Not to get too wordy here about interpretations of words (ha!), but I did want to add my two cents on the topic (addressed by an opinion writer in the paper today) of whether writing your pandemic story or your day's story or even your life story allows you to move from being locked with your own feelings of despair to creating something good of all that has happened. The theory is that writing will help you confront and presumably disperse all your worst anxieties. After you've done that, you will grow.
Maybe. But it seems to me that you need more than just a reflective hour at the keyboard to pull yourself up and to move beyond whatever has been holding you down, big or small. You need to first convince yourself that you are in fact in control of your narrative. Moreover, the spin you put on your tale will likely determine how together you are at the end of it.
And how do you describe your life? What's your narrative like?
We weren't all happy, carefree, strong and hopeful before the pandemic and so returning to prepandemic levels of sanity, even if it were easy, isn't necessarily going to put us in a good place. Nor is the pandemic likely to have pushed you into a better place. If you weren't oozing contentment before, you're not easily going to pick up those thought processes now.
But here's the thing: you really are in charge of your pen. It will do what you want it to do. From the tone you take, the words you choose, to the events that you describe -- it's all yours, you control it. And that's so powerful, I think!
So maybe creating the arc of a good life is helped (tremendously!) by creating a good narrative of your life. Still, is that honest? I mean, isn't it cheating to leave out the awful, or to describe it as something other than awful? Hell no! If you can spin a good yarn out of a miserable bag of shabby wool, well then you are good! Be proud!
I've always seen this powerful side of writing in the story telling that I do here, but today's article in the paper made me confront it head on, as part of the Ocean text.
Otherwise, the day was, well, summer-like. It reminded me of those days when you were a kid at summer camp and there were rain clouds and you wondered if all your activities would be messed with because of the weather. (Which in turn reminded me of today's music notes on the radio, where I learned that the musician Percy Grainger spent seven years teaching at Interlochen Music Camp until he could stand it no more. He and his wife eventually left at which point she commented -- this would be such a wonderful place if only there weren't the all these horrid children here!)
(Morning walk: cloudy and sort of cool)
(lots of dainty achillea starting to bloom...)
(a self sown pea is proving to be delicately stunning!)
(and the meadow... oh, the meadow...)
We had breakfast with friends who stopped by to retrieve the motorbike Ed had fixed, but also, I think, to walk through the garden with me. (This is the person who has volunteered for years at Olbrich Botannical Gardens, so she knows a thing or two about perennials.)
And then the two older kids came to the farmette. I had to coax them a little to come to the meadow. It's not too hard: just tell them they can pick some flowers. Any flowers. I would not give myself that privilege, but for them, I will give the world.
I've said this before: kids and meadows belong together.
After, Snowdrop made cherry earrings out of the cherries I picked and Sparrow build castles out of magna tiles. Somewhere in the background, I read them a book.
Back at their home, I chat up a sleeping Sandpiper.
Toward evening Ed and I pick up our CSA box of veggies (so many peas!) and then head to our local farmers market where we pause to talk to one of our favorite farmers there. Ed has questions about weed suppression (the answers were disheartening: you want to get rid of Canadian thistle? Get out that shovel and start digging!), but eventually we get to more personal topics as she tells us about a drama that's unfolding in her life. I mean, it's sadder than sad and infuriating too. Makes you want to scream "life is so unfair!"But the way she tells it -- well, it's beautiful, really. The love is so obvious. Her sense of humor, her "I'm going to take charge of this" -- they're powerful. We walk away a little stunned, a lot in awe.
The amazing power of a beautiful narrative... Really, we should all aspire to it.
