You guys, fuck. For the first time in 5 years, I missed my
post.
I’m sorry.
Ever since shortly after my first post earlier this month,
I’ve been thinking about what to write for my second. I noticed how much I’d
been relishing this year’s posts that were not just shared links, but little
windows into people’s lives, beloved’s lives, some halfway around the world,
some in Canada, some about loss and the fullness of love, about transition,
about the experiences that, in their aches and their arcs, make us remember
that we are ALIVE. Much, as it happens, like February.
I like your posts. They make me remember what it is to feel sparked.
To waiver and jolt and wriggle my butt and my whole puppy body with joy. Thank
you for that. Thank you for giving us tastes of the specific flavor of each of
your blessedly unique lives.
So, I guess now…me.
My life at the moment, in a few Sumi ink strokes:
Monastic
Laptop
Pajamas
Downton Abbey
Cattime
Words
This is my thesis year. I am writing towards the end of a self-imposed
exile/adventure/crucible played out over the past almost 3 years on the western
edge of the American Midwest.
Exile. Initiation. Return.
It’s an old cycle. Unlike the groovy vision quests presided
over by hawks and played out under the boughs of long-grown live oaks on plots
of land up near Sebastopol (experiences my Bay Area-based friends seemed to be
flying off to in droves), my time in the Midwest felt light years away from,
and, decidedly unsexy.
I wanted the live oaks and the raptors! I wanted bursts of
insight to explode in the solitude like blood stars behind my closed eyes! I wanted to feel the woo woo
splendor of a transcendent sunrise wash over my body after weathering a crazy
nightlong storm!
My life in Columbus, Ohio is a far cry from all this. And
recently I threw a little bit of an extended interior temper tantrum, a fit
that crescendoed as I fished my credit card out of my wallet with bare hands in
9 degree weather to denude my windshield of its overnight ice crust. I internally
groused as I scraped, thinking of all the metaphysically exalted, West Coast
anchored, land-based vision quests I was not on.
Ice misted the back into my face. My nose started to drip
uncontrollable snot. My scraping hand turned a raw meat pink from the cold.
What in the actual fuck. And then, I laughed out loud because I finally
realized.
This whole extended 3-year experience alone with my words in
the Midwest? Guess what; it is a vision quest.
Because it doesn’t look like the vision quests I’ve heard about and held in my
mind, I just didn’t recognize it til now. Surprise! And also, like, duh.
In the past 3 years, there have been so many times I’ve felt hot griddled by the weight of the verb phrase “have to”—
I have to get through two more years. I have to put up with colleagues who make me feel like I have nothing
special to offer. I have to plead
with the Chair of the English Department and the head of the MFA program NOT to
expel me (more on that story one-on-one if you care to hear more sometime).
But I recently realized something else. Actually, I don’t
have to do one fucking thing. Every one of these items is something that I GET to do.
A few days ago, I popped up on the blog to say that we GET
to experience February’s crucible for 11 more days (btw, we only GET FOUR MORE days!)
Thanks to an insight offered by my extraordinary therapist,
I’ve been thinking often and deeply about the profound difference it makes to
think of an experience as something we GET
to do rather than something we HAVE to
do.
It’s such a simple semantic shift. But, I’ve fixated on it. Switching
the verbs is just so thoroughly and miraculously empowering. The psychological
shift it creates is huge, even in my outlook on situations that feel
constricting and even unhealthy. Watch—
In February, we GET to
revisit profound love in the guise of mourning.
In the Mid-western winter, I GET to experience the weather in a very REAL way, a way that is a
metric fuckton more real than the way I experience weather in the temperate
world of the Bay.
I GET (got) to call all the shots in a romantic involvement
with a man who wasn’t able to be proactive himself and be the true and equal partner I want, and, as a result, I GET (got) to muster my strength when he wouldn't/couldn't to call it quits.
And, for these 3 years, I GET to go it alone. I GET to
integrate, deep into my soul bones, that I have the capacity to nurture myself.
I GET to be my own sanctuary.
Oh, and also,
we are all our own sanctuaries.
Let me say that again:
We are all
our own
sanctuaries.
Each of us is wonderfully resourced to give ourselves absolutely everything that we
each respectively need. There is no such thing as need. Aside from the need for
air, food, water, and shelter, we don’t need anything. The rest of it is just
what we want, what we choose
for ourselves. To wit: we don’t need
the Feb Project; we want it. And so,
we choose to co-create it together.
Every choice we make for ourselves, even when those choices
lead us to trouble or pain or narrow places, are exactly the right ones.
Through our choices, the good and the bad,
We GET to grow.
Love,
Allie
 |
| This wreath was made by an extremely cool artist named Grace D. Chin. I saw her work this past September hanging in a coffeeshop in Lawrence, KS as I made my Solo Woman Journey by car back across the country from CA to OH. See more of Grace's powerful and excellent work on Etsy and Instagram. She does custom orders. https://www.etsy.com/people/gracedchin https://www.instagram.com/gracedchin/ |
YES YES YES
ReplyDelete