Measuring the miracles
Deep adaptation; the measurement world; women who ice fish
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This is a quiet space. Your space. Remember who you are. Know that you are loved. Let that knowing be your buoy as you navigate the cold winter waters of this week. Remember. Give thanks. Forgive.
What nourishes you?
“A lot of things can be true at the same time,” wrote a participant in a recent Zoom writers’ workshop, “The Well at the End of the World.”
The workshop was offered by the Deep Adaptation Forum, whose mission is “connecting people, in all spheres of life, to foster mutual support and collaboration in the process of anticipating, observing, and experiencing social disruption and collapse” brought about by the effects of climate change.
In the same session, the moderator asked: “What nourishes you?”
We answered: tenderness, generosity, warmth, humanity, gratitude.
“How your soul remembers,” one participant wrote. “That’s how you heal.”
We explored the idea of archetypes, as opposed to stereotypes. One of the participants, a woman from Gloucester, England, noted that archetypes are shared by all cultures. She calls that “a living flow of resonance.”
Frequency, she said, existed before form.
Not long ago, I heard someone reference the Big Bang (the theory of the birth of the universe) as “the Big Bloom.” I like this less violent imagining of the blossoming that , billions of years later, resulted in humanity’s attunement to resonance (see measurement, below).
Ice fishing
~Don’t fence me out~
I’m still fascinated by the idea of sitting over a little hole in the ice, the winter air crisp around me, waiting for the fish to bite. The Christian Science Monitor ran a story last week about women who ice fish.
They want to get in on all the fun.
“Being on a frozen lake is kind of like walking on the moon. When the ice is building, it’s actually an audible noise that kind of sounds like whales,” says Capt. Barb Carey, who founded Wisconsin Women Fish because all of this felt inaccessible to women at one time.
And here’s the description of Wisconsin Women Fish from wiwomenfish.com, its cleverly named website.
We are a fishing club for women only. No boring meetings, no obligations … we go fishing. You can either attend one of our many events that are held year round, go to a meet-up and get to know other anglers who share the passion for fishing, or just learn and interact on our private, members only Facebook page. One of the biggest reasons women don’t go fishing, is they have no one to go with. We are here to change that!
Who wouldn’t want a cozy shirt with a woman ice fishing on it?
All about measurement
In The Art of Possibility,* Rosamund Stone Zander talks about the “measurement world.”
That is the part of our world that cares about degree, about comparison, about judgment, time, distance, frugality, rulers (inches, not kings), dimensions, constraints. It is the world of scarcity and rules, bounded by the lines we are not allowed to color outside. It is not a creative place.
As Zander writes:
All the manifestations of the world of measurement —the winning and losing, the gaining of acceptance, and the threatened rejection, the raised hopes and the dash into despair—all are based on a single assumption that is hidden from our awareness. The assumption is that life is about staying alive, and making it through—surviving in a world of scarcity and peril. Even when life is at its best in the measurement world . . . it keeps the universe of possibility out of view.
*The Art of Possibility (Harvard Business School Press, 2000) is one of the very best books about opening oneself to the spiritual power to the Universe. Written by Roz and Benjamin Zander, it explores methods to help expand creativity and becoming, often using metaphors drawn from Ben’s work as conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra.
Measurement matters
Sometimes, when I sense the world of measurement encroaching too closely, I reject an idea, or forestall a trip down a rabbit hole, or deflect a line of reasoning.
I can tell that the idea, the trip, the thought, has too much structure. It’s too Cartesian. Too binary.
Too constrained.
There’s a whole universe of thoughts, ideas and rabbit holes. I’ll just find another.
Measuring the measurement
And yet . . . there are times when measurement is the right prescription. The 20 minutes of my daily writing exercise, another 20 minutes for meditation. More minutes for exercise. Two hours of writing in a day. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but measured.
Sometimes the constraints of time, distance, and fulfillment matter. Sometimes they build the necessary framework for a story. They dictate whether you are getting enough sleep. Or if you are going to run out of gas before the trip is over.
Context matters, too
Measurement is important for making a cake, but less so for a salad.
You might need to count the steps of a dance. Tax season is coming, and measurement matters there, too. But you don’t need to count the number of teeth that show in your smile. When it comes to the socks in your drawer, you only have to count to two.
Put away your thought rulers, dear ones, and let the Universe measure your steps.
Measuring the marigolds
Or consider this, from the movie Hans Christian Anderson, written by Frank Loesser and sung by Danny Kaye:
While schoolchildren are droning their sums: Two and two are four Four and four are eight Eight and eight are sixteen Sixteen and sixteen are thirty-two . . . Hans is outside the classroom singing a little ditty about measurement: Inchworm, inchworm Measuring the marigolds, You and your arithmetic will probably go far. Inchworm, inchworm, Measuring the marigolds, Seems to me you'd stop and see How beautiful they are! The counterpoint between the two verses is perfect.
Movies in theaters
Hans Christian Anderson was one of the very few movies I saw in a theater as a child. The only others I can remember are The Music Man and Lady and the Tramp. Why so few? My mother, a divorced single parent, couldn’t afford to buy the 35 cent tickets for each of her four children.
Similarly, although we lived in the Minneapolis area for seven-plus years, we never saw a production at the world-class Tyrone Guthrie Theater. I once asked Mom why not. She raised her brows: “It was too expensive for five people, of course.”
Once I started raking in the bucks from babysitting as a teen, I spent most of the cash on candy. But I did see The Sound of Music about five times in a movie theater in Sioux Falls. Hey, I was 15.
Scales, clocks, hierarchies
In the world of measurement, scales, clocks, hierarchies, and comparisons govern the way we think about ourselves and interact with others. In the world of measurement, it matters how big your salary is, what grades you get in school, how much your home is worth, whether you have time to fit in one more project.
Precision is important in the measurement world, often in ways that serve us. Scientific instruments need to be carefully calibrated; flour needs to be measured carefully when you make a cake. But when precision becomes too acute, when it stifles movement and creativity, it becomes its own shadow.
Individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder, for instance, may use precise, ritualistic, repetitive behaviors—handwashing, counting, or cleaning—to forestall dealing with unwanted thoughts or other issues. For example, a teacher with OCD may be so concerned that the desks in the classroom line up that he ignores the deep needs of the children.
Leaving the Measurement World behind
When I drive into creating, measurement recedes in the rear-view mirror.
In the “zone” that comes with creativity or meditation, or in the blissful repetition of exercise, there is no time, only an endless present. I could set a Zen alarm app to play a bell sound at even intervals to remind me to get up and stretch, but I resist it. It might shatter the zone just as I am reaching for the perfect word.
In traffic, stopped at a red light, I let the measurement bustle lapse. I let my hands rest easily on the steering wheel while taking in the landscape, the trees, the buildings, the people outside my car. The sense of hurry, of urgency, dissipates.
Walking, I continually notice new things in familiar streetscapes. I marvel at the parallax, watching the shapes of trees and buildings shift in their relationships as I move. Time falls away.
The world recedes
You know the times when you are not in the world of measurement: when you are immersed in a book, when you are playing a musical instrument, when you meditate—whenever you are so engrossed or detached that you lose track of time. Time, the ultimate measurement, ceases to exist.
I have chores to do, but writing matters more. That it can matter more is a function of how far I’ve come. My needs are not what they used to be—or rather, not what I thought they were.
The Universe has different ideas ... or maybe not ideas so much as impellings. I am impelled in different directions because I have chosen to listen to the Universe instead of fighting it--or fearing it. Increasingly, I step away from the world of measurement into the world of possibilities.
And when I write, time has no meaning at all.
Measurement in verse
You count the minutes As if it matters A time of no time And yet You measure the minutes The inchworm Burrows under your skin Forgive the fellow We can’t stop Counting the steps One two three one two three Even in our wildest dances We measure the steps Counting cash Keeping track Minute by minute Time flies An arrow into the heart of the wood Yet still we concede We keep track Minute by minute
The pressure of the measurement world
Another Substack writer, Anne Helen Petersen, has a glimpse of the calmness behind the chaos.
Trying to iron out the wrinkles in a life full of commitments, she writes:
A full life can be glorious. But when it becomes so full you’re in constant fear of collapse, you’ve got to let go or give away some of what you’re carrying.
Useful measurements
Some of the quantities read on NPR’s “Car Talk” by Neal Jackson many years ago
Ratio of an igloo's circumference to its diameter = Eskimo Pi 2,000 pounds of Chinese soup: = Won ton Half of a large intestine: = 1 semicolon 2,000,000 aches: = 2 megahurtz Weight an evangelist carries with God: = 1 billigram Basic unit of laryngitis: = 1 hoarsepower Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement: = 1 bananosecond 2 wharves: = 1 paradox 1 million microphones: = 1 megaphone 1 kilogram of falling figs: = 1 Fig Newton 1,000 cubic centimeters of wet socks: = 1 literhosen 1 trillion mosquito bites: = 1 terrabite 10 monologs: = 5 dialogs 5 dialogs: = 1 decalog 2 monograms: = 1 diagram 8 nickels: = 2 paradigms 100 Senators: = Not 1 decision
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More about negativity
Remember, February’s theme for our mutual betterment is “nix on negativity.”
How aware are you of your negative thoughts? It can be difficult to separate them, especially if, like me, you have a critical nature.
You know, wanting everything to be just right. Caring about where in a place setting the fork should go. Finding a grammatical error in a book by an established publisher—you never used to see those kinds of things, did you?
Caring about whether the recital piano is out of tune. Wishing your friend didn’t wear that purple sweater with a red vest. Hating yourself for chewing your fingernails.
Putting the brakes on these thoughts and tendencies—it’s not easy! All you can do is try. And fail. And try again.
Like Fred and Ginger.
I still watch The Sound of Music regularly.