June 2024 Soul Notes
Melissani Cave, Kefalonia by Sandra Hilton
I am a woman of words. Language has always been important to me. It’s how I make sense of the world, wrapping my tongue around syllables that describe the inner and the outer landscapes I encounter. Translating experiences into the shapes of vowels and consonants, weaving sentences of word constructions that somehow miraculously convey something of meaning to others. I have relied heavily on this mode of transportation to connect the far flung reaches of me to you, to them. But something has been happening recently. The words aren’t coming. My translation skills have deserted me. I’ve been in a word wilderness, wondering when the next bus is coming. I’ve been writing Soul Notes for years now, sending out a missive almost every month. But this year, I haven’t been able to write a single Soul Note. I’m sure this is familiar to some of you. Whether you have a regular writing practice, or you need to sit down to draft a report, a letter, an email, a presentation – what to do when the words don’t come?
One thing that I’ve discovered is that you just have to write anyway. One word at a time. You write what is here. For me, that has meant writing reams about the endless frustrations of not being able to write. Which of course is a paradox for here I was. Writing. About not writing. And in the writing about what was not happening, something was happening. My writing took me into the confronting truth of my experience which was that I was not writing what I thought I should be writing; I was not writing with meaning about the atrocities of the world we live in; I was not going “deep” enough, being smart enough, erudite enough. In short, my judge was at work and telling me I just wasn’t enough. It seems that it’s irrelevant how much work I think I’ve done, and in fact have done, around this, I still find myself in this place, silenced by the inner voices that would rather I didn’t put anything out there. And so I say hello to these fearful ancestors and invite them to sit with me and keep the noise down whilst I write anyway.
The irony is I feel incredibly fertile right now. I’m experimenting with new ideas. In the days of less hands-on mothering, I have time and space and focus to commit to myself and what’s important to me. What I’m learning repeatedly is that the more I tap into my creativity, the more ideas I have and the more passionate and focused I get about anything, the stronger the silencing part of me becomes. The tension of the opposing forces becomes almost impossible to contain and I sometimes feel like I might explode. The temptation is to give in to it. To collapse and drop one end of the tension. Jungian analyst, Marion Woodman writes of these moments as being like a crucifixion:
“Both arms on the cross
we dare not drop the tension.
If we reject one part
we give up our past;
if we reject the other,
we give up our future.
Whether we like it or not
we need to hold to our roots
and build from there.”
(The Pregnant Virgin)
Carl Jung believed that if we hold the tension between the two opposing forces, then a third way will emerge, uniting and transcending the two so that we might become more fully ourselves. The third way may take us by surprise because it has not been in our awareness in the struggle between the binary poles. This is how something new might be born.
For this to happen, we need to learn to identify and hold the tension of the opposites whilst we are in the fight, not let one arm drop and succumb to one side of the polarity.
One set of opposites I’m holding right now is: my creative longing and my creative infertility. If I lean into the longing, I want to immerse myself in the creative fire - merge with artists, poets, writers and filmmakers and soak up their work, I want to work frantically and lose myself as a way of avoiding the bleak empty feeling. If I lean into the creative infertility, I want to bury myself in the fallow, find a million reasons why I can’t create anything myself and not risk putting anything out there.
Both are forms of escape. Ways of avoiding the pain of being stretched on that crucible. The truth is that I am both a creative being and an empty being. I live in the darkness and in the light. This is life. We sometimes burst with fertility and birth new life, and other times, we sit in the darkness, burying deep underground into the soil of ourselves, recovering something equally valuable. But how to meet the challenge of feeling the tension of this in our bodies? How can we learn to live with it all? How can we build the container that can hold all of this?
When I arrive at the page and write even when I feel the impossibility of it, then I can name the tension and bring the conflict into awareness. I begin to see the fight inside me for what it is. I can see my longing for a super productive creative flow, that doesn’t consider that I also need time and space and quiet to digest the experiences that feed my creativity. One part of me is dissatisfied with my inability to be creative “on tap” and another part is unhappy that she can’t just crawl under the duvet and rest. One pulls to action and the other to inertia. Once I see that and breathe into it, then I can begin to consider ways to stop the internal war and find a way that applies the feminine principle, allowing for both sets of energies.
In doing so, I discover that my darker energy is tired of my expectation that I will write orderly, well-argued pieces in long, protracted bursts, sitting at my desk. Taking inspiration from Christina Sharpe and her exquisite book “Ordinary Notes”, I experiment with jotting down notes of whatever strikes me throughout the day. An image here. A poster there. A memory. A feeling. In the process, I gather a scrapbook of prompts and snippets of writing that don’t join together in a straight line but do have their own circular coherence as my lived experience. I visit them and use them as jumping-off points for other pieces of writing. Like seeds I am scattering here and there, seeing which ones might grow into something more substantial.
This part also wants more space in between the writing. She insists on it as nature insists on the seasons (except when interrupted by our violations). I’m listening more.
The creative part wants company and variety and to play. She likes to be stimulated by new sounds and smells and tastes and conversation. But the darker part says, let’s let all of this sink in….give us space to absorb it fully….to feel it with our whole self and see what it does with us, so that we can translate it in a way that is worthy of the experience. Rather than scoff words like candyfloss, let us chew mindfully and slowly, then write one sentence at a time savouring every syllable.
This was the commitment I made to myself just recently. I will write one sentence a day of a “book” that is fermenting. Just one. My creative self said “That’s hardly worth showing up at the page for but ok…..” and my darker self said, “Thank you”. Once they arrive at the page together, I find that invariably, I write way more than one sentence. This is just the meeting place for us to begin to work all together in a tender process of focus and kindness.
Danna Faulds' poem reminds me to breathe, to be still, to be here and
….”just like that,
something in me settles, softens, makes
space for imperfection. The harsh voice
of judgement drops to a whisper”
and I can
“walk
slowly into the mystery”
In a time when words can feel like weapons, I hope we can all find ways to express ourselves and listen to each other, and hold the tension of all the opposites.
With much love,
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