Where I am, on a small island at the bottom of the world, this means fluffy sparrows in the bare branches of the peach tree and bulbs unfurling from the wintered earth.
Writing too is an unfurling.
Writing is thought made matter, the invisible, the indivisible, the indivinable as paper and ink. You write, and there you are on the page. Almost always, unless you are writing a shopping list, you me we will be disappointed by our reflection.
How can this be?
In part, because what was true in our mind is no longer true when it’s on the page.
Why?
Because in the writing you’ve moved on. You’ve pegged in time what was, and what is yet come.
So why do it then?
This making matter of ourselves is alchemical. The process is the transformation.
Once the body is emptied of the thoughts, ideas and inspirations to which it has been beholden, new thoughts will come. New ideas will fill the spaces in our bones and blood and flesh. Occupational heroes, questing for the light of day, visible in the world.
It is the unfurling self, visible in the world. I exist. This is me, for one single moment in time, this is – was – me. Do not hold me to it. For I have moved on. Nonetheless, here is my offering and my offering in time has value in time for you and for me and for others.
This is a primary reason people who long to write do not write. Which reason? The risking of the visible self made matter on the page, the potentialfor disappointment, in ourselves and, by impotent reason, to others.
This is why writing is the bravest thing we’ll ever do. We show up for ourselves. We respond to the summons within. We risk visibility as we know ourselves to be. We show others it’s okay out here in the light.
Unfurling. Dark to light. Laying it down.
Image: Honouring Hilma af Klint, whose paintings laid out her own path on which to travel.