DORMANCY
While visiting an artist friend last week, she opened her newly acquired copy of “Tuscany: Inside The Light,”(Maggie Barrett & Joel Meyerowitz. Sterling Publishers 2003) to this page:
I remember that day, nearly 20 years ago, looking at that wall and as I read my accompanying text I was struck by how certain thoughts and ideas, captured in ink for all time, allow us to reflect not only on the journey of our lives, but the ways in which – if we bother to look – nature can inspire us and sometimes even teach us the lesson most useful to us in that moment.
Like many of us I feel I have been lying dormant for more than a year. Sometimes it feels like a relief and sometimes it feels extremely uncomfortable. In our contemporary age we have become inured to the ways in which the pressure to continually “achieve” has impacted our lives to the extent that to embrace the need for dormancy means being willing to suffer the temporary loss of one's identity. I had a bit of a giggle as I read the text. I mean how often do one’s own words come and kick you up the bum?
Two weeks ago, in the ongoing process of updating my blogsite, my IT person informed me that most of my subscribers of the last 10 years had mysteriously been deleted as a result of faulty technology and that there was no way to retrieve them. A few emails to friends around the globe confirmed that they hadn’t received a post for months, some even longer, and had assumed I had discontinued it.
My reaction to this news was not that of an evolved adult. The sudden knowledge that I had been basically writing into the void brought me to my knees. If I weren’t so vain I would have torn my hair out. And, of course, from that place of the wounded child I swore I would cap my pen for good. At least I’ve become mature enough to know that on days like that one is not in a position to make healthy decisions. So, I returned to dormancy, occasionally stirring to do a bit of sleuthing which revealed that there were about 20 people still receiving posts, and even they weren’t receiving all of them. Twenty, out of – at last count – close to a thousand.If fifty years of writing (thirty of them professionally) has taught me anything it is that rejection is not a reflection of one’s worth; that running numbers is ego-driven and has nothing to do with quality, and that humility allows one to be present for whomever might need what one has to offer; that there is always value in communication, even with just one other person. And so, as spring tries once again to come out of winter hibernation, I, too, rise up and go forward.
Yet even spring, here in Tuscany, is reluctant to wake up this year. First there were months of drought. Then an unseasonably hot week which encouraged new growth, only to be killed-off last week by 2 nights of deep freeze. My wisteria vines which drape the pergola in front of our home had just begun their purple entrance and we looked to be in for the best perfume-laden show. But Jack Frost came back for a last visit and killed not only our wisteria blossoms but the valley’s vineyards and fruit groves.
At first this seeming cruelty of nature felt like one disappointment too many. But then, as is my wont, I looked at what could be gleaned from this. What I came up with is not only the reminder that between expectation and reality lies disappointment, but that in this, the second year of the pandemic, we all need to be careful about opening up too soon; not only because, like the frost, it can kill us, but also because we need more time without the distraction of returning to consumerism in order to make good on the promises that we made last year: promises to become more conscious, more compassionate, not just with each other but with the earth itself.
What kept me going these last few weeks – thanks to the technology that was still functioning – are the many Facetime visits with family and friends, the persistent, joyous birdsong all around us, and a visit from this woodpecker.
Thanks to them I will continue to peck away and sing for whomever is out there in this wild, wonderful, world...
With love, Maggie
