“To love means to embrace and at the same time to withstand many endings, and many many beginnings—all in the same relationship.” ― Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Phix's Curiosity: what sparks my interest
Watch this space to see what's sparked my interest this week. A random grab bag of delights!
It's the end of the year. For me, this is a reflective month as I look back over the last 12 months and think about what I want to take with me in the next 12 months. What could I never have anticipated in the last 12 months? Wondering what I can't anticipate in the next 12. What do I need to start planning for? Some things are locking into place, other things remain as fuzzy as always.
Medusa's Garden
When you need every one and everything around you to just stop.
Sometimes the only thing I need to stop is my brain. If it can be overthought, I've possibly overthought it. Please don't ask me if I've overthought something because if it hasn't occurred to me yet to overthink it, you've just ensured that I will now do that very thing. Meditating has really helped reduce that tendency, and lately I'm remembering that good exercise also does the same. Meditation helps me start recognizing patterns and being able to quietly, calmly recognize the stories I tell myself as exactly that - stories. And to pry around the edges of those stories and patterns to see if and how justified they are. Exercise just shuts everything down and re-centers me in my body.
In movement I get out of my head and into my body. It sounds weird to say, but someone once aptly described it as being a floating head. The classic Cartesian duality of mind as separated from the body. I don't actually believe that's the case, but I do believe that sometimes the mind can get so wrapped up in doing its own thing that it forgets about the physical matter it's tethered to and is a part of. And so, it's nice to go for a walk, even if it's on a treadmill, and feel my awareness shift from somewhere behind my eyes to down the back of my neck, out into my shoulders, down my arms, into my chest, then belly, down over my hips, down my legs, into my calves, my ankles, and all 56 bones in my feet. Coming back into my whole body.
When I go to the Y, and have to do the walking on the treadmill, I turn the music up loud enough that I (mostly) can't hear the other machines, then I find a stabilizing hand rest, close my eyes and walk. Sometimes I sing along under my breath, silently. Home - home from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, and all is right as I re-center, fully in my body.
Ariadne's Yarn: playing with threads
What I'm up to with fiber and possibly how mythology and stories all tie together.
I'm knitting a HAT now. And spinning pretty purple merino. Slowly. I'm trying to go slow because I have so much that I've spun that needs to be made into things that I feel like I really ought to do a bunch of knitting and weaving and also this is my last hank of roving before I'm entirely out. Which can be remedied, sure, but... I'm looking on in a bit of horror at the amount of yarn piling up and wondering what I'm going to do with all of it. I think I'm in that terrible space between spin more than I can use and don't spin enough to actually sell it (and certainly not at any kind of cost that would compensate time and labor, lol!). I wonder if the local yarn store would sell on consignment...
Random entertaining thought that I think I will probably not do - you know how as a kid some kids put playing cards on the wheels of their bicycles so they'd have bikes that (sorta) made motor noises? Yeah - that on my spinning wheel. I crack me up.
Mythic Librarian: the art of arranging a life
Thoughts on ontology and ways to organize a life.
Coming home, cleaning out the old to make room for the new, year ends that are beginnings. The endless looping cycles around the sun. Looping and looping and looping.
“Often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else. I've felt that many times. My hope for all of us is that "the miles we go before we sleep" will be filled with all the feelings that come from deep caring - delight, sadness, joy, wisdom - and that in all the endings of our life, we will be able to see the new beginnings.”
― Fred Rogers
Thanks for reading my newsletter and listening to me ramble on about my loopings and loopings and loopings. 💕