Roughness, resilience, texture
Scour your surroundings and your soul in spring’s rituals
Check in
A few weeks ago, I checked in with three words and some advice. I said I would return the next week with another three words, then I forgot. Until now. Here are three new words:
Strength
Enthusiasm
Willpower
These are powerful words, hearty words. I chose them because I’m feeling great strength, enthusiasm, and willpower. I am enjoying writing on Substack, and I am delighted that you are reading my postings week after week. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
(I avoid clichés, but that one is appropriate.)
If it moves you, please examine these new words in the context of your own life. Where are you strong? What rouses you? How hard do you fight?
Morning routines
I want to write about morning routines in coming weeks, but the concept is tough. There’s so much being said and written about the importance of getting up at the same time (always early) and having a trap line of chores to start each day.
I’m fascinated by morning routine, and I fear it. I’ve been trying my whole adult life to shift, resolve, prioritize, start each day anew—and yet . . . and yet . . . the resolutions slip away like sand.
The schedule, often dubbed “the new regime” will last a day, two at most. Then life lobs enough curveballs to throw everything off track like a mixed metaphor.
I can’t even blame the MS. I had these issues long before my diagnosis, and that was maybe 27 years ago.
Maybe the topic of the month of April will help:
Reset and reorganize
Time to check in, get the taxes done, start really planning the summer’s events.
Now is the time for spring cleaning, especially for Passover if you are Jewish. The kosher kitchens at Rose Schnitzer Manor are scrupulously cleaned in the days before the season. Some residents visit the kitchen with feathers to brush away final crumbs.
Spring cleaning
It seems that nobody really cleans these days. You're always hearing that it's acceptable to have dust bunnies under the bed. Lee Child’s creation Jack Reacher doesn’t even bother to wash his clothes. He just tosses the old duds and buys new, cheap replacements.
So I don’t know if anybody bothers with spring cleaning, bringing out the rugs to beat them on the clothesline, whitewashing the cabinets, cleaning the oven. Replacing the shelf paper. Airing, then refolding, the linens. Polishing the silver.
How quaint that seems!
Inner reorganization
Nevertheless, it’s’ a good idea to straighten once in a while. And not just external clutter, either.
Consider your internal clutter. Do unsettling thoughts and repetitive earworms keep you from meditating or from falling asleep easily? Do you feel upside down? Does you nose run and your feet smell? (Sorry, just checking to see if you were paying attention).
We are always shoving stuff to the back of our emotional closet. But in the interests of peace and clarity, why not do a little spring cleaning there, too?
Light your imaginary smudge stick (sweetgrass and sage bound together) and gently force the smoke into the corners of your psyche. Burn out a few cobwebs.
Feel the anxiety lift from your being.
Step into your future refreshed and renewed.
Texture
I’ve said I’m not big on writing prompts, because there is so much to write about. You may even remember that my favorite one is just to open a book at random and pick out a couple of words.
But I have a new idea for writing, and that is texture.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about patterns, and you responded favorably to that idea.
I encouraged you to find patterns in everything that you saw in everyday life. Now I urge you to look for textures.
Like these:
Rough
Think bricks, baskets, gravel. I have great love for stone walls.
Smooth
Fabric, cutlery, dishes, glass, walls—although those can be rough, too
Prickly
Makes a good contrast for rough and smooth.
Look at your pets
Or other animals: furry, fluffy, scaly, smooth.
Clouds
Is there texture in sky?
Buildings
Buildings exhibit patterns and textures—both close up and as part of cityscapes. View the skyline across a river. Old buildings stand sentry while newer buildings excite or annoy with odd angles.
The texture of you
Now move inward. What about your psyche? Is it rough, smooth, mottled, pimpled, shingled, gravelly, prickly?
Look at nature. I mentioned tree trunks, but there are also leaves and branches. Those are both pattern and texture, aren’t they? But leaves, especially, have their own special patterns—the veins, the lighter colors in the interstices. Some are smooth on one side and rough on the other. Others are prickly, scaly, needlelike.
Mix it up
What to do with texture? Write about it, of course. How do various textures make you feel? Which soothe you, excite you, nauseate you?
Weave a fantasy. What if all leaves were like glass or metal, hard? What a racket the wind would make!
Well, as I said, I’m not much for prompts. But I am big on observation. Now, when you go on your daily walk or commute or whatever takes you outside, I hope you will think a little bit about texture.
It does keep your mind off traffic.
I get a kick from a book
In book I read recently, a character stopped in the middle of the winter street on his way to the subway, and exclaimed, out loud: “I am happier than I have ever been!”
Now, no matter, child, his name. I just want to know if that sounds like you.
Because it surely describes me. I am happier than I have ever been.
How did this happen? I didn’t do anything; it just came about.
In a good place
To start with, I have no impediments to happiness. I’m disabled, but that’s mostly an annoyance that I accept.
I could eventually run out of money, but I have enough for now.
I live in a place I love—someone calls my new apartment home “the treehouse” because I’m surrounded by sun and trees, flapping crows and wheeling hawks—with people I respect and admire. My husband isn’t ready to move into assisted living, but even so in this time our love grows stronger and deeper.
My children live on the other side of the continent with the grandchildren, but that is their life, and I don’t live through them or for them.
I have everything I need, but I always need more of one thing.
That is creativity. I need to create.
To write
To foster relationships
To quilt and knit
To play the violin — yes, it's back!
To create and re-create myself anew and anew.
To become.
Yet are we really in charge of our own happiness? Like I say, I’ve been lucky. I can’t fathom the pain of the loss of a child or a spouse or the scars of illness or abuse.
So I just don’t know if, in the face of tragedy, it’s possible to feel happiness in the present.
One thing I do know: It’s not the happy ending that counts, it’s the happy now.
Footnote
Meanwhile, a friend has asked—no, told—me that I need to write about fear. I thought about that, but I don’t want to. Maybe I’m afraid.
Check out
Eli Perlman, the prolific writer behind Dr. Metablog, came up with one good turn of phrase (of his many thousands) in an item titled “Anemoia.” He’s writing about Riley Black’s novel The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, which envisions the scene 66 million years ago, just before the Chicxulub asteroid cratered the Yucatan and dinosaurs went away forever.
The good doctor had some problems with the premise of the book, which he said was “a shame, because Black is well-informed and writes with intermittent flair.”
Intermittent flair! I like that!
I’m going to make it my new motto.
Plus, we get a new word out of it. “Anemoia” is a sort of nostalgia (for a time you’ve never known) tinged with curiosity. That concept would explain the dinosaur writer’s fascination with T. rex.
It was coined by John Koenig in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (2021), his attempt to increase the vocabulary of emotions by making up words to describe them. I’ve ordered the book; surely I’ll have cause to refer to it again. Has anybody out there read it (besides Eli)?
Coming up
In the next weeks, I’m going to write more about morning routines, road trips (including treks by foot and voyages by sea), and bus rides—plus the dozens of other oblique little ideas that keep impinging.
Many of you, dear readers, return week after week, so there be some bits that you like. Let me know. Also, got questions?
Spring writing
It’s time to shake out the dusty rug of your imagination. Let your writing sparkle with fresh images, clear words, lucid connections.
. . . Um, you are writing, aren’t you? If not, I suggest you try it on and say hello to the new you.
Please don’t put off writing. It’s like punching the “pause” button on the rest of your life. Try hitting “play” instead.
—30—
Yes! What a lovely thought,
Oh, thank you, Kazia! Of course I love to see comments like yours!