thoughts

digging

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The process by which one unearths oneself from one’s life is highly mysterious to me. Is one’s life not oneself, for example, what self is being unearthed and from what other self? Why does one self feel like digging up another self? Why is it hard to do it? What happens if that self is not dug up? Why is there this sense of an unheard appeal from a self that to all intents and purposes is the same person. Who’s to say that what is being dug up is any more authentic or meaningful than the one who is, apparently, persuaded into digging.

Mysterious, and for the most part, unanswerable. There is some kind of appeal and it is somehow appealing. The one who responds to the call to dig is also mysterious, then. Why does she dig?

This digging is what I am spending my days on, so it seems, mining myself for something that is not certain, really to exist. I am so used to it that it feels certain to me. But I never know quite what I am digging for and sometimes when I have dug it up, whatever it is, I also don’t recognise it until later.

But nonetheless, the digging is part of me and so is the apparent regularity of sensing an appeal, often after weeks of performing at a high level other tasks and jobs that I actually do enjoy – I really don’t think I’m faking it. So then how does this part get so buried?

I am unusual in that I keep a daily journal and one of the very interesting elements of this practice is that one can visit oneself in any previous era of one’s life. Sixteen? I’m there, with my sixth form self, questioning the universe and pondering boys with my best friend. Twenty four? I’m there in a corporate job being appraised and wondering if I can get a mortgage on a flat in an aspirational area of a capital city, despite my frail pecuniary beginnings.

This week I have been revisiting selves of seven, five, and and three years ago, a year ago. It’s like digging in various layers of substrata and somehow I feel like I am getting somewhere, but where? It’s like lining up my younger selves in a row and interviewing them as witnesses to an event, the event of me, that I am somehow not quite able to grasp, and I’m relying on them to shed light on things.

Of course I talk to other people too, but almost none of them keep a record. Their thoughts are memories of memories. Mine are of their time.

I don’t know why it felt important to capture this thought in writing, but there is something that I’ve come to recognise as relatively unusual in this process, and this is on my mind as I continue it.

progress

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Well, I seem to be making progress although the measurements of that progress are often contested.

How do I measure it?

It’s a certain feeling – strength – that I can see returning to me. The familiar places of physical demand are not so depleting, the balance of the equation has shifted. I’m less emotionally raw, although that may be because I have had a respite from certain circumstances.

But mostly, it’s because I am getting to things that have long been out of reach, either practically or metaphorically or both. Yesterday I started the rereading of a long-written book draft, ready to, eventually, edit the second half and Send It Out once and for all. I’m connecting with people whose requests I have long let drift, taking up the tools of places in myself that have been beyond my grasp due to demands and the sheer limitations of one person’s confinement in the human condition.

There is a giddy euphoria at the return of a recognisable self that often entails overly enthusiastic ambitions and subsequent disappointments. This may indeed recur, as it’s part of personality dynamics which my whole life I have not escaped. But I’m perhaps also a little wiser, taking more time, letting things establish themselves more fully before I gallivant everywhere for the sheer joy of feeling more true.

It’s so particular that this specific space, of writing, and in writing so discovering something, has so much power for me. I am thankful, despite the flimsiness, so it feels, of my reach.

depths and trees

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It’s such a mysterious work of the depths.

Also when just now there is almost no one who sees me. Including here, I notice.

Yet in this mysterious strange quietude, shifts of substance are taking place.

In my teens I once wrote a poem about my essence having deserted me. It’s on my mind now.

I am going about my day, a little bit drifting, a luxury after so much structured work. Just now it’s also very stormy weather. I tumble into reveries, watching the trees. The branches so wild, the trunk so still. The branches terrifyingly wild, it sometimes seems. It’s a shock that they can be tethered to any stillness at all, but they are, and the tree trunks look immoveable.

They are comforting me. Though the wildness of my current living feels ferocious, somewhere, also true, is the peace of a truly established being, with roots which go all the way to the source of life, which carry sustenance and which enable growing and straining. I am taking up everything I need to grow, and I am not hollow and will not, despite my feelings, snap in two when it feels too much.

I won’t. So the trees reassure me.

feeding and renewing

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It continues. The discernment of wild forces was strengthening in itself. So too was the realisation that staying in position was the place of hope.

So I stayed while everyone left.

Stayed still. Not rushing hither and thither. Stayed in the small circumference of the garden, the seaside, the station and the park. Dwelling myself into home, to wholeness, to hope and to trust.

I did ordinary things. Tending the flowers, the laundry, the thoughts and the imagination.

It seemed like nothing. But the seeming was not true.

The staying still revealed the rush of everything; long days at work, long calls listening to friends, trains, planes, fretful self-displacements searching for places to hide, be found, regroup, distract.

The more the rush appeared, the more the stillness showed its value.

I’m still not there yet, not there, a somewhere that some part of me knows I am going towards but cannot speed up, or even really know where it is, just that it is. There is a somewhere and part of me knows how to get there.

The rest of me must follow, blind.

constellation

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While I have been fretting about the presence or absence of the innocent and ancient self, other things have been going on, which I somehow did not connect.

It’s been a time of furious difficulty. And in this difficulty I’ve been unusually lost.

I have chosen a life of particular exposure to the wilds of existence, and yet normally I know where I am. I have an inner stability borne of experience and love.

The last months have been like a battering. Certainly not comparable to other terrible events elsewhere, but for a self that wants to make creative work, crushing.

After every wham of difficulty I have tried to regroup, only to (sometimes) glimpse a moment of arrival before, wham, some other violence to my body, self, relationships, possessions, work…

After months of bravery, suddenly it was too much. I was distressed, tearful, lost. Plus the endless noise disturbance of the sound injury fills every moment of potential rest.

No wonder the delicate self was not keen on showing up.

Today I reflected on various ‘solutions’ that had been proffered in the last week: Get new friends, take a flight, look online, try America.

All of them, I could feel, were like trying to tack a threadbare patch over a crater and hope for the best.

A deeper part of me thanked the offerers and explained, yes, this seems like a sensible option, but it is not enough. I cannot thrash around trying to fix things.

This morning I realised what was really going on. I was being intimidated out of staying in position, by who knows what force, but the one we often concede to.

The recognition summoned a deeper ally: No.

No I will not back down.

No I will not make compromises.

No I will not fritter away truth.

No I will not choose my path based on fear, mockery and pressure.

Nothing much has changed in the circumstances.

But in the inner situation, the clarity is like a protecting force.

Maybe she will come out now that she knows she will not be betrayed.