Pulling Focus

Can I keep the clouds and rain and grey suspended here, over Michigan, please? Just a few more days? I am at Nosh, mocha half-empty, Bon Iver sweeping in my ears, mind moving in to focus on the words, "You're love will be, safe with me,"...and moving out again, to the parking lot, the book open beneath my elbows.

I am reading The Artist's Way. Slowing down this time to really take this in. To take these words on as if an identity, a new, more active, fresh, name. I just read this line that really reached into the swirling chaos of myself for a moment. It reads, "In movie terms, we slowly pull focus, lifting up and away from being embedded in our lives until we attain an overview."

Last night I opened the two art journals I've made over the past couple of years. I read the sloppy ink spotted scrawles of, "Today is sun strung--light linking everything. Today is my sister laughing just inside and the thought of building a fire for lunch. It is free. I feel that--YES. Free slipping around in tank tops, through paint. There is some pain--some soft dark lingering. But for now, this: the paint, sun, Bonnie Prince Billy, some hope, is enough."

I read over other pages, examined the pictures I glued in, the spray paint spattering, the lists of places to go, of things to see: whales, cacti, a real snow topped mountain.

I felt like I was looking at myself, from far away. And I was smiling. I was proud of this person. I did not consider her job situation or her level of discipline, or whether she can maintain a clean and organized closet. I did not consider how she might be terribly absent minded and worn out and even awful at taking care of valuable things. I simply liked her, because she was this fresh, wide, lit-up, person.

It was nice. It was very good for me, because I've felt incredibly inadequate lately. It's been impossible for me to finish cover letters or resumes. It's been so hard for me to actually doooooo these things, because I'm terrified. I've accidentally gone to work at the wrong fruit stands. I've forgotten I had to work at all. I feel like I'm losing it. Like I'm just falling out. But, last night, as I struggled to sleep, feeling like I'll never get anything right, like I'm on a downward spiral and I have no idea if I can regain footing, or if I have the will, I picked up these journals, and I found myself in them.

Today I sent out my resume and cover letter at last to one organization. And I started reading this book again. And I wrote a draft of a poem, and I'll be going into work in an hour. And I am proud of myself.

I hope you have the chance, a slice of time to pull back from the present, and look at it all, and love it in a silly, deep way. May you find that you are alight, and that all of these terrifying, risky things are gifts. Right now, they are gifts. And here you are, their wrapping crinkling in the palm of your hand.