Reclaimed love
I am returned to Scotland, back to this old house nestled in the hills. In the recent storms, I felt like we were in a snowglobe. Snow piled up, whited out the land around us, but the pines, great sentinels, seemed to protect us – a forcefield of green lawn and snow that floated lazily passed, no intention to settle, just an idle curiosity. The weather partnered with the magic of my new housemate to make a romantic, spiritual and female homecoming. This is not just a return, but it is a reclamation of a love for this place, that’s as deep and springy as the moss that coats the tress and the rocks.
It’s easy to get caught up with everything we’ve lost, has been impinged upon, or feels abnormal during such catastrophic times. It’s good to clock these things, helpful to own the suffering we’re experiencing. I wonder – do you also recognise what you’ve found or gained?
My birthday delivered some unexpected joy. I got to spend a relaxed day with the two gorgeous humans that made me first; was bestowed with a beautiful collective moment with friends far and wide, zooming in from lunch breaks and island evenings to see a superb magic show; and was gifted a tarot reading with a magnetic witch. Kairos turned up in my spread: the opposite of chronos, a time force that cannot be read in a linear or hierarchical way, that defies that capitalist instinct to measure our worth in the ways we spend our time, in what our time can affords us in material goods, in what our age dictates we should have festooned our lives with.
Kairos is the cycle and the spiral and the suspension. Kairos is the experience of living every second of the universe right this moment; it is the sensation of falling out of time; it is the groundhog day, whose edges can no longer be discerned. Becoming aware of kairos helped me ask myself: do I want to experience this cycle again?
Though it feels like the big changes were happening to us last year, this year feels, to me, like we can make changes, transform this peculiar experience. Removing things from my life that have ceased to be nourishing is part of it (and the ideas are the hardest to shift): so too is an invitation to stillness. This rolling stone is inclined to gather moss awhile. Not until the world opens up, not until everyone is vaccinated. But at least until I can see myself clearly again.
A beautiful email arrived in my inbox this morning. Dylan wrote It’s hard, now, isn’t it? To fully catch up with anyone? How do you paint a landscape like this one? I have experienced such a tumult of desire for ‘catching up’, couched in this impossibility. Gone are those moments when I can grab a friend’s face in my hands, letting my forehead rest along theirs to do the job of talking. Or that snatched half hour, hunching over a table in a bar, knees knocking together, talking of the conjuring ability of paint. The truth is, catching up via screen and text is inadequate and incomplete. But still, that desire exists. And for those that have insisted, with these impoverished tools, to be in touch – they take the heart of me.
I’m intensely grateful to have the friends I do. A kooky bunch of heart lead enthusiasts, all with their own special mission. Some of them have turned that mission toward bridging the gaps between our islands of solitude. When I floundered with the sheer futility of words, Erin sent me the sounds of her fingers remembering old piano practises. Ben shelves his zoom fatigue whenever I really need to see his stupid face (he would get the reference, I’m not being rude). Rob, always so gracious about doing better than most, being luckier than most, gives the gift of improvised music to inject the day with a feeling of spontaneity. Where I have been mired, reticent, blocked and slow, there has been such a generous understanding.
This week is the final of my Artist Way meetups. I’ve been following the path with eight other creatives and the group has kept me interested (as someone that’s suffered horribly in past times with being uninterested in myself, this really has been a godsend) and been a space for crunchy thoughts to manifest. Jami Attenberg, in her recent craft talk about writing through grief, describes a process that is such an apt description of what I’ve felt walking this path: You will write nothing for a while, and then a little bit and then all of a sudden more than you have in a long time. And on that day, you will be filled with a specific kind of joy because you will feel like your former self again but also a little different, too, older and wiser and connected to yourself in a special way. You will see yourself as something new. Something new to love.
Last week, my housemate Kenzie curated a ceremony for the new moon. I sat with three beautiful women as we listened to Kenzie’s song of welcome for the new cycle and for our tender hearts. We pulled a new moon spread each and my central card was the arresting ten of swords. This, in answer to the question ‘what seeds of expansion and evolution am I being invited to plant?’ looks violent – and in the sense of the decisive turn of a corner, perhaps it is. But it is also the symbol of having already done the hard work – you got here, now you can release yourself from the hurt and take that bold step into the future.
I notice that I have been wearing different mantles this last year, trying on what suits other people. In the company of my parents, I wore the mantle of domestic bliss. In the company of my lover, I wore the mantle of scuba-like adventuring. I see that, though there were pleasures to be had, those pleasures were not mine. I’m lucky to have had the experience. And now I’m weaving my own mantle. As I do so, these elbow lyrics are on repeat in the record player of my mind:
One night I sat you down and told you how
the truest love that’s ever found
is for oneself
You pulled apart my theory
with a weary and disinterested
sigh
So yes I guess I’m asking you To back a horse that’s good for glue
-Guy Garvey, elbow, Starlings -
You keep on backing, my friends, and I love you. Welcome to this year of self love, in which no plague or foisted chronos or broken heart is gonna stop us.