Just hidden enough
The paradox of sharing and sheltering
I’ve now read two pieces today that have simultaneously made things more clear and more complex.
First, Are You Tortured Because You’re A Really Slow Writer? by
* “Writer” in the title could be subbed with any progressive endeavor. Me? I’m tortured because I’m a really slow … um, creationer. I have bright ideas. But either they never see the light of dawn, or they’re like one of those annoying firework bombs that blind and deafen temporarily, but vanish as quickly as they arrive in a puff of smoke. You know, to kindly reassure me it wasn’t an ignorable hallucination.Cali gives us solace though. It’s ok to take up to a lifetime if you need to.
These words must’ve touched a braincell unexposed to the “patience is a virtue” and “good things come to those who wait” cross-stitch pillow, winery gift shop adages. As the kids say, it hit different. But I wasn’t sure why.
And then hours later, I read and listened to David Whyte’s piece Hiding from his collection Consolations. Whyte writes:
Hiding is underestimated. We are hidden by life in our mother’s womb until we grow and ready ourselves for our first appearance in the lighted world; to appear too early in that world is to find ourselves with the immediate necessity for outside intensive care.
Immediate necessity for outside intensive care.
That’s how I feel when the ideas come too fast, too furious, too lush, too a-ha. So much so that I want to share immediately with all who will listen. I rush. And when I do, the ideas scatter under the bed faster than my near-feral cat Marvin when a stranger approaches within a square mile radius.
And then I feel like a failure and it’s time to triage my fragile creative psyche, which – glancing at my watch – should take about three to four years.
Whyte continues:
What is real is almost always to begin with, hidden, and does not want to be understood by the part of our mind that mistakenly thinks it knows what is happening. What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.
In ways that diminish its presence.
Do you ever experience that rare euphoric moment when your problems have vanished? Like when you take a bathroom break, and no one’s there to bother you. Or it’s Friday and you think about an entire weekend of freedom ahead. It’s probably just a dopamine rush triggered by some brain interworking that nodded off and fell into the wrong hormone lever. But the moment you take notice, you wake up the guy in charge of making you feel like shit all the time, well, he pulls back the lever, and the euphoric blanket of joy goes poof.
Ideas are like that too. Addicting and all so feral. They’re like Marvin. One move. Gone.
Shelter in place
David Whyte’s observations in tandem with Cali Bird’s piece taste like a double shot of liberation from the story I told up there about scaring away my ideas. I realize that it’s the tale I use to convince myself to shackle my creationer-self to a false belief that I’m trapped here. I’m never going to escape from the loop of false starts.
But what if my self-made prison was actually a shelter? In Pandemia many people seethed with anger as governments told them to stay in their homes indefinitely. (But raise your hand, introverts among us, if this was your golden ticket to finally relax AND be a good citizen to boot?!) When I borrow that page from Whyte’s book, my whole story gets rewritten. I’ll leave you with one more for good measure:
Hiding is a bid for independence, from others, from mistaken ideas we have about our selves, from an oppressive and mistaken wish to keep us completely safe, completely ministered to, and therefore completely managed.
Last episode, I said I’d give you the 30,000 ft view of Bonesick’s so-far story in three acts. I could do that. Or I could shelter it a bit longer – not in false sense of security I get from avoiding exposure and idea death – but rather because it’s still simmering, the marrow needs to marinate, and it’ll let me know when I can get the ladle out, which may just be in our next episode.
. . .
There is so much to cradle in David Whyte’s piece, just listen to its 4:48 entirety here ›
*My intro to Cali Bird is by way of Tree by
.**My synchronistic gratitude for David Whyte, courtesy of Rob Brezsny’s Astrology Newsletter “When We Discover Who We Are, We’ll Be Free” plus my Waking Up mindfulness app