No lie, it’s been a struggle. Autumn turned to winter and now it’s spring. All of my energy the past six months has been directed toward health, wellness and rehabilitation. It’s been a time of negotiation, reflection, some darkness and some pretty beautiful revelations. It isn’t over, certainly, but I’m feeling spring in the air and life sprouting up all around always elevates my mood. As much as I adore the darkness and hermit energy of winter it’s a blessing to hear birdsong, feel the air growing warmer and things turning green, days lengthening and night receding…for a time. I feel different. Changed. Not radically, subtly, that thing that you can’t quite put your finger on but it’s there. The adage is true, resilience is certainly built from struggle and strife, the butterfly or moth pumping blood and life force into their wings to be able to take flight. It’s natural, necessary and vital to their survival. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and walking, looking at nature and trying to find the clues, the lessons and intelligence of the natural world.
Autumn forest walks and rainy winter wandering in the trees not only helped my physical body to stabilize but my mind and heart were able to connect with the earth, the trees and the forest floor. Mushrooms abound and I found myself turning not only to regard them as visual inspiration but seeking to learn what they might know, how do they spring so beautifully from all that loamy, murky death? I found a copy of Merlin Sheldrake’s, Entagled Life on a sale shelf at my favorite bookstore. Drawn to the cover, full of illustrations of mushrooms I picked it up and started to learn about fungi, how complex their lives are, how resilient and intelligent they are, how adaptable and varied. I started to feel somehow akin to them. A tree falls in the forest, it decays and inevitably nurture the fungi spores and they grow and flower, bringing their delicate shapes and texture to the forest floor. All autumn long students brought me pictures, picked specimens from under trees and shared stories about mushrooms they’d seen here and there on their way to school. Gigantic red mushrooms and tiny white glossy mushrooms, little button ones and some that were almost pale lilac, would show up on my desk randomly. They became my reminder that sometimes things have to die for something new to spring up. Thinking about just letting go of the assumptions and labels I’ve given myself, the titles that maybe don’t serve me anymore…maybe I can let that die. I don’t have to be made of iron, I can let it go. Let something else grow in that space. It’s okay.
I spent a lot of time in my kitchen too. I learned to bake bake bread. It’s therapeutic. It’s a moving meditation. It gave me a sense of a time long past, when people were more self sufficient and lived closer to the land, their food and the process of things. I connected to my maternal family, somehow, through the act of mixing, kneading, caring for that yeasty boule, coaxing it into a shape, feeling it take form under my palm, I could imagine my grandmother in her kitchen, on the farm, creating for her family’s nourishment and survival. It’s also a slow process, nothing happens immediately. It requires patience, time, my energy and my presence. Just like healing and rehab, it’s not a right now sort of situation and patience is key. Just as I have fails and “back to the drawing board” moments with sourdough, so too, is it necessary to “back it up” in this healing process. Some days are great and others just don’t gel. It’s okay…it’s a process. Bread is process, man, is it ever. Somehow, though, I don’t give up, I keep trying. It’s okay to fail, it’s only one loaf, one time, one rep, one set…try again. See it as a stop along the learning path, the healing path. Just let it go.
I feel like bread is an act of patience and love. it needs to be nurtured, fed, coaxed into shape, cared for. I guess that’s why I love making kombucha as well. Yes, my kitchen is full of growing organisms. A mother Scoby is likely the strangest thing I’ve ever received in the mail! I’ve nurtured her, fed her sweet tea, kept her safe and warm in a “hotel” next to my fridge, where it’s cozy and away from the light of the sun. In return she has provided me with countless tasty and healthy elixirs. We have created tangy, fruity and herbal beverages galore and there’s a satisfaction in keeping her healthy and safe. The same holds true for my health and vitality, I nurture it, keep in safe, feed it, care for it…brewing is not a quick process either, it’s careful, thoughtful…I’m trying to treat my body the same way, with thought, with care, consideration. It’s okay to slow it down, take my time, get there when I get there. It’s a process and I’ll get there when I get there.
What does any of this have to do with the creative process? Everything. You can’t get water from an empty well. You need to feed creativity. That is work to do on the regular! When your mind and body are completely and utterly focused on a trauma (whatever sort that might be) it’s a tough call to make, to get into that creative zone. I think the acts of kitchen creativity have kept me sane, busy, in the zone, when it could have been so easy to fall into a pit of despair and worry, which tends to be my nature. And the processes have taught me things about the nature of growth. It sometimes requires the death of something that no longer serves us, it takes time, nurturing, patience and resilience. It doesn’t always turn out perfectly but you learn, rework, come back at it again…isn’t that at the heart of the creative process anyhow?
Comments
Yes for me just getting moving again this spring took some effort. But moving and planning are therapeutic in my own passions.