Gathering the Drops
The art of thoughts repeating
If you’re in New York City, and curious to spark creative practice, an invitation: I’m guiding a bookmaking workshop, followed by a journaling session this Tuesday, September 24 and a workshop on making paper roses from marbled paper on Wednesday, September 25 — both in Brooklyn. If you enjoy these letters, and want to work together, learn more about one on one sessions. Not in NYC, or prefer to explore on your own time? Try a guided journaling workshop. Paid Subscribers, a new Seasonal Session arrives later this week in celebration of the Equinox. Another along with another Colorway lands soon, too. To all new readers here, welcome! Start here.
Daylight comes. A new day. A gift of hundreds of minutes gathered up into twenty four hours. Sunlight is a candle burning along the skyline — a calming guide, a focal point. Light shines through the horizon. First thoughts come. Eyes opening wide to the skyline. Stretch from one plane of consciousness to another and notice as the drops of thought take form. This morning space is the first instance of choosing. Toward the horizon, I turn my gaze inward, invoking the morning, breathing wide and slow, stretching.
Bridging the gap between wake and sleep is a sliver of time for seed planting — a space where we can wake, breathe, notice our thinking. City lights hide in the wakening daylight. Birds call. Coffee to make. Ever, the daylight comes — and with each thought, breath, minute a chance for iteration. For choosing conscious action, nourishing thought. For consciously waking up and whispering into the dawn hours: this is the intention for these daylight hours, these minutes, this day, then taking action. Minute by minute. Drops of time amassing.
A thought is a thought. Thoughts are drops of mind, a force insisting on coming whether conscious or not. A single drop of water repeated enough times carves stone; enough repeating water over time creates a canyon.
Gather thoughts in a day and notice. A drip, a river, a flood, an ocean. A day is one thousand, four hundred, forty minutes. Sixty-thousand thoughts or so flow through in the span of those minutes. In those glimpses of consciousness, creativity flows with us in our power to choose. A mind made up of curiosity, intrigue, and love flows differently than one where the river flows towards fear. From the flow of thinking, comes life. From the river of thought, blooming.
A thought becomes an action in the body, an expression out in the world, an interaction between thought, self, and each other. Our thinking can be creative; our conscious thinking, choosing, creating is imperative; and the ways that we fill our minds impacting the iterations of our days. Pause, ground, notice, and ask is this curious or constricting? Is this creating, sustaining or destroying?
A thought arrives and leaves. A wave. A day arrives and leaves. A tide. A day is one thousand, four hundred, forty minutes; of those minutes, some twenty thousand breaths. How to slow down the mind for conscious thinking? Drop into your body. Slow your breath.
Drops gathered up into rivers of action and belief amassed over our lives like a landscape, carve out shorelines, plateaus, canyons. A day is a time to gather up our energy with our intentions, check on the ground of our living, pull up ideas from the soil, and harvest what’s nourishing. Drop into the flow of the day and and wonder is this though watering, supporting, maintaining, or depleting?
We are each a constellation of ideas, actions, and small moments. Our cells are starlight coalesced, atoms amassed in concert with air, water, fire of the sun, land, oxygen, sound, vibrating breath, each other — a symphony of synapses taking form.
Creating, sustaining, destroying, crafting canyons in our minds, carving our understanding out through the actions of our lives in the world. Word, breath, thought, shape, pattern, action, however small, amasses over into something of density and form. Which is to say that what we choose to focus on matters, and that our matter adds up. Miracle, particle, the thoughts we choose to sift though, and hold onto, and belief contribute to the shapes of our days, and how our lives form.
A season is a thing repeating. The leaves now are orange-bright, yellowing. Soon, most of the green will fade. A pattern of change, repeating. For now, gathering up the daylight; gathering up thought, idea, breathing. Watching patterns. Watching the lines on the streets repeating, feeling the ocean crash again, again. Hearing rhythms of the trains passing, or noticing the striations of rock as evidence of the dance of heat and mineral, in the earth forming. Feeling into the slow, even pace of feet on the ground, body breathing like a day, in and out. An air of anticipation exhales into this seasonal shifting.
What I learn from the heart, the sunrise, the heat of the season of summer is what what I gather together in the space of the mind for September. As summer leaves, I let it go. I’m choose to remember the warmth and the daylight, the lessons from sweat in a world warming. Yes, I choose the thought that feels like sun, cool breeze, Earth and steady. The season, a drop in the water of time, like the sunlight, like breathing, seems to say, as if often does: keep going.
On the verge of this changing season, what are you repeating? Choosing? Anticipating? Releasing? What are you grounding down into, playing around with? What stone are you forming with thought, and what kind of tools are you wielding?
Nourished by, Nourishing:
This week I’m inspired by the writing from
— whose recent piece asks a question I’m returning to in my own life lately, of faith or fear. Reading about iteration and creative process, and the impacts of mindfulness on behavior change. I’ve been diving into Dr. Ellen Langer’s work, with more on mindfulness versus mindlessness here. Here’s a playlist for September.Classes and Experiences:
Join in for Pamphlet Stitch Bookbinding and Journaling on September 24, and Marbled Paper Roses on September 25. Explore the guided journaling library here, and sign up for some of October’s classes below. More to come in the weeks ahead.
Let’s Work Together: Creative Life Sessions
Creative Life Sessions are here! Together, we’ll transform blocks into expressions; generate a grounding, foundational practice; reconnect you to the innate creativity within you; and restore your mind, body, and breath. Schedule a session below.
