Wind Blows Deeply

I gathered with my girlfriends recently to have our annual Christmas gathering. We eat a lot of food, exchange gifts (some tangible and some intangible), and generally catch up on life. We try to get together throughout the year but, when you think about it, this is our time of reflection of many days gone by.

When it was my time to share ‘what was new’, I said ‘not much, really’. This was met with plenty of objections. Consensus was that my life might be the most adventurous of the lot: I started a new relationship, bought a house, travelled to Africa, and won a national award. Not a bad letter to insert into the Christmas cards I didn’t send. Of course, here’s hoping that 2012 will be slightly more interesting [tongue inserted in cheek].

All 30-something-year-olds need to have a crisis or two. Mine came a week ago: unable to fall asleep, searching the darkness, then crying out into the empty echos in my house — I’m not perfect. That unwritten Christmas letter could certainly make it seem like I have it all together, that I’m successful and well-balanced and friendly and talented and, well, merely amazing. Except that I’m not. Sometimes I’m desperately insecure and unsure and floundering behind a facade.

I’m not sure if this has ever happened to you but sometimes, on occasion, I read a book that completely resonates to my core. Meandering through a local bookstore, I found ‘Grace for the good girl’ [E Freeman] tucked in behind some others on the shelf. After a cursory glance, I knew I needed to read the book. Although I’m 90% sure that there won’t be any miraculous answers or resolution of angst, it is sometimes simply nice to know that someone else has walked the same road.
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I remember my first computer experiences: playing Rabbit Reader on the Apple IIe at school and switching between DOS and this new-fangled Windows thing on the home PC. (Somehow DOS seemed so much easier, especially after I crashed Windows and my parents had to call the computer guy in to fix it.)

I remember getting Internet access at school: checking email over lunch breaks and learning how to quickly minimize screens when the librarian would walk by. And those chat rooms that seemed so very prolific at the time but made me wonder about trusting complete strangers. And who could forget the sound of the dial-up modem? And the load times on pages that didn’t really seem that long at all?

I remember hearing about blogs for the first time: someone was travelling in the UK and set up this online journal for anyone to read. I thought it a bit odd to post things for strangers. Why not just email the people you wanted to have the information.

I vaguely recall my own first blog, in a now defunct hosting realm. I bounced around using different hosts and templates, picking up a basic knowledge of HTML and CSS along the way. I don’t have archives of all those early blogs or emails or chatroom conversations. Sometimes a secret part of me wishes I did, to see where I came from. Mostly I am content to remember them in my mind’s eye.

I do have a post from autumn 2002 that remains at the beginning of the current archives: “Thank God for cucumbers”. I had moved out of my parents’ house the previous year and settled in with a couple of close friends. That summer we planted a garden in a plot that had been seriously overrun with grass and weeds. I’m not sure that anyone expected much of that garden. Our initial enthusiasm turned to haphazard neglect. Still, the seeds grew in poor soil, amidst weeds and with occasional watering.

The next two posts are about family. In the first, I mention my paternal grandmother. She turned 90 this year. I think that’s rather incredible. I had the honour of MCing her birthday party. I learned some family history: my grandfather milked his cows after his own wedding ceremony. I saw longstanding friendships: my grandmother’s friends, from her single days, were at her party. I was a part of a larger family: distant relatives, second-cousins, frequent questions to figure out the ever-larger family tree. (And yes, my own family still plays tile rummy.)

After a long hiatus, I am not sure if anyone still comes by this address anymore. You might get the RSS feed, but you might load up the actual site. If you did stop by, you would see a few cosmetic touches: a new design and a new banner quote. The new quote has some meaning to it, as any quote should.

During my hiatus, a summer of moving and settling-in and workplace transitioning, I tried to figure out who I was. Was I the pharmacist? The servant? The intriguing but not-quite-exotic-enough one? How would I, or should I, define myself? After all, I had just turned thirty and my world needed clarity.

Many of my best thoughts come at the edge of a body of water. And so my answer came beside a man-made pond on a cold, windy autumn day. I create. I find and caress words onto a page. I capture moments in photographs. I choose yarns and coerce them into patterns and shapes and forms and functions. I combine ingredients and tweak recipes. I assume and shape new roles and positions in the professional landscape.

As I end the hiatus and relaunch Wind Blows Deeply, I invite you on my journey of rediscovering creativity.

Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.
~John le Carre

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Elizabeth Gilbert spoke at the TED conference about creativity and the relationship of people and God. Or at least some sort of external source or a divine attendant spirit such as the Greek’s daemons or the Roman’s genius. Near the end, she shares this story:

Centuries ago, in the deserts of North Africa, people used to gather for moonlight dances of sacred dance and music… Every once in a while, very rarely, …one of these dancers would actually become transcendent… Time would stop and the dancer would step through some kind of portal, and he wasn’t doing anything different than he had ever done a thousand nights before. But everything would align and all of a sudden he would no longer appear to be merely human. He would be lit from within, and lit from below and all lit up on fire with divinity. And when this happened, back then, people knew it for what it was. They called it by its name. They would put their hands together and they would start to chant, … ‘God, God, God… Incomprehensible. There it is, a glimpse of God.’

And, although she seems to brush up close to God being our source, she it not quite there yet. Perhaps this will mean something in your creative process. Perhaps it will mean something in your search to understand God. Perhaps it will be a starting point for an important conversation. What are your thoughts?

Have a peek at her entire presentation.
HT: SCL

You may also want to read:
My Father, the Artist at Along the Narrow Path

It’s true that the morning brings perspective. The monsters under the bed have disappeared. The strange noises become recognizable. The nightmares fade away and are forgotten. Sunrise brings another beginning.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this You will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.
(Thomas Merton)