You Exist
It snowed yesterday in Edmonton, and it feels that we are on the cusp of an enormous winter. Will we come out on the other side with a soul that is more beautiful, more worn, more wintered? Are we nearing the beginning of the end of the pandemic? How to carry on now?
For me, I think that now is a time for three things: a time for the work, a time to try and lift others up, a time to sort things out. And actually, I mean that last thing literally. This past week I took everything out of my closet, and did that Marie Kondo trick of just putting back the things that I love. And wow, does that ever feel amazing.
So, toward digging into your work. These words by Enrique Martinez Celaya from his book, On Art and Mindfulness:
“When doubts bring you down, go back to the work not with the intention of doing something great but of doing something that marks your presence, that affirms you exist. Do not let yourself remain absent.”
In her book Index Cards, Moyra Davey quotes Lisette Model, (and I come back to this page very often):
“We are all so overwhelmed by culture that it is a relief to see something which is done directly, without any intention of being good or bad, done only because one wants to do it.”
Later in the book, she talks about how the last thing anyone needs is more “product.”
Someone I’m often on the same page as, is Anthony Wilson, and if you don’t visit his blog regularly, I recommend it highly. This morning in my inbox was his post “A helping grain of sand,” and it was exactly what I needed to hear. I’ve been returning to Anthony’s poem “To a Notebook” in his recent book The Afterlife, and it seems to me right now to be such a perfect way to write, authentic and necessary. A few lines:
“What you know is what you make up.
Still, this skateboarding cat will not write
The poem by itself. We will all have to chip in.
God comes to you disguised as your life.
I read the other day. It may be true…”
And:
“Forgiveness, have I used you today?”
And:
“Pour over me reassurance of your love
while I weep. Sunlight paces the floor
(There is no sunlight). Call to me,
Was that you calling, don’t abandon me.
Sometimes I am more angry than I know.
No one knows this but you….”
I have a long Bruce Springsteen post brewing….no big surprise there, but right now I’m hanging onto his words from this interview with Stephen Colbert, where he talks about being a “fighting optimist.”
So, to sum up: Mark your presence, keep making things, uplift others, keep working to be optimistic. It ain’t easy! Write a long poem to your notebook. Pour your anger, disappointment, confusion, despair into it, and then, like milk over the cereal, pour all the love and optimism and beauty over that that you can summon.
November 15, 2021
