A NEW AGE
A couple of weeks ago, someone asked me how my sabbatical from achievement was going. I said I felt like I was my own strobe light: constantly switching on and off between light/dark, yes/no, happy/sad, relieved/anxious, positive/negative, hopeful/dispirited. And I thought about a man I’d known in the 70’s at which time he was the quintessential love-child; laid back and loving, his face a constant smile. Then we lost touch. The next time I saw him was in the early 80’s. He came knocking on my door in Woodstock, crawling out of his skin, crazed on cocaine. I remember being torn between wishing he’d brought some coke with him and the fear that he was going to die. I ended up putting him in a warm bath in an effort to soothe him.
Another decade passed and then one day, in the early 90’s, I was on a bus in Port Authority on my way back to my Upstate NY home. Just before the bus pulled out, an edgy man got on. Our eyes locked. It was him. The seat next to me was empty but he passed me and took a seat at the back. Five minutes later, he came and sat with me. He’d just got out of jail. He was wired, talking frantically in an attempt to convince himself that he was okay. I had 3 years sobriety at that time and looking at him I was reminded of how close I’d come to being where he was at. I put a hand on his shoulder and urged him to slow down, that life would last longer if he did. He looked at me in amazement bordering on horror. “Slow down!” he exclaimed. “If I slowed down I’d skid for 30 years."
During these last 2 months of my own attempt at slowly down I’ve come to realize how hard it is to do. While I do not feel I have a 30 year skid ahead of me, I have, nonetheless, experienced the kind of driven, anxious energy that seems to have a life of its own, continually rising up and lurching forward even as the sane part of me succumbs to flopping on the couch. So, I skidded for 2 months. And then something amazing happened.
Because I continually said no to the wild energy, I eventually came to rest in the state of merely being. I no longer felt need, or desire, anxiety or ambition. I even gave up gardening. Finally accepting that my damaged hands needed a rest, I handed it over to 2 local men and another surprising thing happened: Once I let go of the need to feel I was at least achieving something by slaving in the garden, I suddenly got to enjoy “being” in the garden. Sure, I still find it hard to walk past a week without yanking it, but I now find it more rewarding to sit alone, or with Joel and appreciate what I’ve made; to marvel at how many birds have taken up residence, to become hypnotized by wands of gaura fluttering in the breeze.
3 weeks ago we went to Giglio with friends from London and together we spent 5 days, all of us in need of rest. We surrendered to being taken care of by the family-run inn and spent our days napping, reading, swimming, laughing and eating.
I got to the point where I felt yes, I can live like this: peacefully, slowly, one day at a time. And after a week of feeling this way something miraculous started happening. I started receiving emails from people telling me they just read my book and loved it, that it had been chosen by a couple of book clubs to be the book of the month. A friend in Paris wrote to say she is trying to arrange for me to read in Paris in the autumn. Another person wants to include me in her new Podcast series in the fall, in which we will discuss various topics that arise in the blog. And then I started hearing from people about how much they miss the blog.I started to write again, for the pure, adventurous joy of it. I’m attaching 2 pieces, in reverse order date-wise. Pieces that I wrote purely for myself but which I would now like to share with you. I hope you enjoy them and I hope you will feel free to comment.Joel and I are leaving on 4th August for a week in Edinburgh where we will meet good friends from NY, attend the Fringe Festival and celebrate my 70th birthday. A new age indeed!! I look forward to connecting with you again when I return.
With love to you all, Maggie