heightened

It’s a new month in a new year, a fresh start and a new beginning and I wonder, as I write that, is there any other kind (of beginning)? A beginning can only ever be new, this is the wonder of beginnings, is it not? The turning of corners, the stepping through doorways, the looking out to horizons, everything as yet untouched, uncolored, untrodden. In this new month (this new beginning) I gather the pieces of my 2025 self and step into… I begin… 2026.

The beginning of the month saw snow and low temperatures. I walked in the snow and the cold, bundled against the elements, tasting the crispness of winter on my lips, reveling in the delicious quiet. There’s science to this quiet, the quiet a result of sound traveling more slowly through cold, dense air. There’s also this: though sound travels more slowly through the tightly-packed molecules of cold air, the resulting density helps sound move more efficiently, more clearly, so that it travels farther. Something in this intrigues me... the dampening which clarifies and heightens, and which might contain more.

I’m back to almost-daily writing, almost-daily being my sweet spot. I stumble upon a realization as I write about my father. It’s not the first time I write of a certain memory but it’s the first time I tie this certain memory to another memory, and I see a thread connecting the two. It is a hint of revelation, it is curious, it might be powerful. I suspect, at some point, this thread will stitch itself onto additional pages, this connection I never saw before that might not mean much of anything but which struck a chord, the sounds of laughter and tears reverberating some forty years later, dampened yet clarified, heightened, possibly containing more.

In addition to writing almost-daily, I am sketching more, am splurging on (wait, investing in) art supplies, am taking a class that will stretch me in competence and confidence. I draw a cozy chair and it ends up being a chair I wish I could curl up in, would buy a chair like this in a heartbeat even though it wouldn’t go with anything we own. It’s a simple sketch, yet I love this chair I’ve drawn in greens and purples, love the way my drawing style of twenty years ago shows up, saying oh hey, I’m still here, there’s been a lot to move through over the years, but I’m here, I’m here, I’m here. Like sound traveling through cold, dense air, quieter yet reaching far, this playful chair comes to me ringing clear as a bell. It’s been a while but I haven’t lost it, haven’t lost the joy, the flow that rises with pencil or brush in hand. Somehow I will stitch it all together, words and images, beginnings and endings and all the in-betweens. I will make my way through the densely-packed particles of time (of life) (of heart) because I must, and because there is more.

Stay true to your own voice, and don’t worry about needing to be liked or what anybody else thinks.
Keep your eyes on your own paper..
~ Laura Dern ~

listen here…

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