Wide Wingspan, A Run on the Edge of Summer
The hum of a practice, heartbeat, and finding a sharper vision
September workshops are live, and Mini Lined Heirloom Journals arrive for you soon. Read to the end updates on a new offerings and upcoming experiences. Paid Subscribers, you’ll receive another Colorway essay this week on the bold, bright red of sumac with a recipe for tahini-almond stuffed dates with salted sumac chocolate.
On the corner on the way to the river where I run each morning the sunlight is a golden honey pouring through. It signals the start of the day, new, wrapping its arms through cloud cover, tendrils of light like running fingers gently through the hair of dense skies, weaving warmth through mornings, making its way to the ground through the cover of trees surrounding my apartment. Each morning is a rhythm — a ground, a steadiness repeating: I exit my building, exhaling dreams and heft from the night before, and inhale as I walk through the open door, feet on the pavement.
Then, the weather of life moves through. Grief is a cloud, a temporary brain fog embodied. I feel heavy, but I am there — my feet are running, body coasting along the East River, both the river and I humming along, continuing in the same direction. I arrive to my pacing. I let it be what it is. I am at the edge of what I know to be a temporary density with my head down, thinking how the moment is heavy like the sky I’m seeing, thinking if I could only dig my head into my the glow of my phone at the right angle, the right time, and find the right image or phrase that this clench would plateau and the taloned-grip of feeling would go away.
Instead, I put my phone down. Instead I shift from thinking. Instead remember presence, embodying the attention of sky, heart, breathing. Instead, I look out to skyline, eyes wide, tuning into my surroundings. In the near-distance something is moving; my body already tracking toward this something as I turn my gaze, vision focusing in. There, fast against the skyline, a peregrine falcon coasting on the current of air, its wingspan wide across the horizon.
The moment is an affirmation: a visual cue breaking through the cloud cover of thinking reminding me how soon, the fog, embodied and weathered, will lift. The bird arrives is a momentary talisman — an answer to the request I’d planted into the quietness of those mornings, whispering into the ether of wonder for weeks since I’d first heard it calling, its cries wide and high from underneath the bridge. What does a falcon look like when it flies? What form does it take when it’s soaring? Let me see the bird in flight, I think, and for weeks, nothing. Until that morning — until suddenly I am sprinting, running alongside the soaring bird, river, too, wings wide and eyes, held up in astonishment.
A frequent inhabitant of shorelines, peregrine falcons are one of the fastest birds on the planet. Known for their abilities to dive earthward at astonishing speeds, these birds rely on the streamlined shape of their wings to draw them into speeds of over 200mph in the downward arch of their hunting. Perching high, their strong eyes draw them wide — upwards of a mile away. For best success, these birds must rely on their agile flights, as much as the acuity of their honed vision.
Grief is a lens, joy is a lens, too — each a way to see that feels acute. A bird flies past us for only a minute and if we’re lucky, we sense it and see it. The more we notice, the more compounds. Joys and loss each show life in its sharpness, contrast, ranges of clarity, tuning us into what we love, what we feel deeply, what we turn our attention to, noticing what’s present for us in the absence of loss, what’s in the present moment, and what currents of wind we’re aiming our wingspans toward. Our visions keep us tuned in to what we care about and into the winds of living, where we’re headed, where we’re going.
To see the bird and to write, each, are the ways I say to life, let me feel my own quickening heartbeat. Let me run with some joy toward spark of idea, inspiration, insight, intuition, and notice what comes next. Let me feel the fierce understanding of life as it hums through me, grief like a storm, but heartbeat like a river: constant. Running.
Everything is in the process of living and dying, dying and reviving again in some new form. Still, I run. Still, I write. That’s the process: whether perched or soaring, wings tucked or widening, continuing. The bluejay arrives and calls by my window, then the mourning doves, and still the quiet mornings, each where I wake up and return to myself. My practice is the ground. Still I pour the boiled water through the thin metal gooseneck over my coffee grounds on ceramic cone and paper filters twice each morning. Still I run. I put my shoes on, tie the laces, and put the key in the car. Still the car turns on. Sunlight pours through the waking window.
Even on days when life feels at a standstill, something moves. Still the river is rushing, still our bodies are breathing, each heartbeat a continuation. In variances of presence and distance, some visions clearer and not, if you listen in, you’ll hear wings flap: bird wing, and your own.
PS. If you’re seeing some vision, clarity, or aim, you’re in luck: I added my journaling workshop library to the Odette Press shop — so now you can pair writing experience and contemplative practice with the fresh beautiful expanse of a journaling page. Try Values & Visions: Journaling for Intention or Journaling for Focus, to imagine wide and hone your ideas in.
Let’s Work Together: Creative Life Sessions
Creative Life Sessions are live! Imagine: one on one session for you to support yourself, guide your creative practice, and focus in. Together, we’ll transform your blocks into expressions; generate a grounding, foundational practice; reconnect you to the innate creativity within you; remind you of your intentionality and capacity; restore your mind, body, and breath into your best friend and creative ally; bring your ideas into actionable steps and tangible ideas; and shift your perspective wider, to encompass a grounded and inspired creative view. Is this you?
From the Studio:
I’ve been working on a small release for you this season and can’t wait for you to have these in your practices, mornings, homes. Small journals, big visions, these new journals arrive to Odette Press this week — and for the first time with lined pages. Watch more on this release here. Paid Subscribers, you’ll learn about these first. This batch is small, and very limited. For those of you who have been requesting lines over the years, now is your time! Subscribe below to learn about this arrival first.
Classes and Experiences:
Nourished By, Nourishing:
Zucchini and sharp cheddar pastries, arugula salad. Motherwort and lemon balm tea — more on these herbs Northern beans with lemon and cheddar. Remembering a love of the oven, and warm food. A friend asked me recently about my grocery list — that’s up now on Instagram, along with some of what I’m cooking. I love our Pocket Map Journals for lists.
Paid Subscribers, another Colorway essay arrives for you later this week on sumac red, with a recipe for tahini-almond stuffed dates with sumac salted chocolate.