Over the many years I have used writing practice as a way of life I have found sometimes I need different methods to get deeper, to tune into that soul-voice asking me to listen more carefully.
Today I found this writing from more than ten years ago. I wanted to share with you about the “Infinite Loop de Loop” so I searched my old blog for content and this is one of the pieces I found.
it is a suggestion from Natalie Goldberg, where we write back and forth from two sides of a the same statement.
In our #5for5BrainDump we will write, “I give…. ” and “I don’t give” as well as, “I receive… I don’t receive.”
On this day in February 2007 I wrote from “I am…” and “I am not…” The process took two separate writing sessions and the result was an ongoing deluge of a-ha’s, bubbling up everywhere I look.
The Julie of 2017 had forgotten every moment and now scooped up even more insights.
Here is where it began:
I am hopeful. Well, _begrudgingly_.
I am pondering conditionalism – is that a word? What I mean is I am contemplating my own experience of loving with conditions attached.
I am not so pleased with the discomfort I feel when I surround myself with past happenings of “If you ________, then I will show you love. If you don’t _________ , I will withhold love.”
This is so contrary to my being – and I am open to the discoveries the divine is requesting I make.
I am different.
I am not ordinary. Convention? Pah. I am glad the Dixie Chicks won a lot of awards last night. I am not used to having people be mad at me, so the last few days of people seeming to be mad at me has made me WAYYYY uncomfortable… and again, there are discoveries to be made and growth to happen, all of which is just right.
I am frustrated as I witness stupid stuff causing my nerves to fray (as I am allowing it to do, not that stupid stuff ‘causes it, it is my opinion that causes it so sayeth Epictetus… nothing like ancient Greeks showing up in my 43 things meanderings) I am letting it go now.
I am not prone to tantrums but maybe just maybe if I gave myself space to have one… oh, I don’t know.
I am willing to grow.
I am not amused by meanness and sarcasm. No wonder I don’t fit in with a lot of people.
I am tuned into Sam today. I am so glad, because he seems to be feeling so much better – relief.
I am not concerned about tomorrow.
I am Julie.
I am not anyone else.
I am.
Who are you?
(Something was waiting in the conclusion of the writing earlier today… that something asked…)
Who are you? So I answered my writing –
I am a fledgling collector of crystal doorknobs – these objects of fear, of wonder, of curiosity, of bewilderment.
I close my eyes to feel with, with the palm of my hand and my fingers. An iced over pond, with a new dusting of snow that stands clear of footprints until I walk across it.
The doorknob has eight perfectly symmetrical indentations – eight, the infinite, standing up. The doorknob – held, turned, let go. Grabbed, tugged on, pushed on, always so momentary.
The doorknob that is never really held,
So I hold the doorknob and sob, feeling like we have this in common.
My fingers wrap around its slick exterior and my palm grips it fully. My cheek rests against it. I wonder for a moment if the little Julie’s cheek ever grazed the old bedroom crystal doorknob, the one that seemed to mock my middle-of-the-night, eight-year-old spiritual musings we assume eight-year-olds don’t muse.
Constance-the-Cat doesn’t quite know what to do. She grazes me until she senses I am ok. The wind chime sings its approval of the moment to which it is witness.
I kiss the doorknob and nuzzle it from the other side.
My smallest finger notices an imperfection inside, a place where a tool pushed too hard and scarred the doorknob. Its scarring makes me delight in the doorknob even more.
Why?
Connection.
We are all scarred. Doorknobs, cats named Constance, outdoor-living-so-weathered-wooden-desks, women named Julie. You. We can choose to bear scars – with dignity, grace and wonder. We can choose to bare scars with vulnerability, unfamiliar to most, yet desired – in truth – by all.
I traced the scar on the doorknob and traced my own scars with a sacred hush… alighting gently from my fingertips directly into my heart.
I look deeply into the soul of the doorknob and see the core, the artistic beginnings, the casings and the laser-like narrowing into oneness as the doorknob offers itself into a lifetime of service only to be passed off as salvage until….
Until one conversation lead to one spark which lead to one man walking through another door to pick the just-right crystal doorknob that is now nestled in my hand in its own, unmoving stand… placed on the outdoor desk of this wildly passionate writer, relentlessly following her divine call and allowing the observations to flow….
And the loop of infinity swoops up and down and back and around, once again….
Who are you?
