we will miss it when it ends
on longing for evermore life
Thank you to all who participated in this past Sunday’s (sold-out!) writing workshop, “A Vision for the Future: Writing Toward 2021.” Every time I lead one of these I’m surprised by what emerges in people’s writing out of uncomplicated, free-association prompts. It’s a simple yet profound practice, and can unlock so much in our psyches, and y’all know I am all for bringing that old dusty furniture out onto the curb for some sun and fresh air. I always walk away with some cobwebs cleared and juiced up on hope for the future.
Next one up is January 24th, at 10am PST. It’s another lighthearted theme:
Disrupt the Narrative: Writing through Chaos
Sign up if you dare and I’ll see you Friday for a humbug Open Thread ;)
I had a whole post planned about reality and magical thinking and imagination as the grand disruptor and then last night just before sleep I read this poem:
((read it out loud))
The span between Christmas and New Years was already a time of nothing-time, of not doing, of not knowing what to do with not doing, of sitting around, of eating one too many of all the things we wouldn’t usually eat, of sleeping in and trying to let ourselves off the hook for sleeping in, of nostalgia and grief and sadness, of loneliness, of loneliness made more acute by being surrounded, of bad moods and feeling guilty for them, of crankiness and trepidation but also joy, if only small sparks of it, of a can’t-help-ourselves-but-look-forward turning, of orienting by no more than a few-fifths of a degree back toward the sun, which, chaos be damned, is where we’re heading now. And I’m talking about a literal sun, about the next-up solstice that blessedly comes no matter how awful we are to each other, but also, of a metaphorical one, the one you feel as a star in your gut upon reading the last two lines of this poem when it hits you that, yes, dammit, I would miss this. I don’t want this to end.
“We will miss this when it ends” is what remains underneath all the terror of living inside this terrifying, neverending, time as a spiral, full-of-death year. It’s the banal chatter-at-a-safe-distance with shopkeepers and grocery store cashiers and the man ringing up the half-rotisserie-chicken-dinner-meal. It’s holding babies and sniffing the crowns of their soft skulls. It’s that last choking sip of dregged up chai after a whole cupful of smooth sweetness. It’s memories of offering some muscle when a neighbor struggles to carry an unwieldy box to their car, springing to help without having to think twice. It’s winking like a nerd anytime anyone makes eye contact to counteract the absence of smiles. It’s the staggering grief of losing a loved one and then staring in wonder at the soft shoots of baby blades of grass emerging on surrounding hills and at the planets aligning in rare formations in the sky and the hummingbirds that chase each other around and through the plum tree outside the window every single morning like clockwork.
Part of what it means to be human is to mostly careen through life without noticing the mundane holiness of the every day. “We will miss this when it ends” is a pause. It’s that weird thing that happens when a small, or messy, or routine life moment we’re mostly just trying to get through is suddenly and without warning elevated to the realm of the sacred. It’s the overwhelm that hits when our bones recall the fleeting nature of life. It’s visceral, tangible, but so slippery: we can’t live there long, and this is another part of what makes us human, another thing we’ll have to figure out how to forgive ourselves for.
// my god, may I never try to get through anything ever again //
The thing about solstice and poems about solstice is to acknowledge the passing of time. It’s a humbling down, a remembering that as much as we crave the light, as desperate as we are to bask in a patch of it on the kitchen floor, it won’t be long before we’re back hunkered down under blankets and in front of space heaters, ubiquitous chai in hand. It’s embracing contraction as kindly as we do expansion. It’s remembering our animal bodies, it’s owning that whether we notice or care or not, we are in conversation with the world around us: with the tides, and the planets, the presence or absence of the sun. With each other. With the dogs and the cats and the squirrels and the rats and the crows and spiders and snakes. The light is coming, but so is the dark, and there’s nothing we can do about it, no real way to prepare (we’ll try anyway).
There are so many things I wish would hurry up and end. But this? I’m moving slow. I’m spreading all the way out. I’m here for it all, every last heart-cracking moment.
Slow Motion Sober is a newsletter and community for creative types who are sober or curious about sobriety, and all the life-y intersections along the way. It's written by me, Dani, a writer, facilitator and sobriety advocate in San Francisco, CA.
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