In Hot Water

The second half. The pleasant comfort of baking bread and whiling away your evenings reading seem a distant memory this year. The promise of slow, somehow lagging. And there is a little while yet to go. 2020. The year we’ll all remember for its exceptional nature.

The second half of this year has been accelerated for me. I’m so very lucky though. I’m safe, employed, supported both at home and at work. I’m also bone-tired. Some of it is of my own making (as you’ll see).

Today, I cracked a little bit. And I cracked over a boiled egg.

I was making an egg salad sandwich for lunch for my husband and me. I boiled the eggs the same way I always do. Cold water. Bring to simmer. Take off the heat. Cover for 15. Perfect eggs, right?

Not today.

Today, the membrane wouldn’t give and the entire thing disintegrated in my hands. The quivering whites simply clung to the shell, exposing the bulbous yellow, the colour of a cloudy whipped up marble. I wasn’t happy about this. My eggs are usually perfect. It wasn’t the actual eggs - we just had them the other day. It must be me. It’s definitely me. I can’t boil eggs and I can’t do much else.

“You’re too hard on yourself,” my husband said, “It’s just an egg,” he pointed out as I worked myself up into an untenable state for 10 minutes.

Lunch was now the dark cloud in my otherwise quiet day. This is what happens when you have to much time to process.

The quickfire pace of the autumn finally gave and I took a few days off to catch up on sleep and do some laundry and get my head back on straight (a forced reprieve that was needed). I’m not used to large empty swaths of nothingness - life has always been scrambling between one crisis and another - it’s addictive, this productivity cycle. I’d rather clean out a closet or polish the knobs on the stove than sit there doing little. I’ll sign up for things, cramming my schedule with activities that render me exhausted, so that I fall into bed desperately tired each evening. And then I do the whole thing again. But I’m trying to maintain a level of productivity from five years ago under the acute stress of a global pandemic. We all are. And it’s not fair, is it?

All this fuss over an egg. But even when you’re in isolation with the rest of the world, the lessons keep on coming. I’m fairly certain it’s a call to dutifully subtract the nonsense that threads through my everyday - mostly the nonsense I create for myself. And to take the foot off the gas. What’s the end state here?

All the meditative walks in the world won’t help you surface it. It’s that ability to deliberately hold discomfort in the air like an unresolved note at the end of a song. It’s there. You have to be alright with it.

And so we come to this: Fewer cracks at room temperature. Lunch can be imperfect. Drink some water and hold space. It won’t feel good, but then again, it doesn’t have to.

Here’s a few things to read:

For Home Cooks, Burnout is a Reality This Holiday in NYT

I Believe that Marriage is a Sacred Union in The New Yorker

All the nice gulls love a sailor. ugh in The London Review of Books

Brene Brown speaks to President Obama

Slow

I remember when I was young, one day, my mother made dinner out of two potatoes. My father was away - we don’t know exactly where - and she was left to take care of two children on her own. I don’t remember much about the days or moments, but I do remember it involved two potatoes. We ate that evening because my mother always knew how to make do.

For anyone who has grown up in impoverished circumstances, or as new immigrants to a foreign land, survivors of natural and man-made disasters, or war-stricken environments, you’ll recognize the feeling of constantly being in the hurricane, buffeted from here to there as you tried to live with a sense of normalcy. For better or worse, you’ve learned to live in a world that is not always on your side.

We’re facing this today. A global pandemic of unprecedented (in our lifetimes) proportions has all but brought society to its knees. The directive is stay inside. Avoid contact. Only get what you need. Help others while you can. We are not used to having our freedoms limited. In a sense, the march of time has stopped and maybe even reversed.

I can see the discomfort of some in this situation. The sense of utter panic and the feeling that the excess we live with is, in fact, not enough. How will we manage? Do I need one package of turkey bacon or should I grab 17 just in case?

There is a creeping realization that, perhaps, we’ve gone too far. We’re using too much, we’re doing too much and we’re burning up. The forced rest, the deliberate conversation, the inability to escape from the things that are bothering us have now been foisted upon us. So many people are taking pause. Instead of simply staying inside, so many of us are being forced to go inside. To actually take some stock.

The beauty of it is, our survival also depends on the goodness in others. For every person trying to mark up prices on necessities, there are scores more knocking door-to-door and making sure elders have enough to eat. So many of my friends and family are working in areas that put them in direct contact with the general public. People are the essential service.

Survival is just that. It makes your question the necessity and the utility of so many things we take for granted. It knocks on your door to take away things you think you needed, but that turn out to be mere luxuries.

You need less. You can do better. You should do with less.

Some of us continue to live like we are in the eye of the storm. The survival instinct that I inherited from my childhood never left me. It’s a deep and ingrained part of me. It doesn’t serve me well many a time (does everything have to seem like it’s on fire every day?) But it has given me a confident sense of calm in my world, especially when we face a global pandemic, head on. I know how to read and clean and write and walk my days away. I, too, can conjure up dinner from two potatoes.

This week is the first week in a long time that I heard birds chirping in the morning. I’m sure they do everyday, but I don’t hear them. I’m too busy stuffing a Tupperware into my bag, while putting on my shoes and yelling at my husband about the traffic report on the freeway. This week is not that. My hair isn’t on fire. Survival instincts are never far and the eye of the storm is a surprisingly quiet place to be.

We’ll be fine. We’ve done so much more with so little.

Hummingbird

Vancouver winters are characterized by long bouts of rain, starting in October. Like any of the cities along the Pacific Northwest, we start to see life shrink into the muddy depths of soil, going into hibernation until the spring (which is coincidentally also characterized by long bouts of rain). It’s not uncommon to see angles of geese flying south, honking like so many cars stuck in traffic. The birds and bees quite literally go elsewhere. Bear sightings increase and then slowly decrease. Coyotes lope back into the urban swathes of wilderness.

Our home is in a sparsely populated urban area in a suburb that is desperately trying to become more urban. We have hardware stores and lots of parks nearby. I like it most because of the flowers that line our walkway in the summer and the cascading skyline of mountains behind tall fir trees. And the Starbucks that is also conveniently a block away.

It’s fairly normal for bugs to fly into our home. The ideal mix of nature and uncharted territory that is the tall apartment building makes it so bees are fairly (and frighteningly) at home here during the summer. They sometimes die a valiant death trying to get out of the apartment. This is generally not a problem in the winter, and no other creatures have ever made their way in.

This winter day, my husband and I were getting ready to go out to one of the many holiday festivities that seem to start earlier and earlier each year. As I was waiting for him to finish getting ready, I heard a very loud buzzing sound. I turned around to where the windows are, and spotted a hummingbird. A hummingbird! Twelve stories above ground level. In late, rainy (frankly depressing) fall, a fully grown hummingbird had made its way into the home.

Thereby, started an adventure of trying to get it out of the house. We opened all (two) of the living room windows. We switched off the light, figuring the artificial glow was going to attract it. It fluttered overhead as it flew the full length of the living space. I screamed - you would too.

The bird kept hitting the glass windows. It had spotted the horizon and couldn’t get out, regardless of our best efforts to usher it outward. We tried to shoo it to no avail. Finally, exhausted, it settled on the strings that we pull to raise the blinds. It seemed all of us were exhausted by this entire ordeal that had already gone on for the last 15 minutes.

A short while later, it finally - and with no lack of effort - made its way out. We quickly shut the doors and windows before it had any other bright ideas.

As a writer, I’m prone to seeing the symbolism in the unusual. And so I think, it’s the perfect little lesson in unusual things that feed into the mundane. So here goes.

We all, at times, find ourselves in unusual situations, in unfamiliar territory. We are going along in life, when suddenly, we end up somewhere different from where we thought we would be, at a time we didn’t expect to be there. Despite all the best efforts of those around us to open windows and usher us out loudly, we keep hitting our heads against the same obstacles. We can see exactly where we need to be, but can’t seem to find the opening to get there (even though it’s utterly obvious to others).

And when we get tired, it’s okay to stop for a moment and re-evaluate. I’d like to think that Hummingbird needed a second after frantically expending all that energy in one go. Soon enough, those openings become more clear to us as we slowly gather our wits about us again. And then we’re off to where we might need to be next.

I hate to belabour a point, which may have simply been a freak moment of nature. But I can’t help but think some things come to us exactly when we need them, as unwelcome or unwanted as they might be at the time.

So this is a good last thought for 2019. We’re rounding off the decade (if that means anything to you). For those seeking clarity or those facing the unfamiliar (I think we all are), there is always a way. It’s not always totally clear. It helps to listen to those whispering or yelling that way out for you.

For this next year, I hope that clarity becomes more apparent. And that you rest when you need to, before you journey forward.

The Beauty of the Slash

There is an ideal for writers. Most of us have fallen victim to it. It’s the burning desire to be left alone, to our own devices to create. Ideally, we’d like to get locked away in a cabin where we can have endless amounts of time and cups of tea to write the Next Great Novel.

I’ve tried it on a micro-level. I think we all have. It generally goes like this: If I have all of Sunday free, I’ll spend it writing/painting/practicing music/going to the dance studio/working on my presentation. Inevitably the gremlin of discipline comes through. Somebody calls or you’ve somehow managed to do everything but the thing you set out to do. And so begins the process of berating yourself for wasting the one precious day when you could have finally, finally mastered Italian, if only you hadn’t washed all the pillows.

I’m this person. I think on some level, anyone who likes to create - and not just in the purview of arts - is this person. Flow is such a good and lovely thing when it happens. If it happens. The stage gate is getting past the big “if” that often makes us feel inadequately prepared to add meaning to our creative lives.

Over time though, I’ve come to realize that we’ve had the process of creating hopefully wrong. To say nothing terrible of the people with the discipline and - perhaps dependence on the paycheque - to create at a moment’s notice. Unless you’ve got a patron (whether you’re coupled or not), creating doesn’t seem to happen when we’ve got a vast vista of time and space to do it. Rather, that open space becomes suffocating. It’s a lot like singing in a concrete room. You expect an echo but the sound simply drops to the ground with a gross thud.

Creativity - the desire and urge of it - needs constraints. We need to be, as human beings, bound to some commitment, in order to make it happen. It’s part of the reason that the slash exists. Many creators are many things all at once, breaking their titles up with slashes. Artist/chemist; Musician/Manager; Chef/Writer. Some of these might be out of necessity, but some of them are simply because we must create conditions for ourselves where creating becomes a need, rather than a desire or whim. Whims tend to be fanciful, needs, much more forceful.

In an interview, Tania Katan (theatre trained evangelist who has made some very creative leaps in her career), mentions that she used to write in the mornings before she went to her 9-5 job. One day, in an effort to complete a play, she quit that job and took on writing full time. What she discovered that her plays virtually relied on her day job for source material. That is, the characters were based in real life situations that occurred while she was busy working. Essentially, her creativity relied on constraint, which in turned fuelled it. She’s not the only one who has done it. Lots of creative people, have used time as their own personal constraint. Knowing there is not much of it in a day, it becomes necessary to rearrange it to meet your creative purpose.

In the real world, creativity relies on it just the same. Whether you’re creating a product or working within the parameters of a physical space, you’re faced by constraints, which necessitate you make connections or turn ideas on their heads. What we use then can sometimes become secondary to how we use it.

And it’s utterly thrilling.

Immersion and boredom have their place and are really important for ideas to form and coagulate. But vast amounts of time to stare at a blank page is frankly horrifying.

I recently started carrying a notebook again. Something that I used to do in high school and stopped doing when my purse became heavy, and so did life. These days, I can only find snatches of time to read and write. As life changes, and priorities shift, my sprawling Sunday afternoons have given way to a noisy chaos of living more fully. So those precious moments are even more so. The practice of capitalizing on them is still something that I’m working on.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then creativity is its long-lost sister. The creative impulse is a funny thing. It’s often a blip of an idea or a quick “I wonder” and then it fades away. Capturing it within a constraint seems all but necessary to realizing whatever it is you’re trying to achieve. In the end, where you put the slash is up to you, where it’s on your own person/ in what you do.

In creating, give yourself the time. But not too much.

Things to think about and read:

Tania Katan’s interview on the Good Life Project

Anne Lammott on Creativity - Brainpickings

Yo Yo Ma on Successful Creative Collaboration - HBR

To-Be

The waning days of summer are a confusing time for wardrobes. People don all kinds of combinations: Trench-coats and sandals, shorts and parkas, tank tops and fleece pants. It’s the time of year where you’re in between what was and what is to be.

While there are plenty of days of sunlight left, many outdoor movies and festivals to attend, and many barbecues to indulge in before summer truly ends, there is a comfort is knowing that the change in season is around the corner. I relish in the rain tapping at my window as I sleep at night and the almost-but-not-quite suffocating warmth of coffee shops full of wet scarves and seasonal drinks.

The transition from summer to autumn is special. it’s a time when we gear up to get out of holiday mode. When I was in school, there was a special feeling that came with the thought of reinventing yourself for a new year. Though the reinvention most of the time involved getting new jeans.

Transitions - any transitions - place us in a strange world between the nostalgia of old and the springy newness of what’s ahead. There come so many lasts which leave us silently and lightly mourning, while not knowing what’s quite ahead.

But that also happens to be the beauty of transitions. They are heavy with the unexplored and undesigned. They herald in new eyes and ears and doing things differently. Even if in the fall that simply means new soup recipes. We can revel in the idea that we will somehow act differently and embrace all of it wholeheartedly.

When we transition - seasons, relationships, our own being, we carry along the past with us, though it looks very different. We are taking with us, the sometimes-heavy somethings into what is to be. In doing that, we are asking our past to transform with us - please would you change as I change. To look just a little bit different, so we can make room for what hasn’t quite taken place. And sometimes the past cooperates. And sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes it’s better if it doesn’t.

This morning, I walked in the crisp late summer air to the library a few blocks from where I work to drop off a book. As I did, I recalled that this is the last time I’ll be walking to the library before I go away to get married. It seems inconsequential but in some ways profound: to think that the every day act will have somehow transformed into something else in a month’s time. The act itself won’t change. Everything around it might. Perhaps I’ll be picking up a book for my to-be husband. Perhaps he’ll have driven me there. Perhaps he’ll be working from nearby and we’ll stop for coffee. Perhaps, perhaps…

The to-be is undefined and sometimes unrefined - rough-hewn and itchy. And sometimes we mix up our personhoods in trying to define it before it is ready to happen. But just like the change in season, we ought to, I think, let it come slowly. We can wrap ourselves in its being when it arrives. Like a warm scarf on that first day of autumn when the chill is more or less here to stay, thank goodness.

Some things to think about:

Anne Lamott on Love, Despair and Change on Brainpickings

A cover of “Changes” by Seu Jorge

The Year of Nurture (Part 2)

Very recently, I read a book called "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry" by Neil dGrasse Tyson. In it, he explores the formation of the universe - how just the right conditions create what we now have. Through abundance and lack, the universe struck a perfect balance so that our little planet could harbour life. 

At the end of that book, I marveled really at the ability of the universe to just course correct and right itself through a slow process that takes more time than we can even fathom in our heads. Millions of years to perfect and fine-tune.

I have been trying to apply this concept of taking time to nurture this year. I recently found myself in for a community garden plot just down the way from where I am. It's a lovely little hub that's hidden in the woods, close to the inlet.

I have never really thought of gardening as a hobby. Allergies and a general desire to be indoors mostly kept me away from it. But this year, I decided that I could use a little more zen in my life. I've always been good with plants. Things grow when I'm around. Credit to the things of course - they survive in spite of my best efforts to ignore them and how little I actually know about gardening. In a way, we are all made for inhospitable environments.

Back to gardening. I thought I would use my hidden green thumb to grow a few things. In the shockingly calm early morning, I generally make my way down to the plot. I spend most of my time weeding and turning over soil. I check on the few plants I have right now - mostly I'm focusing on herbs and keeping things alive. (The lavender bush disappeared last week - it may have gotten up and walked off.) Then I wander around and admire other people's gardens. There are all manner of happy, healthy fauna from bright blooming marigolds (good for pest control) to early summer strawberries, just starting to turn red to that hardy strongman of verdant plants we call kale.

I'm learning things too. Tending a garden requires patience. Your peppers don't sprout in a week. And not all things will grow. Some aren't simply meant to. And others, you haven't learned to take care of properly. You can't compare your work to the work of others. Different environments just breed different products. A little more sun, and you have bright early tomatoes. A little less sun and they'll need some coaxing.

It helps to be generous too. People who cultivate these plots share with each other. We are all tending to the same earth after all and there are only so many chives you can consume in one week. There is also, only so much you can do to control the environment around you. If the squirrels get to your zucchini first, then you'll have to concede.

Right now, going down to the garden on the weekend is a small joy. Between the butterflies that roam around, the distant sound of water lapping at the shores, and the ever-evolving surprises on my small plot of land, I've found some peace. It's not perfect. But it's peace nonetheless.

That's really what nurturing seems to be about. It's a slow cultivation and a balance of states that allows us to create life. Or coax it out. Some things will survive the harsh winters. Others, despite your best efforts will inevitably fail. We ourselves, grow in the same way, at the mercy of those who tend to us, and the whims of the world around us. But at the end of the day, the universe that's contained in this garden and within us finds a way to right itself.