piano

suspendue en l’air – gathering

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In the airy depth of suspendue en l’air living, a development has occured. Perhaps it was the intention towards depth that I harnessed in the turbulence of obstacles. Encountering this deep substance of self has given me a confidence and a question: Where next? And since I am often asking this question, I have tried, by sitting with it, to let it answer itself.

And yesterday it did. First it occured to me that having somehow been reunited with this luminosity of being, I should now collaborate in its strengthening, intensifying it but also clearing a space for it, gently. As I allowed these thoughts to order themselves, I pottered about, paying reverent attention to the ordinary: piano (listening), writing, lunch, and, as I am still a little ill, resting.

And then there it was: Reading an old-favourite work I heard the creak of an inner shift and I knew it was pulling me into the next movement of this strange summer: The boxes. Four years after emigrating I finally moved into an own home last autumn and the boxes housing my former life caught up with me. The work of sorting boxes is a particular kind of work, appearing practical but concealing endless emotional and spiritual work. It took a phenomenal organisation even to get them opened and arranged in the attic, and to deal with the wildness of the encounters with multiple former selves. At the point I had undone, unravelled everything, and placed things into their new positions, I landed into a work project that took all my time and energy for months. The unfinished work of tidying and sorting the boxes has been looming over me for months, totally inaccessible in terms of time, yet dauntingly apparent.

And so yesterday I started the work of arranging things into their new homes. Starting with the journals that I have kept since I first heard a boy liked me in senior school – ‘I am at an interesting time in my life…’ – and so yesterday this accumulation of substance took the form of setting my journal/selves in order, sometimes glimpsing a me here, a me there, in Paris, applying for a graduate job, commuting, wondering about some new love interest, off to a consulting project in Russia, praying.

And pondering how little those selves knew where I would be now, and wondering what it would have meant to know it, and now I sit again in the beautiful garden ‘a garden on a mountain is the human ideal’ so I learnt on a podcast yesterday about ancient scripture.

What does my life mean?

la vie suspendue – interrompue

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Toujours là, kind of.

Yesterday in a pinnacle of irony I found myself panic-stricken that the very cough I’d previous resisted, denied, been in a bad mood with etc etc before I finally accepted that I was ill might be actually be nearly better.

Suddenly it was clear that I wasn’t ready. Whatever was being accomplished by the enforced quiet of being ill-ish (very different from actually ill) had not actually been accomplished yet. In a kind surely-this-only-happens-to-strange-me moment I found myself relieved when the cough reappeared. Relief. I was still protected by the circumstances from emerging back into whatever demands I associate with being well.

But there is a turbulence, nonetheless in this unfinished mid-air living. Last night a friend visited with a variety of provocative thoughts and imaginings about my situation, which despite being sweet and light, shook the depths of myself in places where, so it turned out, I had already settled into what might become a staleness. This morning the inhabitants of the piano apartment announced an imminent visit moments before I expected to play. And there is torrential rain so my beloved garden is out of bounds.

I lean in, listening to my own music, my own heart… what do I do with this, with this ruffling of the still depths, obstacles?

And I hear the answer, ‘deeper’, the kerfuffles of the small disturbances can be allowed to herd me into deeper places, deeper depths, the music of my own being. I elude the obstacles with a deeper intention.

The turbulence of suspendue en l’air, echoes the turbulence of the water. I let myself be carried; I swim deeper. These paradoxical realities do their work with me, within me, wildly. I am sky, I am sea.

la vie suspendue en l’air – pretending unconsciousness

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Toujours là.

Yesterday’s recognition of an importance to là vie suspendue en l’air was at once an encouragement and a danger.

When the work of deep substance is going on, too many overly conscious or rational thoughts can disturb the process.

As someone who is often a galloping herd of conscious and rational thoughts, in particular, stories, the moment the recognition that a work of deep substance is afoot is the moment all sorts of theories and ‘good ideas’ can line up presenting themselves as the way to ‘manage’ the process.

One of my wildest works, now that I have actually surrendered to the silence, is to stay out of the way of myself while whatever takes place takes place. To give it space and not to intrude, bustling, with ‘are you ready yet?’ and ‘would you like a cup of tea?’.

The only way I have found to do this is to pretend as if an unconsciousness that anything might be going on at all, to pay an almost excessive reverent attention to everyday rhythms and chores, albeit it quietly, and, then, to avoid those who might see my quiet as a chance to visit their stories and theories onto my existence. I skirt the contours of myself, respectfully, and hope that by carefully holding my attention elsewhere, I can allow the mystery of the luminous uncanny the time it needs to accomplish its fullness.

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.