The Still Point

"At the still point, there the dance is." 
- TS Eliot

I started writing about this a few months ago, after making a connection with someone and becoming aware of this 'still point', which in that case took the form of calm company in the social storm. It was an echo of something I had not yet realized I had fully lost, and had not yet released into the ether.

This week I became aware of another type of still point. I was seeking, and did not honour in the moment, the calm quiet place that lies at my centre. I am not weaving metaphors when I say the seas were churning around me, in a place called 'the snake pit'. An amphitheatre of swell engulfed rocks, body and boat breaking forces, confused seas. I ended up there because I allowed the quiet voice to be stifled within me; my feet moved, my hands gripped the paddle shaft as I launched myself and 5 others into the surf; I left my soul behind and blinded my senses for the sake of a test. I was trapped by my own inexorable movement across transition after transition. Tent to beach, beach to surf, surf to swell, swell to boomer-choked maelstrom. I crossed the threshold of my tent that morning riddled with anxieties borne of a poor nights' sleep and bad dreams, and 10 more thresholds later there I was, still ignoring the silent scream of resistance, better judgment and fear. Whatever vision I normally possess lost in the struggle. I labeled my misgivings as irrational, dream-bent perception, ignoring or putting aside my own truth in the matter. Paralyzed myself in the process. The quiet truth of gut instinct and good sense clamouring in frustration, straining to be released. Vocalized.

There is no doubt that there were earlier thresholds crossed, that I don't yet recognize.

The pressure was behind, in front, all around; external and contrived, but internally it felt real, compelling, almost inescapable. There was an exam to pass, money spent, an ego to protect. There were people I wanted to prove wrong, to revise their understanding of who I am. Other people I wanted to prove right, about me, and what I am capable of and who I am supposed to be. I had even forgotten that I never really expected to pass, had heard others' assertions above my own. An un-winnable battle on many counts. Playing by the rules of others can steal the truth from our lips.

Escape. I say it was almost impossible. To utter a refusal, or a change of plan away from the directive of the examiner, would have been a simple enough act. Just the opening of my mouth, the loosing of the voice that I own, the utterance of what I knew was the right thing to do. What I would have done in any other situation. But I remained locked up, unable to explain the dream, to validate this gut of mine and what it was telling me, loud and clear. Not to mention the intelligence and training and perspective that I know I have. While I paused numerous times, spoke up, timed out, my attempts were small, muffled, uncertain; requests for help rather than clear divergence away from a set plan. And I was blinded to the right line in the confluence of fear and stress.

In retrospect, I know that either way, into the pit of snakes, or away from it, would have had the same result on paper. I would not have been heard or admired by the ones with the pens and the power; a failing grade, a number written in ink below my name, a file filed, a retest. A judgment confirmed. But I would have voiced my own truth, heard myself out, respected and known myself perhaps a little more for finding the still clean line in the raging seas.

How strange is it that we can drift away from ourselves so efficiently? As if our lives didn't depend on finding, listening to and honouring the still points that lie within us.

It is not nothing. Our gut, fear, instinct and intuition is there for a reason. I need to hold myself more accountable to it.

Examination Rapid

There is a river in Quebec called the Dumoine, and it is one of the places where I cut my teeth as a younger paddler. It is known as a great 'teaching river' for the progression of difficulty of each subsequent rapid. It starts gently, giving you places to practice basic manoeuvres, figure things out. Like the way the canoe moves when fully loaded, the balance and strokes of our paddling partners, the effect and synergy between river current and hull. As it moves downstream, the Dumoine river gets increasingly technical, forcing you to up your game; combining whatever skills and water sense you have accrued. The last major rapid on the river has been named "Examination", a set whose overlapping features require more finesse and precision in boat manoeuvring and teamwork. This is a river that teaches us as we go along and presents new challenges usually just at the point when we are ready.

I find myself wondering this week that I am being tested. I have sunk deeper into myself of late, remembered who I am more profoundly. I have been learning how to love things with less attachment, and have the courage to leave my heart open despite the risk. I am learning to turn shit into fertilizer, to put it another way. I have felt...happy. At peace. Despite the mystery that yawns before me and the broken path and burned bridges behind me. And I am being presented with a challenge this week.

Bridge Rapids on Beaver Creek (not the Dumoine).
As a friend said recently "We'll burn that bridge when
we come to it."

It is my real work: To stay put in myself despite what swirls around me, or threatens to pull me off my line. To see the obstacles ahead and what came before and take note, but not stare into them. To not get pulled into the maw of that recirculating wave that looms ahead. To thread the needle when necessary. And to love the beauty and intricacy of the river, despite it's hazards. To be myself, as graceful or clumsy as I might be from moment to moment.

River paddling is often about finding the quiet water that lies in the midst of the maelstrom. To hit the glassy black tongue between rooster tails and standing waves, however narrow it might be. At times, often when we are paddling more challenging rapids, we end up off line, in a place all our scouting from the shoreline did not reveal. We are faced with the need to execute "plan B". Here we are required to be fully present in the flow and pay attention to what is emerging from moment to moment, and respond with whatever skill and precision we have learned on our journey.




If I have hurt you I see that, and am sorry. If you have hurt me, thanks for the shit, it's proving to be rich ground for growth.

On the Loose

There will come a time, a month or so from now, when I will be loosening my grip on this home place for a time. A longer absence, most of a few months with only short breaks.

I have gotten used to this staying put thing, especially so this winter. I have revelled in it, become attached to this way of being still. Although I know the anticipation of the departure is worse than the actual doing will be.
It worries me, makes me uneasy; this looming period of being on the loose. I have gotten used to my temperature controlled existence, the comfort of my version of 'routine'. The time I have had to be within myself, the pauses I have built into my days. Down in there somewhere I also worry that by pulling up anchor, I will be forgotten again.

But I am about to be unleashed upon the wild places. Mountain, ocean, river will become home once again. I will forget the patterned safety of the day to day in favour of something magical. I am supremely lucky. Privileged to opt out, at least in part, of this modern existence. The rhythms of wind and tides and currents will reshape my senses, and loosen whatever plaque has built up in my mind. I will reset my internal clock, sink into a quieter way of being, forge new connections with myself and others. I will relearn what it is to be me, and the true meaning of 'staying put'. I will have permission to unplug and be accountable only to the here and now. I will walk beside those who may or may not know they have come to do the same.
We will be washed clean by this wildness, find space to breathe more fully, and will leave distractions and  trivial concerns behind. We will remember what matters and heed our own truth, which is simple and elemental. It can be found in wind sculpted stone, in the confluence of salt water and sand, and in the potential energy of a building storm over mountain passes.

As I approach this transition, I may sometimes crave the safety of the harbour, but this ship is made for more than that.

The Impossibility of Knowing

I embrace my elusive nature.

There are times when I have felt understood and helped others feel understood. But these moments are impermanent, and flit away quickly under fingertips. To be known is a gift, but to really know someone is to see their eternally changing nature. To watch them move and shift with the light, and accept that for what it is. Them for what they are, and are not in any given moment.

I have been guilty of seeking to define and see clearly with a direct gaze. By staring, I have hoped to illuminate the truths I so desperately sought. In myself and in others. But the eyes play tricks, and these days I need reading glasses. I am finding that it is only by looking away that knowing comes to me, lands in the depth of my gut as a moving, breathing arrival.

As human beings we like contracts, structures. The scribing of paperwork and a hammer and nail help us believe that there is something still and unchanging in this world. Helps us cling to the river washed stones of security and certainty. We try to write ourselves into each other's stories, tack ourselves to the living tree of someone else's existence. We also do it to ourselves; pinning ourselves up against some previously held reality. If we succeed, we are killers, crushing the life out of the magical element of what we are. More often than not though we come to see that the real person has left, leaving only an earthly husk, dust in our hands.

I aspire to look away more often, let my hands fall from your shoulders and mine. Breathe out. It is hard to look away from such beauty, but truthfully we can only have what we let go of. And that is a sometimes painful process of unhooking and unhinging ourselves from objectivity and guarantees. From promises that could not be kept. Again and again, over a lifetime.
Hold me, but not still.

Risk

About a year and a half ago, I posted a 'crowd-sourcing' question on Facebook. Something to the effect of "wisdom on risk taking - go." I remember it clearly and some of the answers that came, and not because I tend to remember everything I post. I remember it because I was in the process of taking a real risk. One that was emotional, exciting and scary. And although the initial result of that risk was hands down balls out positive, the ramifications of what ensued have embroiled me in a yearlong process of loss, ambiguity and disappointment. And have caused other people pain and strife, I have no doubt.

Now I return to this idea of risk. I have shied away from it a lot this past year, but at times I have expressed my truth, been more brave than at any other time in my life. I have risked seeming like a fool, and in retrospect perhaps that has been the result from a certain perspective.

I am an innately cheeky and sometimes irreverent person. I enjoy whimsical banter, but I am also serious and tend towards deep thinking and profound idealism. And I have spent a lifetime feeling that some of the aspects who I am are, well...'a bit much',  in addition to a fairly healthy dose of 'not enough'. As a result I moderate myself, from being too silly, or too serious and quiet, too sad or too brazenly gleeful, especially in the company of strangers. For the most part, it's the impish part of me that hides away - most often with people I know less well, and more so when there is something at stake - something of the ego to be lost or cracked into. I unfold slowly, though in some cases I transcend that tendency.

I work with people for a living, and while I feel one of my gifts is authenticity, I also know there is a part of me that needs to chink the mortar and limit the doorways people have to who I am. I need to stand up in the watchtower and see who's coming, so I can decide whether or not to let you in. If I find myself being too funny, or too serious - a bit much - I might withdraw. If I inadvertently drew you in too quickly then thought better of it this withdrawal is a way that I avoid a painful conversation later. It gives me some time to regroup and reassess, but it is also a form of pre-emptive cowardice. I am as afraid of disappointing as I am of being disappointed.

So what if I was just myself, whatever that means at any given moment? Would the right people just show up and the wrong ones steer clear? And what about that...I expend energy tamping down the fire of who I am, assuming that I am right about who is 'right' and who is 'wrong'. Perhaps my impressions are incorrect.

What if the real risk is the one that I have been so energetically engaged in? I have risked being a smaller version of who I am in order to exert some imagined control over the outcome of my relationships. Perhaps the real measure of who is right and wrong flows organically from all of us simply being ourselves, moved towards or away from each other by the grace of authenticity.

What the Heart Knows

Take a seat on this blustery March day.
Ink the screen with thoughts alone, black on white, the illusion of words made real by their emotional bones. These scripted shapes have weight and truth when infused with the light of feeling. They are steeped in it.
I have discovered, or am discovering that when the mind has found no explanation or solution to life's mysteries, it is time to give up thinking. All the questions will continue to go unanswered because the answers are not sitting out in plain sight, they are not earthly perhaps. They cannot be grasped, or held at this time.

So it is up to the heart to understand, as it did in the beginning. In every beginning I have ever known. I knew what was up and what was happening long before the mind got hold of it, and will continue in this way. I knew there was a wait in store that could span lifetimes. Knowing that the heart acknowledges no timeline and has a wild tolerance for ambiguity. Trusts the territory where reason and logic have no hold, where intuition and the body's wisdom are paramount. The only truth tellers.
Now to learn to listen.
Hold off on conclusion, 'understanding' and any certainty that seeks to inhabit a physical form.
I knew all this in childhood, before that. I was infused with a connection to what is light and good. That despite everything, and all that was to come, all would be well. I knew too that there would be darkness.
Now I need to listen more carefully at the beginnings, and honour what I know to be true, despite the internal or external pressures otherwise. And always be open to getting it wrong.

The Sound of Otter Feet on Wet Pavement

The darkness of a spring rain night in an oceanside city. For a city it's a modest one, short on skyscrapers, long on driftwood strewn beaches and greenery. And pinkery for that matter. Spring was upon us in February. Blossoms and all. The air is soft, and damp.
There is a final walk of the night for those of us who live with dogs, a short trip around a block or two, finding grassy sidelines, a last bit of sniffery to be had. The humans as well get to breathe some of the outside air before bedtime.
We live beside the water here, from my door less than a minute trip to the salty edge of things. The wood of the trestle bridge and pavement were freshly damp this evening. Emerging from one side of the trail came the humpbacked twosome, in the dim light hard to see. Cats? Coons?
Neither. The strange slapping of compact webbed feet on manmade substrate, a loping and slightly lopsided gait showed them up for who they were. Heads raised, always. Optimistic. River Otters in transit, looking for better fisheries, or a bankside home to hole up in. Perhaps this was their pre-bedtime stroll. They looked to me and the dog for a moment before completing their sidewalk crossing and we looked back, saying nothing.
Before this evening's dark rainy dog walk, I have never known the sound of otter feet hitting wet pavement. And in the smallest ways I am stretched by it, welcomed into some tiny but significant secret that I did not even know existed.