Meandering into the New Year

As I thought about this week's blog, I decided it would be useful to revisit some writing from last year to see where I was and how similar/different this year is from last year as I enter into another early winter season. For the most part, I'm still feeling vata overload. Kapha is a distant energy. I can see it on the horizon and catch glimmers of it in my body, but for the most part, it is the dry, vibrating energy that has me in its grips.  

Here, though, is a paragraph from my experiences last year, December 19 of 2012 to be precise:

At one point in Juliet's Saturday class, I was in malasana and I thought, this is it.  This is the shit that I resist, despise, and from which I always disconnect.  I felt it deeply in my hips as I struggled to find a comfortable moment in the position.  But then I tried to relax and started to focus on my core and pressing my big toe into the earth.  I then felt something moving--that dark energy moving around and making space for something else.  My butt settled down closer to earth and I felt lighter in my heart.  I could feel that the sludge did not have to take over.  The feeling was again momentary, but what I realized this time was that I can plug into that darker heavier energy and find places to move and shift.  I can play with this energy instead of fearing and dreading it.  I realized the real work of my body in the juncture and the season: to play with kapha.

That dark energy, the sludge, as I called it, has not been settling into me too heavily. The feeling this inspires within me, though, does remind me of what I felt in cycling class on Monday.  When class started, everything was heavy.  It was hard to push the pedals. It was hard to get my rpm's up to a decent rate.  It all felt tremendously difficult. The easiest of motions felt like I was trudging through mud.  And I focused on that feeling.  I stayed with it and as I stayed with it I could feel a loosening.  After a few rounds of work, I was able to, metaphorically, pedal out of the mud and smoothly move my body through the motions of the class. 

I bring this up, because I realized as I read that entry that the act of sitting with does not take as much work as it used to.  I can access it more quickly these days.  The daily practice. The routine of my morning  It all seems to have helped me face the immediate moments of fear that the sludge can induce.  It is freeing.  It gives me tremendous energy as I enter into this cold and dry early winter that has hit us in Fargo.  Sub-zero weather has been the consistent temperatures for the past month.  The snow is crunchy and dry.  The wind isn't bad, but the air is incredibly dry. Vata is definitely lingering in a serious way in my environment and in my body.  Stiff joints.  Shoulder achey.  I can feel the ache from the back of my skull to the left side of my hip.  I get to head to a massage today, which I hope will inspire juiciness. Help me find juiciness. I love that word: juicy. 
And it is something I am craving deeply in my body.  Deeply.  Because I am feeling so dry--the anti-thesis of juicy. 

Body Patterns and Shifts: A Tangent

One thing that emerged from my Thai massage session was that my body was feeling some aches due to holding my body in a more puffed up fashion.  Why is this interesting?  Probably because I have been spending an enormous amount of time working on shifting away from my typical victim narrative.  It is a story that comes with a particular stance-- a stance making me as small as possible.  That means hunching, crossing my legs, and holding in my shoulders. Anything that I can do to not take up much space--especially in moments of stress and tension. Anything I can do to hide, become invisible. Not be accountable to anything.  Not even myself.

My body seems to be moving into expansion and visibility. At least that is how I'd like to interpret my body right now.  It is feeling the aches from holding my chest out, lifting my shoulders--not hunching them.  It is part of a new narrative taking shape. Just as this type of ache in my body is new, so are all the feelings that come with being awake and accountable--especially to myself. It was not a sensation I felt with much force. I find it intriguing how unconsciously my body posture started to change as some of my new story started to settle in.  It helps me to think about how the way we see ourselves in the world has a direct impact on how I'm physically in the world.

There was also a serendipitous moment in this experience of my bodily changes. I was watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in which there is a girl who becomes invisible. She is so socially marginalized and unseen that she becomes physically invisible.  I couldn't help thinking about that girl as me. How that story was mine.  How I had worked hard to try to make my body something invisible and unassuming and now here I am working hard to break free. Here I am trying to hold my space. Here I am finding space and holding space for me. 

So as I think about last year and how the sludge hit me so early. I am amazed at how I move through these rotating seasons, but they are far from redundant.  This year is drawing out something different. Something else.  It isn't just a replay of last year's early winter for me.  I am a new body facing this season in a new way.  It is a thrilling feeling.  I never thought I'd find a thrill in the winter season. I never thought I'd feel a lightness, a curiosity toward this time of year. 

Another practice I indulged in on Christmas Day was not leaving the house.  I stayed in pajamas and stayed home all day.  And I didn't feel guilty or gross.  It was a challenge, but there was something lovely about reminding myself that December 25 would be a day of leisure, not guilt.  That work and the world is always there and I can take a day to hibernate. It wasn't totally conscious.  There was television. There was food. But there was also reading and loving and all kinds of wonderful that can be found in the great indoors.  It felt as though I had finally shed some of the past in which being inside meant being depressed.  I felt as though some of that old story was rendered completely irrelevant and that it now time to turn to something deeper. 

Liminal Spaces at the End of Juncture

This past week has been an exploration in incompleteness, grayness, and all the words that convey an in process transition.  Sitting in the incomplete spaces of a semester not quite ready to end, I worked hard to find grounding and solace.  By incomplete I mean there were

frayed

lingering threads still holding me to the fall semester: finals, grading, committee meetings. My routine started to fray as classes ended and the threads holding me somewhat stable unraveled as I started to look toward the start of winter break.  Losing my routine last week seemed to align with the instability of seasonal shifts and added another layer to a complex month of juncture work.  The end of autumn came, though, and we are now in early winter.  I am also ostensibly done with the semester.  The threads totally severed, as I now work to weave new threads into my daily life.  Early winter is a challenge.  Doshically (is that a word?), it reflects my constitution.  The tension between vata and kapha is in full swing.  Vibration and earth colliding.  How do I find balance between these seemingly oppositional forces? How do I use them well to support each other, rather than exacerbate them?  That is my challenge over the next month or so before winter deepens and kapha takes a deeper hold of the earth--and me.  

The past week was a series of challenges and I am always surprised how valuable intentionality can be as I head into moments that push and pull at me in uncomfortable ways.  I have to admit, it was a week of vata gone crazy.  I was vibrating and floating above the earth more often than I could find the ground beneath me.  What helped me? Remembering that it was just a moment.  It was a moment. A moment.  It was not forever. And ever. And ever.  Rather than closing my eyes or trying to burrow away from the the source of the discomfort, I held on. I remembered that I needed to keep grounding myself as best as I could. I held on to my morning routines as best as I could.  Yes, I slept badly. I tossed and turned.  My mind churned over and over like a record on the turntable.  But in the morning, I dragged myself to my morning pages. I held my mala.  I repeatedly called to akhilanda.  It did not always go well.  Many times, I couldn't get through all my pages.  Other times, I felt mindless in my calls to the goddess who is  never not broken, but also never not whole.  But I did my best.  I remembered.  I remembered intention.  Intention is everything for me right now. 

http://shrinkrap.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Never-not-broken-750x260.jpg

Liminal is defined as "occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold."   Juncture is defined as "a point of time; especially one made critical by a concurrence of circumstances."  Shifting ground.  Boundaries changing.  A new threshold.  The concurrence of events that lead to shifting ground.  To boundary changes. To the discovery of a new threshold.  These events can lead to uncertain territory. They can produce fear of the unknown. 

Yet, I'm drawn to the liminal spaces even as they terrify me. I seem to be creeping up on them more and more and not with my eyes closed.  I can see myself in the moment and find patience in my fear.  It certainly doesn't mean that the fear disappears.  It is very real, visceral. I can feel my body clench and muscles tighten.  But I'm starting to understand that I am prepared. That I can move through these new spaces and that as I hit these junctures, they have much to teach me, even as I lay awake at night unable to calm my mind. I can feel something happening even as I still experience the terror of being something new, something different from what I was or what I imagined I should be.  Never not broken.  Never not whole.  

Yet awake to it all.  

Kapha Snorkeling throughout Vata Panic

I'm catching up a bit with the blog.  I was away for Thanksgiving in Florida and I knew that I would not be able to post while I was down there.  I've spent some time thinking about this post and what I wanted to focus on and the theme that kept coming through my experiences and my writing pages was  the intersection of vata and kapha.  Panic and stuck-ness. The freakout in my mind as I work through those simultaneous and oppositional experiences.  Sounds a lot like the challenges of my dosha type and my winter work.

Kapha Snorkeling

Feet in Fort Lauderdale

When I was in Florida, Matt and I went snorkeling. Mind you, I have never snorkeled before. I assumed we'd be walking out into calm water and sticking our heads down in the water to see beautiful fish and coral.  Well, that wasn't exactly what happened.

Biscayne Bay, Miami

It was a rather windy day in Key Largo and we got on a boat that took us about 10 miles out into the ocean. The coral reef was a ways out in the middle of… well, water.  Water all around.  And the wind was strong.  There was a strong current and white caps were breaking all around us.  I looked around and realized that I was going to have to swim in that rough water.  Not exactly the image of calmness I had imagined.

I kept telling myself that this would be a great experience.  Submerging myself into the water of kapha--such a dominant force in my life-- might be a way to learn how to move through those dense and liquid spaces that feel so treacherous in the moment.  The power that liquidity holds overwhelms me. I often get lost in it during the winter season, or at least I get lost in the fear of it taking over.  As I watched those waves, I saw how easily they could take me down, down, down into depths I never knew existed.  Although the water was not that deep near the coral reef-- maybe about 5 or 6 feet, we were not to touch the ground.  The coral would be damaged by our touch, so we need to stay horizontal in the water.  I was scared.  But I went in the water with my snorkel in my mouth,  my life jacket on, and a water noodle tucked under my arms.  I'm sure I was a sight.  I was a bit scared, but I swam.  I kept kicking my legs and moving through the waves. It was exhausting.  I was trying to get enough air through the snorkel as I swam and found myself out of breath quite quickly. It's hard to realize in the moment how much work it takes to swim against the current.  I was scared, though, so I just kept swimming to stay up.  I was not enjoying the experience.  I was doing to do it.  But Matt came over and told me to look down, put my head in the water.  I was so scared that up until that point, all I was doing was keeping my head up and swimming.  But then I looked down.  And I saw beautiful fish--yellows, golds, reds.  I saw spiny tree-like coral. I saw a big flowering coral.  It was amazing.  And I then relaxed. I could really see.  I swam more and moved further and further from the boat toward the coral reef.  I looked down and saw more coral and colorful fish.  The panic was still present, but I was able to mediate my fear by letting to go and seeing, really seeing, that I was in this amazing place for this amazing moment.  Admittedly, soon after that Matt came by in a panic because he had swallowed some water. My worry returned for his safety, so we headed back to the boat. But that moment mattered,  even though it was a brief. It helped me see how much the vata panic is not the remedy to the dark heavy fear that kapha can instill within me.  Instead, I need to use the stubbornness of kapha and the focus of pitta, to help me let go.

The Story of Vata Panic
Frenetic.  Vata is here and she is vibrating uncontrollably. She is here and inside of me, vibrating, making it impossible to feel comfortable.  Making it impossible to feel calm.  I'm trying to sit with her, be with her.  I'm trying, but the mind keeps moving and moving, making it hard to settle down. Making it hard to be with.  I'm trying to remember kapha snorkeling. I'm trying to remember that moment. That brief moment in which I looked into the water and saw the beauty beneath me.  The moment I saw the beauty of presence. I'm trying very hard to remember, but vata keeps vibrating uncontrollably.  She is here and demanding that I move with her. Moving, moving, moving.  I'm trying to be with her, but not join in her frenetic dance. I'm trying to just be with her.  To be a witness to her.  I'm trying to remember what it felt like to look down in the water and see the beauty and feel the calm within.  The calm despite my inability to control the water, control the wind, control how I moved in the water.  I'm trying to find space in the panic. Space to stop and observe.  Space to understand that this is just a moment.  A set of moments.

Silhouettes

The Coming of Early Winter: Reflections, Practices

Autumn is fading in the ayurvedic cycle and we are moving into early winter.  By the time I do my next blog we will have entered yama damastra. Yama (the Lord of Death) damstra, according to my teacher and other readings, represents a time in which death’s presence is quite strong.  It is a time in which those with low life force have an easier chance of slipping out of this world.  Not the most optimistic of times.

There is something else at work, though. The death-life cycle, right?  With death comes the deeper work to generate new life, new possibilities. This juncture is also considered one of the most important junctures of the year.  As my teacher has stated, if there is one juncture to take out time and really do inner work, this is the one.  This year it has felt like the early winter shift has taken place already. The past couple of weeks have been plagued by challenges, exhaustions, anxieties, frustrations. I often haven't quite been able to gauge my own sense of well-being.

Juncture, according to Miriam-Webster, is a point of time made critical by a “concurrence of circumstances.”  For ayurveda, seasonal junctures are critical times of flux. The concurrence of circumstances revolves around the unsettling of the elements that comprise ourselves and the world.  The elements open up and loosen, leading to potential reorientation.  It can be a time of great change, great discomfort, great challenge, great potential….  These can be times when all hell breaks loose, but these times can lead to incredible moments of insight and life.

This shift also means a lot to me, because it takes us into the season that parallels my own doshic make-up:  Vata-Kapha.  It means that both can easily become imbalanced. Both can find excess easily.   And I am often susceptible to their simultaneous disruption, which means I can go from frantic unfocused anxious motion one moment to lethargic depressed dissolved stasis the next.  This is not a welcome season for me most of the time and this year I have to do my due diligence to embrace it and find gratitude amidst the challenges this season provides for me.

I know I need to stay intentional and focused on embracing everything that this season has to offer—the good, the bad, and the ugly.  This juncture, then, must be a time to open to intentionality, joy, and self-compassion through this seasonal journey.  We have nearly a month of juncture, starting with yama damstra and from there moving deeper into the juncture more associated with the winter solstice.   It is a month of deepening myself and facing my fears and anxieties. 

I sit here now deeply thinking about the upcoming juncture, which starts roughly around November 21^st, because I want to be intentional during this time. I also want to be kind, yet focused and determined, in my work.   

Comfort Wisdom

What I need to focus on is the comfort wisdom that I developed in my work with Brene Brown’s reading group for The Gifts of Imperfection.  I want to work on my reliance on these tools (yoga, breathing, meditation, playing, etc.), remember these tools, and pay close attention to when I find myself slipping away into the numbing tools that are so much a part of my attempts to hide out and retreat.  I need to go deep, but I need to stay awake and conscious of my discomfort (and its sources).  What startled me most was the idea that to numb the anxiety and pain means that I numb the possibility of feeling joy and love and happiness. I can’t selectively numb.  I deaden my feelings and I deaden them all. I am tired of not feeling joy and happiness. I want those feelings consistently, so that means I must suck it up and feel the anxiety and moments of embarrassment and failure and anger and isolation.  Those feelings are all real and they all are part of me. 

There are several strategies that I will take this year and I’m writing them on this blog to help keep myself accountable.  In the process of utilizing, really utilizing, the comfort wisdom practices, I will be doing several other things.  First, I will be focusing my diet for part of the juncture and only eating wholesome home cooked food.  I do pretty well sticking to my ayurvedic diet, but I do have a tendency to go out to eat on a consistent basis. For the first 5 days of yama damstra, I will only eat my home cooked food.  After that, I will be on a trip and I cannot make that promise through that period.  I will come back to home cooked food, though, when I return from my trip and finish up this first juncture with a deeper connection to cooking and eating.

My second practice will involve revisiting last year.  I hold a great deal of anxiety around how I compare to last year, so what I plan to do throughout the juncture is use this blog and my other forms of journaling to engage with last year.  I will do that through photographs. I will focus on a photo or set of photos from last year and see where I was last year and speak to what I see now and am experiencing now.  I will also revisit my journals from last year, although I know I was not as consistent with journaling as I have been over the past 8 months.  The goal here is to not compare in a judgmental fashion, but to stay curious and explore how I have developed between last year and this year.  It is with compassion that I will look back and reflect. 

Turmeric & Ginger

The next practice I plan to do throughout all of winter, actually.  This will involve deeper reading and exploring of the rhizomes turmeric and ginger.  I have been thinking about these plants a lot lately.  I can’t help but feel a connection to their rhizomatic structure and their various properties.  I am drawn to them and I do not want to ignore that. I plan to get to know them better and their many facets—from their science to their physical appearance. Thus, my plan is to sit with them throughout the winter, reading and writing about them. 

My last practice was suggested by my teacher and that is engaging in dream work.  I have started to do that, but I will focus on it more intently during this juncture season.  I will focus on the feelings of my dreams, journal on them, meditate on them, and do some visual work with the dreams that I can remember.

 

St. Augustine

 So there you have it.   The coming of early winter is near and I have a set of intentions that I hope will keep my focused and awake throughout the junctures and the season.

Yirah: Reconsidering Fear through Listening

“…writing is the art of taking dictation, not giving it.  When I listen to what I hear and simply jot that down, the flow of ideas is not mine to generate but to transcribe.” –Julia Cameron

 

I think what I want to focus on this week is the art of listening. Julia Cameron is quite helpful with this idea.  It draws on the idea that we have what we need inside; listening is about opening up to what is present and tapping into that presence.  When I think about this, I do not think it means we should only write when the moment strikes.  It is more about understanding the intention with writing.  It is about the approach.  It is about the inspiration of writing.  And I know I struggle to listen.  I get so caught up in the supposed to’s and the ego seeking comfort of meeting deadlines that I lose sight of the spaces out of which productive writing emerges.

Sometimes the noise is so incredibly loud that I can’t hear what is going on inside.  I get stuck in those moments and all I can hear is everything else.  I can hear the espresso machine churn, the voices of the couple behind me, the wind blowing hard against the windows, the bad jazz circulating through my ears.  Coffee shops.

All of it keeps moving and shifting and I can feel my restless mind unable to settle in and listen—really listen to what is going on inside.

Fear, lately, has been going on inside of me lately.  During my attendance at a conference one of the speakers discussed the Hebrew words: Pachad and Yirah.  Pachad is when the ego is afraid of being wounded. It is the primal fear that comes when we feel our lives and utter well-being under threat. Yirah is the fear we feel when we enter larger spaces and come into growth. This fear can feel like pachad but it is actually an opening, an expansion, an emergence. Yirah is when ego transcends into something larger, rather than experiencing the threat of destruction.  It makes sense that we could confuse the one for the other.  The idea of moving into something new and unfamiliar can be foreign and create panic in our sense of self.

I love this idea of yirah.  It is what helps me think about the ways that fear has had power over me and how I can start to look those feelings straight on and keep moving and experiencing the world.  It is a way to embrace and find joy in the possibility of something else. 

Sara Mohr quotes Rabbi Lew, who “describes yirah as ‘the fear that overcomes us when we suddenly find ourselves in possession of considerably more energy than we are used to, inhabiting a larger space than we are used to inhabiting’” (See more at: http://www.jonathanfields.com/blog/is-it-fear-or-awe/#sthash.ZLhMDiBY.dpuf).  I love this idea.  It is incredibly powerful and enriching to think about the moments in which I have been most frightened and how much those moments were meant to push me further and into new and uncomfortable places that made me feel more and more alive. 

So what does yirah have to do with listening to what needs to be written?  At this moment, I honestly do not know exactly. Listening and fear have been on my mind, though. There is something telling me that I need to really spend time with the idea of yirah. With the idea that my fears are not about a deeper survival issue, it is hard to tell my body to sit still, to stay awake to the feelings.  The practice of sitting with that fear is something I know I need to keep up with.  And I can't help but wonder if sitting with yirah will help me to listen more deeply and engage my writing in new ways? Or maybe writing and listening is part of what I need to do to engage with yirah. Listening to my fear to find yirah. 

That is my work. 

Joshua Tree, Me

I must admit that the day got off to a rocky start, so I'm struggling a bit to find grounding.  I'd like to simply say that vata has taken a hold of me, but I'm not entirely certain that is all that is going on.  It is definitely part of the struggle I'm facing at the moment, but not all of it.  

I am honestly at a loss as to what to write today, but I wanted to stick to my commitment to be present on this blog and speak to the things that are bubbling up to the surface for me in the here and now. I think the best approach is to just open myself to a free flow of thought.  I think I will focus on how I relate to vata.

Joshua Tree, Route 66

I decided to write about this picture, because it represents much of how I feel about my relationship to vata.  The isolated tree. The dryness. The sage bushes.  The large open sky.  All of these things dominate right now in how I'm relating to the world around me.  There is a sense of isolation that I am experiencing. An exposed isolation amidst the dry brush blowing and shifting all the world around me.  The sky so large and limitless, but not in a way that provides a sense of possibility. Rather, it is a limitlessness that is heavy and scary, because it feels out of my control and out of my comfort zone. 

I have an affinity for Joshua trees.  There is something I'm drawn to in the jaggedness, the awkwardness, the bristles, the way it survives in the an extreme climate. All of these qualities are alive in me in ways that, at times, feel amazing and empowering, but then at other times it feels lonely and frightening. It is as though my whole being is getting whipped around and hit by gusts, which takes all I can give just to remain upright. 

Today is a day that feels like the wind is beating me around, flinging me around in a whirlwind of emotions.  I have been able to stay centered and stable and like I can maintain a level of rootedness regardless of the wind, but it is tenuous, hurting and anxiety-ridden.  My goal today is to just keep finding the earth reminding myself of the rootedness that is inside of me.  Rootedness. Joshua trees. Me.  We all have roots that extend and thrive beneath the surface, waiting for attention. 

Grounding through Flying

Aerial yoga.

Over the past month or so, I've been attending classes teaching aerial yoga. It is something that has made me think about my body and its relationship to the earth in new ways.  This weekend I attended two workshops that solely focused on aerial practices. Grounding my body through flying might seem contradictory, but through these workshops, I started to understand how flying suspended and weightless provided interesting moments of clarity in understanding how my body settles into the earth.

I have always enjoyed the sensation of being upside down, so I have relished the moments in the aerial fabrics in which I can weave my legs through the material and rest my hands on the ground.  To feel my spine stretch, I have been learning to let go in new ways.  I have also been realizing how much I unconsciously hold on to spaces such as my hips and shoulders.  I have also been realizing that no matter how much I think I let go, there is still so much more I can let go of.  The loosening involved in inversions has provided a clearer sense of how my body shrinks in on itself, hiding and tightening not only when confronting moments of uncertainty, but also out of sheer habit.

In those upside down moments  I also get to put my hands on the ground and let them be my feet.  Pressing into the ground, my hands feel the solid ground with a sense of safety and comfort.  I can feel my shoulders adjust to the new pressure points, sinking into the earth with a strange experience of comfortable disorientation.  It is a truly beautiful experience that my body absorbs with a great deal of joy.

There were two wonderful moments during the workshop that helped me find my body in a new way.  The first was when we were in a position similar to the picture above.  Feeling the fabric across the middle of my back, I was able to lean into it.  My feet sank with deeper intention into the ground and my core held its center with new found commitment in order to keep me from spinning off to the side. Using my core in this way helped me focus in on opening the center of my spine in a way that is often unavailable to me in a wheel position.  The opening was very much like the sun breaking open and I could feel my heart give and receive with little restraint.  It was enlivening and incredibly joyful.

In the second moment, I was hanging from the fabric as it rested at my hip bones. The fabric sort of cutting me in half.  My head was toward the ground and my legs were bent into my stomach.  The instructor kept telling us to let go of our legs completely. I thought I had let them go; I felt relaxed. But she came to me and touched my legs gently near my hips and I could feel the tremendous amount of holding that was still in my body.  As comfortable as I am upside down, my body wasn't ready to let go, but then I could feel the muscles slowly loosen more and more, opening up to the earth in a new way.  Yes, only the backs of my hands were gently touching the ground, and not my legs, but I could feel my body melt into the earth in a way that I can't describe.  Giving myself up to the fabric left me feeling more grounded and connected the earth than I had felt in awhile. It didn't matter that my feet weren't on the ground.  What mattered was the way I could feel the earth cradling me even if I was suspended above it.   What mattered was the way I could let go and trust the earth beneath me as the fabric cradled me.

Yes, autumn is the time of grounding.  It is a time when we feel airy and untethered.  Although I do not advocate exacerbating that feeling, the experience of aerial, with a clear intention of opening and grounding, has been an incredibly powerful way to access some of the darker places that are often buried and untouched over the course of autumn's winds.  I'll take aerial yoga as a welcome breath of fresh air.

Planting Bulbs

Planting bulbs, I push down into the dirt. I panic a little as I lift the trowel-- a tinge of fear emerging in my stomach as I lift uncertain dirt.

The sight of worms and scattered roots and fiber welcome my vision into the unknown.  The dirt is moist, clay-like, and difficult to unpack.

Planting bulbs, I set in the bulb and slowly start to cover it with leaves and the unsettled dirt.  I think about the process of digging and then burying.  Unsettling the space and then resettling it with a small seed.

Each bulb has a unique shape and size.  The daffodils were like onions, with their skin peeling away as I pulled them out of the bag with my dirty hand.  The irises were small and tiny, like a spring onion.  The anemones were jagged, brown, and ugly. 

Planting bulbs, I press down the newly settled earth, taking my time to feel the wet clay-like earth.  I have no idea what will emerge from these strange rhizomes.

I can’t help but wonder how these bulbs will attach to the earth and find their way up through the dirt. I hope they understand that they are home as they nestle in for the long cold winter ahead.

The messiness begins

*****

Throughout the planting, I think about how rhizomes find their footing in the clay dirt.  So much has to be right, yet at the same time, these are resilient living things finding a way to survive.  I think about how much there is to learn from these strange small objects.  I intentionally decided to plant bulbs this year as part of my efforts to connect with the seasons in a visceral way. I wanted to feel a tangible connection to what goes on for all of us in the winter—humans and plants alike.  That seemingly dormant turn inward is anything but dormant. There is a lot of work going on deep in that dirt. Rhizomes must find ways to connect to the dirt—must establish a relationship with its surroundings.  There has to be some trust at it goes on to offer itself to the dirt, connect and tie its rhizomatic tentacles to the earth, worms, leaves, and all sorts of darkness.  That inward turn is where those rhizomes do their heavy work. Foundational work. The daffodils, hyacinths, irises, and other flowers become symbolic of my own shift in the season. 

I think about the rush to make sure I planted them all before the storm and cold weather set into the area.  As I planted those bulbs, I thought about my work to organize my own space so that I can turn inward.  Finding that space of trust, so that I can spread my own rhizomatic tentacles into the unknown and embrace the darkness that settles into winter. 

As I spent time with each bulb, touched each with my hand, I could understand the care that is necessary for my own self.  It is a care I don’t often take with myself as I typically try to function the same in the winter as I do in the summer, never understanding why I felt so miserable. I look out at the cold dark world with a level of dread.  But those rhizomes, those rhizomes don’t do that. They understand that this is where they must do the work in order to take root and push up and out into the world once spring arrives. But if they don’t do that work now and throughout the winter, they will not be able to revel in that juicy beauty of air and light and heat. 

I so often fight and kick to recapture the summer months, not understanding that each season needs its respect and honor and my body needs that same respect and honor.  To honor my body is to let it work through the seasons with acceptance as I embrace the changes around me.  To try to control climate and all that is around me is a futile task, one that takes too much energy. 

So, Christina, it’s time to take out the sweaters and the boots and the scarves and the hats, and curl up to drink that warm ginger, clove, nutmeg tea that warms me from the inside out.  And in that warmth, revel in the beauty of the monochromic world that is beginning to surround me.