The First Page
What would happen if you said yes?
I love an excuse for new habits, for change, for goal-setting, for trying something new. January 1st is a strange time to start anew. It is the middle of winter. The bitter winds have arrived. The days are short and dreary. And people lurch after the swollen holiday madness. In classic black or white, all or nothing American fashion, we swing from glutting on holiday feast to dieting in January. (The “we” is all inclusive here, as I have pulled sugar, dairy, and gluten from my diet for the month in hopes of healing some lingering challenges in my body). It’s a hard time to start fresh, and if you have made no resolutions, perfect. Each month the moon goes dark and returns again bright as ever. There is always some cycling ending or beginning. Whenever you are ready to shed something old or welcome something new, go ahead. You never need the permission of a new year.
Here is a fresh essay, conceived during a mini retreat dreamed up by my friend Jake.
“I think I’ve gained more willingness to try.” Anna, an intern at the community garden, told me this during our end-of-season review. There is a place for discernment, for holding back, but so often, we must simply be willing to try. Willingness is the currency of growth. We have to start somewhere. We have to answer the questioning blankness of the life that appears before us.
I am putting to words a call to try. Here is why. The forest crumbles and landfills swell and attention is whored around for quick entertainment. Last month, I spent a silent day remembering how to pay attention. Here is what I came away with: we must teach our friends, then our children, whatever it is we have to teach. Culture moves at the pace of attention. Notice: where is yours going? It is the only sane thing to do: to start, to try, to mark the page. It is only sane, to be willing to learn. By learn, I mean fail. We must be willing to fail. Hard. And stay open, stand again and go forward.
The first page is the hardest. What will fill those pristine, blank lines? Not quite a challenge, the page is an ask. An invitation lurks in the pulp of the paper, dried in like secrets in a palace wall. Will you accept? It asks for your heart, your ideas, and your willingness. It’s not just the page. Anything blank has a question. A plate. A stage. A canvas. A block of wood. Behind the question stretches a great history of great artists and in front of it everything you can imagine in its perfect nonexistent, ideal image. Nothing you can live up to in either direction. It’s insane anyone starts a piece of art. But they do! They start and then keep going after that first fateful mark on the stillness. The mark is never quite right, of course. The paint is too thick or the words are cliche or your voice is too soft or the rice was overcooked. Sometimes the page will be ruined, and the glaring promise of that original emptiness was better. But that’s life, and so we keep going and know we will learn and know our practice will improve our skill. We begin to walk the path towards Better.
The journey is grand, magnificent. It is mundane and subtle. It is painful, joyful, furious, kind. Who knows what it will be! Naivety helps when you are beginning, when you try something new. Sometimes, I think the only wisdom I have is that I know nothing. But neither do you. None of us know at the beginning, and this is why you go. You want to know. You are curious, hopeful. We have dreams or visions or plans or goals. We WILL make it to THIS future. It will look just like THIS. It is good to believe this when you start. I’m not concerned with naivety. We learn within the first few miles that it won’t be at all like we imagined. Oh, to be young! We are all young, you know, every time we start something new. Fools, the lot of us. But the Fool is the Saint of Beginners. He is the valiant first card in a Tarot deck. She is every young heroine. So, gather up your Will.
Let’s go up the mountain, into the forest, down the valley, across the page. You can call it practice, but at some point you invest. At some point, there are stakes, and SHIT they are high, and I hope I can pull this off. So starts the adventure. Your eyes get bigger, ears and nose wider, skin and tongue more attune. Everything is AWAKE. The Buddhists and Yogis love it: Beginner’s Mind. So curious, without all those assumptions and all that heavy knowledge. You are light, flexible. Which does mean you can get blown around or bent out of shape, but that’s all part of it. So, try. Go ahead. What have you been scared to start?
What would happen if you said yes? Say yes. Yes. Let everything in. Touch the soft skin of what is possible. Nothing is wrong here, nothing out of bounds. Let everything be new. Desire kickstarts an attempt at something new. New is erotic; it is the dark unseen. So let it be sexy. Yes, I want what I don’t know. I want Eve’s apple. I want the sight of my own face. I want the pleasure of being taught, of discovery, of listening, of mistakes. Pour the world into my ears until I beg to touch it. Then, mad with hunger I’ll take it all. No frog or lichen, mouse or vulture, leaf or bit of sand will be turned away. I will embrace every lonely person and every person that wants to be left alone. Eat every texture, touch every taste. Now. Please. Yes. This is what it takes to wake up. This is the wet pussy of beginnings, the hard cock of trying something new. It is how we stay sexy in the face of long-term relationship bed death. By trying. By saying yes. By doing it now. And meeting it wide open, ready to stretch, vulnerable, as ourselves. As yourself. Yes, you. These beginnings desire you.
Let me speak for your Beginning, your Canvas, your First Page.
I want you to be happy and to feel in your skin that we are together. Touch your fingertips together. Now, touch them to mine. The current loops through like salt and lime and prayer. I am writing to you. I like to be heard, seen. I like to be touched like this, to let go and get out of the way and just play. Come closer. My hand on your arm, shoulder. We are dancing now, and the music is somewhere else. We go to its world of sound and feeling. Here, did you know you hips could move like purple winter skies? Did you know your feet could carry you like pond ripples? Oh, how delicious, the shared moment of pure attention. Shed the bars of that skull-jail above your shoulders, and we are bodies together, practicing physics. Don’t ask what happens next. Leave the logic of decisions and time and what is good enough. Can my questions light the way?
Quilters know their math, and it is never worth it. They sew anyways, and beds are warmer. I know the odds. The sheer number of people, pens, and notebooks in the world. I write anyways and hope my friends are warmer. It is winter, when we pull in and miss the sun. If you listen, you will hear some soft voice or savory prayer or heat in your feet pulling you. I’m sure of it. Pulling you towards your next beginning. Pack your bags. Kiss your loved ones. You won’t come back the same.
And a Poem
Traveling
quiet and vast
the far side of the bed
where I usually find
your breath
Ahh, words that encourage a want-to-be wanderer to keep walking. I enjoyed this thoroughly!
Thank you for this!!!