There are certain times in the creative process that are absolutely soul destroying. For instance, I’m two Squarespace glitches away from ripping the fucking screen off my laptop o’clock, or when I’m doing glass and it reaches half past I’d rather torch my goddamn hand off than fix this crack.
Luckily, I have things to diffuse such frustrations, so my hands and computer can live to serve another day.
For the past two Saturdays my mom and I have been tuning in to Oprah’s virtual rendition of her 2020 Vision Tour that got cut short because of the virus (and they’re free on YouTube!) Last week’s topic was focus and the word I chose to guide my intentions for the week was purify. For me, this meant weeding out the crummier habits of my day and replacing them with sustainable habits that make me feel full (of life, of love, of passion, etc.). I don’t mean to rhyme here, but having a built in retreat of movement, meditation, and writing every single day has really been a treat! No matter how shitty I feel, how much anxiety I have, or frustration, or anger, or defeat I experience, there hasn’t been a day where I’ve executed the magic trio and not felt remarkably better after.
I was joking with my friend, Zoe, yesterday (at a car’s distance in a parking lot off Skyline) that working out in itself is like mouthwash for the body...just makes you feel all fresh and tingly and alive again.
I feel like this is all I talk about on here: movement, meditation, and writing, but it has seriously been a game changer for me to feel more in control of my emotions and in tune with life’s bigger picture.
I’m partially behind the belief that consistently probing inwards through meditation and journaling is why this daily exercise is fruitful, but there’s also the more basic side to me that reasons if I’m spending on average three to five hours a day working on the computer, shouldn’t it take an equal amount of time, if not more, to untangle whatever mess I created for myself in that initial duration of time?
Last fall I spent three-ish weeks living in a four-storeyed homestay house in Patan (aka Lalitpur), the third largest city in the Kathmandu valley of Nepal, and each evening I’d sit on the rooftop of my borrowed home for the sake of sitting. During my 83 days in Nepal I wielded no technology, (a liberating experience on its own that requires zero travel). This basically meant I got real good at sitting with myself.
Even without the damaging presence of technology, I’d get caught up in the day-to-day maneuvering of a foreign country, which was why I sat at each dawn and each dusk. In the dust-free refuge I sought above the streets, I was acquainted with the entire Kathmandu valley. Even to this day, I can close my eyes and really, truly be there again. The details come flooding back. The man across the alley balancing on bamboo scaffolding to lay brick for a third storey. People, stacked two, three in a row on motorbikes dodging street dogs and each other. The jetliners screeching down in the only clearing of buildings in the valley. And when they went up, I’d lose them to the nameless peaks of the Himalayas closing in the view on my left. The planes were always a reminder that my time here is finite because some early December day, I too would be on one of those planes kissing the skyline one last time.
But to return to the point, I sat a lot. Sometimes several hours. Just sitting. Sometimes singing. Until I felt like I had touched bottom, and could return to the scheduled doings of my life. In doing this daily writing, I feel like I get that same feeling of touching bottom. And here’s what I mean by this: Imagine you have a balloon. Or even, you are the balloon. When we’re fully present, caught up with our thoughts, and have no internal inventory of things that are on our minds, we’re grounded or in other words, have touched bottom. As we get carried away in the happenings and drama of our lives this balloon slips our grip and in slow motion, carries on upward. Luckily, if we are also steady in our groundedness, we realize the balloon has escaped and we grab the string before it gets too far from our reach. But, unfortunately, usually we allow too much time to pass before we realize and the balloon is beyond our reach. By sitting every day, I stay within arms length of the balloon.
Another way of imagining this, maybe more comprehensive than the last, is to picture yourself on the seafloor, a deep, quiet space where nothing of the above world can reach you. This time though, the daily distractions fill you with air, sending you closer and closer to the water’s surface and farther away from the peaceful sanctuary at the bottom. When we sit, we are in the process of releasing air, and eventually, after some time, sink down to the bottom and return to an at-ease state of being.
Hmm….I feel like I’ve drifted quite a bit (no pun intended).
Here’s what I was trying to say (but in two sentences this time): It is the act of sitting for a duration of time, not the headspace when you sit, that really matters. Sometimes you just need to catch your breath.