Wednesday, September 10, 2014

how to enrich your life.

It is September, I have just returned from a wonderful but somewhat dizzying month-long trip to Europe, I'm putting on sweaters and scarves, and I am trying to enrich my life.

To sum up the trip: being in foreign places anchored by long histories marked with suffering and triumph, walking every day for a month straight on cobblestone, looking at art I've only read about or seen pictures of online, listening to languages I don't understand, reading The Age of Innocence on so many trains, jumping into the Mediterranean and letting the waves roll over my face, never spending more than a fifteen-minute-long shower's length of time apart from Eric, trying to absorb everything right into my marrow so I can feel like the experience was real.

Now, back home on the ranch, back at work where I'm attending webinars on fundraising techniques between teaching children how to ride horses and cooking meals for large groups of people, I'm thinking seriously about how to enrich my life. To accept that I cannot quit my job and just be a "writer" or an "artist." (I use quotations intentionally, and I'm trying to give up the idea that these are things you just suddenly become, rather than things you just are or aren't -- and if I'm not, then maybe I'll have to accept that, too.)

I signed up for an adult novice concert band. Last night I went to a church in a somewhat seedy neighbourhood and played the flute with other people for the first time in nine years. It was a humbling experience. As it turns out, I've forgotten how to count to four, and how to breathe.

I'm re-reading Ariel and trying to remember how to talk about poetry, with the help of Lizzie, who very much knows how. And I have big plans to clean out the office and to set aside two hours on Sunday nights to go into the room, close the door, and write. And, as I usually am when the weather turns cold, I'm thinking about winter crochet projects.

All of this to try to hedge the winter ennui that I know is coming. This year it took till August to shake it. Maybe this fall I can start by being more grateful for the life I do have.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

after a long time

This was a long winter.

It followed a tense and difficult fall, and was only broken by a busy and stressful spring. Now summer is opening up on the Ranch with clouds of mosquitoes and the sweetness of Alberta roses. Mornings are warm and bright. Everywhere is green leaves or blue sky. I come in at the end of each day smelling like sunscreen and bug spray and horses. Just like I used to.

Except.

I haven't slept in a month. Every day I force my body to do the things bodies are supposed to do in the daytime: have open eyes, put food in mouth, go to work, speak to other people, shower, brush teeth, wait for sleep. When the day is over and I think sleep might come, it eludes me, always. I am awake while everyone sleeps. The dog snores. Eric faces away from me, buried in his pillow. I keep checking the time on my phone, lighting up the room with little disappointments -- it's just later and later and later.

If I didn't live in the wilderness, I would leave the house. We used to stay up until dawn, remember? Talking and talking and talking and talking over craft beers and sometimes pipe tobacco and sometimes campfires, and always Garneau. I don't know what they do now, if they still do that without me.

But now I'm in the quiet of the countryside. No cars, no backyard parties next door. Just the hum of bugs in the air and the wind in the trees. The breaths of horses and the songs of frogs. And at three in the morning, before the birds have woken up and before the sun thinks of rising, I'm awake and alone.

It's been months since I've written anything. I tried to strangle out a poem this winter, but it wouldn't give. I've been reading a lot about the creative habits of writers and artists, trying to glean what it is that makes art work for them and not for me. It is hard work for them, too, but they've got an idea to start with. Something to go on. To work towards finishing. The process after that idea comes is different for everyone.

How long do you wait for an idea? At what point do you just surrender to your life? To going to work, speaking to other people, making plans with friends, being a nice wife, a worthwhile citizen? To putting on sunscreen in the morning, running my hands over the smooth summer coats of our team of Belgian horses, to standing on the deck next to Eric and looking out at the wide green world? There is nothing wrong with any of these things. They could be enough, maybe.

But I would like both. The ideas, the words -- and to surrender to my regular life. And, of course: to sleep for a month straight.