Yesterday I took a Sabbath day of sorts. The day started out fairly normally. I went to the gym, stopping to admire the camellias that had suddenly burst into bloom after a warm rainy week. This in and of itself is not surprising, this particular camilia tends to bloom sometime during February, March, if it has been a cold winter, which it has not. I posted a photo to instagram, the same one as seen below:
Upon my return I started upon normal household chores: a little vacuuming and dusting, for example. I took the leaves out of the dining table, only to decide I needed to put them back in for a dinner party tomorrow. I fully intended to write a blog post.
But then I sat down to knit and realized that is what I needed to do more than anything else, and so I knitted and puttered for the bulk of the day and well into the night. There was an interruption for a fabulous violin concert, a concert that left my heart vibrating with song and fueled knitting late into the night. I am still working on the pink sweater, the only day I had to work on it for over a week, and I finished one sleeve and made a good start on the second.
I had trouble going to sleep, and I realized that I this too is a part of who I am. When I can devote days to myself, to my “work”, I am happy and calm and at peace. Then I can go out in the evenings and be all buoyant due to the effects of that balance. And I tend to do that. There was a fund-raiser for the YWCA this week, another fabulous party for the opening of the Beauford Delaney exhibit at the Knoxville Museum of Art, (which I will have to write about another time), the aforementioned violin concert, and one whole day filled with meetings, and that same evening as well, a day that simultaneously inspired me, exhausted me, and caused me to question whether a particular cause, much as it is close to my heart, is really the place where my talents can flourish.
I realized that this day (work, meaning creative exploration) evening balance is essential. That the social feeds the contemplative, but the obverse is equally true. That I go out and then sleep well, and that if I start creative pursuits in the evening I loose all track of time and space and am likely to work far too late. I am likely to tumble into the slough of despond, but this may equally be due to lack of sleep as to an excess of alone time. I realize, well have long realized that I am not the “sew a dress in 10 minutes a day” kind of person. I need long blocks: the social block, the creative block — be it writing, cooking, playing with needle and thread in all its many permutations, even gardening — the cuddle with someone on the sofa block, wait, that one is on sabbatical, so the social fills a bigger and more important role. But life is like that too, ebbs, flows, sometimes even tidal waves.
I like sitting in my breakfast room in the early morning, catching up with news, or a book if I feel the world is too intrusive, looking out at the flow of hellebores. I can open the window and hear the birds.
I am only a few pages from the end of the first volume of William Manchester’s life of Churchill, The Last Lion, continually fascinated by Winston: his obstinacy, his brilliance, as I said earlier sometimes his naïveté, by the very complexities of the man in fact, strengths and flaws. I also enjoy Manchester’s prose, and his own comments and comparisons, contrasting time and culture, his and Churchill’s, each with its own biases and blind spots, each population confident in its modernity, its a self-assurance that their own beliefs are the path of the future. I have long wondered, and this book feeds that wondering, what future generations will think of us, looking backward 100 years from now. I suspect each and every one of us would be surprised.
I like the way Churchill needs to keep busy to fight off his own battles with “the black dog”, the way we all have gifts, and strengths, but also weakness. The way he plays with his children, determined they would not be lonely the way he was lonely, but equally never around. I admire the determination to make the most of those times he was around.
And I am reminded also of a smaller book. One I read this week in a fit of early morning insomnia.This would have been Kreis Beall’s The Great Blue Hills of God, a book that I believe is in the small pantheon of books having one of the most perfect opening chapters I have ever read. But even this is subjective, and I suspect that what I see and love in this book may not be what everyone sees. But that is the good thing about books, good books, that they speak to us on different levels.
I am reminded of a conversation at the art opening, about how art, literature, music, dance as well, cut through to the soul, wiping away the fogs and shadows we drape around our lives, and how most of the time we do not want to be impaled, do not want to see the depths of our souls. Some of us are better at the shallows than others, some of us, having fallen into the depths find we don’t really ever want to return to the shallows.
After reading that first chapter, I was impelled into Beall’s book, and it think it was gracefully written, reporting the stages and struggles of her life, looking back with a kind of distance and humility, even though it has been an accomplished and in many ways enviable life, that can only come at the cost of great personal unraveling and reknitting. This is the woman who I found admirable and fascinating. And odd for me, because I too have been guilty of always being busy, of wanting to make things look perfect in a mistaken belief that they will then be perfect, of searching for love and peace through shadows and trappings, I found that I felt indomitable sadness for that younger Kreis, for her own self-described lack of options, even as her life was in many ways charmed. I suppose I am saying I find it odd, because my younger self would have been awed and intimidated by the younger Beall’s accomplishments, but my older self finds this less important than my enormous respect and admiration for the woman she has come to be. But then, none of us, if we allow our hearts to break and mend, are the people we once were.
I shall leave you with the last sentence from that “perfect” first chapter:
Only when I let go of perfectionism and learned to sit with devastation, and from there slowly breathe in meaning, did I discover that what I had built was not a picture-perfect life, but a real and beautiful one, stronger for the breaking.
