Monday: Reflections on Yeast and Other Transformations
small brave thing #215
Hello beautiful human,
It’s one of the coldest days of the year. A high moon shines down through my window this morning, half-light, half-dark. And I’m trying to write something, somehow, that I’ve been working on for days. (Turns out it’s longer than email can support, you’ll have to click in to read the whole thing…today I just needed to take up some space, I guess.)
One: Watching the Yeast
Whatever this says about me, one of my favorite things to do is watch baker’s yeast grow. Have you ever baked bread from scratch? You put a little yeast in a bowl. It pours from the packet: tiny, dry, light brown granules. Almost sand-like. Add warm water, the exact temperature of the inside of your wrist. Stir in a teaspoon of sugar or honey, gently, with a fork. A little of the yeast may clump wetly to the tines as you lift the fork and set it aside. At first, it just looks like a bowl of slightly clouded water, like a puddle in a gravel road after hard rain. Keep watching. The yeast is alive, after all, and somewhere that we can’t see, things are happening. It looks like nothing but below the surface it’s beginning to eat the sugar and grow. Pretty soon, you’ll see a bubble rise to the surface. Then somewhere on the other side of the bowl, in another minute, another bubble. Maybe two. These bubbles rise, tiny, isolated, in ones and twos. Not touching. Separated across the surface of the liquid, drifting slightly if at all.
But things keep happening where we cannot see. The bubbles keep rising, small signifiers of life stirring, and sooner or later some group of bubbles reaches another group and they connect. A minute or two after that, the yeast blooms. All at once, a frothy foam rises to cover the whole surface. It’s time to make the bread.
This is a metaphor. Work with me.
Two. Re-Organizing the Art Supplies.
I have an art room, right in the middle of my house. It’s been a disaster zone. Everything has been piled up, stored haphazardly on tables and shelves, in carts and even on the floor. None of us can find anything, so nothing is getting done or made. No fun is being had. Enough is enough. The other night, everything went onto the table into a great heap and one piece of paper, one pen, one old draft or canvas or skein of yarn at a time, we said Yea or Nay and decided what we wanted to keep and what to do with it. It was a two-day job. The garbage is full and a little more of my wealth is sunk into the plastic tubs and bins that now hold and display everything clearly.
The table is available. Art can be made again.
Three. Two New Pieces
I started in the middle of the story though. There’s always a catalyst, just like that teaspoon of honey in the yeast bowl. I’m re-organizing the art supplies because last weekend two new pieces of furniture came home to Quility. (My home has a name. Yours does too—do you know what it is?) We didn’t know what we were going to find at the Antique Mall, but I had something in mind. An energy I was following. It’s been a dry and cold January. The drive over to Columbus was all brown fields and bare trees. Small frizzles of leftover snow here and there. The daylight is thin, yet. We’re past the solstice but the sun is still in its infancy, too young and new to warm anything. But I was warm with enthusiasm. We went looking for something I’d seen, a Victorian piece that was there a few weeks ago—half bookcase with glass door, half writing desk. To me, it looked unique and foible-ish, although as it turns out, that combination was pretty common for the Victorians. It charmed and amused me: an unlikely, hobbled together office-on-four-legs, as though they’d folded a gentleman’s library into a single piece of furniture. I loved the whimsy and surprise of it. I wanted to see it again. Something had grabbed hold. I had dreams and possibilities to pursue.
A second inspection however revealed it wasn’t as sturdy as I thought and it wasn’t as cheap as I hoped and in the end we knew it wasn’t the right piece. Disappointment is a heavy thing and my tread on the stairs echoed in my head. As we walked down from the third floor I stopped at the landing to the second floor so I could point out a big old secretary desk with rolltop, and a hutch perched on top, two glass doors in good shape. This grand old thing has been there as long as I have been visiting this particular antique mall. And on this particular January day for the first time, a red tag dangled from the handle—25% off. I couldn’t resist. Suddenly, everything fell into place. This was the piece I had come for and I didn’t even know it. I didn’t know where it would fit in the house or what I would do with it, I didn’t even know if it would fit in the van. I just knew sometimes you have to say yes to the Universe. We measured. Debated the options. A slight nudge revealed it could be broken down into two separate pieces and carried home that way. Voila. It was meant to be.
Now it holds art supplies.
Four: Transformations at the Twelfth Month
Remember that yeast?
Just like those individual little bubbles—so slow to form at first, and so far apart from each other—eventually connect and encourage and spread across the entire surface of the bowl. I find that’s how it is in my life too. Everything happens at once. I don’t intend it that way, but things grow where I can’t see them and stir themselves on the back burners of the imagination and then, when it’s time, they bloom.
Something is happening here at An Inviting Space, here in the twelfth month. Ideas that have been percolating in my head for a while are suddenly ready to emerge, and all at once. I’m okay with that as long as they all play nicely together and let me get some sleep when I need it.
Five: Baker’s Dozen Books
So, I think I said we got two pieces at the antique mall, just not the one I originally went for? There’s a story. Maybe this is the beginning of the story after all. I think I’ve written all of this upside down or inside out. Or maybe yeast doesn’t care about narrative arcs.
At the start of the year, I drew a picture. A sketch. I didn’t know what I ws going to draw, I was visioning forward into the year to come, feeling for next directions. Words weren’t helping (a hard admission for a writer) So I turned to a blank page in a different notebook and took a breath and poised the pen right above the paper. Show me, I whispered.
The pen moved in my hand.
Books.
And plants.
And a table to gather at.
I don’t know what to make of it, exactly, but I like the feel of it. It looks like something to lean into and discover, or maybe create.
I keep coming back to the sketch. I’ve taped it over my desk, so it’s straight ahead of my gaze each morning as I come in to wake up. Books. And plants. Chairs and tables.
It looks like a bookshop, was my first thought. A cozy little spot in a corner. It looks like An Inviting Space. And a place to find like minds.
Something’s happening here at the twelfth month threshold. An Inviting Space started with a breath. Why shouldn’t a bookshop start with a sketch? Before a brick and mortar. Before a corner shelf in the local community center. Before I cart a vanload of books to the next pop-up adventure. A seed of a bookshop. Something for me—for us—to sketch in, revise, and grow like a poem.
Baker’s Dozen Books exists in the lofty castles of my imagination and possibly now it may begin to exist in yours. Thanks to Bookshop.com, it also exists just a click away.
When you buy a book from my links, Baker’s Dozen Books (i.e., me) receives a small percentage of the sale and you receive a book in your mail easy as pie (!) and without supporting the behemoths and leviathans. That percentage, while small, is the drip drip drip that starts flow, that leads to Next.
And meanwhile, back at Quility, is there a “real” Bakers Dozen books? Yes. Because while that Victorian hobbledy-nob wasn’t quite right, we did find a second piece at the antiques mall, an old pie cabinet.
Every thing around us and within us, even the Universe, starts in seed form.
I found a pie cabinet and turned it into a bookshop. A lovely thing that tucks right into my writing space. Just the right size. Right now.
Don’t be afraid to start small. Don’t be afraid to start.
Six. Something to Hold On To
My mother is the most truly resilient person I know. She practices a grounded positivity, keeping her ears and eyes open for stories of hope, community, connection that she can share with the rest of us. See? she’ll say, Things are happening. Where we can’t see them. In yeasty little pockets.
Imaginary bookshops. Community circles. Shared meals. The small, hopeful, joyful things that happen where we can’t see them, under the radar and safely away from the interrogational glare of the algorithms.
Hold on to that.
xo
S
A Celebration Corner for sharing the Good Goodies
Today I’m reading this from La Bonne Vie.
Rachel also sent this gorgeousness in the mail (fun mail! fun handmade mail!) Thank you Rachel for the gift and the inspiration!
And I’ll share this image from the Presence-ing Circle I co-facilitated with my friend Jenn yesterday as a Pre-Inauguration moment to celebrate and remember our creativity and resilience and juiciness within a group. It was a wonderful day. Art, movement, community, and through the well-insulated windows, the river.
We’re celebrating one year of An Inviting Space with an online Zoom circle celebration. Bring your own cupcake! Wednesday, February 5. Mark your calendars! More info to come.
I go each day with gratitude for your presence and attention. Thank you, from my heart to yours.
I believe our world needs new stories. what if those stories lie curled within us like seeds? This is An Inviting Space to experience where and how we might discover, recover and nurture the secret, magical gardens of soul day by day. Starting where we are, as we are.
(Not quite ready to subscribe, but want to show a little gratitude? You can always buy me a coffee.)
Your attention and time are the true gifts. Thank you. xoS
Of course, I love the yeast imagery! It works so well here.
So much to think about here. Thank you🙏 and well said.