Tension, Release
Books and Seeds in the Ground of the Season
The morning began with a book in hand. Pages, folded, stacking together. Cloth, boards, glue. Mind and hands as companions, working in tandem to think and make. Inching forward. I am tying knots, gathering stitches together, bridging the divide between pages. A long thread, waxed and wound like time hooked onto the end of the metal needle. I stitch together pages, feeling the tension of the thread — pulling tight and releasing. Noticing how and when to release.
I know to loosen my grip at the neck of life when my body and mind are tensing. Grip at the thought. No space. Breath, small. Like stitching and thread, we can feel our way into the dense mind, then notice, and in the noticing, soften. This is what I learn from the books, at the bench, in the world: that our bodies, tied up with our minds, are nature, like seasons, the weather, everything ephemeral — a visitor, like Rumi says, in this life like a guesthouse.
I know about life through making and body and mind, mostly. The practice of making books, paper, of writing, paired with the practices of movement and mind (walking, yoga, hiking, fair weather running) inform my own navigations in the world. I’ve learned about overextension the hard ways, through college years and years of burnout working many jobs at once, while playing music, and studying books and printmaking. I sense the density of tension, what life feels like when I have embodied too much from this time. It’s this limit and learning it that informs much much of what I write, make, and do now in the world.
In those days, I didn’t know how to soften. I didn’t know about drinking water, taking a beat, taking good care, basking in the sunlight, tuning into nature, taking a deep breath, taking a walk if only to soothe my brain, how to ask for help, how to relax. I only knew work, and doing so in excess, an excess that I accepted normal, and as the only way of being. Later, I’d come to learn by experience and experiment the body’s natural inclination toward balance. How the landscape of the mind and the body are both soothed when close to the earth, the dirt, when cooking, by fire, when writing, in friendship, toward a softening by lakeside, by night sky, by road trip, by water. Through tension and its accumulations, I learned how and when to release.
The nature of life is constant change, cycles of it, and I am learning, since then. I listen to the signs. I tap into the whirring mind, listen when body says rest. I sleep. In the creative process, creative acts of any kind, we notice the tension, and when we can, encourage release. Much of writing, creating, breathing, being, and bookbinding, require this attention to balance — noticing moments of challenge when needed, and then the exhalation.
Sunday comes, morning, and I am holding the book in my hand. I pull the thread. I stitch together memories. I dig through archives of the mind for techniques. I hold together ideas, some that take form, and some that get released. I feel the dense mind as I’m stitching. Then, an exhale: I release and leave my apartment, down the steps, down more, into the vessels, underground, the channels of the city. Then I am gone, out of the neighborhood, the familiar. I take the train an hour uptown, arriving to museums like catacombs, soft murmurs, stone walls, crowds, each of us strangers revering in someone else’s stitches, strokes, sculptures. The sun shines and I soften.
Hellebore, mockingbird, jays. A much needed break. Crowds of us gather around stained glass, stone, nettle. After a winter underground, daffodils on the hillside, city park, everything emerging. I look wide to the river, I remember how, hours before, I’d been looking close, fixating on each stitch, so small, amassing these tiny increments of thread into braid, into book, hand cramping.
This moment to pause is a chance for perspective. That afternoon was the exhale, release. To remember body in moment, in time, in place. To get out of mind, out of thinking. A plant into sunlight. To the city and its wide views and intricacies. The ways each of us overlap. Passing by strangers, I think of us all like stitches. We are there in the hallways, on the streets, we are all passing each other, catching trains. I think of each person passing, embodied. Everyone has a pulse, a family, a history, some thread of care or fragment that they belong to, each person like a whole book of memories, a story, layers and layers of history and time, each with some fragments of joy, need, delight, hope, pain. Momentarily, we are all stitched together, and then we’re released.
Later, when I finish the book, my mind breathes a kind of ease. The thread, waxed, knotted, warmed in my daylight hands, cooling with the evening. I check the stitches. They’re not perfect, but that’s fine, and it’s good enough. I feel the edges of my focus start to wane, sense the edge of the day, and turn my attention again to millimeters of book, glue, paper. Then focus on the breath. Each day is made in the small actions we take, these tiny stitches we amass, the gathering of our ideas like stitches and threads, our stories, our memories, desires, and diligences, our wide views and intricacies, our practices of continuing, enduring, and tending. I think of the earth, remember water, remember to take care, remember sunlight, remember to take a breath. The day begins and then ends. Inhale, and then the release.
Prompts for our pages and practices this week:
What does the body say, lingering from winter into this new season? What can you shake off, into the earth, down into the ground, into life, or the ground of the page? What’s a steady growing seed in your life, something growing, ready to move forward into the season? What’s emerging, out of the ground, stalk in the soil, blooming up and out? What’s giving you air, balance, nutrients? What’s helping you move through the day?
Here’s what we’re making this week: Coptic Stitched Books, and Suminagashi Papers. When I’m not writing, recording, or making books, I’m teaching classes. Curious to support your creative practice? Join in for an April session.
classes and upcoming experiences:
Join in for creative practices with me in NYC and beyond:
4/4 Bookbinding: Coptic Stitch
4/4 Suminagashi Basics
4/14 Bookbinding: French Link Stitch
4/14 Ottobar Maker’s Market [baltimore]
4/21 Earth Day Journaling
4/21 Suminagashi 2: Meditating on the Landscape
4/24 Bookbinding: Casing In
4/24 Build Your Journaling Practice
4/25 Suminagashi Basics [baltimore]
4/30 Journaling for Intention [online]
New additions for paid subscribers arrive soon: more to dig into; more writing, more to work with, more practices, more essays. In celebration, we’re offering 30% off paid subscriptions between now and April 10. Curiosity blooms, too; I’d love to know: what brings you back to Creative Nourishment each week?
nourished by, nourishing:
Took my creativity on a date to the Cloisters, so this week’s inspiration well is refilled, and feeling grateful. Nourished by rare books, heart beating hard after a long walk uphill, growing soft earth, earth growing, Inwood Park. Re-reading The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, a favorite — more on Bookshop, here. This week I’m baking these, recipe from Mother Grains, cubes of sweet potatoes, listening to the songs of my younger days, namely Linger, Y Control, and Sunday. What’s grounding, energizing, nourishing you? Reply here, or tag your reflections @OdettePress
