Today, I’m resting. When you read this, I may be in bed reading. I may be shin-high in mud gathering the sky. I may be.
A couple of weeks ago I talked about navigating a depression, which I have been working around every day prior and since, but on Monday I sat down at the end of the day and realised it was the first time I had felt the signs of the flood waters receding. I said to Neil I don’t want to raise your hopes, but I think it’s shifting. He was relieved. I was relieved. We ate tomatoes in silence.
My words are without art at the moment. Mainly, I use them to raise stepping stones.
Every day, new clarity about this plutonic affect. Yesterday, someone named it ‘post project depression’, and I nodded. It makes sense I said without elaboration. Weathering was an occupying force. Now the files are ordered, the papers cleared away, the post-its exhausted and spent underneath piles of books. A new blazer hangs on my wardrobe door. My Look. I try not to look at it.
And not only that of course. I am always creating. I am always creating alone. Dreaming. Offering. Emptying. Self-congratulating (ha, almost never that). This week another creative writing programme is complete. I feel the possibility of collapsing again, but instead I give it this new name.
I think back over the years and recent months behind me; the many endings implicit in a therapist’s life. How abnormal it feels relationally to always be finishing up.
For the first time in months I start to understand the death in completion, the loss in execution. I long for a project half-finished. For the possibility in nascence. I want beginnings. I am so tired of this rain though I dream of once again roaming the fields with a bucket heavy and sloshing with thought. Spinning it high and fast and losing none of it. My hair breaking lose from its plait. The sun a coin in my open palm.
Spain. Italy. My long-awaited autumn trip ended too I remind myself as I listen to a radio programme about the science of nostalgia. A bird circles the head in my hands.
Maybe I need someone on my team. It’s not a metaphor.
This week I attempted to write who I am without ‘I’ and other nouns. Introducing myself to the invisible ecology of the empty page. Bison-footed blue vulture of the hard grounds, mineral thinking into slabs, wilding time as it listens onwards. Gabble, and nothing more. A decentring of myself and a malady that connects me to a distant planet.
Oh, and this. I danced poorly, even after watching a sweet performance, my mirror neurons sleeping. Who am I without my kinaesthetic empathy? I ask the space on the edge of dreams.
But on waking I feel the inexplicable shift. The land beneath me, dried. I risk a smile. Put all the work on hold. These creations can only go one way I realise, so I’ll wait a little longer. I pull up my feet and let the aquifers recharge.
This is a briefly edited excerpt from my diaries this week. Above, a geosomatic enquiry into the possibility of lightness and tenderness.
Words without art? I'm going to politely challenge that, please. So authentic, so beautiful, so comforting. Poised on the brink of hope, I thank you for the gentle nudge.
'a bucket heavy and sloshing with thought' - delicious! Happy rest day to you!! Xx