Reflections on what gets in the way

small brave thing #235

I’ve placed payments on hold as I reconfigure this Space, but if you feel gratitude for this post and want to support me, you can always buy me a delicious beverage.)

Hello beautiful human,

Some mornings—many mornings—I have no idea quite how to get to where I don’t even yet know I’m headed.

Usually that’s an abstract statement about my life or the writing of these Reflections, but a few weeks ago when my younger was home we walked downtown for coffee. Construction had torn up the streets so getting to the café at all was a bit arduous, especially in the flip-flops I had slipped on. We agreed we would drink our beverages on-site to rest and give ourselves a break before the walk home. Unfortunately, also in the café sat a man with two young children and a great big Bible on the table. He calmly instructed them, at evangelizing volume, the reasons why the little boy’s name would be listed in that good book and the little girl’s would not. Unconvinced by his reasons and uninterested in hearing more, we left with our lattes, and wandered in a new direction back out into the spring morning.

It was the sort of day spring promises but rarely delivers, idyllic and flower-laden. Our footsteps took us to the river, over a bridge, and under and amid the blooming trees. Sweetness wafted through the air and we talked of the upcoming summer and possibilities and then our unlooked-for path brought us to a new alleyway and a discovery.

A behind the scenes nook off an alley, the backside of a building next to a parking lot. A place unlikely to be seen, and somehow someone had still taken the time to paint sunshine and eggyolks and brighten the place into cheer. Someone believed this overlooked and unlikely little corner mattered enough to paint and keep it swept out. Not because anyone would see it. Just because.

The obstructions that morning became our path and brought us to surprise and delight.

2.

The other day my social media feed showed me an offer from a press: I could write 21 poems in 21 days and at the end they’d turn it into a book And then I’d have a book! Of my poems!

I kept scrolling.

Another window popped up—a cheery middle aged woman (white) (with very white teeth) celebrating with me that she has already earned thousands of dollars this year alone selling hundreds of books that she didn’t even have to write! AI does all the writing and she makes all the money! And I could too! It’s easy!

I stopped scrolling.

Something is getting lost in all the noise.

3.

Lately I’ve been reading A.S. Byatt’s novel Possession. A novel for people who love novels, and poetry, and the history and deep layering of novels and poetry across the centuries. It’s a book written and published long before Facebook or Google or Twitter or TikTok changed the definition of “author” and how we think about—and receive—written language.

It reads differently in ways it’s hard to describe—I’ve been searching for words for weeks now. Somehow, time moves at an older, an alternate rhythm and pace, not just in the narrative, but in the very unfolding of the sentences. Byatt wrote a book for the tactile page and the binding glue rather than the cold blue glare of screens. Her prose takes a slower, winding and particular path. There’s an attentiveness to the granularity of the world, rather than the pixelated. The clauses and paragraphs curl, flutter, shimmer and divert. Meaning glints like a school of minnows, darting amid the dapple of a sunlit stream, rather than declaring itself, obvious as a flow chart. It lives just under the surfaces of her paragraphs and she is content with that. Perhaps, for her, that’s part of the point of the writing.

4.

I delete some paragraphs I was going to include and hope the minnows will dart by.

5.

The obstructions become the path.

That’s not a truth we humans much like. We keep trying to remove obstructions, smooth the way, outsource our struggle and delegate discomfort. That’s easier done for some of us than others, and we name this ability privilege. It’s an awkward term for the purpose but it’s the one we have.

When the path is smooth, something gets lost.

Look, I’m all for flow and ease. If you know me or have worked with me you know one of the pillars of my teaching is to follow flow and ease and ask on a regular basis, “What would make this easier?” But that doesn’t mean we don’t face challenges. It means, we learn to be like water and flow with and around those challenges, to learn from them, not depend on someone else to handle them for us.

Our difficulties and challenges become the path. That is one of the truths of all creative work that the conversation around AI seems to miss or avoid. It is in the figuring out of plot, or problem, tangle or twist that we get where we didn’t even know we needed to go. How to capture the line or the quality of light onto the canvas. How to get from one theme to the next in the bridge of the song. How to create justice between us. How to alleviate suffering and put food on our tables and the tables of our neighbors. How to govern ourselves with dignity and respect and make space for everyone’s pursuit of happiness. These are not inconveniences to outsource. They are not data patterns for the algorithm to crunch and spit out while we go on vacation. They are the soul-making stuff of human endeavor.

6.

Elizabeth Bishop spent twenty years working on her poem “The Moose.” Nowadays I find it hard not to reach for my phone every few minutes if it is on the desk beside me. I put it in the other room then distract myself with worry I’ll miss an important message. The minnows flash by then disappear again. Can I write a sentence that doesn’t declare itself like the fat blatt of a brass section?

We wandered across a bridge and made a discovery. Without the construction and the proselytizing, no wander. Without the wander…

To many conversations about AI and convenience want to take the wander away. “It saves me so much time,” a common refrain. Time is the real wealth and everyone promises ways to save it…but what if we go about the hoarding and saving all wrong? What do our time savers save us? We can have a book in 21 days, but a book of…what? What if the current tech-fueled obsession with ease, speed, immediate reward are not actually gaining us more time?

I like my dishwasher as much as the next person, but I am beginning to believe we don’t gain time through time-saving convenience and certainly not through AI. What if, paradoxically, counterintuitively, time stretches like taffy, pools and eddies at our ankles, when we take more of it for our tasks? And actually do the tasks ourselves, with our hands, our bodies, our minds?

This morning, perched between May and June at the very cusp of summer, before coming to the desk I went outside and walked past my gardens. I crushed basil and marigold in my hands and brought them inside with me. The smell of basil, with its slight hint of licorice, steeps me deep in the marinara of summer afternoons. Marigold—a scent like no other in the world—carries for me the knowledge of encroaching school buses and the coming chirp of crickets in cool grass, a human awareness of the turn of time’s wheels caught in the scent of a flower. Within the cup of my hands, spring, summer, fall…seasons collapse here at the desk and I am once again in the realm of the lyric, the body, the everpresent NOW.

Someone took time to paint the unseen backside of a bar yellow not for likes or shares but just to honor the integrity of the space.

Someone spent twenty years with the unfinished draft of a poem up on the wall, waiting for the right words to come in the right order.

And someone slowed enough this morning to ask a few new questions in a way that still does not satisfy her, and again she lifts her hands to inhale the scents of her garden as coffee cools in the cup, and outside the shadows of the tall grass dance along the fence in the sun.

xo
S

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Listening for New Stories
a listening circle held by Sarah Sadie of An Inviting Space

We are what we listen to…circle with me and take time to listen for each other and the quiet voices within. (Photo by Mohammad Metri on Unsplash)

Experience the slowing of time with me in a listening circle. Scheduled for June 18, right at the brink of solstice, we’ll make time together to listen to the messages and gifts of nature, to each other, and to ourselves, to discover new stories and next steps.

Wednesday, June 18

3 PM UK/10 AM Eastern/9 AM Central/7 AM Pacific
or
11 PM UK/ 6 PM Eastern/5 PM Central/3 PM Pacific

Come to one or both. Share the registration link above with a friend, your sister, your circle. We’ll have opportunity to listen to each other, to the more-than-human natural world, and to ourselves as we lean in to the possibility of recovering and remembering new stories and potential next steps. This is a free offering. Registration required (links to register above)

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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.

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A Celebration Corner for sharing the Good Goodies

Twenty years to make this poem, by Elizabeth Bishop.

A few songs from themes of today’s Reflection…

The Circle Game, by Joni Mitchell

Yellow Submarine, by the Beatles

The 59th Street Bridge Song, by Simon and Garfunkel

Your support is welcome, and your attention and time are true gifts. Thank you.