Still Sundays

May 1st.

“Our job as creatives is to give poeple what they didn’t even know they wanted.” ~ Tyler Weaver; “rocking a doll is not a spoken truth, it just is…” ~ from a reader; you will never have some answers; “Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names.” ~ Toni Morrison

If you would like to know what Still Sundays is about, please take a quick gander here and just read the third paragraph. Thanks.

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Hello, May. Will you be full of maybes?

Maybe.

Whether or not spring is here in a manner we desire—less rain and more sun or less breeze and more steady—winter is gone. It’s over. Finally. For now. It was a long winter. Or has it always been this long and I just grew old with it and now can’t help but observe it so closely? Holy matrimony of aging: things appear closer than they are.

Stillness this Sunday morning in New York City is a grand ship that docked without my knowing. Friday I had mentally prepared myself that it is quite possible I will not have any time to meet immigrant thoughts this Sunday morning; I was anticipating (and correctly) quite a busy weekend. Yet I woke up this Sunday morning staring at the fleet of stillness berth gently against  Sunday.

All aboard…

Some thoughts will sail away, no longer necessary, and others will be visitors at least till next Sunday. Some feelings are relatives I didn’t know I had, others present possibilities of relating that are beyond my imagination.

New York City is ready for these Sundays again where the early morning light drops against buildings and sets the stage for the ripe unexpected. It’s crystal ball quiet.  One could possibly hear algae breathe, algae which floats in the dark corners attached to the dock on which the sun shines brightly.

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Anyone who writes or takes upon any creative endeavor is called upon to answer: for whom? Sometimes the bearer of this thorny question is another, other times you are not as fortunate. Often this spear is tossed your way more than once. Also, often, the answer can change. I write to understand and be understood, as I have previously stated.

I get some interesting emails. Usually I have no words to offer except that of gratitude for relating. I don’t have any more answers than anyone else. But sometimes I get an email that takes me two months to process in the grinder of stillness. This particular one was short and without much history. I am not at liberty to disclose the writer’s name.

“I read what you wrote and it took me to the memory of being three on the tire swing in Copenhagen, pushed by boys in a language I did not know. The girl with the doll understood me, though, when she took it and rocked it, because rocking a doll is not a spoken truth, it just is…”

When I get an email like that I feel something beyond than understood. Sometimes I find me in you, not just slices and scraps of me but the glimpse of the whole story, and the sky is not so big after all.

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I asked Marco Rojas, my yoga instructor, why he feels ‘compelled’ to ‘teach’ us this practice of yoga? After all, doesn’t this compulsion to share or teach imply that one is bestowed with something another is not? He didn’t understand my question. He often says during practice we are there to remind ourselves we know what we need to know, we are our healers and teachers, we practice because we forget.

He tried to answer, “I teach yoga because I don’t know anything else that excites me as much as practicing and teaching yoga. I don’t know any other practice where I feel this present with reality and what is offered in the now.”

As is often the case, the questions we ask another are hardly ever genuienly about another but ourselves.

I bring myself to the mat of stillness on Sunday mornings because the discovery, with or without answers, becomes the destination.

My exploration of the world (literal or otherwise) is not per se to find anything. I am neither lost nor running away from or to anything.  The travel (within my block or to a remote village somewhere) exists to relish all that I observe even when it is painful, disheartening, disappointing, and downright filled with “yucky” energy. Sidenote: Evil is obvious, yucky is not and therefore yucky is more dangerous.

That being said, sometimes I also observe joy, beauty, possibility, and downright surreal.

I was told the other night that I am fierce. Perhaps. But aren’t we all if we are intentional? I am not dangerous, just real. I do my best to be compassionate but never to forsake reality as perceived in the now.

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A good friend and fellow creative, Tyler Weaver, called yesterday after attending the Boston Comics Conference. My best friend of over twenty years, Erica, was sitting in the living room while I took the phone call. It so happened that my multi-talented friend Erica (singer, poet, writer, personal organizer and creative designer) and I were discussing visual arts when he called. Tyler gave us an update about the comics industry, it was disheartening. He ended the phone conversation with a quote by Henry Ford. But his own words were equally if not more discerning.

Our job as creatives is to give poeple not only what they want but what they didn’t even know they wanted but do now.

Art allows us an opportunity to deconstruct as it constructs something for us.

To practice the art of living means knowing you will never have some answers.

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If out for a swim in a lake or swimming alongside the seashore or just paddling in shallow water, and you tilt your head with one ear submerged in the water but at an angle so the water doesn’t quite get inside your ear, it is amazing what one hears. Maybe it is only me who did this as a child and even now. The sound is most unique. It’s not even a sound perhaps. Sometimes I think it is the echo of the universe. This would be the sound if we all practiced silence and truly heard each other. Something beyond the hubbub within.

Is there no context for our lives? No song, no literature, no poem full of vitamins, no history connected to experience that you can pass along to help us start strong? You are an adult. The old one, the wise one. Stop thinking about saving your face. Think of our lives and tell us your particularized world. Make up a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created. We will not blame you if your reach exceeds your grasp; if love so ignites your words they go down in flames and nothing is left but their scald. Or if, with the reticence of a surgeon’s hands, your words suture only the places where blood might flow. We know you can never do it properly – once and for all. Passion is never enough; neither is skill. But try. For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief’s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul. You, old woman, blessed with blindness, can speak the language that tells us what only language can: how to see without pictures. Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.

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