Zooming In
Can we talk about the beauty of this bok choy bouquet? Something lovely that suggested itself before I swept the pieces into the green bin?
Can we not talk about the reason I’ve been eating so much bok choy, and the list of things I can’t eat now, and won’t be able to eat again?
It’s the end of February 2021. A month that was tidy and perfect in so many ways. Like how it fit in the calendar—28 days, beginning on a Monday and ending on a Sunday, so that there were no unused or doubled-up squares. A visual delight for people—like my resident daughter—who are satisfied by how things can fit and also please the eye.
It’s been an incredible month. A month when I gave myself too much to do and somehow managed to do it—but left other things aside: my embroidery (which calms me), my yoga (which calms me), correspondence with friends and family, and just about anything to do with the house.
I don’t think I fully comprehended how much was happening inside our little hive until mid-month, when suddenly, instead of running in and out of the second-floor bathroom (the main one used by all three current residents), I found myself standing frozen in the middle of it, surveying the full extent of its filth. I am a terrible housekeeper. Anyone who has a glancing familiarity with my space knows this. I am also the best housekeeper here.
But the bathroom was a midden.
Much more disgusting than usual. Zoom out, and I could see that the disorder was rampant, extending to the hall, my office, the library, up one staircase, and down another. And incredible though it seemed to me, I knew that the other floors of our big, old house were worse. I looked down at the used towels in front of the tub and behind the door and heaped on the rad, and the toothpaste in the sink, the grime on walls and in basins, and the bits of wrappers and paper that had been on the vanity for days, and I thought: no.
We can’t live like this. This is not workable. This is not working. And then, I thought, Except it is. It is working. I am working. We are working, all of us, on our things. And (mostly) getting them done.
It’s Black History Month, which means multiple public appearances for my husband, happening out of his office, around which we’re arranging dinner schedules and who’s responsible for walking the dog and trying to keep her quiet when a package comes to the door.
It’s a month of key assignments in our resident daughter’s final year as an undergraduate, and a month when an application is due for a future she’s trying to convince herself is still coming.
It’s the month when I joined a bunch of devoted participants in Kerry Clare’s Blog School, for the deadlines and camaraderie and guidance toward completing eight blog posts in four weeks. It’s the month in which I was determined to deliver a huge section of my rewritten manuscript to a dear friend and key reader. It’s the month when a book I’ve been hoping to see for some years, arrived for a blurb, with a very quick turnaround time.
It’s the month when I began offering a new service (professionalizing something I’ve done informally for friends for years): coaching writers and artists who are stuck, or questioning, or expanding their practices, or seeking out the best ways to speak about their work to new and expanded audiences.
Often, one of the things an artist struggles with is time—how to be a maker or a writer, how to show and share that work, in a life that’s already too full with other demands (financial, familial, the limits of the body). As my clients and I have talked this month, I’ve seen the value in the coaching appointment itself, and its limited agenda.
As artists, we so rarely allow ourselves time to plan and consider. We’re lost in our immediate creative project and its deadlines, or tangled in the net of life’s imminent concerns. In our hour together, my clients focus entirely on themselves and their creative work—where they aspire to take it, or let it take them. It’s amazing what revelations occur.
I’ve been so happy to spend that time with them and their possibilities. Even—especially?—when I know that as soon as I open my office door, my own, messy life will topple in.
So, as February comes to its close, I’m embracing all of our accomplishments large and small. Our single-focused efforts towards things that are important to us, while keeping the distractions out of frame. The work we do on what matters now, while we let the mess pile up.
I’m celebrating the delight in a bok choy bouquet. The detritus from which we make something beautiful, or from which we extract something that pleases us, at least for a while.