The Crash

I adore Brian Cox. Talk physics to me. Whisper it in my ear.

It was bound to happen sometime.

We learn Newton's first three laws in school. Entropy, that sneaky little secret knot at the end, ties it all together.

Everything falls apart.

Life is a constant battle against entropy. We mow the yard, wash the dishes, sweep the floor. The ants fight to bring the nature back inside while we try to bar them at the door. Out in the woods, where things make sense, the trees are growing to die to grow again. It's cyclical. The fourth law tells us entropy is constant, and whatever we do will eventually be laid to waste by forces beyond our control.

Does depression makes its place at your table when you read that? Sit with it. Make a place for what you read instead of the sadness you feel. The trees are not sad.

My body has gone the way of the lawn that's been mowed too much, the horse whose wind was broke.

It's broken for a while. Where this will take me, I don't know, but I'm learning to make a place for the reality instead of all the feelings when I respond to the sensation.

I'm reminding myself that movement isn't cancelled. It has been changed. Smaller, slower, stiller. But I am still me, movement doesn't make me. The stress that led to this isn't me, even though my mind and body struggle to identify real threats - lions and tigers - from modern threats.

This was coming for a while, evident in the moments when the words I needed were like red balloons released from a toddler's hand and drifting out of reach to the sky. The tiny pieces of sand added up to make a beach, drops that made an ocean, until I was so full and still didn't listen.

The pattern is easy to see when I look back. In the same way constellations would be hard to see if we were in the midst of them, I can't blame myself for running myself down with stress and activity. Now... now, I must be still, so I can chart my course to whatever the next destination will be. Never has there been a better time to seek stillness, quietness, smallness, than now.

Being ill - with whatever is actually it is that makes me feel this way deep into the tissues that never see the light - has forced me to be willing to allow myself to evolve. Can I embrace whatever new me lies ahead? Yes. I hope I can carry so much of the old me along.

If there is a lesson here, it's this: Stillness can be a movement, too.

Subtle Quality vs. Depth - Or, Why Is One Not Like The Other One

Life is odd right now. Can we all just agree on that?

YES.

Just say it, own it, admit it. Loudly, emphatically. May I encourage you to make it your rooftop ballad for the evening? Serenade your neighbors - we are all home anyway - with the song of your people. Own it. Because when we try to run from the fear of the unknown and shove our heads in the sand, the only one fooled is the person covering their head and saying nothing is happening. Everyone else knows you are lying to yourself. Can you embrace the nebulous state of the world and maybe even, dare I say it?, embrace your fear?

Look, as ever, I promise I am taking you somewhere. This will not be an eternal call to embrace being afraid. No one really wants the fear, the heartbeat racing, cortisol spiking, bad dream bringing, anger brining insanity of any of this. But we can't hide from it either. We all have our coping mechanism. Mine is: Move.

To quote Saint Motel (one of my all-time favorite hot Sunday at Bonnaroo shows), "Head, shoulders, knees, toes, Look alive, it's time to go..." Or maybe Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" is a bit more your speed.

All I am asking is, can you look a little alive and less like you're staring death down, because life is short. So I choose to make this happen with yoga. Yesterday I went a little off the track I normally follow - move, move, move, move, move, to slow down the rippling waves that bowl over the depths of my mind, the only way to get everything to just stop and be still, because if I am winded I can't think as much - and I chose a still-er than normal class. The class reminded me that sometimes when you are a pot of boiling water (raises hand) all that's necessary is to occasionally pull the pot from the stove so the water molecules slow themselves the hell down and stop being so excited all the time. It sounds like I'm talking chemistry now, and maybe I am, because aren't we all just built out of chemicals anyway?

Or maybe I am talking about cooking, because lately my insides have felt famished. Hungry for depth and complexity. But yesterday, I finally heard the call to be still and listen. It's not like no one has ever said to me,

"Honey, could you be still and listen to what is going on in that mind and heart of yours?"

For the first time, my brain said, "Oh, okay. This is novel."

On my mat in my living room, I saw that when I calm the waters, there's no depth needed. The ripples clear and everything is right in front of me and all I have to do is look to find the subtle qualities I seek in yoga, in my mind, when I write and paint and create. No, depth is not bad. But depth was perhaps not the destination at which I wished to arrive. I was cooking the wrong things, possibly, following the wrong recipe or mixing up the wrong compound when all I needed to do was take the pot off the stove eye, remove it from the flame, and let the air bubbles settle. Right there, just below the rolling surface, was complexity. I didn't need to dive deep for it.

Depth implies that seeing involves a struggle. Subtlety only asks that we observe.

I ask myself all the time, "How can I write like (enter author here)?" Perhaps the depth I seek from their work is the subtlety I can lend to my own work. Shall I choose rather than deep dives to sit with something small and explore it infinitely? Is that where my power lies, as a creator?