A year ago today I began this blog. All day I have been musing on the distance travelled since. And on the stretchiness of time. Its circularity.
A year ago I was about to embark on the write-a-novel-in-a-month adventure. And where is that novel now? (this is a rhetorical question; I know exactly where it is: hiding in some dark corner of my C: disk). All year, I've been answering questions about THE novel with stories about the need for maturation prior to revision, the fact that it was only an exercise anyway, the other creative endeavours that the novel had made possible, in particular crafting. These stories were both contradictory and true, and reading between their lines, there is the story of what I have put of myself into that book, of tears and tears (vowel change), of high resonance and wisdom, of ecstasy and blood and sweat and more blood and more sweat (and ecstasy). Not to mention the staggering number of dried mango's. So much in fact that I can neither throw away the manuscript nor read it all the way through.
These days, my mind is on de-cluttering. The good old 'love it, use it or throw it away' principle turns out to be a tad more profound than I guessed at first sight. What does it mean to 'love' and therefore keep something? Why do I 'love' clothes I never wear, letters I never read, photographs I never look at, manuscripts I never get around to revising. Because somewhere deep inside I believe that these objects are me. I seem to have locked some shred of myself inside them; a shred too painful to look at, yet to dispose of it would be cutting off my own finger (or worse).
But what if the things I hold on to are only a reflection of what I hold on to inside. If I were to let go of the letters, the clothes, and the manuscripts, would I also be letting go all that I have locked up in my soul, all that I am carrying around in my backpack? But surely, if I carry it still, it is because I am not done with it? If I no longer have these gates into my previous experience, can I trust that what I have not worked through yet will come my way again? Can I trust that it will come at the right time?
Because if I can, oh the freedom of it. The lightness of being. The stretching of my wings. The amount of free space on my C: disk.
I look at that picture above, of a three-year old curly miracle in her bath, all the way back in 1977. I look at the curly three-year old miracle in my bath tonight. And I think maybe I do trust. Trust that all that I still need to see, read, hear and feel will come my way again. And again. At the right time. Even without reminders.
