dream of some place better, bigger than your skin

          Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?                            —Wisława Szymborska

My handwriting is all over these woods. No, my handwriting is these woods,

each tree a half-print, half-cursive scrawl, each loop a limb. My house is somewhere here, & I have scribbled myself inside it.

What is home but a book we write, then read again & again, each time dog-earing

different pages. In the morning I wake in time to pencil the sun high. How fragile it is, the world—I almost wrote

the word but caught myself. Either one could be erased. In these written woods,

branches smudge around me whenever I take a deep breath. Still, written fawns lie in the written sunlight that dapples

their backs. What is home but a passage I’m writing & underlining every time I read it.

First and foremost, I learned procrastination from my painting career. Also, how a story has to have layers of meaning. I remember once one of my teachers, during a critique, saying about a series of paintings I had made over a frantic weekend, big wild eleventh-hour-fueled things: “This looks like the product of one weekend of painting.” That was his entire critique and I still remember exactly the feeling of it—of having offered something that was all surface, no depth. A couple of us had a drink with him afterward, at the Foxhead in Iowa City, and he kindly bought me a beer and a basket of popcorn but never said another word about those paintings. It was the most valuable lesson I ever learned as a student, and therefore everything about it is amplified in my memory, from the turp-smelling sprung couch in the critique room to the layer of greasy fuzz on the Foxhead hanging lamps; everything, that is, but the paintings themselves. In the end, nobody could teach me how to paint, but John Dilg taught me something invaluable about art.

Like, all of those platforms were still profitable...massively profitable before they had targeted ads on your feed and unskippable ads before videos. They didn’t need to bring them in. They weren’t going to go under, their CEOs weren’t living in the backseats of their cars, they were living in mansions already. They just wanted more money.

That last bit, “we all long to know that there’s a graciousness at the heart of creation” has been stuck with me all day. Partly because there are echoes of the Catholic I used to be in its phrasing—the idea that we are all hungering for grace is embedded in my very skull; I don’t think it’s ever washing out. But there’s something about graciousness in particular…

These days, I take a bus to work. Once, long ago (i.e., 2012) a coworker described public transportation as an exercise in mutual tolerance—a group of perfectly unaffiliated strangers come together in a crowded, constrained environment with the understanding that this will be mutual painless only insofar as we make it painless for each other. This means: you don’t talk loudly on your cellphone. You listen to music with earphones. You pretend not to be reading what your immediate neighbor is texting her friends. You squeeze yourself into as small a space as you can and say liberally “sorry” and “excuse me.”

And still…..there are older people on my route, and pregnant women, and a couple folks with the big motorized wheelchairs. And every time, I’m still surprised—touched, even, by the people who very gently brush an older woman’s elbow and ask “Would you…?” and when she nods, gather their things and stand. The nervy-looking young man who rockets to his feet to offer the pregnant woman somewhere to sit. CTA buses are somewhat-to-mostly ADA accessible, but only if the people sitting in the designated seats get up and lift the plastic, ugly-colored pew they were sitting on to make room. I’ve never heard the bus driver do more than start to lower the access ramp; the people in those seats nod, gather up purses and laptop bags and coffee cups and make their way to a convenient hanging strap. 

It’s not anything profound, it’s not special. This should be the way the world works on every level, the ordinary and rote grind of mindfulness of how others move through the world—even perfect strangers, stuck in traffic on Lakeshore Drive. I think often graciousness is a habit, a rote lesson learned and reiterated and made ordinary by its consistent application. Saying “thank you” is gracious even if it isn’t meant, small talk with coworkers is gracious even without any sort of real or genuine connection. Graciousness, the unthinking social response to need, to difference, to the other people you occupy the world with, and all others who you don’t personally know, can be deeply and movingly virtuous by virtue of its existence. Still mundane, absolutely, but….making it a part of our ordinary reality gestures to an even better one, where the good and the gracious are even more boring and commonplace.

It's a good idea to think about the difference between rest and low-level activity. Many of us think we are resting when in fact we are engaging in low-level activity. Reading a book or magazine, watching TV, scrolling through our phone: these are low-level activities, and while they do not require a huge amount of energy (and are good to do in your day), they are still using up a little. Proper, restorative/healing rest helps to put some energy in your battery -- to charge it up. Rests are 'pauses' in activity. These might be in the form of relaxation exercises, breathing exercises, meditation techniques, mindfulness, restorative yoga practice or sensory techniques such as sound apps, a heated blanket, or aromatherapy. Find a way of truly resting that works for you.

Many people express feelings of guilt about stopping and resting or view it as a negative thing. This can act as a barrier to resting. If this sounds familiar, try to reframe your attitude to rest in a positive light. By resting you are not doing nothing, you are recharging your battery. You will be doing yourself (and those around you) a huge favor.