existence

toujours suspendu en l’air

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I’m still here, in mid-air, which is uncannily like a depth, it turns out. In the wrestling match between maintaining a normal pace and slowing down, slowing down has won. And yet now I’m here, I feel strangely at home. I don’t feel the fret of missing out, I’m no longer disappointed, I’m kind of content, and curious, because at other points in my life when I have found myself in this imposed suspension, often something very deep has been at work, beyond my thoughts, words, understanding or control.

So it’s a little bit like I’ve set up tent here, in mid-air, and now find myself delighted. It’s so peculiar; how can I resist it so much and then turn out to be glad? Sometimes I feel like I don’t know myself at all; I can sometimes so little predict my true feelings about things that are in prospect.

I am still playing the piano (although today I didn’t because the neighbour was using the apartment) and writing, but I have seemingly slipped into a complete harmony with quietness and ordinary chores. Small unexciting things are getting done and I’m not feeling lonesome or deprived.

And the deeper stillness means that I’m more aware of the rumblings of movements in unknown places, and this awareness increases my patience because instead of fearing nothing, I can feel something. And what is a creative process for if not to prepare a space to welcome and embrace that?

perseverance: suspendu en l’air

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There I was all in persevering mode with happenstances aplenty and ferocious efforts and all of a sudden (well actually it snuck up on me):

Heat, and a cough.

It sounds so prosaic. Probably it’s meant.

All my wishes, intendings and momentum are scrambled. I am slowed down in a kind of ancient and insistent pace. I can’t do the things I wish to do; I can’t go to the places I want to go. It’s the first summery weather here for weeks and I can’t cycle to the seaside or bear to lie on a hot rock even if I got there. I’m in a continual internal argument with Little Miss High Achiever who seemingly cannot help but persist in believing that concrete reality is for losers and wishes should triumph. (And I should have compassion on her because indeed the feeling of disappointment is intolerably near to defeat).

I am well enough to do this and that (here I am after all, and I played the piano although the piece sounds slightly less rippling punctuated by a rasping cough). But it is as if everything has been suspended in mid air, that a certain kind of time has stopped and I’ve arrived into a different one, chronology displaced by eternity.

Oh the wriggling and squirming before this kind surrender.

But yes, I let go of everything, I choose to let the moment of suspendu en l’air be a kind of grace to me, to whatever is going on. (And somehow it is always a consolation to experience the exquisite perfection of the phase in French).

Something beyond me is at work, and in accepting this I find a renewal of hope.

new terrain

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stumbling, almost certainly,
dazed and blinded by
new light
the exposure
vast expanse of space
foreboding
joy

steady myself
‘we’re here now’
tend to immediate needs
gentleness, cool water
supplies, details of
beauty

orientate
or fail to
unfamiliarity blurs
vistas to a mist

stay still stay still
come home to yourself
sense on high alert
senses
sensations
sense? sense
stillness reaps,
something moves beneath
the surface
knowing something
knowing nothing

still, longer
tend yourself
attend, wait, let it
grow substance with you
test it
strengthen beyond
an impulse to a
passion

presence of the giants
of fear
ancient guardians
fomenting fury
don’t let go
hold your position
sense
stay still, you are the giant here
let them run
let them hide

a certain
confidence of motion
trust a bedrock
we have been here before
never, often

straighten up, let
your burdens
stabilise your steps
move in

goodbye

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I reached the top of the mountain
all of a sudden, unknowingly,
of us
Suddenly, there was no more climb
beneath me
you were far away
and lost forever
and my diligent everlasting love
and my efforts,
had not saved you.

So I discovered
(or had they; perhaps
I will never know)

But they had saved me
or, it is truer to say
they made me; they made
my bones, they made
my freedom
they made my love
stretch further than
it ever had before,
they made my fire more
ferocious, they made my
passion reach beyond
the bounds of
everyday imagination,

they made the rock,
they made the heights,
they made the view
they made the ‘we’ of friendships
strengthen to a wondrousness
they made a miracle
oh, and you will miss it,
that is sad, but someone
else will live that substance
with me
and, with me, will
revel in its glory.

Thank you.

the studio inside, threshold

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Persevering with the studio rhythm as a path to the studio inside is starting to pay off I notice.

Something that I did in the real studio rhythm was to record my morning piano playing, and then later to play it to myself. I am not sure what made this idea occur to me, because never before have I listened to my own playing, still with mistakes, hesitations and an overly long pause needed to turn the pages, as a source of joy. It took long years as an adult to recapture any of the delight of playing as a child, so painful was the décalage between my old competence and new ineptitude. And to actually record and listen back to myself was excruciating.

Yet here I am, and there is something in my own music. It’s mysterious to me.

So yesterday for the first time I played my music back to myself in the more ordinary setting of the apartment. I was a bit disconsolate and needed something to soothe the mean fears that had crept in to try to nibble on a new joy. And this playing filled the apartment with fully-human-with-all-her-errors-being. There is something in myself that is trying to tell something, to offer something to myself. What is it? Mystery.

But this, I realise, is part of the perseverance of the studio inside. And the playing of this yesterday made me feel today like I am on a threshold, and that soon I will be able to more fully live my creativity into the summer, even without the much longed for material studio. The elements are nearly all in place.

(I will know I am there when I am able to paint.)