The crossing

It's been seven days since I returned from my month on Monhegan. Seven days of unpacking and (seven) loads of laundry; seven days of car inspections, teeth cleaning, and bang trimming. Seven days of letter opening, bill paying, and teaching yoga; of spending time with my kids and parents and deadheading each and every peony I never saw bloom. Seven days to do the things I can only do inshore, also knowing that in (another) seven days, I'll repack the car, turn around and do it all over again.

To be clear, I am aware I am citing the champagne problems acquired through the privilege of owning two homes—the above are not complaints. Still, finding one's footing in the time and space in between can be overwhelming, at least it can be for me because I am uncomfortable with disorder, which I conflate to catastrophe.

In my old life, I tried to accomplish all of these tasks in less than a day, checking every box—answering voicemails and emails, making lists, and planning menus from the passenger’s seat of the car all before we even left the state of Maine. Laundry? Check. Wegmans? Check. Snail mail? Car pools? School supplies? Check, check, check.

I know it sounds insane, but there was a time I believed my compulsivity was in service of maintaining the calm, composure, and ease I felt on island when in reality, it only wiped the experience clean.

In the new administration, I do my best to allow everything to unspool at its own pace; trusting disorder isn't indicative of disaster. As with everything else, I am forever a work in progress and gratefully, I've maintained the morning practice that began on Monhegan—I’ve continued to write my way home.

It begins with permission to take in the day. To arise slowly, lingering in bed perhaps a little longer than I think I “should,” listening to my breath, trusting I am exactly where I’m supposed to be.

Then coffee.

While I wait to press the first pot, I do the Wordle as a warm-up. Like a pianist rehearsing their scales, I string the letters into a grove of green, share it with my sweetheart (because we might be a little competitive), then I silence my phone.

The writing begins with a review of words written the day before, circling back, circling lines from previous pages, some days noticing patterns as my call and response; other times being willing to let everything go. Then I’ll pause and close my eyes, taking a moment to listen to the fullness of the world outside before assuming I know what comes next. 

While the sound of the ocean has been replaced by the hum of the highway, there remains a space in which to write, and in this space, I’m trying to release my false narrative—the one that says, “I can only write on an island ten miles out to sea.” Instead, I am trying to remember that the journey to Monhegan begins in the crossing, in the slippage between two shores and the spaciousness of open water and blue touching blue. 

Scientifically we know blue is the rarest color in nature apart from sea and sky, and to be rare is to be sacred, but it is also the color from which I write.

To be the blankness of the page is to be in the crossing, knowing that nothing comes out of the blue, but when we write into the blue, we can find ourselves. Wherever we are. 

My writing occurs in the willingness to embark on the journey, to trust my blue inside, knowing I can’t be here if I hadn’t been there, allowing 

writing and living to be one thing so that writing is just me living, but on the page—an extension of the living I was doing before I sat down to write.

Sheila Heti

The crossing is the space and the page where we meet in possibility.

Each morning begins the same—with a review of words written the day before, circling back, circling lines from previous pages, some days noticing patterns as my call and response; other times being willing to let everything go.

Then I can begin again with the vast open space of a blank page as my form of crossing, trusting the material and the memories of where I have been as a guide to what comes next. 

Because life is not a list to be compulsively checked off. Life is in the living, and the writing as the same thing, as the one thing, and as the space in between in the crossing—in the blue and in the blankness of the page. 

Some days it feels like a ritual; other days a routine. Regardless, I’m still writing.

thanks for reading ~

When Women Were Birds: murmuration, memoir, meditation on Monhegan is FULL

coming soon… . ..2024 retreats on Monhegan AND in the Finger Lakes… . ..

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