Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Letting go is not giving up.
(I’m almost caught up on my Reverb posts! And I have to say – really enjoying the prompts more than I thought I would.)
This year I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that letting go and giving up are not the same thing if you are stronger for the absence of the thing let go. For a long time I have confused the two, hanging onto non-supportive relationships and organizations because I “don’t want to be a quitter” or because I am afraid of being perceived as failing or “losing” an argument.
This year I gave up two very significant political relationships on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Back in the summer, I gave up my intention to run for higher leadership in my union, and as of October I gave up my membership in the Resist! Collective which I helped found thirteen years ago. These have both been difficult and painful decisions to make, given the constancy of both organizations in my life for a long time, but when it came right down to it the frustration of staying in was worse than that of leaving.
Really, both decisions came down to a strengthening in myself – that I really *do* have something to offer, that I really am a hard-working and decent person, and that I don’t want to waste that playing silly games or justifying and re-justifying my existence. Rather, I’d like to be focused on the positive offerings of the world and to operate from where I am truly welcome rather than having to live in continual apology and fending off the negativity of attack politics.
I haven’t let go of my political beliefs, my shop stewarding, my community involvements or my affinity for anarchist media providers… But I have decided to let go of things that aren’t serving me or my activism so well anymore in order that I can be better energized to face what is sure to be a challenging future for our planet (and our class).
Cultivation.
My cultivatation of wonder in the last year grew directly from my garden – the most literal of places. Which is a funny thing because though I’ve had many gardens over the years, I have often regarded them only as a means to an end. That is – I want food, so I grow it. I want the front of my house to look nicer, so I plant some perennials. And as disconnected as that seems, I have always done the necessary work to upkeep and tend my green charges, without thinking much about it.
But my efforts this time around have transformed something in me – which is perhaps related to the amount of time I spent setting up my backyard, and the attention I have given each variety of plant and weed being reared back there through two spring and summer seasons. In short, I have been rapt by it in 2010, by the pushing of the sprout from the seed and the seed from the earth. By the cycle of living and dying that happens over one week, one month, one season – the miracle of it really, that such a small bit of matter can become so great as a towering tomato plant. A speck of dust becomes fifty summer squashes pushed out on fecund impulse by life intent on coming again. Renewed by the seed spilled and fertilized by the leaves falling and rotting, by the shifts of soil and rain and freezing, tended by the human hands which have cultivated this life for thousands of years in order to sustain our own desires for abundance.
I have opened my eyes to the hyper-sexuality of it all – the glorious hidden center of the red rhubarb coy behind its large leaves, the flower opening greedily for want to insects to enter and rub up against its tender pistil, the bursting of seed onto soil or into the cupped hands receiving it in the creation of new life. Not to mention the shifting sun which brings into heat most plants and trees for a mere half year before dipping low and sending plants and animals alike into frigid hibernation. An erotic dance against the backdrop of time, this riot of life and colour is – and has become to me. Wonder indeed!
Living snapshot
It’s hard to separate a moment out of 365 days, 8760 hours,525 600 minutes – because most of our lives are lived so unconsciously, on automatic pilot. Even the moments that should be precious and life-affirming go by in a blur because we are overwhelmed or distracted by everything else going on around us. As part of meditative practice, mind-focusing work, we are taught instead to slow ourselves down and bring awareness to every moment, even the most mundane, in order to truly notice our aliveness.
I have to admit, I’m horrible at slowing down, of being conscious of what is truly happening around and in me because I am so often caught up in my head to the degree that my eye doesn’t see and my ears don’t hear. And I recognize the problem in that we miss alot when we are forever living forward or backward, the moments that are truly important only recognized in hindsight when our memories cast them in the haze of reflection.
But there are times that I catch myself, remind myself to take in the moment that is happening because it is so grand and important – and one of those times this year was the moment of “I do” with Brian standing on the rocky ledge of Point No Point. On automatic pilot through much of the repeated vows, I managed to hold myself up for a minute to look deeply into Brian’s eyes, and hear the words as they came from my mouth promising my love undying, and my commitment fast. I took in the smile on his face, the wind caressing my neck where my hair was fastened up, the sea the provided a backdrop of waves beating against the lap of the cove. I took in the overcast sky like a comfort above me, and the salt on my lips as my mouth formed the words. And I filled up in that moment with the connection being made with this other person, and the world in which we stood so trustingly on a precipice above kilometres of ocean stretched out as far as we could see.
And then I pulled all that in, the memory like a kite straining to break off, and kept it close beside me as we walked across the little red bridge and through the muddy forest to where our wedding fire was lit. And even now, two and a half months later, my joy at being alive for that moment, for that day – returns to me in the most sterile of places.
And speaking of proficiency……
On that writing thing, I have a lot of habits that hinder my daily writing practice. Worth examining, I suppose, particularly since its the second prompt and I’m furiously paging through my ideas on the subject. In the last four months, I’ve barely written a thing – mostly owing to the fact that I’ve been working too much and sleeping in whenever I can. Writing for me is a morning affair, I do it when I wake up or it doesn’t happen at all. Mostly because I have to start writing before I start thinking too much – about what I’d rather be doing, about how there’s no point anyway because there are so many better writers than me, about how I’ve got this or that chore that *has* to be done. If I get on it right away, there’s none of that. Problem is, I’ve got to get up an hour early in the cold dark, and that’s been harder and harder as I’ve been struggling with self-worth on a number of fronts this fall. Not to mention getting married and negotiating a collective agreement for tens of thousands of people. i mean, i shouldn’t be too hard on myself given everything that’s been going on.
To make writing happen though, I need the time and space. Not just an hour here or there, but the mental space, which I haven’t had lately with my somewhat frantic pace and demands on my attention from everywhere. I have a goal for the next year that involves giving myself space for all sorts of things – writing, music, hiking, crafting, photography, and academia – because I’ve lived a lot of the last several years for other people and objectives, and I’m missing big parts of myself as a result. Living for myself again, I suppose that’s the answer to what would help my writing practice. I haven’t really done that much lately.
One word.
Interconnection. That’s the one word I would use to sum up the last year even though I have experienced at least two fairly major ruptures in my organizational and personal affiliations. For the first time in many years, I feel like I am on my right path for discovering new community alliances, sharing skills, and working through what I want and need from friends and allies. I have participated not only in my union in the past year, but continued in my writing circle, joined our neighbourhood group, championed a boulevard gardening project that received grant funding, written two articles for publication in the activist press, gardened the hell out of my backyard, hosted many dinner and wedding parties, and started down the path of apiary studies. All with the goal of connecting to myself connecting to positive social and ecological goals. Even my organizational ruptures are about finding a better place for myself to work from as opposed to retreating or giving up. Most of all, I have formalized my partnership with Brian through marriage, as we have continued to build a world of support and love in our home – and this is about as interconnected as it gets.
For next year, I would like my word to be proficiency, as I have a number of areas in my life – writing, gardening, sewing – where I would like to deepen my skills. This means re-dedicating myself to the practice of each of these things, as much as I currently enjoy the dribs and drabs of process I engage in. I don’t feel the need for greatness in any area, but I do crave high levels of competence.
Red Cedar 