Exhale
I went to the Cloisters on a day last week that felt like the definition of fall. It was chilly and clouds were passing by rapidly, leaving the interior gardens dark one moment and then glittering in sunlight the next. I went alone, so I could walk through the museum at my own pace, not really trying to see everything but letting myself be caught and stand transfixed in a square of light coming through the stained glass windows. Walking through the quiet rooms was like a long exhale. I had few thoughts. Nothing to distract me from being filled up with the beauty of the place.
Fall feels like a kind of emptying. The trees and undergrowth thin out, there are fewer bird sounds, the sky seems less full. Social plans don’t stack on top of each other the same way they did in the summer. There are more dark, quiet hours. I saw a friend recently just before her return to her solitary life in the woods on a small island in British Columbia. Most of us don’t have islands, but we’re retreating in our own ways. Into our books or movies or thoughts, into our homes, a smaller winter circle of loved ones.
I’m trying to empty myself too. I gave notice at work, so this coming week will be my last. It just stopped being worth it. Even when I was working, I wasn’t fully there, not in the way I could be before. If restaurant service is a soccer game, I felt like I was always a few steps behind the ball, trailing everyone else as I breathlessly ran back and forth, one eye on the clock that would be my liberator. Deciding to leave the people I work with has been the hardest part of the decision, but also one of the reasons behind it. If I can’t be a fully functioning and contributing member of the team, I don’t see how I can stay. Everyone understands, which I’m grateful for.
I have something new lined up that I’m very excited about, but it’ll only be part-time and I’m trying not to fill up the rest of that time immediately. I want to see what will come with a little bit of space. Like many driven, slightly obsessive people, I sometimes find it hard to deal with empty unproductive space. It doesn’t feel right, or I worry that it doesn’t look right. Society rewards you for the abundance of your accomplishments, not the depth of your quiet thoughts. Sometimes I recite to myself all the things I’ve “done” in the past couple years, in a perverse ritual of thanksgiving. These kinds of thoughts are among those of which I’m trying to empty myself.
Silence is when no one sound is louder than any other. I heard that somewhere. There are always things to hear and things going on, but when none of them beg too hard for your attention, then you’re left with hearing nothing or everything equally. I know that that’s the state in which all my best writing happens, or when new ideas come to the surface. It’s where change of any kind begins to take hold. Or at least where I’m able to notice it. I have a lot of changing to do in the future, and it will be more dramatic than leaving one kind of job for another. I want to be clear and quiet enough to step towards it gracefully.