Writing, Water, The Great Sow & Salvation
We are such creatures of water. Flowing one moment, stagnant the next. Rushing madly and standing still. I am supposed to be writing a Neo-African Dance Ballet for a small company. Instead - I am mourning this moment of stillness. This place which is waiting to be filled. Today, I keep trying to remind myself that being in each and every moment is a state of grace. This is a good thing.
But, I keep returning to the ballet - which last week rolled over my entire essence like ten thousand razor blades. It filled me with resentment. It made me question what I am doing sitting on the floor stacking a bunch of plastic rhombus. “I should be writing the (next great ) fabulous piece of literature,” I would exclaim loudly to myself. Every nap time, I soured my milk. I kept saying to myself - “I should be able to get shit done at nap time. Nap time should be MY time.”
Today during the napping, I invited again The Great Sow. She was the only sanity when one month after the birth of my son, I lived in a fixer upper filled with boxes and was grateful that I could finally make milk because we had moved. I felt powerful and graceful. Eternal and magnificent. The Great Sow lays on her side - happy, fat and lazy with her piglets suckling, kicking, suckling, dreaming. She does not want to clean her sty. She does not want to roam the fields. She just lays there (like me at nap time) a great, powerful heaving body bringing life and sustenance to her young. In her massive indolence is the power of the future.
How often I find myself acting like the river before a waterfall. Churning, thrashing crazily towards one dramatic event. Thinking - “Oh, oh! I am jumping and leaping. When will all of this stop? I just wish it was all over by now.”
All of the drastic and radical events are happening now. I am the river dashing over the cliff. This is parenthood. This is writing. The creek bed becoming the river becoming the waterfall becoming the quiet pond seeping into the underground water tables. And rising.
But, I keep returning to the ballet - which last week rolled over my entire essence like ten thousand razor blades. It filled me with resentment. It made me question what I am doing sitting on the floor stacking a bunch of plastic rhombus. “I should be writing the (next great ) fabulous piece of literature,” I would exclaim loudly to myself. Every nap time, I soured my milk. I kept saying to myself - “I should be able to get shit done at nap time. Nap time should be MY time.”
Today during the napping, I invited again The Great Sow. She was the only sanity when one month after the birth of my son, I lived in a fixer upper filled with boxes and was grateful that I could finally make milk because we had moved. I felt powerful and graceful. Eternal and magnificent. The Great Sow lays on her side - happy, fat and lazy with her piglets suckling, kicking, suckling, dreaming. She does not want to clean her sty. She does not want to roam the fields. She just lays there (like me at nap time) a great, powerful heaving body bringing life and sustenance to her young. In her massive indolence is the power of the future.
How often I find myself acting like the river before a waterfall. Churning, thrashing crazily towards one dramatic event. Thinking - “Oh, oh! I am jumping and leaping. When will all of this stop? I just wish it was all over by now.”
All of the drastic and radical events are happening now. I am the river dashing over the cliff. This is parenthood. This is writing. The creek bed becoming the river becoming the waterfall becoming the quiet pond seeping into the underground water tables. And rising.
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