I’ve lived in a pile of self-doubt most of my life. I didn’t trust my intuition, nor could I feel it, to be honest. I didn’t trust my worldview, nor was I sure what it was. I didn’t trust what I wanted from life or that it was possible. I didn’t trust my own creativity or that I was creative at all.

I was so disconnected from my emotional center that it wasn’t until I was 25 that I slowly began to identify, understand, and support it. Not being able to identify or describe one’s emotions is called alexithymia and I still struggle, when in the middle of big feels, discussing what I’m feeling. I prefer to retreat and process before I share and, if necessary, explain. And I do get big feels. BIG, BIG feels.

Though it’s not a situation I wish for anyone, there are upsides: it’s taught me to question new data, remain open, discover. I turn things over from different angles. Rub them up against existing data to see how it feels or plays out. In other words, I observe.

Because of this disconnect from my emotions and ability to turn things over and over again, my first fictions were rooted in concrete detail and used the sensations and proximity of my characters’ bodies in an attempt to build emotional weight and tension without using words like “she felt anxious”. My characters didn’t feel anything, they experienced moments.

I wrote detailed settings from what I knew intimately: the rooms and streets I occupied were my backdrops, and they created a mood. The stories were just as much about place as they were more specifically about the characters. And I think that writing those close, detailed observations, whether I did so effectively or not, was an accidental path to learning to trust and observe myself from the inside.

In his poem, “The Bricklayer’s Lunch Hour,” Allen Ginsburg observes a construction worker at rest almost in a single breath without overtly introducing his own thoughts or feelings about the subject. Of course, the language we use to describe anything (and even our choice of subject) will reveal a bit about our perceptions, knowledge, situation, worldview, etc., but making the effort to record as accurately as possible, almost as if with words, we’re drawing the subject rather than writing it, roots us deeper into our own immediate experience.

In case you need a refresher on the poem Ginsburg notes as the turning point in his poetics, I’ve taken the liberty of pasting it here, probably illegally, from a blog that probably also posted it illegally:

Two bricklayers are setting the walls
of a cellar in a new dug out patch
of dirt behind an old house of wood
with brown gables grown over with ivy
on a shady street in Denver. It is noon
and one of them wanders off. The young
subordinate bricklayer sits idly for
a few minutes after eating a sandwich
and throwing away the paper bag. He
has on dungarees and is bare above
the waist; he has yellow hair and wears
a smudged but still bright red cap
on his head. He sits idly on top
of the wall on a ladder that is leaned
up between his spread thighs, his head
bent down, gazing uninterestedly at
the paper bag on the grass. He draws
his hand across his breast, and then
slowly rubs his knuckles across the
side of his chin, and rocks to and fro
on the wall. A small cat walks to him
along the top of the wall. He picks
it up, takes off his cap, and puts it
over the kitten’s body for a moment.
Meanwhile it is darkening as if to rain
and the wind on top of the trees in the
street comes through almost harshly.

The first time I read this poem I was moved nearly to tears by its seeming simplicity, its concrete detail, its tenderness both in the action of the subject and the writer.

Sometimes I feel my writing must contain broad strokes, grand adventures, big emotional upheavals (partly because I’ve had so many) and I forget that the smallest, seemingly insignificant moments can move us. And that we spend most of our time living in thousands of small, seemingly insignificant moments most of which we forget, rather than in the big upheavals.

creative invitation

So this is my invitation to you, whether you need to build self-trust or not: closely observe a person (or animal or moving object) in a single moment, movement, or action. A cat at rest, a child at play, a partner putting away the groceries, a barista making coffee, a Roomba roomba-ing, yourself writing. Use whatever descriptions you like, but refrain from entering into feelings or thoughts. Also, poets out there, avoid metaphors and similes. Be direct and precise.

But above all: play, delight, explore, expand. Share in the comments or via email if you’re feeling social.

With love,

invitation to collaborate

What art, writerly, mind-body, or life practice are you leaning into? What does your creative life look like? What were the inspirations for your favorite pieces? What is poetry, art, mindfulness, practice to you? If you’d like to share about your creative, poetic, spiritual, well-being, or otherwise living life practices, please get in touch. unraveling, unmoored seeks collaborators. More info can be found on the About Page. Please message or email with questions.

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Note: I am primarily a writer and I focus on that angle, but freewriting can be useful for makers practicing any medium. Translate as necessary.

Start with Reading

This excerpt, the first few paragraphs of Virginia Woolf’s “Street Haunting,” attempt to eschew the life our everyday objects behold us to in voluptuous detail as the narrator embarks on a wintery evening adventure to buy a pencil.

We are no longer quite ourselves. As we step out of the house on a fine evening between four and six, we shed the self our friends know us by and become part of that vast republican army of anonymous trampers, whose society is so agreeable after the solitude of one's own room. For there we sit surrounded by objects which perpetually express the oddity of our own temperaments and enforce the memories of our own experience. That bowl on the mantelpiece, for instance, was bought at Mantua on a windy day. We were leaving the shop when the sinister old woman plucked at our skirts and said she would find herself starving one of these days, but, "Take it!" she cried, and thrust the blue and white china bowl into our hands as if she never wanted to be reminded of her quixotic generosity. So, guiltily, but suspecting nevertheless how badly we had been fleeced, we carried it back to the little hotel where, in the middle of the night, the innkeeper quarrelled so violently with his wife that we all leant out into the courtyard to look, and saw the vines laced about among the pillars and the stars white in the sky. The moment was stabilized, stamped like a coin indelibly among a million that slipped by imperceptibly. There, too, was the melancholy Englishman, who rose among the coffee cups and the little iron tables and revealed the secrets of his soul—as travellers do. All this—Italy, the windy morning, the vines laced about the pillars, the Englishman and the secrets of his soul—rise up in a cloud from the china bowl on the mantelpiece. And there, as our eyes fall to the floor, is that brown stain on the carpet. Mr. Lloyd George made that. "The man's a devil!" said Mr. Cummings, putting the kettle down with which he was about to fill the teapot so that it burnt a brown ring on the carpet.

But when the door shuts on us, all that vanishes. The shell-like covering which our souls have excreted to house themselves, to make for themselves a shape distinct from others, is broken, and there is left of all these wrinkles and roughnesses a central oyster of perceptiveness, an enormous eye. How beautiful a street is in winter!

Now Root Yourself in Your Body

Wherever you’re sitting start by taking a slow, deeeeeeeep breath. And then another.

Count to four on the inhale.

Eight on the exhale.

Focus on filling only your belly as full as it will go for breaths three and four.

On breath five fill your belly and your chest.

Breath six: work the breath into your throat.

Now, if you can, add a pause at the top of the breath for a count of three.

Stretch the inhale and exhale out by two counts, if you can, but don’t strain.

This isn’t a challenge. It is a filling up and a letting go.

Whatever breath you’re now on is the right breath.

Take five more like this.

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And when you’ve done that, on your last exhale, return to a no-effort breath, but maintain awareness.

Watch the gentle inhales and exhales.

Scan the body starting with your toes or the top of your head, just bring a gentle awareness to how each body part feels. If you can, allow any remaining tension to release.

Count ONE for the in-breath and TWO for the out-breath up to ten.

Do three to five rounds.

Then slowly begin to bring your awareness back to the room or space you’re in.

Now scan the space you’re in.

Let your eyes rest, one by one, on the objects that surround you.

Spend two to three minutes observing, without judgment: the wallpaper, the paint, the dirt on the walls and light switches, the books on the shelves, the knick nacks that surround you, the office stapler and cubicle plexiglass, the photos you’ve set up on your desk, the dust.

Now Write

Choose one or two items you were most drawn to or that surprised you (surely we all have things on our shelves we’ve nearly all but forgotten) and write the name of that object on the top of a piece of paper.

Begin a free write about the object or set of objects.

Note its color, properties, size. Why did it draw you in on this particular room scan, how did you acquire it, how long has it been in your possession, and more specifically how long has it been in that particular spot, is it meant to be there?

What’s your history with it, what has it witnessed there on its shelf or table or place on the floor?

Who has it interacted with?

Have you learned anything from this object(s)?

Has it learned anything from you?

Write until you’ve exhausted all angles of said object, write things that make no sense, write things that have nothing to do with the object itself. Just keep writing until you feel depleted or empty.

Or, conversely, set a timer. Ten minutes. Twenty. Thirty. Whatever serves you. And write until time.

Or Draw

Draw the object. Or paint the object.

Paint the scenes the object represents.

Do a one-sheet book sketch answering any of the questions listed above.

Use the colors of the object in colored pencil, marker, or watercolors.

Trace the object and make geometrical shapes based on the object.

Draw the object in a completely different setting.

Paint a representation of the object a radically different color.

Whatever You Do

Use whatever tools you have to hand. Don’t think too much about how you’re doing what you’re doing, and play. If you’re stuck or frustrated take a walk around the block or move to a separate room where you’re no longer looking at the object.

Engage in some other kind of movement your body is capable of: dance, jump, bounce, wave your arms. Wag your tongue. Rotate your ankles and/or wrists.

Write or draw your frustrations.

Say to yourself: “I’m so sorry you’re frustrated. I’m so sorry you can’t write / draw this object.” Use the second person “you” not “I”.

Continue to observe your breath.

Try again. Or don’t.

Either way, you have done the right thing.

And repeat.

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Next Steps

In a week, or a month, or a year (put it on a calendar noting the notebook / page number or linking to the document). Revisit these writings / sketches.

Pull out language that feels nice or triggers more writing.

Or, cross out bits that do not feel nice until those things that feel nice come forward.

Rewrite / re-draw things on a fresh page or document.

Rearrange, insert, shift words, play, explore.

Spend a few minutes, but up to an hour coming back to this piece every day for a week.

What’s there, what’s missing?

What’s working; what’s not working?

Where is the heart of the piece? What’s the piece unexpectedly saying? What connections is it making?

If you must, set the piece aside again for another week or month and come back to it.

The separation is good for your relationship.

Have a trusted friend look at it with objective eyes. (We can be so critical of our own work and we are not always trusted friends!)

Is the piece working? Can it work better? Should the relationship be severed?

If so, it’s okay, you have or will have many more relationships in different stages of working that need your attention.

This is not your only one.

Put it in a drawer or a file, a SOMEDAY / MAYBE file, and forget about it until you’re scanning your SOMEDAY / MAYBE files when you might consider the relationship again, or not.

Repeat This Invitation

As many times and in as many rooms as you see fit.

Practice it once a day for the next thirty days (you will have thirty drafts).

Take it outdoors. To coffee shops, roadside cafes, restaurants, the ocean, the woods, a friend’s living room, a lover’s bedroom, your parents’ porch or back garden.

Try it in different seasons and at different times of day when the angle of the sun has shifted.

Or not.

Whatever you do it’s the right thing.