lotta silence in this little corner of the webs, I know.
when the navelly head grows too fraught, as it tends to do in turbulent periodic bouts, otherwise verbal volubility sinks into great morasses of (invisibly thrashing) silence. so this spring has been– and winter before that, and fall before that– a long season underground. some kind of transitional time, creative soil lying fallow and percolating, psychic skies overcast with dark and gruesome (self-generated) cloud cover, blusters howling, life huddled and hunkered down, all a-shiver. in the midst of which the outer world’s floral hoopla and verdant explosion of leaf only serve as insult to the injury of inner drought.
so a coupla weekends back I was poking around an andersonville thrift store while chris got his hair cut, picking up this and that in the perpetual search for, most likely, some existential explanation not to be found in chipped dishware and secondhand bloomers, when lo and behold there on a shelf sat a little red boxed set of audio cassettes for The Artists’ Way.
and it just so happens my vintage car stereo has a cassette tape player– so I’ve been listening to julia cameron during my drives to and from work– and in place of that too-frequent vortex spin of “what am I doing with my life? god, I hate this traffic/the cacophany of signage/the fleets of hermetically sealed strollers/other drivers/the rampant urban dinge”, have been submersing myself instead in sweetly spoken, at times sung, suggestions of hope and possibility. and I’ve picked back up the book itself and begun reading and doing it once again (this’ll be the third time through), beginning with Week 1.
and when I incline to self-flagellation over not being further along some self-realized and productive creative path, the artists’ way reminds me that the road of creative work is a spiral one– naturally so, like whorled seashells and fibonacci’s mystic sequence and musical octaves– and so I circle back over and again addressing familiar themes and slumps and challenges, and it’s all okay– as long as I am writing writing writing those pages every morning I am in motion, and motion is life.
It's been pretty silent in my corner as well. Thank you for the reminder to check out this book again. I could use it now. Hope you are well!
Hmm. A spiral. Fascinating. I will think about this. Thank you. *hugs*
yes, there's a dearth of silence right now… sometimes we all need some time to simmer while we become delicious.