On stillness and silence

and trusting your gut

dusk
snow just fell
coating the branches
icicles hang on the empty feeder
the suet cage rocks back and forth
one bird hops on a horizontal bough
I look beyond the reflection of the lamp in the window
a tree limb has cracked, bony twig fingers skim the ground

everything is still

It’s Sunday morning and my spouse Janyce and I are sitting in the living room: me with my legs outstretched on the couch, and her, sitting upright in the club chair. She’s looking directly out the window to our back yard.

“What’s happening out there, ” I say.

“Nothing,” she says.

“No birds?”

“Oh, there’s a few birds out there,” she says, looking back down at her laptop.

The jazz is playing low in the background and I can hear plenty of cheeping coming from the window behind me. All the sparrows are in the thicket of vines bouncing around on the ground in the snow.

I’m writing all day today. But I’m struggling with it. I keep looking around the house at things I’d rather be doing, like disassembling the Christmas tree that has remained standing in the corner for the past three months now. Every morning I look at it, frown, and then plug it in. It needs to come down. I got up earlier and pulled out a bottle of marsala wine from the cabinet. I have baby portabello mushrooms and thinly sliced chicken breasts in the refrigerator and brown rice in the freezer. Dinner will take 15 minutes. I don’t have to think about that anymore, either.

I’m procrastinating because I have an assignment due next Sunday. It involves direct reporting and observation. Similar to what I’m doing right now while writing this post, but it also involves interviewing, research, and finding a focus. Last Thursday evening, my classmates and I opened the start of our writing class with a free writing assignment. We had exactly one minute to look out the window and write what we saw. I scribbled the words that came out like a little poem, untouched.

Only, on second look, I would interrogate myself about that last line. Everything is not still. Not the suet cage that is rocking back and forth, not the bird hopping on the horizontal bough, not even the bony twig fingers that skim the ground. It’s an image but it’s not a poem. Just like how my pages of notes and photographs are not yet an article.

The other day I read a beautiful long form nonfiction story in a running magazine. The writer expertly wrote about his own experience of running in a specific location with his dog. It was descriptive and relatable and it was also personal because he wove in memories and anecdotes. The focus of his first-person article was how he used the time with the dog on these runs to help him make sense of a very difficult time in his life. If you don’t yet have a focus for your neighborhood story, trust that you will find it by observing. Go to the place and write what you see and maybe you will be surprised by what you find. This is the paraphrased advice from my instructor. I don’t have a focus. I don’t have a personal connection that I can weave into the “reportage.” I don’t have someone to interview or a plan for the piece and I’m feeling very uncomfortable about the entire assignment.

I look up from my screen to watch Janyce walking laps around the house, she passes by me, looking down at the fitbit on her wrist. Swirly is on her chair, breathing deep, lying on her side with her eyes closed and just the tip of her nose hanging off the edge. The operating word in my instructor’s advice is “trust.” A friend of mine texted me earlier in the day. “I’m thinking I need to go back to work,” she said. “Don’t do it,” I said. “I really think you are on the verge of something big creatively. Trust your gut.” It’s so easy for me to tell her to trust and yet practically impossible for me to do the same for myself. I hear all the time that part of learning to “trust your gut” is to get very still and silent so you can hear the inner voice inside you. I’m not sure I fully know what it means to “get very still.” Janyce will sometimes say to me in a sleepy voice, “just be still” when I’m talking to her in the dark in the middle of the night, complaining that I can’t sleep. And of course that just makes me grope for my ear buds attached to the radio on the nightstand.

I recently read some advice on Michael Clinton’s blog from life coach Michele Evans, the co-founder of NxtWaves, a life coaching business that helps people in career and life changes. She says that when it comes to navigating transitions you should, “foster intentionality by getting out of auto-pilot and becoming more aware of your thoughts, feelings, and actions.” My friend is at the crossroads of a big decision. I’m pushing myself to write differently in this journalism class. “Making time for stillness and silence can help calm your mind and improve focus. This can be achieved through meditation, yoga, or simply taking a walk in nature,” she said.

“You know, I can go with you on a walk today. Look at Selene, she’s going crazy. I’ll walk her and you can observe more,” says Janyce, getting up from the hearth of the wood stove where she was just crouching and shoving logs into the side door, the fire now blazing in orange plumes behind the glass.

“You want some lunch?” I say.

“I am getting a little hungry,” she says.

“How about red pepper soup and a sandwich?” I say.

Swirly gives up on her excited jumping and resumes her morning posture, eyes closed and sprawled sideways on her chair. Even she can tell that I’m not quite ready to bundle up, grab my notebook and pen and venture out of this warm living room. Not yet ready to walk the cold woods trail observing and taking notes and trusting.

“But soon I will, Swirl. I promise I will.”