Solidity and Flow
A balance to familiarity and newness
I’ve moved four times since July. Soon, it’ll be five. I come into contact again with the creative process, to the places where steadiness and change coexist together at once in these acts of creation and dissolution, of packing up the car and the apartments. I am tasting what solidity and dissolving feel like lived out and embodied.Pack the car, roll the clothes, and stack the paper. Any lingering extras? Dispose. Each time lighter and swifter — that is the intention. Each time understanding motivations and intentions with more clarity, moving forward more finely tuned.
Each time I move, I endeavor to be better. By better I mean kinder, more compassionate in the process. There’s a lot to think about in the world: mental densities and pressures, numbers to crunch and things, plenty of them, to worry about, to worry, and worry. Despite the dense mental pressure of moving, there are grounding things I turn to. Sometimes I worry when the mind says worry; other times, I find enough space to distract myself, or to stay with the feeling, and breathe in deeply. Inhale and exhale. I tune into the ground — gravity, writing. I tune into the warmth of the days, glad for the sunlight. I tune into the seasons as they shift. I return to gentle movement.
I have been “good” at worrying for most of my life. Worry is a balance beam I am familiar with, a way of standing on one foot, of being a tree in a storm blown from side to side in the gusts of wind. A carefully, fine tuned mind can be an exquisite thing, and a benefit, when paired with ingredients or behaviors — like the ability to tune into life deeply; a way of paying attention to the details; a way of crafting love and practices of care for self, others, and the world. Held too tightly, though, and this energy flips to the other side, to the place where worry is a harsh grip and a closed-off view. With each year added, my intention is to soften, to learn recognize that holding is a harshness and a stuck place where no warmth gets through. That breathing into the stuck places, or finding some way of channeling them out (writing / walking / cooking painting / speaking) are the ways of making space for patience, trust, creativity, and open awareness to come through.
Predictability and uncertainty existing together at once is something that working with ink has taught me, that fluid teacher, that creative altar. Crafting lines and shapes on paper. In the decade since I started practicing suminagashi, balancing ink on water and trusting the flow of the process is inherent, is like breathing as the wet ink hits the dry page. I show up to my workbench and my ink and water bath and realize and remember that both can be true at once, many things valid: that despite discomfort, grounding can still be present. I endeavor to I learn to breathe into multitudes.
In the tumult of movement, shifting, and change, some things stay constant. This morning, I walked on the sidewalk and felt the simple pleasure and pressure of the earth. I felt the concrete, the simple act of walking down the street. If we are dedicated to resolving, to aiming and intending, as this moment in the year inclines us to, I wonder how it is that these efforts are already present in our small, daily ways. How are the aims we’re setting already present and being embodied? What are the small actions that we take daily to build toward these goals? The more I learn and shift and move around this city, borough to borough, place to place, in the flow with life as a breathing thing, the more I endeavor to stay present and connected with that intention to grow, the more I learn that home is a place I return to first and foremost in in myself, in my small daily acts. It is the small, daily acts of care, the simple practices, favoring the simple and mundane over the overwhelmingly complex that these actions start to take root.
In the four times I’ve moved since last July, soon to be five, I have learned each time new things, and I notice how the layers of value and care shift around, grow, or fade away. In each of these moves, many factors change (locations, trains, grocery stores) while some stay the same — like how I write to you every Tuesday, teach some of the same classes or iterations on the same few, walk often, source out favorite restaurants, look to the sky and the skylines, identify the birds by their calls and start every day devoted to the morning, staring into the hypnotic slow bloom of the slow circular pour of my morning coffee.
There are days I am terrified, days where I am steady, days where I am unclear, but ever my intention is to embodying the flow of trusting, of learning to trust both the moments where the lens blurs and others where it shifts and comes back into focus. This is where intentions come in. They are the focal points. They are the perspectives to return to and see the world through. They are the structures that hold the flow through the art of the everyday, the ground for the river of life to rush through. I go back to the small, steady, stabilizing practices, on both the easy and more complicated days days. I turn breath, food, air, movement, color, taste, smell, tactility, and a deep self-earth-other-friendship-trusting-life connection.
As this new year starts, and winter steps firmly and fully into this seasonal room, let’s breathe in a balance: to the places where seemingly impossible aims are fully envisioned and believed in, while not losing sight or sense of the present moment in the intricate inching forward of the everyday. I wonder if, instead of aiming for lofty goals, aims and intense aspirational visions in this wintering time at the start of the year, instead of putting pressure on an already pressured year, what happens if we endeavor for endurance, for steady and stable and sustainable actions?
Creative practice is the foundation. It is the sturdy, stable base we turn to. They are the practices of reflection and expression that hold us through the undulations of life. Creative practice is the relationship that we have between ourselves and the vast unknown, that which is being created, packed away, or dissolved, and those loud and quiet whispers in between us as solo selves and the rest of existence. With creativity, we can collaborate with the dance of life. We notice what we are we dedicated to, and work toward those intentions. We notice what abundance can we make with what is present now, we use what we have, we connect to what we can, we try our best from day to day, and continue. May we endeavor in this season and the wide year ahead to move with consistent effort toward the vast horizons, the far reaching aims and dreams, the long roads, and celebrate the mundane and the practical along the way.
What efforts are you building toward? How are you finding ease from moment to moment? What helps you find solidity and flow?
upcoming experiences:
1/2 Journaling for Intention
1/10 Suminagashi Basics
1/15 Bookbinding: Casing In
1/17 Beginner’s Journaling
1/24 Taste + Write: Meditating on the Senses
1/31 Bookbinding: Pamphlet