Endless Small Adjustments of Balance
I spent the weekend in Ontario, helping our daughter out with her move back home for the summer. Not that she really needed much help in all honesty. We are so thrilled to have her back, but of course it means that we need to hit some kind of reset button. Our everyday rhythms will slowly adjust....just in time for her to leave us again. But I don’t mind any of this; it’s lovely. What is life but endless small adjustments?
I’m reminded of words by Elaine Scarry:
“How one walks through the world, the endless small adjustments of balance, is affected by the shifting weights of beautiful things.”
and
“The surfaces of the world are aesthetically uneven. You come around a bend in the road and the world suddenly falls open. When we come upon beautiful things . . . they act like small tears in the surface of the world that pull us through to some vaster space.”
My practice this summer will be to walk through the world, open to beauty and all the imbalances and corrections. Open to the shifting weights of it all.
My kitchen window, early mornings, does feel like a bright portal, a tear in the surface of the world. It pulls me into the vast space Scarry speaks of. And the window seems like a constant though everything through and around it changes.
The month of May is a busy one. The first of May is our 25th anniversary (I’m writing this on our anniversary and pre-posting this before I head to work for a 1-9 shift). My birthday is also this week, and we’ll likely celebrate both next week when we have more time. Corrections, imbalances, shifting weights, the beauty of daughters, will also be celebrated.
And then it’s looking ahead to my Edmonton book launch at Audreys. So if you’re in Edmonton it would be terrific if you could buy the book at the store which is wonderful at supporting local authors. Not only are you supporting me, but also one of the last Indie bookstores we have here. Thanks in advance. And I hope to see you there, if it’s at all geographically possible.
