June 2023 Soul Notes
Thanks to Arisa Chattasa for this image: https://unsplash.com/@golfarisa
Written in the Tao Te Ching over 2,000 years ago, Lao Tzu’s lines draw us to the precious nature of the container. These images are familiar. Domestic. Quiet. Homely. Look here he says. Look at these simple artefacts. The wheel. The pot. The room. What do you see? An outline…yes. But do you also see the potential? Are you present to that which is yet to emerge? The journey to be taken. The nourishment to be created. The life that may be lived with all its joys and sorrows. I’ve been meditating with these lines and over a few days, have noticed that if I slow down and really sit with the description, then my attention moves from the outer perimeter of the objects into the open space that they offer. But my default is to want to hang out in the tangible. To stay with the clear lines and structure. The feeling in the “hollowed out” areas is less sure and asks me to be more present; to use my senses more keenly. It brings me back to Dr Scharmer’s idea of “presencing” that I wrote about last month: the invitation to bring our open hearts, minds and will to the contained spaces. And I feel that this is a practice that takes time and goes against the cultural insistences of clarity and speed and productivity. This is the territory of the feminine once again. Anthropologist, Elizabeth Fisher first wrote of the “Carrier Bag Theory of human evolution” in her research on early human development. “Carrier Bag Theory”…..doesn’t that phrase just shake you up? An item so banal, so everyday, so humdrum (so environmentally threatening) as the carrier bag, set up to carry the whole theory of human evolution. Really? How is that possible? Fisher suggested in 1975 that early humans’ primary “cultural device” was not a spear, or an arrow, or other weapon, as often espoused, but rather the humble container – an object used to store and carry food from the place it was found to the home. (Women's Creation). For if you don’t have something in which to put the food you are gathering, then you only have enough for you and for now. But what about later? What about the others? Science fiction writer, Ursula K. LeGuin later adopted this term and wrote of the Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. In support of Fisher’s claims, she writes: “It is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it’s useful, edible or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people . . .” She goes on to expand the theory to storytelling: “I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us” She acknowledges that this runs counter to the heroic narrative of many a tale. The extraordinary man conquering all – the “killer story” designed to excite but which also excludes, for we are not heroes. We are ordinary people, with flaws and foibles and daily routines. Food to gather. Mouths to feed. LeGuin advocates a new way of telling a more human, a more inclusive story. A story where we might both be, and recognise ourselves. As I read this, another wise woman’s words land in my inbox. Foluke Taylor, author of Unruly Therapeutic, responding and offering her own resistance to the dominant story in a magazine article about storytelling Unruly Therapeutic | Substack Foluke offers a practice to inhabit the contained space. She writes of how she annotates whilst reading: “annotation is a necessary and generative practice; a practice of curiosity and desire; a meeting of the need, as I walk with a text, to slow down and engage it in conversation.” Annotation as a practice of containing. Creating a space to hold the friction that the original article’s fictional frame is not able to contain because of its singular story. Annotation, breathing life into the unseen, the untold, the unheard, the unacknowledged so that the frame expands. I add this to my newly forming list of space-expanding, space-inhabiting practices. I make a note that this will take time. And I begin to play with this idea of containers. They’re everywhere. The container and the possibility to be contained. The thing itself and the “use of not”. Thirteen talking heads meet on zoom. Where the chatter is quiet is where the connection is felt. Two histories sit down face to face. Where the rules are not the healing begins. Claimed moments to arrive at the page. Where time stops is where truth arrives. Once you sit with the containing form for long enough, then the possibilities become visible. I wonder what container you might claim? And what emerges in its hold? I meet the question of what it means to be a container for myself in this wandering and wondering. And how to offer a container here that is sufficient to hold you in your reading and exploring? I feel the stretched boundary of this format. The one where I write and tell you what I think. I’m heading out for a walk. I feel the need to step outside the writing container and into the natural container to inhale some fresh air into these ideas. To add another ingredient into this pot. But really I want to take the words themselves outside. I long to be talking with others about this, not at others. The hero narrative asks that we be the expert; that we stand up and declare pointedly what we think, believe in, stand for. The container narrative invites many voices in to see what the collective story is. How do they sound together? What harmonies are sung? What jarring notes? Is there a chorus? Do some voices sound out louder than others? Some sweeter? And the pauses…..listen for the pauses where an even deeper container is held for the unspoken…the unconscious – holding space for the next new arrivals. Notice this in your gatherings. What containers do you hold and are held for you? How tightly do you pack them full of the expected and the familiar? How much space do you leave for the unexpected, the unstructured, the unexamined? If “the profit in what is is in the use of what isn’t.” what use do you make of what’s not there already? Free free to annotate and send back 😊
With love,
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