DECONSTRUCTION//DECEPTION

Taking apart things that are no longer working. Seeing through situations and people who are not what they appear to be. This extended winter for me has been a season of dismantling. A lot of this process takes place in the mind, and often, through the words and support of others. As spring approaches (really, it does!), I am feeling the potency of this process of unravelling. Rest and inner work are clearly needed before a busy spring season can begin - preparing the soil for new growth, so to speak.

When March arrives and everyone is clamouring for warmer weather and no more snow, I almost always make an inner call to the weather gods...Not yet, I whisper. One more month, to gather and create, finish up inside projects, connect with myself and my body in a way that often doesn't happen once the bustle of gardening, outdoor activity, and this year, moving house, arrives. This year, my call was heard, and we have a couple more weeks of cold and snow (and yes, a whack of other challenges to consider). With apologies to those who are really not winter people, I relish the time to simply be: with my wood stove, with my daughter, with our cats, and with my thoughts and intermittent creations. It's a slow simmering, a soaking much like I do with a sink full of dishes, before the more obvious work begins.

Someone whose writing captures the essence of deconstruction - and the possibility of hope and new life contained within - is Jeanette Winterson. I recently finished reading Sexing the Cherry, and found her style and story deeply satisfying, as well as soothing - she seems to truly grasp the felt sense of a world gone mad, and somehow maintains a spirit of hope, joy, and celebration in her work. Brilliant lady!

In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance.”

― Jeanette Winterson, The World and Other Places: Stories

The world is changing and everything feels upside down; today I can hardly stand the uncertainty, the overwhelming love and gratitude I feel, the darkness and light so thoroughly mixed up with each other. There seems to be poetry everywhere, and so many unnecessary things falling away. Also, blank space where before it was full; a mind that can choose stillness where before it was filled with to-do's, and busy-ness. Doubt and self-analysis threaten to tumble into reproach and criticism. My demons are having a field day!

“Time that withers you will wither me. We will fall like ripe fruit and roll down the grass together. Dear friend, let me lie beside you watching the clouds until the earth covers us and we are gone.”

― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

As a writer I long for more time to write - but now that I have it, I have spent days in unfocused movement around my house, aimlessly anxious and making hopeful lists whose items do not get checked off. I know there is a way through this, and the romantic part of me wants to believe it will involve more horses :) At the same time, I crave practical answers, actions that can be taken now to improve this world, less idealism and more messy realness.

Do my words feel useless? Perhaps they are. Maybe the act of writing is nothing more than self-soothing, but today, I'll take even that. Why share? Because I can. Because I want to believe our interconnection counts for something, brings good into our lives, even if it is not always acknowledged. I feel the potential for a drift towards more tangible creativity, in the weeks to come. But I also cling somewhat desperately - and for sure, fondly - to the feeling of self-expression for its own sake, rambly words that may never be read again, musings and admissions that won't be published or liked on Facebook. 

It's hard to dive deeper into yourself, uncovering flaws and shadowy corners of apathy, contempt, and unanswered longing. With unstructured hours at home, I question myself at least twice every hour. Somehow this time at home is going to force me to accept that, accept myself, and make plans for an uncertain world. Life as paradox, even moreso now.

Everything I write feels like it has been written before. All feels as though it has been done before, and I wonder if I have anything new to contribute. Please don't try to convince me otherwise - it is a real possibility, that it is one cycle after another, and we are all part of a flow that will never stop (but may also not sing our praises). I feel myself in some strange process of erasure, and I'm not sure where it will take me. On many long walks, I hope. One step in front of the other. Peaceful wishes that we all find our place in the world as it reorders itself, and that we leave a healthy room for chaos and the ever-present unknown.

“What should I do about the wild and the tame? The wild heart that wants to be free, and the tame heart that wants to come home. I want to be held. I don't want you to come too close. I want you to scoop me up and bring me home at nights. I don't want to tell you where I am. I want to keep a place among the rocks where no one can find me. I want to be with you.”

― Jeanette Winterson

With love and prayers for wellness for all,

Christine


"Time has no meaning, space and place have no meaning, on this journey. All times can be inhabited, all places visited. In a single day the mind can make a millpond of the oceans. Some people who have never crossed the land they were born on have travelled all over the world. The journey is not linear, it is always back and forth, denying the calendar, the wrinkles and lines of the body. The self is not contained in any moment or any place, but it is only in the intersections of moment and place that the self might, for a moment, be seen vanishing through a door, which disappears at once."

- Jeanetter Winterson, Sexing the Cherry