On the Frozen Lake
Avian walkways, slivers of noticing, slowing down, and paying attention
Had I not looked up from the endless space of my phone in the instant when I did, I would have no doubt missed the geese, and the awe of witnessing them tenderly walking into the fog across the frozen lake. Here, the vitality of attention. Here, the gift of a gaze. In the distance, the temporality of the season, the phenomenon of temperature, winter unfolding. Here, the gratitude in realizing what I was witnessing. My intuition sparked then, something magnetized, some sensing, an unnamed attuning, and with it followed my attention.
In the quick space of looking up I noticed the flock of birds as they carefully made their way off into the distance. The fog rising in waves off the surface of the lake, the lake frozen solid into a terrain of ice — this temporarily solidity became an avian walkway, a potential that I imagined the birds seemed to be eager to experience and partially confounded by, based on how slowly and carefully they traveled across the ice sheet. One step, then another, and a slight slip, and then continuing. Geese, mallards, seagulls, swans, sparrows all tested the edges of this this momentary terrain, coalescing into masses together.
But I hadn’t been paying attention. I was thinking about emails. I was thinking about destruction: environments, landscapes. I was worrying about housing. I was ruminating on despair, my thinking spinning. I was avoiding, really — scrolling for a new song, attempts at relief, momentary disconnection, something to get me away from this moment, this body, this mind shrouded in fog, this day encased in rain.
The birds come along, often, as my teachers, nature urging an onward-ness, a force intuiting a guidance toward pausing. One breath, one glance in another direction was the sliver of time it took in that instant to tune into a new view, to witness something small but confounding. Here, now this inner nature comes up and says.
I am learning how the deep hearts of life exist in these glimmers — in these acts of looking up, looking out, widening perspective, tuning in, sensing deeply, and paying attention. To feel, with gratitude, the moments when some phenomena occurs to pull us from our reveries, the times when conversations spark into something glowing, glances of understanding or instinct at the right moment passing, looking up with enough time to catch the trains, twisting the body in such a way where an idea once lodged deep within the psyche unlocks and unfolds takes form, the right temperature in which something fluid becomes solid for enough time to walk across. The gift of just enough time to sense a momentary beauty, a flash of astonishment, a chance for connection. Being tuned in and attentive enough at the exact moment something that happens — what a gift, despite the horrors, despite the heaviness, despite the gray days, to be alive, to be present, to be the witness to this sliver of existence no matter how temporary or brief. As Mary Oliver writes,
Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
There are moments that demand the urgency of our action and attention, and the swiftness of our instincts, without a doubt: our current climate crisis, housing challenges, and genocides, to name a few. Coexisting within that same fabric of time are gifts of the now moment that carry with them the potential for awe, for wonder, unfurling seeds of the potentials for gratitude. The abundance of small momentary things. Had I not looked up, I would have missed the joy from witnessing the geese, the tenderness of their attempts and successes across this icy terrain, and then later, the ways the drops of rain hung unhurried on the edges of trees, the bluejays and how they bantered in the pines, and the lone white squirrel chewing something at the top of the tree, and the start of new mushrooms. Some days I wake up and in my mind ask for miracles, and then I am reminded that they exist in the here right now, evidenced in the smallest things.
Much of my work personally has been a continual act of learning when to speed up, and learning how to tune in and slow down. Now I am an agent against urgency, physical body a channel for deeply sensing and feeling. I claim this now as a strength, this sensitivity. Urgency is palpable: it degrades our connections, erodes our soils, souls, and planet when it becomes the expected ground or the baseline. It is a core ingredient in the chokehold of white supremacy. I see, feel, and sense the way it slips into bodies, our days, our psyches, and our exchanges, seeking to benefit from separation in place of connecting. Urgency’s fast pace feeds the machines of industry, forcing us unnaturally at full throttle speeds against each other and these landscapes, quickness in place of slowing. There are times where the tigers of life come at us, yes, and we must run, and we must go as fast as we can to escape. Then, there are moments of slowing down, of recalibration. These slow moments are necessary.
A week later, the ice is melted, the day is another shade of gray. The birds are there again, and swimming. Now I am the one at the shoreline, now it’s my curiosity lapping at the fluid places that were once solid last week days before those avian walkways. I walk the longer loop around the water’s edge to push my capacity and remember the building of strength in slow, deliberate ways. I see the geese, who turn for a minute and see me, too. They’re doing what we all seek, I think, instinctively, innately, inherently, in some way: they’re gathering food, gathering together, cleaning their feathers, tending to each other, using their voices, diving below the surface, seeking what that need, resting on something solid, and anticipating the timing for new shorelines. This is not a metaphor but a moment of sameness and connection. We are more similar than stories of separation would benefit from us believing.
The birds, often, are my teachers. They remind me of the nature of living: flying together, swimming when one calls, searching for food, looking toward stimuli and in directions. My avian guides remind me to find a place to land, to turning inward into the soft feathers of our own skin, to look up just in time to see the shock of navy, where I am astonished by the moment of blue feathers the mallard hides underneath her gray plumes, where I stand in awe at this small moment of pigment, this unexpected color on this gray day. To witness this is like like a sliver of blue sky that passes through the cloud cover on a dense day. I learn savor a slowness when possible. To look up and out, and dive down face first into the waters when I can. To walk with curiosity, one step, one slip, then another step, and another again.
Who benefits from our distractions? From our disconnections? And what are we connected to? What astonishing things arise when we can slow down and pay attention? What are you paying attention to? What feels solid this week, what’s fluid? what’s melting, or somewhere in between? What are you slowing into or picking up the pace of this week? Who or what are your teachers?
upcoming experiences:
1/31 Bookbinding: Pamphlet Stitch
2/4 Greenpointer’s Market
2/7 Suminagashi Cards
2/13 Online: Letter Writing
2/13 Online: Journaling for Love
2/15 Taste + Write: Meditating on the Senses
2/21 Ink/Play new!
2/21 Suminagashi 2: Meditating on the Landscape new!
nourished by, nourishing:
Reading | best american essays, moved this week by “on likeability” by lacy m. johnson and “silence breaking woman” by therese marie malhot.
Making | plans, dinners. map journals. videos, here too. if you’re in baltimore, i made a small selection of limited edition, handmade blue marbled notebooks for the upcoming design concept store at blue light junction. go see them for me!
Enjoying | favorite theaters, anatomy of a fall, ice season