I have been struggling to write lately. Mostly because there’s this big, horrendous thing happening that weighs heavily on many of our minds… And it’s a thing that feels impossible to write about, but also impossible not to.
On social media today, one f/Friend posted this:
And another posted this:
It’s American Thanksgiving, and although I’m not American, a) I have all sorts of American ties, and b) gratitude always seems like a good idea to me. Those are reasons enough to write something.
I feel that noticing small, simple, bright things, and appreciating what they mean, is a practice that makes sense at times when there is so much non-sense in the world. Like collecting pebbles: they’re little but solid. They feel good in the cranny of our hand. They might sparkle if you look up close.
Today, I am thankful for my daughter coming out of dance class, buzzing with the joy of collaborative, connected creativity. There’s nothing quite like that feeling. It’s pure human.
I’m also thankful for catching a glimpse of a former student, who attended our school last year having just come to Canada from Ukraine. (Not for the scenery.) She is in that same dance class, collaborating and connecting and creating.
If “the opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation” (Jonathan Larson), then this moment, and the process it represents, are one perfectly sensical pebble.
***
Di, that was perfect. Talking about the elephant in the room without talking about it. And I love the quotes!
I love those quotes too. Both were helpful to me for cutting through the mind-circles. Thank you for being here! <3
it’s exactly what I’ve been feeling, without writing it down. Thank you for doing that.
I can stand at my big kitchen window and look out at the grey sky through the bare trees, and then a break comes in the clouds, and light causes layers to be visible, and grey becomes silver, and there is shimmering, and it’s a striking beauty for which I am grateful. That is a true story, but it’s also a metaphor.
Winter Light
Of course it is low,
sweeping around the southern rim
of my northern home,
and it is long,
stretching from the distant sun
as earth inclines away,
and these are things we know
and understand, or claim to,
as natural consequence of
our planet’s revolution,
but
this sensible reasoning cannot explain
how winter light
gleams with such delicacy
through skeletal woods,
illumines sky and snow
with such silken wisdom,
spreads with such grace that grey and white
are rich with seeming colour,
reveals
the heavens’ soul.
Yes. And I think that humans are meant to feel this way about the natural world.