four days in november
and a sketchbook I've decided to keep
At first I thought I lost this footage, but then my computer just said it was out of storage. So, with some reluctance to spending the rest of my day deleting files, the space was cleared and the video was made and now I watch it over and over, reliving those four days in November.
It’s a peppermint chapstick that sticks to my lips like honey. It’s the backdrop of snow falling falling falling. It’s the infinite number of times I question and doubt myself before actually starting something, anything.
In this case, the starting is this, and this feels so small, so insignificant, that I wonder why it even matters that I question it at all? Either I write something or I don’t. Isn’t it that simple?
I don’t know anything other than how I want to feel, and feeling is not fact, so where, as someone who relies on that surety and control, do I lay my foundation? Where do I find confirmation that yes, yes I can do this. Yes it is worth my time. Yes this helps me to understand myself and the world better. Yes when I do this I feel like I can be the best version of myself here, and everywhere else.
Just as we all choose to do anything, I choose to do this—or not to do anything at all, which, for the past few years, has been my default: creativity equaled instability, and what I needed was to feel safe, with my two feet planted firmly on the ground, and hands snug in the pockets of my oversized winter jacket.
At first, I couldn’t understand why I was stepping away, actively choosing to close that part of myself off. But just as with most things, I can understand that decision more clearly now, and am grateful that I chose to trust myself. Trust that no matter the outcome, some part of it would be ok.
If I wanted to start back up my relationship with creating, I knew I would have to be unwavering in the act of stepping back in. Because once you’ve, conscious or not, decided to close yourself off, finding your way back can be a bit of a slog: the only thing keeping you moving forward is the wanting and the promise of something more—of remembering the roughness of it in your hands, but unable to grasp the part where you begin to shape it into something of your own volition.
All of this mess of creating is something much, much bigger than us—something too big and too messy and too impossible to explain. But if we allow ourselves, we can land on a temporary conclusion—something that will get us from this project to the next. Something that will keep us asking the hard questions, even though the answer was never promised to us.
The point not being the conclusion, but how we choose to relate (or not relate) to something.
All of this might be why I have tethered myself to the warm pages found in books with fabric covers, muted photos of romantic cafe scenes set in places I dream of going, trickle down down down through the murkiest parts of my mind. There’s a candle lit, and postcards with handwriting that sends you to places you weren’t expecting to go; it’s impossible to tell when or where or how you ended up here, or if you’ll ever be back, but the act of trying, of pulling out book after book, pausing when a page invites a different kind of thought, is worthy of our efforts.
And with no promise of where you’re headed next, the thing that keeps pulling you back will likely never make sense, but will also be the thing that you end up trusting most.
(It’s the thing that says this is enough. It’s the thing that encourages you to not hold on so tightly. To trust that the untidiness of it all).
Trust the way one moves through and with and outside of and in between something, never fully able to grasp it’s meaning, but unable to turn away.
Love,
Chloe
Currently…
The table to my left is occupied by a group of older women with sparkly tinsels in their hair, and though I didn’t know they were coming, I did know that it was reserved for 1:30pm, and that it was likely for the purpose of crafting and chatting and drinking afternoon coffee. I’m very pleased with the outcome.
I’m at the other end of the bookstore, feet curled up beneath my legs as I type away and watch as people browse for holiday gifts.
This month I decided that I would keep a sketchbook. Something that can hold it all and be entirely my own.
It’s now 1:45pm on my birthday and I’m trying to talk myself into sending this little message to you after only a few rounds of edits.
This morning I took my dog to the desert and decided I would film and commemorate this entire day because I’ve never done that before, and I think it would be good to feel that kind of love from myself.
Anyways, more on that later. I’m going to send this with my eyes closed and hope that it lands in your inbox at just the right time.
Now I’m headed back into this wonderfully dark Winter’s day.
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