lengthening my neck, gently lengthening my breath), and I will also accompany this physical action with something softer.
Return to sender, I whisper, if I know where it’s coming from. Return to the earth, energy back to source, if all I know is that I am picking up on The Big Fear and it does not belong to me.
A monument
It occurred to me this week that these moments are also monuments.
Both in the sense that they involve a pause, a think-for-a-moment, and in the sense that they rewrite memory, they mark a turning point. A monument in the moment of releasing, a monument to the releasing.
It is the point at which you decide that enough is enough:
I do not agree to carry the fear energy of the world, it is not my job to hold all of this, I can do a better job supporting the world through my steadiness. I have noticed this big fear, and I am asking it to be transformed through being noticed, and released back into potential energy.
Or whatever, phrase it however you want. Maybe those words don’t work for you at all, that’s fine. I am not married to the phrasing or even to the idea. I am only into noticing when we are picking up on ambient panic, and reducing the load, for ourselves and for the collective.
What else is or can be a monument?
Omer suggested that December 30th should be Africa by Toto day, as in the song. Because of the line about “she’s coming in on a 12:30 flight”. 12:30 aka 12/30.
And so if you are someone who loves the song Africa by Toto, now you have a feast day to look forward to, which itself is a sort of monument. A think-for-a-moment that is a day.
A song becoming a day becoming a monument
I really love the idea of a song becoming a day becoming a monument, because it feels like a very wise and clever way to use a proxy in order to feel things or otherwise process them very indirectly.
You don’t have to make a day for the thing that is too many feelings, it’s just a day for the song.
Maybe something is too close to home for me to declare a holiday to mark it or build a monument to it, but I could have a song that means something to me, and build a holiday around it, and kind of fold whatever I’m working through into it, you know?
The monument that forms itself
My friend and I went on a hike for her 71st birthday, and we passed a community monument that people built in memory of friends of theirs who died in a terrible car accident. Not at the location of the accident, but at a place on this path, at a location that presumably meant something to these friends.
The friends had brought objects that made sense to them, and combined them in a way that made something statue-like, and this was their think-for-a-moment that is now also a public think-for-a-moment.
It was beautiful because it was not beautiful, if that makes sense. It was a very human endeavor, to honor a very human kind of pain, you could feel the humor in it, people laughed and cried while making it, you could just tell.
The absence of a cairn of objects, for example
For me, I don’t have a physical place to go for the person I miss the very most, but every single time I hear a song, I am thinking about what he would be thinking about that song, which means that every song is a monument.
When I am insisting that Flowers by Miley Cyrus is overrated, that is a monument. Sometimes I even will say I don’t like a song when I do, just because I want his take on it. I know he can get me to listen to it differently.
Sometimes the songs themselves make me so angry, just by existing, especially all the new songs that he will never get to hear in real life.
Do you even understand what you are missing?????? I yell at him because it is easier to be mad at him for leaving the world (me) than it is to build a statue on a mountain and then never go there.
Ritual
This is our ritual, now. Our little routine. He doesn’t get mad at me. He doesn’t even mind that I yell. He sits on the windowsill and smokes, holding his cigarette outside the window so the smoke won’t get in, and it never does, because it is not real, but I appreciate the care he takes.
I make him listen to the whole song with me.
It’s a monument of a moment. I get mad, he lets me be mad, he smokes his cigarette and holds it out the window, we listen to the song until it is over.
The healing stone
I had a dream about the healing stone.
I had a dream that someone asked me, “What don’t you want?”
In the dream, this was the answer to everything.
In another dream there were terrifying emergencies that couldn’t get solved, possibly related to all the ambient panic.
In a third dream, the father of my childhood best friend was still alive, and he hugged me and told me that everything was going to be okay, and that the answer was “lots and lots of flowers”, that’s what would make everything better.
What don’t I want? Ask the question. Make sure there are flowers.
When things are hard, which they often are
When the hard things are hard, I like to light a candle or an imaginary one.
Or to set a stone on a cairn, even if it’s an imaginary stone on an imaginary cairn.
Something to do while exhaling and humming and shaking it off and returning what is not mine to the earth.
A breath of whoosh, goodbye to this big panic that is not mine. A breath for grace, compassion, ease of ease, small miracles, any shift in a storm.
It will solve itself, or it won’t. And still we exhale.
The monument we need most
Maybe it matters less what it is and more that we pause to feel it.
We change the pattern by noticing the pattern. That’s not the only way to change a pattern, and it’s not even the most interesting way to change a pattern, but it’s the most consistent way to approach.
We noticed. Something shifted. We noticed the noticing. Another shift.
We interrupted the pattern not just by noticing but by pausing and exhaling. We interrupted the pattern by describing the pattern and the noticing and the interrupting.
We are making more and more space to just be in conscious relationship with the pattern instead of inside of it.
The noticing is a monument
The noticing itself is a monument.
And the pattern can’t remain unconscious when there’s a monument right there.
We can map the pattern through these monuments. We can introduce small changes, gently, with love.
It will solve itself, or it won’t (and still we exhale)
You win some, you win some later.
Sometimes you take the nap, sometimes the nap takes you.
Sometimes you make a monument to a moment, sometimes the moment is the monument.
And so on.
It will solve itself. Or it won’t. We breathe it out, and notice what’s ours and what isn’t, and keep it moving. It’s a practice. Sometimes it’s easier and sometimes it’s less easy. That’s okay.
Here now / it’s not easy being green
What would help most? For me, it is doing comforting things, repetitive things. Ritual things. Baking cake.
My cake, much to my astonishment, turned out bright green on the inside. Imagine a cake made by the grinch. I truly thought for a minute that I’d poisoned myself and was about to perish dramatically in a way that would be remembered in myth by the locals because of the circumstances being so mysterious and weird.
But it turns out that sunflower seed butter reacts chemically with baking soda, because there is chlorophyll present in sunflower seeds that will turn your batter green when you bake!
What a fun surprise for someone who likes surprises
What a fun surprise for someone who likes surprises.
But if you are not that person, and you are out of peanut butter and tahini but happen to have sunflower seed butter because it was on sale, and you use it in baking because it’s the right consistency, you too can treat yourself to a serious panic over nothing.
And then enjoy being relieved, I guess, after you think of the right thing to ask google.
There’s some poetry in that
I really genuinely scared myself for no reason, but what if this reminds me to try being less scared of things and potentially more excited. For example, I could open a wicked witch themed bakery.
I can pretend that I am a sunflower, purposefully ingesting my chlorophyll to grow tall and face the sun.
There is some poetry in the panic, once it passes. And in these times of massive ambient panic energy, there is going to be a lot of poetry as we help it disperse.
A breath for this moment in time, and a breath for the next one, a breath for pattern interruption, a breath for a generous monument in time, and a breath for all the unanticipated poetry.
I am ready to let some more joy in.
Come play in the comments, I appreciate the company
You are welcome to share anything that sparked for you while reading, any monuments of your own, anything that helped or anything on your mind. I am lighting a candle for all of it.
Or anything you’d like to toss into the wishing pot, the healing power of the collective is no small thing, companionship helps.
Whatever comes to mind (come to heart?), let’s support each other’s hope-sparks and wishes…
Thank you to everyone who reads, porch breaths, the winding path, the many clues that land when they land, receptivity, keeping on keeping on.
New ebook alert!!!
Aka fun bonus material on how I relate to time and map out my quarters for the year.
Anyone who gives to Barrington’s Discretionary this week (see below) will get this by email as a pdf!
A request
If you received clues or perspective or want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Between Long Covid and traumatic brain injury recovery, things are slow going.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing the many broken things.
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share this with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it and you so much. ❤️
In a memory of a holy place / a memory in a holy place / a memory that is a holy place / forgetting
Announcement & reminder about the ebook!
If you’ve already given to Barrington’s Discretionary last year or this year, you should have received my ebook (by email) on how I approach and plan my year, how I think about time and am in relationship with time. The feedback on this has been lovely and heartwarming, thank you!
And if you gave to Barrington but didn’t get it, I am so sorry if anyone fell through the cracks, please email me at my name at this website, Havi AT fluent self DOT com, with any emoji, and I will send it.
You can still obtain a copy for now, as a thank you when you give any sum to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund, and I hope you enjoy and find lots of clues in there!
More housekeeping: You can subscribe to posts by email again!
If you aren’t seeing these posts in your in your email and want to, you can click right here, or scroll way down to the footer and click the orange RSS icon.
This will pop up a new page on the Follow.It site that lets you subscribe via email, via newsletter, or via RSS reader. It says you can “expect 50 stories a week”, and yikes to that, but that’s a number they made up – it would be shocking if I post more than once a week.
And if you want to catch up on / binge-read essays from me from the past couple years, they are at fluentself.com/archive, the password is starlight, enjoy.
In a memory of a holy place / a memory that is a holy place
My favorite German word
My favorite German word is not one of the long, complicated ones. My favorite German word is Denkmal.
It is the word for a monument, but unlike the English word monument, which, to me, feels cold and clunky and somehow much too large, Denkmal is compact, sweet, clever, warm, maybe even kind. It’s an invitation of a word.
It means: think for a moment.
Think, for a moment.
That’s why this statue, that’s why this marker. We are here to think for a moment.
Welcome, stranger, this must be the place. This is the spot where you get to stop and think, for a moment.
In other words
In other words: Pause here for a spell.
Or: Stop and take this in.
A moment to notice what is here (or what was) before we keep moving. A moment to contemplate the significance of this space and your moment in it, just for a moment, before you go…
It’s so lovely to me that the name itself suggests what you are meant to do. Oh look, there’s a think-for-a-moment! Guess I will stop and think for a moment!
Just the most charming thing ever. It almost makes me cry because it’s so sweet.
Depends on the day, like so many things
Obviously this all comes with a major asterisk, which is that if I ever say that a specific word is my favorite word in any language, that is true, and also: I might have a different favorite word on a different day.
I just love so many words! Words, like trees, or foods, are my favorite when I am spending time with them.
Is pausing at a think-for-a-moment to think for a moment the most charming thing ever at all times? I mean, yes, of course! And also: No, it varies.
Because sometimes the most charming thing ever is the German word for mittens (shoes for your hands!), or the Arabic word for manatee (sheep of the sea!), and maybe I am easily charmed, or maybe there is simply an abundance of charm available in language. Probably both.
To forever (as a verb)
In Hebrew, the verb to memorialize, l’hantziach, means to forever someone.
And once, a long time ago, I was trying to translate a news broadcast very fast, from Hebrew into English, and couldn’t remember the word “memorialize” or even that it existed as a word.
So I tried saying, “You know, the desire to forever this person who is gone?”, and it was immediately clear that I’d landed on the wrong phrasing, but also the person I was talking to knew exactly what I meant.
There is something very appealing and compelling in forever-ing
We all want to forever someone. Or to forever a moment.
To do something, in some way, so that the person or place or experience that was-and-now-isn’t can live on in our hearts, or in a place.
Or maybe we want to forever something or put up a marker for it so that we can stop holding onto it so tightly or so that we can let the big feelings around it rest in some way. Situations vary.
Beautiful
It’s a beautiful desire, and I also think that to forever someone or to forever something, is much more poetic than to memorialize, which is only about the aspect of memory and remembering, and not about that very specific yearning to hold onto a moment in time even though time is always moving.
Yearning to touch something that is gone, to stay with it, or at least, to not let it be swept away from us with the swiftness of time.
Maybe the person we miss is the version of us who is gone due to that experience changing us; yearning for the before of it all.
Time is always rushing on, which is why we need the reminders.
It’s why we need to be gently told, by a word, by a pillar, by a song, by a piece of art: Think for a moment.
The pause is the interruption, and the interruption is where we notice things
The moment is for whatever it is for.
Think-for-a-moment at this think for a moment. Remember.
Pause here for a moment. Let this moment be a forever-ing of something that matters.
A breath for the moment. Remembering to exhale.
(Exhale.)
Etymology
Three summers ago, I had a pretty nasty concussion, and six months later I became ill with COVID and never recovered, so my memory is a hot mess, which is why I just spent a good ten minutes trying in vain to remember the word “etymology”, and I simply could not bring it up from the recesses of my mind.
Eventually I was able to think of some google-able terms, and at some point one of them got me to the missing word.
The upside of constantly losing words is my joy at re-finding them. It’s a joyful reunion, the pleasure of being re-united with an old friend.
Ah yes, Etymology. We knew each other, once upon a time. I smile happily at Etymology. Hello, friend. I forgot your name but I did not forget you.
The Etymology of Etymology
Here you go:
late Middle English: from Old French ethimologie, via Latin from Greek etumologia, from etumon, neuter singular of etumos ‘true’.
Logos is word, thought, principle or speech.
Etymology is about getting at the TRUTH of the word.
And while I think the phrase “the truth of the word” could carry a religious connotation which is not at all what I’m going for or getting at here, if you put that aside, there is something very compelling to me about this.
As if there is a kernel of truth hidden within anything, and if we are patient, and shine some light, approach with curiosity and investigative rigor, we will arrive at something.
We will arrive at something
And then we can pause there, and think for a moment.
Each word is a monument of its own.
A truth-kernel that will reveal itself when we pause and think for a moment, when we let ourselves sit in the vicinity of a memory.
Memory
The word memorial is related to the word memory: remember, something that serves as a reminder.
And the word monument, also from Latin, comes from the word monere, which means to remind, or to warn. Which can be interpreted as “Let us learn from what happened”. Or may this memory give us clarity about how we want to continue.
The word Denkmal is also related to memory in spirit, or it’s at least memory-adjacent, because when you pause to think, what you are thinking about is a form of remembering-and-forever-ing.
Or a form of releasing and making peace, if that’s where you need to focus your remembering.
Memory is tricky, and each time we revisit a story, the story is a little different. Telling the story changes the story. And also stories can remind us about what is important to us, they can bring us back to ourselves.
Midrash
A midrash is a commentary on Hebrew biblical text, they are the stories about the stories, because what is a story without friends in the form of more stories?
Here is a wonderful paragraph from Reba Carmel in Currents:
”In its simplest and perhaps most basic meaning, the word “midrash” is derived from the Hebrew root drash — study, inquire, seek, explain, investigate, interpret. The sheer number of verbs that actively describe the process of creating midrash speaks not to uncertainty but to vibrancy.”
If you know any Arabic, then you see the similarity to madrasa (school), mudaris (teacher), and other words that share this same root.
Here is a midrash about Alzheimer’s, for example
The midrash says that if you encounter an elderly person and they have forgotten Torah because they have a cognitive disorder or whatever form of memory loss, you treat this person like an Aron Kodesh that currently doesn’t have a scroll in it.
The Aron Kodesh is the holy ark in the synagogue that holds the Torah scrolls when they are not being read. And just because the holy ark doesn’t have a scroll in it in a particular moment, that doesn’t make it less holy.
It’s still a holy place without the words that were there. It’s still the place that exists to hold them.
And so, to treat this person who has forgotten everything important to them as the empty ark means that you treasure and honor this person. The container of past wisdom is as important and special as the wisdom itself.
Reminders about reminders
I try to regularly remind myself about this midrash, in part because I cannot hold anything in my head consistently, and in part because of another situation, and in part because I am trying to forever some things for myself.
The container itself is holy. Or, as Abraham Joshua Heschel put it:
“Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.”
Just to be, just to live. Holy and a blessing. In this container. Think-for-a-moment on that.
Two things (pick a card, any card)
My dad has been telling me lately each time we talk that he wants to do two things before he dies.
Each time I ask what they are, and each time he has already forgotten them and can’t tell me.
I hope that he is joyfully reunited with one or both of them and feels as good about that as I do when I remember a word, like etymology, or when I remember what I was on my way to do after half an hour of pacing in my tiny, tiny house.
But maybe any two things are good. Pick a card, any card. Remember something and find some joy in the remembering. Let something go, and find some joy in the letting go.
A SMOPL, for example
I have written quite a bit about my practice of SMOPL, something my brother and I came up with called Something Meaningful On A Personal Level.
For when you need a ritual, any ritual, and there isn’t a pillar there or a think-for-a-moment, and so you have to come up with your own moment.
A forest in imagination
Someone sent me this piece about a COVID memorial in Scotland that invites people to interact with all we have lost.
There are many beautiful clues for me in this piece, but the one that stands out the most is this: “Grief is a heightened state which must be respected.”
There is also something bittersweet and maybe even bitter-funny to me about a memorial to what we have lost from COVID, when one of the primary things I have lost is memory itself, and my mind, at least in the way it used to work.
A remembering of my memory, a memorializing of my not-remembering.
Even though I can’t go to Scotland, I can visit the trees there in my mind, and I can hug the trees here in Southern New Mexico, and all trees are connected, and the trees can remember too.
What’s important to us? What’s important to you?
For me: small joys, small rituals, porch breaths, making gluten-free flour tortillas in my tiny kitchen, hanging out with a deer who likes to visit.
Also sharing my writing and my love of words here. Forever learning new words even while knowing that I will forget them.
There is a buried bottle of wine somewhere that I remember. I don’t mind that I will never go to retrieve it. I like being reunited with the memory when it comes up to visit.
Reminding myself to ask
I want to keep reminding myself of what is important, reminding myself to pause and think-for-a-moment, to pause and check in. To ask the questions.
What’s important to me? What do I need right now? What would help?
I want to remember that it’s okay if the answers about what is important shift and change, or if an answer slips from my grasp.
It’s the pausing and asking more than the answer. Asking is a declaration of life and hope. Maybe we’ll get to a truth-kernel, or maybe we just let the question float out into the world and trust that it’s going where it’s needed.
(Thank you for being part of the place I go to ask questions…)
Come play in the comments, I appreciate the company
You are welcome to share anything that sparked for you while reading, or anything that helped or anything on your mind. I am lighting a candle for all of it.
Or anything you’d like to toss into the wishing pot, the healing power of the collective is no small thing, companionship helps.
Whatever comes to mind (come to heart?), let’s support each other’s hope-sparks and wishes…
Thank you to everyone who reads, porch breaths, the winding path, the many clues that land when they land, receptivity, keeping on keeping on.
New ebook alert!!!
Aka fun bonus material on how I relate to time and map out my quarters for the year.
Anyone who gives to Barrington’s Discretionary this week (see below) will get this by email as a pdf!
A request
If you received clues or perspective or want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Between Long Covid and traumatic brain injury recovery, things are slow going.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing the many broken things.
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share this with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it and you so much. ❤️
The slow steady art of Just Keep On Showing Up
Announcement & reminder about the ebook!
If you’ve already given to Barrington’s Discretionary last year or this year, you should have received my ebook (by email) on how I approach and plan my year, how I think about time and am in relationship with time. The feedback on this has been lovely and heartwarming, thank you!
And if you gave to Barrington but didn’t get it, I am so sorry if anyone fell through the cracks, please email me at my name at this website, Havi AT fluent self DOT com, with any emoji, and I will send it.
You can still obtain a copy for now, as a thank you when you give any sum to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund, and I hope you enjoy and find lots of clues in there!
More housekeeping: You can subscribe to posts by email again!
If you aren’t seeing these posts in your in your email and want to, you can click right here, or scroll way down to the footer and click the orange RSS icon.
This will pop up a new page on the Follow.It site that lets you subscribe via email, via newsletter, or via RSS reader. It says you can “expect 50 stories a week”, and yikes to that, but that’s a number they made up – it would be shocking if I post more than once a week.
And if you want to catch up on / binge-read essays from me from the past couple years, they are at fluentself.com/archive, the password is starlight, enjoy.
The slow steady art of Just Keep On Showing Up
It’s in the air
Or in the earth. I don’t know. Everyone I know has said some variation on “I have never felt this stuck in my liiiiiiiiiife” this week, and I myself have said it at least fifteen times.
It was useful to remember / remind people / be reminded over and over again that sometimes this is just a thing, a known phenomenon. It happens, it sucks, it will pass.
Dramatic fist to the sky
This week was the third anniversary of Stuck Boat Week, plus a wild full moon, eclipse time, all the many heartbreaking and horrifying tragedies of our world, and also this is just a preposterously long month.
So yes, this is a week that we, like a giant boat in the Suez Canal for example, might be confronted with what it feels like to be very much stuck.
Also my bathroom door got stuck for half an hour, which is a long time, and I did the dramatic fist to the sky of DAMN YOU, STUCK BOAT WEEK, once my friends reminded me that this is the week for things to be stuck.
That is such a lovely thing about friendship and about community. We can remind each other. And we can remind ourselves. I remembered, I calmed down, the door opened.
Maybe
I spent a lot of the week taking naps, but the kind of nap where it’s more like, the nap takes you, and not the other way around.
What do you call it when you are so wiped out that there is no path other than into bed.
I am trying to stay attuned to the idea of It Solves Itself, and maybe sometimes sleep is the solution, and I mean this also like a liquid solution, something I am being immersed in. A brining, of sorts.
Maybe it’s catching up on the sleep lost during time change week, maybe it’s recovery from the winter of Witching Hours, and maybe my body is just reclaiming what it needs, and if so then good job, body.
Maybe it’s Stuck Boat Week, maybe it’s Maybelline.
Keep On
After a week of naps and snowstorms and wild winds and trying each day to do one small thing in service of Keep On Keeping On, something shifted.
Suddenly I wanted to be outside again. Outside, moving, breathing, not in bed. Huge.
It felt hopeful. I needed hopeful. Maybe you also need some.
So I took myself and this new [quantity of hopeful] on a short hike. There was snow on the inclines but not on the path. It was very muddy. I took lots of breaks because of the mud and the elevation. I crossed a creek on a bridge of well-placed rocks.
It wasn’t actually a bridge, but it felt like a bridge. That felt important and I can’t remember why.
I bravely let myself experience being alone with my thoughts (braver than the marines). I hugged several trees. And kept on.
Just Keep On
One of the trees seemed especially kind-hearted, which is a funny thing to say about a tree, they are all kind-hearted, but there was something about this one, so I asked it for any advice, any wise counsel.
The tree said, “Just keep on showing up.”
I asked if it wanted to expand on that, and it said, “Just keep on showing up.”
The usual questions
So I have been thinking since then about all the ways that I might keep on showing up.
Sometimes this is the question of where do I already practice this? where am I continually showing up? Aka the question of What’s Working?
Sometimes this is the question of where do I wish to be the person who keeps on showing up? Aka the question of What Is Needed?
What are the rituals and practices, what are the experiments, what are the fun obsessions, where do I wish to keep showing up, and in what way?
Zum Beispiel
Writing and being here is a way of continually showing up. Did you know that this August will be twenty years since I put up this website?! In internet time, that is positively ancient history, as old as the hills.
I kind of wish I could find the picture of me from 2004 that was on here, I remember that all my friends were like, oh no, you CANNOT put a picture of yourself on the INTERNET. What a time.
Small is a good place to start
It would be easy to turn Showing Up into another should, another to-do list, and I don’t wish to do that. My focus is small, simple, do-able, playful. Do less to get more.
So yes, there are small daily ways of showing up.
Washing dishes, sweeping the floor, stretching for the duration of a song. The metaphorical chop wood carry water of a quiet life in isolation.
Baking cake for Cake & Coffee Club is a way (for me) to keep on showing up, I am a big believer in the healing powers of cake for pre-breakfast.
Re-devote, rededicate, reset, restart
But I think my tree friend also meant that I need to continue doing what I’m doing: being bravely alone with my thoughts, and going for a slightly challenging hike.
And really, what am I showing up for when I do those things if not to recommit to being alive, to rededicate myself to aliveness?
Dedicating and rededicating, devoting and re-devoting. A reflexive act, doubled. I am devoting myself, to myself.
What else is a form of Just Keep On Showing Up
Intention + Repetition.
My slow and deliberate modified sun salutations and backwards walking on the rug. My daily ten minutes of practicing Arabic.
Even something like Taco Tuesday could become a ritual of Just Keep On Showing Up.
Why do I not do Taco Tuesday? Maybe it’s time to start. Or maybe that’s just a jumping off point for something similar-but-different.
Any ritual in a storm. It’s good to have things to look forward to. Let’s find out what they are.
Brainstorming / drawing board / an idea party
Each time I think of a way to Just Keep On Showing Up, I am adding it to my list. Adding it to the cauldron, into the pot. What else goes into the wishing cauldron?
- Deep Unrelenting Empathy
- A Glorious Return of [all of the things that help]
- The Beautiful Magical Hourglass, it’s imaginary but I like thinking about visual time
- It Solves Itself
- Choose Calm Choose Ease
- Welcoming simple elegant solutions
- The path reveals itself / one next step is a fractal next step
The more I practice, the more I will remember. The more I remember to just keep on showing up, the stronger the practice.
What’s next
I don’t know, I am hoping and trusting that the fog of Stuck Boat Week will clear, but either way, the path is the path. Or: change the path.
In the meantime, I can focus on what I do know. there are practices that hold me and sustain me, and I can keep returning to them.
And if these practices aren’t doing it for me, I can change up any aspect of them or invent something new.
Lighting a candle for small shifts, new movement, the first signs of spring here in the southern New Mexico, hope sparks, whatever is needed most.
Let the right openings open in good timing, or something even better.
Come play in the comments, I appreciate the company
You are welcome to share anything that sparked for you while reading, or anything that helped or anything on your mind. I am lighting a candle for all of it.
Or anything you’d like to toss into the wishing pot, the healing power of the collective is no small thing, companionship helps.
Whatever comes to mind (come to heart?), let’s support each other’s hope-sparks and wishes…
Thank you to everyone who reads, porch breaths, the winding path, the many clues that land when they land, receptivity, keeping on keeping on.
New ebook alert!!!
Aka fun bonus material on how I relate to time and map out my quarters for the year.
Anyone who gives to Barrington’s Discretionary this week (see below) will get this by email as a pdf!
A request
If you received clues or perspective or want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Between Long Covid and traumatic brain injury recovery, things are slow going.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing the many broken things.
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share this with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it and you so much. ❤️
Imperceptible Movement
Announcement & reminder about the ebook!
If you’ve already given to Barrington’s Discretionary last year or this year, you should have received my ebook (by email) on how I approach and plan my year, how I think about time and am in relationship with time. The feedback on this has been lovely and heartwarming, thank you!
And if you gave to Barrington but didn’t get it, I am so sorry if anyone fell through the cracks, please email me at my name at this website, Havi AT fluent self DOT com, with any emoji, and I will send it.
You can still obtain a copy for now, as a thank you when you give any sum to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund, and I hope you enjoy and find lots of clues in there!
AND! Blog subscription news!
Thanks to the sunsetting of Feedburner (RIP Feedburner), a lot of people have not been getting posts in their email anymore, and I apologize about that.
Here’s good news: If you were a confirmed subscriber, you’re probably seeing this post in your email account right now because we are using a new plug-in and supposedly everyone has been migrated over, so if that’s the case, hi, I missed you, and you don’t have to do a thing.
Though if you want to catch up on / binge-read essays from me from the past couple years, they are at fluentself.com/archive, the password is starlight, enjoy.
If you aren’t subscribed to posts but you want to be, you can click right here, or scroll all the way down to the footer and click on the orange RSS icon.
Doing that will pop up a new page on the Follow.It site that allows you to subscribe via email, via newsletter, or via RSS reader. (It says you can “expect 50 stories a week”, and yikes to that, but that’s a number they made up – it would be shocking if I post here more than once a week.)
Okay, that was a lot of housekeeping! Let’s do this. A breath for beginning. Here we go.
Imperceptible Movement
The tree
Cate asked what I wanted to do for my birthday, and the thing I wanted to do, other than see a person (Cate) for the first time in what felt like forever, was to set off on a pilgrimage to hug a particular tree.
Okay, fine, any tree. I was up for a tree-hugging mission of whatever form, but yes, there was a certain tree I have been day-dreaming about. I wanted to meet (and hug) this tree, and I wanted company.
The tree-hugging mission involved a hike, and thanks to Long Covid, I can almost never make a good guess about how much energy I will have, if any, but also:
I have been training for this.
Training for visiting a tree. Training for all of it.
Training for this moment
Now that I have been sick for twenty seven months, and it’s less a matter of “being sick” as a situation that I find myself in, and more “this is just my life”, I have been getting to know this version of me, learning about the ebbs and flows of existing like this: chronically ill and still here.
Trying to stay attentive, fluid, adaptable, curious.
Trying to channel whatever might help with figuring out what I need, while not judging myself for needing it – to the extent that this is possible, when is possible, and no, it is not always possible.
I will be honest
I will be honest: Sometimes I hate needing so much, both in general, and also regarding needing so much recovery time specifically.
What is possible for me and when? These are the questions, both in relation to what I might have energy to do, and how easily I am able to receive the answer that is.
That’s one part of the training. Asking the questions.
The next part
Staying receptive to the known information, and receiving the answer that is, not fighting the answer that is. That’s another part of the training.
Letting things change. One day like this, one day like that. What if this can be neutral input? And if it can’t, can I conjure some more compassion for myself until it can…
Staying hopeful, maintaining fierce hope in the face of [the many seemingly not-hopeful things], this is also part of the training.
The hope is not about recovery, because what’s that. The hope is about hope.
The hope is about hope
Hope as a way of being, hope as a resilience practice, hope for its own sake.
Maybe I won’t get better but maybe things around me will get better, and maybe I will get better at adapting, who knows, so many things are possible.
So many things are possible, miracles abound, I don’t know what I don’t know, and so I breathe and tend to the hope-sparks. When I can.
Hoping my way towards a version of me who can cope gracefully with the harder days. The me who loves the sea.
All this is a form of training.
What is possible
I have been learning more about what is possible for me (or might be possible) when, and what facilitates a state of [possible], and what preparation and recovery are required to support [possible].
A lot of it is stuff I’ve written about here already: recommitting to ritual and routine, doing so much less, doing less to get more.
Doing less while inviting in more presence, more intention, more compassion, more (or any) grace. Staying devoted to Loving Clarity, aka recognizing what is, but recognizing it with kindness towards myself.
A lot of it is building in more entry (rest) and exit (rest), and making peace with the idea that anything I do will send me back to bed for a while.
Small gains
Every day I walk and jog in my kitchen. I spend time on the balance board, do slow stretches, and backwards-walking. Practicing the art of small gains; assassin training on the micro level.
I know that I am so very lucky that my body agrees to do these things and mostly enjoys them.
Similarly, I know that I am lucky I already had a daily movement practice of decades in place to support me, a practice which miraculously preserved itself beneath the surface, even when I had to spend several months mostly in bed. A thanksful heart for all this.
I also train through not-doing
I also train through early to bed, resting as much as possible, practicing 10% More Relaxed, doing the peaceful, grounding, quieting things that help.
Each day, I say to myself: WE TRAINED FOR THIS.
Because we did.
Slow to the point of imperceptible
The tree was even more majestic and magical than I had imagined it might be when curiosity pulled me into its trajectory, and it was truly a delight to meet this tree and share many hugs.
The tree was enormous and serene, deeply rooted, arcing powerfully skyward, but its magnificent elephant-feet (pictured at the top of this post) conveyed a sense of motion, almost as if we’d caught it mid-step.
I liked the feeling of this, a sort of deeply grounded momentum.
As if the tree was drawing energy from the earth and moving itself. Moving itself! And moving so slowly as to be almost imperceptible, and yet, at the same time, moving with great power and conviction.
Great power and great ease. Imperceptible grounded movement.
Tree-style / assassin-style
Now there are some superpowers.
What would a tree do? Move imperceptibly, almost invisibly. Stay grounded and steady. Draw power from the earth.
What would an asssassin do? Move imperceptibly, almost invisibly. Stay grounded and steady. Draw power from the earth.
Movement is happening, even when I can’t see it
Isn’t it fascinating when things are changing/healing/moving/evolving, and we don’t realize it yet?
I find this reassuring. Movement is happening.
There is forward momentum, change is happening, good things are coming, the wishes are set into motion, moving with power and grace. It’s just a matter of fine-tuning my perception.
Entry / middle / exit / recovery / more recovery
Just as I had to come up with a plan of entry (rest first) and exit (rest to recover) to support my visit to the tree, everything requires a plan for resting before, during and after.
I am currently dealing with a fairly major family emergency. Flying is not an option because of a combination of issues most of which are health-related. So I need to drive across the country very slowly.
(Clarification! I will not drive slowly, I will drive at a reasonable and legal-ish speed; what I mean is that I can only do a few hours at a time, and might need additional rest days in between.)
Which means: I need a plan. A plan that involves a tremendous amount of rest and recovery, for the before, the during and the after.
The planning of a plan
But even the planning of the plan is something that wears me out, and it too requires resting up to be able to plan, and then resting to recover from doing planning time.
This feels almost ridiculous when I put it into words, except it’s also just my reality. My ridiculous reality.
Or as another friend calls it, the ongoing shitshow of magical unfolding.
What can I learn about Invisible Movement / Invisible Momentum
How do you plan a plan when you have no energy to plan, and when you physically can’t do that much? When there’s no way to know if one good day will be followed by another one?
I am invoking fractal magic: may each step be activating thousands of other steps, may the imperceptible motion on the surface be enacting deep waves on other planes of existence…
Patience (I Play The Long Game)
Similarly I am practicing patience, like a big cat: I Play The Long Game.
Patience, and trust in right timing. I am practicing Choose Calm, Choose Ease. Continually reminding myself about This Can Solve Itself.
Cherishing my wishes for a better solution, more ease, more grace, a third way, a new path, and placing them gently into the wish-cauldron.
Whispering about them to my tree-friends and the sky when I take evening porch-breaths.
Holding onto the hope sparks.
Working backwards, working forwards, moving imperceptibly
Working backwards and working forwards simultaneously.
What is one step I can take today?
Practicing within movement practice
Something I like to do when I am on the rug is imagining a pose, for example, a boat pose.
Then maybe I do it and maybe I don’t, but the work has already happened while I was in the imagining.
It’s endlessly fascinating to me that my body works just as hard while imagining doing it as doing it. You can imagine something so hard that sweat pours off of you before you have even lifted your legs.
Sometimes I can even learn more about the pose or the movement through the imagining than through doing it. It is in imagining that I realize how much I need to engage inner thighs, or remember to relax my jaw.
We trained for this, with imagination, and with imperceptible movement.
Imperceptible, again
Another thing I like to play with, in my movement practice which often resembles a stillness practice, is moving as little or as slowly as possible.
Sometimes I can make the movements so small that I feel them but they might not be visible from the outside.
An imperceptible movement practice. Like the tree.
Like a big cat stalking its new toy, I can be patient and wait in the grasses, I can be poised, I can play the long game.
What if there is great power in moving the tiniest amount, an imperceptible amount, but with clarity, intention, patience? Drawing power from the earth, moving deliberately.
Keeping on keeping on
This helps me with the work of keeping on keeping on, in the face of the many heart-breaking things. I am the big cat, I am the tree.
You can’t see the motion, because it is currently in the before, the stored up potential before the kinetic burst.
Or because it is happening at an imperceptible scale, but with fractal and cumulative results. One small invisible step for a majestic tree, one giant leap for a cougar. One small invisible step in imagination, exponential movement that will propel me across the country when I am ready.
Or something like that. This is what I am playing with in my mind and in my movement practice, as I am resting, slowly planning, resting, slowly planning, resting and recovering from slowly planning.
Moving slow, for a good reason
Here is a clue via this excellent piece of dialogue from Will Trent:
“How’s it going down there?”
“Moving slow, making good decisions.”
“See, that’s what you want from a bomb technician…”
Moving slowly and making good decisions feels so important, and I think it’s because it’s about being deliberate.
Deliberate
Deliberate is the quality I am trying to channel most as I work on remembering to Choose Calm Choose Ease, and make my way towards simple elegant solutions.
How can I be extremely deliberate as I figure out how to slowly and steadily move myself across the country for an amount of time and then return, without wearing myself out.
There is something beautiful and compelling to me in this commitment to slowness, to unhurried precision.
To be clear, it also scares me, but maybe that’s because it goes against the external culture of pushing and striving, things I can’t do anymore even if I wanted to.
The perfect answer
I also honestly think this delightful quote might be the perfect answer to nearly any question.
Of course it’s very rare that I speak to a person because I live alone in the wilds and am often resting, but I sincerely hope that the next time someone asks me how I’m doing or what I’m up to, I can remember to answer with: “Moving slowly, making good decisions”.
Like a tree, like an assassin who has trained for this, like a big cat, like a wise and cautious bomb technician.
Deliberate and steady. Deliberate and sure of myself, because I trained for this.
Moving Deliberately & Making Good Decisions Monday
Each day I try to practice moving even more slowly, even more deliberately. Making good decisions, receiving useful intel, adapting as needed.
What day is it? It’s Moving Deliberately & Making Good Decisions Day.
Being slow and steady.
Being deliberate means letting the routine hold me.
What is useful / good / treasure about Slow Deliberations
Deliberate = intentional.
Slow = giving yourself adequate time to perceive more / gather more clues / notice what you notice / feel what you feel / notice that you are feeling the things that you are feeling, and so on.
In a way, moving deliberately and slowly is like having dedicated time for therapy or for journaling or for a conscious movement practice.
In other words, it’s about conjuring a container of time for breathing, noticing, self-reflecting — a container of time when you won’t rush or be rushed, because it is not the nature of the practice to rush.
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast
I know I have referenced the book Momo before here, which I have enjoyed greatly both in the original German and in the excellent English translation.
There is a character who is a street-sweeper, and he explains that if you rush the sweeping, you feel stressed and it takes longer, but if you go breath by breath, breathe-and-sweep, the road almost sweeps itself.
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Slow is present and engaged, and progress happens while you aren’t looking for it. There is a dance of Swift & Slow. But it starts with slow.
Just as my own movement practice yields gains even though often it looks as though I’m barely moving at all. I’m training. For this.
What else is good about Slow Deliberations?
For one thing, you can’t accidentally talk yourself into a decision that is not true to you if you are slow in your deliberations, if you keep asking questions and looking for the path of Choose Ease.
I know I can’t be rushed, not just because I don’t want to be, but because I will physically collapse if I try to do too much.
Adapting to this, and watching other people in my life struggle to adapt or even to remember that it’s happening to me, is its own form of training.
Either way, here we go
Either way, I’m moving slowly and deliberately, channeling tree-powers and fractal motion, moving with great intention.
Training and moving, training and imagining, training and breathing, training and wishing.
Let’s play with invisible and imperceptible motion!
Some ways we can practice and play:
Wishing wishes, into the wishing cauldron, into the pot. It is brave and beautiful to wish, to be present with the wanting, it can be a vulnerable admission to let ourselves want.
Using proxies: if it’s too hard or sticky or potentially painful to wish a wish, can we name a playful, silly, semi-imaginary goal and find out what steps we would take if that were our wish?
In actual movement practice: a clue walk, or any slow, small and symbolic movements. Gathering power, moving from the earth, it doesn’t need to be visible to be powerful.
Journaling and stone skipping, asking questions of a Slightly Wiser version of you, or the you who has already found the answer or taken the next step…
Doing anything that supports the training: hydrating, for example. Nap on it, dance on it, cry on it, rest on it.
What are the superpowers
I am calling in / on / up the powers of:
This is all in the hands of the sky, nothing for me to do here except light candles, choose calm, choose ease, and put it into the wishing cauldron with love…
The cowboy abides, we stay tough and do chores on the ranch, keep it moving, find beauty and any joy sparks.
It solves itself
If moving is where the ease is, what gets me moving? What supports movement?
Can I remember to let myself need what I need and want what I want.
How am I doing? Moving deliberately, making good decisions, asking over and over for Loving Clarity.
Remembering that this can solve itself, simple and elegant solutions are on their way. It might feel like they are moving imperceptibly, but they are on their way. Can I trust in the powers of deliberate imperceptible motion?
The solutions move towards me, I move towards them.
Come play in the comments, I appreciate the company
You are welcome to share anything that sparked for you while reading, or anything that helped or anything on your mind. I am lighting a candle for all of it.
Or anything you’d like to toss into the wishing pot, the healing power of the collective is no small thing, companionship helps.
Whatever comes to mind (come to heart?), let’s support each other’s hope-sparks and wishes…
Thank you to everyone who reads, porch breaths, the winding path, the many clues that land when they land, receptivity, keeping on keeping on.
New ebook alert!!!
Aka fun bonus material on how I relate to time and map out my quarters for the year.
Anyone who gives to Barrington’s Discretionary this week (see below) will get this by email as a pdf!
A request
If you received clues or perspective or want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously. Between Long Covid and traumatic brain injury recovery, things are slow going.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing the many broken things.
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share this with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it and you so much. ❤️