On Being Slow To Bloom

I had such plans for this year, yet look! Here we are already in mid-September, and so little seems to have been achieved. This is not to overlook the excitement of my publication announcement last week, or the thirteen little stories I have written as part of my Witchlines studies. Nor does it ignore a few small poems, a few artworks, many photos, and possibly the best—and most popular—thing I have written this year: The Sacredness of What Is. Still, the months have been flying by and, in a strange way, nothing seems to have happened.

Though my studio is complete, I have yet to acquire all the furniture and bits and bobs I need to make it a workable space, so it still stands mostly empty. Thus, the creative work I wish to pursue in there is still an unknown; and despite my Witchlines tales, I have not been writing much.

I wanted to continue my On Poetry series this year, but have not found the energy to string any coherent thoughts together; and, in a closely related topic, I wanted to explore our use of language, how it distances us from earthly reality, and how it could be changed and improved. This has simply been too much for me. Mentally, I am disoriented and exhausted.

I have an ever-growing pile of books to read, yet I am finding reading something of a chore at present, too great a task for my weary body-mind, so I am moving through them only very slowly, and with some degree of apathy—which says nothing about the quality of the books in question, but quite a lot about my state of mind!

As I wrote last December, my intention this year was to explore embodiment—but though I have, my investigations have remained mostly theoretical, limited to reading books and considering various approaches, both philosophical and practical, without actually doing much in a truly embodied sense. (And I am aware this very much defeats the purpose.) I have been continuing to ignore, or merely to grapple with, the difficult and contradictory reality of my body, and how it works—or doesn’t. (A topic for another post, perhaps.)

I have yet to learn how to become my own anchor, yet to find my place of stillness, and to dwell peacefully within my skin (if that is even possible in the very un-peaceful world in which we live). 

Yet it is true that Witchlines kept me very busy, making it near impossible to pursue any other work; and the ongoing and fluctuating fatigue of CFS has required me to rest a great deal. Many things are simply not within my control (which is as it should be). This is not to say that I am blameless—I have been distracted; I have lacked focus; I have sometimes let my bad moods take me to bad places. Still, this year has been what it is, and will continue to be what it will be. I can only live each day, one at a time, and make modest plans in the hope that at some point I will be able to act on them.

Soon, I will at least have my studio, a gentle green cocoon which will contain me as I go in search of unknown things. And though time may be moving much faster than me, if I trust in myself, and this twisting path I slowly walk, I may still find a way to bloom.