Listening to Ghost Echoes in Winter
A Wisdom Body Collective Series on Mothering & Winter Traditions
On the first day of the new year, I woke in the morning before anyone else, which is a rare occurrence, as I am usually the last to fall asleep and the quiet night is a familiar companion. This quiet is different — awaiting movement, anticipating acceleration of the day. I fall into a deeper contemplation. I move more meaningfully as I prepare my morning coffee. The movement I repeat each day becomes a new ritual with time. I feel awakened.
Often in the family room, the television is on. It projects characters from cable throughout the day, their dialogues reverberating throughout the room. Background noise that intersects my thoughts. Only when I am home alone, the television goes black. I enter with intention. I listen to my thoughts among the silence.
I began the new year with the same silence, my family still asleep the floor above me. With my coffee in hand, I brought two books with me, Emily Dickinson’s Envelope Poems and Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky with Exit Wounds. They have been sitting on my shelf, waiting. Now was our time to become acquainted within one another.
The new year began as I reached back in time. Envelope Poems is a collection of Dickinson’s pieces of writing scattered across fragments of paper. Each line of a letter a thought her hand brought forth. What intrigued me more is that I was invited into her process. In certain poems, she would try out different words or phrases, piling a couple works on top of one another to choose which would be best suited for her intention. The active mind. I felt my own thoughts mirroring her own, deciding poetic intention and execution. Time’s fabric thinned as I grazed my hands over the surface of the smooth pages, desiring the texture of the aged envelops. I imagined their scent, their puzzle across the table.
And she spoke to me still, across all these years. That has always been one of the things that enamors me most about literature. I have friends that died before I was born, yet we know each other’s hearts. It is the most romantic thing.
Who says the absence of a Witch invalidates his spell?
Like so many before me have noted, her brevity cuts to the heart of some truth. Each new year, I reflect upon the year that has passed and set intentions for the new year. This is more like an extended journal entry, because I do not keep one more frequently, that allows me to check-in with myself, my aspirations, and my actions.
I think about how I moment by moment I am crafting the life I am living; I hope to live. It has become a continuous conversation with myself that I’ve now been recording for about five years.
One of her poems poses, In this short Life that only/merely lasts an hour, How much — how little — is within our power. It reminds me of the Serenity Prayer, God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. I hold onto this when I am setting goals and making decisions for myself.
What are the actions that I can take to move toward something? What are the factors that are beyond my control? All of this allows me to focus on my present and let go of anxieties around factors I cannot control.
Her quote cuts into this, feels even grander. As my mind reads it, it feels more philosophical, cosmic, existential. So many elements that pass through us even unconsciously affect our daily life. How much control do we have?
I sit with this poem and each of hers for prolonged moments, sipping my coffee, gazing at the morning light refracted off of surfaces and casting concentrated sunlight on the wall. I like these moments to ponder, to think of myself and what I love in my life, and to bring more of it into my life.
Even though we have now been in the pandemic for over a year, I still feel like I am in transition, like I am waiting for the next thing, but I am constantly trying to ground myself further into my present moment. To be where I am, versus looking forward, skipping time. Things are happening but they feel slow, like moving in quicksand. I want more, faster, now, but I remind myself to be with myself where I am.
Another morning in early January, I was walking the same route that I walk every day around my neighborhood, only it was the first time the temperature was below freezing. Aside from putting on an extra layer and my gloves against the frigid air, as I walked my dog I noticed the small changes in the environment. It hadn’t snowed or anything so obvious, but small puddles from a recent rain began to freeze in the gutters. It was a slight difference, a new texture, that wasn’t there on my previous walks. As I passed each puddle, I began to take pictures of their freeze patterns, the concentric rings suggesting the flow of water or fractures on the hardened surface. Each was a masterpiece, entirely unique and in flux.
I realized in that moment that that was one of the reasons why I like photography as much as I do. It allows me to hone in on minuscule observations and archive them. I become enamored with its surprise composition. It creates a kind of extended relationship with the object. I’m no longer passing through, not giving it thought, but taking a longer moment to observe, appreciation and keep it. In those moments, I have nothing else on my mind and am entirely consumed by the event.
On that walk, I recognized how happy this act made me. It was simple. Almost nothing, really. If anyone was to pass me on the street, they’d probably wonder what I found so fascinating about a dirty gutter. But the absolute absorption into that instance, appreciating a tiny fraction of my world, was rejuvenating.
It can be easy to lose sight of these moments. I have plans and projects that excite me and take my time. I think constantly about what comes next, how to keep moving forward, but those experiences that ground me in the absolute present are vital.
I listened to a video last night that discussed our Western view of time, namely the past and future. We view ourselves as moving toward the future, that there is something out there that we need to get to, need to obtain, but it doesn’t exist that way. The only thing that we will ever truly know is our present.
We will remain in our perpetual present. We are what is fixed, not the future we are running toward.
Instead of this relationship to get to the future, instead, we can view the future as passing through us. It comes toward us, naturally, without force. We do not need to chase the future, but welcome each moment as it arrives. With each intention, each action in our present, we set the course we will continue on.
So I think again of Emily Dickinson’s quote, In this short Life that only/merely lasts an hour, How much — how little — is within our power. I don’t have the answer. But becoming more aware of and invested in the present self, as it will always be, will help to create and welcome what the future may hold.
Read more of A Wisdom Body Collective Series on Mothering & Winter Traditions from all our contributing writers.
