Making a connection…
This week, I want to comment on a few readings that I’ve been dipping into. I’ve found, through the introspection that comes from slipping into an awareness of self, that what I choose to read reflects that awareness, answers questions I have, and leads me farther on my search for those spider webs linking it all together. It is my hope that through all the reading, and thinking, and searching that I will discover something about me I hadn’t yet thought to discover. So far, whatever is on the way, is leaking out through the ideas and experiences of other writers, thinkers, and feelers. I am starting to see connections not only between my life today and my past life and what that may tell me about my future life, but I also notice those connections in so many other people who may at some point have delved into introspection in the way that I am now. Here are a few notes from the books I am reading.
In Mary Oliver’s “Upstream”, she writes that her “loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive. If [she] has a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if [she is] late. Rejoice even more if [she does] not arrive at all.” As a writer, Oliver knows what it is to need to see, to ponder, to sit on the edge and work within that space to discover what hidden elements of herself live there in the darkness waiting to be illuminated, sculpted, and shared. Most revered as a poet, Oliver’s work in “Upstream” continues to exercise her poetic stamina while edging into philosophy and a particular way of life that reminds us to “look with shut eyes upon the miraculous interchange that makes things work, that causes one thing to nurture another, that creates the future out of the past.” I think this is what I am attempting to discover, and perhaps what we all should attemp as strangers come to know one another, sharing lives and ideas, remaining vulnerable with each other as we all attempt to sit on the edge of ourselves and look to see what exists there, hidden away.
I wonder though if it isn’t enough just to sit there with ourselves on the edge and see. I wonder if the way that we see makes a difference. Ralph Waldo Emerson expresses that “We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them.” We must first understand that we live on a surface, with edges, and then we must learn the “art” of skating. We must approach it with balance, with pleasure, with elegance, and over time we may all become ice dancers inside our own consciousness, skating about the world both on the edge and on either side, with grace, poise, and aesthetic beauty.
There is perhaps one more element required to sit on the edge, well. While learning to navigate gracefully, we can’t always be moving forward. We will stumble. We will fall. We will go too far and need to retreat. Perhaps then, by approaching it with this understanding that we must both go toward the edge and aim for the future, sit on the edge for some, and retreat to the memories of the past, we can fully embody the transformation embarked upon. Kaie Kellough explores, in a collection of short stories titled “Dominoes at the Crossroads”, the notion that the past is at once occurring alongside and is embedded into the present and whatever future is coming. In order to move into the future with grace and strength of self, we must remember that we are part of a community; part of a history where the selves we are folded into the selves of our ancestors. We are at once them and us. Kellough is referring specifically to the cultural connection of Black Canadians to their historical homelands. However, the concept of connection may apply to everyone in a person’s past which is as much a part of us today as it will be tomorrow. We must learn to understand our past to move gracefully through the present, enabling us to sit at the edges of ourselves, and then move forward with a balanced and elegant future identity, fully encompassing the entirety of who we are.
There are so many links, from diamond to diamond within the web of existence on this planet. I’ve always tried to see those links and connect them to myself, and recently, perhaps as a direct result of the Covid-19 pandemic, I have been able to see so much more in a much wider expanse than before.
What connections are you seeing?