#4 As the sun

becomes more prominent in the backroom where I write, as the 9 am light crests to highlight the dust, the wax drippings from candles, I have to pause in my work to go to the kitchen, retrieve the almond scented wood cleaner to wipe clear my desk, a physical act of cleansing so that I may continue, creativity now undistracted from the small imperfections. Household maintenance as a means of procrastination.

But on the way back from the kitchen, I wash my hands and notice the cuticles. I already know that I cannot keep nail tools at my desk; too tempting. So I take a second to massage oil into them, do a quick filing touch-up. When you look at your hands constantly while working, it’s part of my necessary conditions to create, rationalizes my brain in defense to no one other than myself.

In many instances, my inclinations towards distraction when I’m blocked mean that I am incredibly productive otherwise. I run a meticulous household; I am so on top of my laundry and my dishes and my cleaning and my dog’s grooming and my own grooming and the plants I tend to when I cannot tend to the words. You should see how I can pace the length of my house- a long, Philadelphia apartment that begins with a great living room and runs through a length of others until you get to my backyard- and accomplish so many things from my to-do list, multi-tasking as I tidy the different spaces, playing fetch with my dog at the same time, picking things up to place them where they belong right as I’m grabbing another.

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I am writing this today because I could not yesterday.

Many reasons that speak to why; maybe a cop out, maybe just giving into the aforementioned procrastination. But yesterday, I was not busy-bodying around the house instead of writing this piece.

The day before had caught me in a great, tsunamic wave of unforecasted emotion. Multiple conversations- with my mother, my cousin, my sisters. I instigated every one of them, spurned from another kind of great need, one I’m still trying to figure out the source of and sometimes it looks like flailing and spontaneously seeking (begging for) verbal, emotional connection from women in my life even though I actually detest speaking on the phone.

The days I have that feel like this, full and difficult to escape from, leave me exhausted, as I’m sure so many of you can relate.

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There is something to be said for resiliency, to have the character and strength to pull yourself together and you know what- I have fucking heaps of it. But it is something that I have used as a tool to sustain me for so long that now, for a time, I have absolutely no interest in pulling myself together for anyone. And I love you all that have been experiencing the unveiling of these stories and their repercussions with me, but yesterday I simply could not. I needed to let it be okay to not make my deadline, to let that part of my perfectionism go, just for a bit.

My interest now is not in giving up resiliency and strength, that would be such a misunderstanding. It is that I am finding the strength in being soft for myself, of rest and gentility and retreating into the little nest of a love life I’ve created for me and my dog. Because when I stripped away all the should’s and could’s and potential obligations of the day, all that really mattered yesterday was caring for him and myself.

The world around us went on.

It’s that I’m learning to be patient with myself, allowing to sink deeply into the slowness of an afternoon, to sit and simply watch the light change across my home, to notice the different shadows, so that time goes by slowly. It rips furiously by us far too often. Yesterday, I asked the day to last, to hold me longer, to let me spend time simply discerning within myself, as my therapist keeps encouraging me to do.

This is not always feasible. There is absolutely a time when we do need to pull ourselves together, and also an element of privilege I have in the current life-schedule I lead- which has not been easy to cultivate, I will defend that for myself right off the bat. The work of piecing together income sources, maintaining health insurance, how it feels when you have constant freelance projects that you could be working on at any time- because at any given moment you could or should be working, should be focused on income, how it is so difficult to chose to relax. I think a lot of people have mastered the time management skill of this much better than I have, though, so something to be said for working on that.

I may have a great deal of flexibility in my daily schedule, and I am grateful that I have been able to provide that for myself the last two years. (I also absolutely began in life from a place of privilege that made this easier for me than others from the start, but that is a subject for another time.) I have spent the last decade and a half in a creative-focused way of life, and that is to simultaneously say I have worked so many odd jobs. It is to say that I have the distinct entrepreneurial spirit that is required of the artist in our current society, that I have always found some sort of next income when I needed one, learned how to save money to an almost debilitatingly obsessive level for my mental well being, while still finding times to prioritize creative projects I was offered, multiple trips of travel and adventure, and now, focusing on the writing and the gift of days that can melt when I need them.

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I hope you all are able to take those days of softness when you need, that you are able to recognize and give them to yourself.

Sometimes I wonder: is it that I need so much more of this than people speak about, because I’m currently emotionally exhausted from all the trauma and challenges I’m processing, or do we all actually need much more rest and leisure than our society has programmed us to deny ourselves?

Not time to be lazy, though sometimes it does like cocooning yourself and knowing it is okay to just be still. Rest is also the freedom in your day to play, to use your own hands to make something, time for passion projects, the kind of work that fulfills us, to move and be grateful for our bodies, to tilt our faces towards the sun, name what we smell in the air, notice the neighborhood tree that fills with sparrows in the later hours, tens upon tens of littles voices chirping busily, perhaps announcing their happiness at just being alive.

-S

Solitude

When it comes
	with a certain blueness
	only allowed by rivers,
certain pauses in Autumn,

You forgive it for its need
	to pool in during a midnight quiet,
	for the way it wraps you
like an old, cardigan sweater.

You hold it just behind your eyelids,
        wander down Ivy Street,
	stare up together at the cables 
labyrinthing a breakable sky.

You share in the pleasure
	that you are both not that complicated,
	and go back to the apartment, 
another night together 
fading in the stillness.




Scarlette 2012