When the life you've built exceeds the current version of you
Or: Mid-year review of the spiral staircase
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Welcome to Percolations #82.
This post would be more of a reflection on the past little bit, instead of the usual Percolations layout. We’d cover faith and understanding, what it means to lose parts of yourself over time, building connections, prioritizing things you do, the difference between living a decent life and a beautiful life, and oh, a hundred other tiny things!
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I’ve had been doing a lot of living the past three-to-four weeks, especially the last week or so. Many things have been coming full-circle for me, which fills me with happiness and excitement — along with some scared-little-girl vibes — to the point that I have to force myself to rest at night, or else I’d just stay up and keep on grinding.
If life is a spiral staircase, this week has been one where I’ve realized I’m now stepping over where I was a few months ago; it feels like I’m returning to the same old problems and reviving the same old dreams, but I’m coming back to them from another level. One more circle completed, life seems to announce; here is your next assignment.
But it’s not as simple as smiling over the realization, thanking my guide, and going on my way.
I have to update my toolkit, change my outfit, check my bio-mechanical balance and health, and adjust my breathing and vision to the changed environment to make sure I could survive one more spin-around on the stairs.
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Five special people
Five profiles of people I’ve met, started working with, learning from, or had fascinating conversations with the past while. I feel so, so blessed and special that I get to know each of them personally!
SB: organ player, church music director, composer and singer.
On Good Friday this year, my family went to listen to a Bach Mass at a local chapel; during a conversation with a lady next to me, I learned that the conductor played the organ, and that he may be open to teaching the instrument (or at least know someone who’d be happy to).
Well, I have been learning from him the past few weeks, going to the chapel to practice on my own as much as I could manage. This gentleman has such a brilliant mind, a kind heart, and a grandfatherly patience with me as I stumble my way back into sight-reading music, understanding counterpoint, learning the basics of playing the pedals, and the like. I’ve let much of my music theory knowledge and keyboard techniques fall by the wayside over the past couple years — something that’s coming back to kick me into having to make a decision about how serious to take this instrument moving forward. (One month seems like a good length of time to check my bearings and ensure I haven’t strayed too far or too long down an irrelevant rabbit hole.)
This is fast becoming one of my “happy places”:
NL: entreprenuer, business consultant, my housekeeping client.
I’ve known her for some months now, and find her an interesting character with a lifepath similar to mine in approach when she was at my age; but it wasn’t until yesterday that I realized she had been observing me as well, and taking notes. (Yikes.)
She said that when she saw me pick up something from the side of the road two months ago, she knew she’d found someone who’d also has that love of things past in her blood. She used to run one of the largest and most successful art and antiques consignment stores in Toronto; and while we chatted yesterday, she offered me the opportunity to set up and run a similar business with her, with her being my mentor in building my knowledge base and network within this world that doesn’t even appear on the internet.
Following the offer, the mini-lesson she gave me on markets, selling, and what the field is like was a shot of caffiene straight into my veins! Maybe I should have warned her to be more careful with giving me ideas, especially business ideas within fields I am already drawn to.David Trotter: Leather craftsman, artist.
I’ve been doing some product photography and website updates for David the past three weeks. I remember the first time I saw pictures of his work my thoughts short-circuted as I tried to figure out how leather could actually be used to create this sort of art.
And he likes crows and ravens so much he always has a few leather corvids hanging around his studio…and let me tell you, that studio and “Cow Palace” is a magical place. The first time I was there, I didn’t want to leave…
a small sample of his work…. Go explore his work — the rest of the website is underdeveloped and most images are still missing descriptions, but I’m hoping these photographs would give you a sense of what David’s up to. Check back in a month or so for updated information and even more pictures (he’s busy with preparations for upcoming artshows right now, so as the tech gal I’m left high-and-dry without sufficient information to fill in the half-edited pages, haha!).
WB: Cowboy gentleman, art gallery owner, poet.
On a gentle early afternoon last month, I dropped into a tiny gem of an art gallery less than five minutes from where I live, and met a wonderful older gentleman who loves and understands good art, writes stories and poetry, and rides horses. He took me through the gallery, telling me stories of each piece and the artistic journeys of each artist, sometimes stepping back to ask me questions about what stands out to me about a certain piece and then giving his own interpretation. I gleaned so much from that visit as both someone who appreciates art and also creates works herself. I now have a couple artists to do research on and learn from — a few of those pieces of art were quite unforgettable both in their styles and the thinking behind them, thoughts I could almost grasp but not quite.At one point he told me he writes poetry and I guess my face lit up at that, because he smiled and asked if I also loved poetry. I said yes; and since that visit two weeks ago, he’s been sending me small collections of his poems, as well as stories of stopping a train on horseback and kidnapping a local mayor years ago, of losing a dear friend and his own beloved horse, of hilarious frogs he’d met in the pasture and the way sunlight shifts the shadows of the stone people he’d lined up next to his house.
Watching him balance rocks into little rock people at the edge of a forested ravine was such an unexpected moment at the end of my visit. It’s been years since I’ve first learned that rock balancing was a thing, and had wanted to see someone do it for just as long; thus, watching him position them “just so” and chatting briefly about the mindset and quietness of the soul during this particular activity gladdened my heart so much.ZSG: Gardener, insurance broker, housekeeping/gardening client.
This lady is an award-winning gardener, and flowerbed designer/caretaker. Now that she’s been unable to take care of her beds for the past couple months, I’ve been doing them under her direction — and goodness, there is so, so much to learn about even the most insignificant-looking plants and how they interact with all the others!
What fascinates me about the way she approaches her flowerbeds and gardens — and thus forces me to also notice and consider — is that she sees each plot as a canvas. Gardening (the way she does it, at least) is an art, not only in the scientific and technical precision that could sometimes be involved (yes, one can get real nerdy over plants), but also in the colors and shades and aesthetics of a group of plants over time. Planning, planting, and pruning gardens is a living art — the things you do to create the effect grow and change over time, in different ways and at different rates, and all of that has to be taken into consideration and you work in the beds.
ZSG commented once on how much more I seemed to enjoy gardening than housecleaning. Well, I do — and this “learning under the eye of the master” is part of what makes me love working with her on those beds.
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Losing a part of you
There’s something the five people listed above have in common, besides the level of mastery they’ve attained in their individual vocations.
It’s their chapter of life.
All of them are reaching (or have reached) that period in the ageing process where they begin to lose their ability, flexibility, and some of their skills due to muscle loss, joint stiffness, general tiredness, and so forth. Each of them are hungry for opportunities to share their knowledge, pass on their passion, connect with someone younger who could take up their craft and not have it be lost after their death.
I count it a precious gift to be part of these people’s lives at this part of their journeys, although it is painful to watch them struggle with their sense of identity and usefulness, and balance their self-dignity with their desperation to not have what they have within them be swept away without having left someone behind who understands and appreciates what they do, and who hopefully could also continue the work.
(It is painful on my end too, because while my fascination, curiosity, and sometimes energy feels limitless, my time and resources are not. And so I could not be the “baton carrier” for all the people I meet, even though I’d want to.)
At times it’s not even old age that takes one’s craft away from them — the young man who taught me chainmaille is also near the end of his life after a long, recurring battle with cancer.
And so I sometimes feel as if I carry the priceless legacies such people have given me on my shoulders, as I invest time and energy to learn and develop myself within these various fields. This sense grants my work a greater seriousness and depth than if I’d just pursued interests because I find them fascinating; because the skill and teaching was in itself a gift, each thing I create and each song I play is also a gift I pass on to those around me.
That is one reason why I do so much and seem to overwork myself sometimes. I know I owe such people nothing but love and gratefulness; they have demanded nothing of me in return; but the love of the work, the shared appreciation and understanding, and the human-to-human connection (and sometimes friendship) that stands behind my learning from them keeps me going.
And maybe one day I would be worthy of passing on what I have been given to those who come after me. :)
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When you begin to trust your own path
This Monday, I was sitting in the parking lot next to the chapel at which resides the organ I practice on when I realized something.
I have, rather recently, transitioned from hoping that I’m somehow working out a life worthy of living to believing that each little thing in my life does matter and would somehow connect to each other down the road. Maybe next year. Maybe in twenty. Maybe not until random people make their way to my bedside the week before my death.
Who knows. But I hold it to be true, at least for my own life.
It’s just faith, I guess, largely speaking —but I’ve experienced enough things connecting and reconnecting throughout my experiences already that it nearly doesn’t make sense to not think that all my scattered interests aren’t all that scattered if we only take a few steps back and time-warp our perspective for a second.
Even the knee placement and footwork when playing the organ is similar to the Wing Chun neutral fighting stance. More than that, the physical shifts during action in both echoes the same principles of movement and focus of energy, though the application differs.
Cool, no?
The joy and confidence this overarching trust brings is exhilarating. :)
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The buildings you inhabit
For about two Friday evenings now, I’ve been volunteering as a “Friend of the Foster” during the concerts that take place in Thomas Foster Memorial.
This is what the outside of the building looks like:
Know what’s special about this place? It’s smack-dab in the middle of cemeteries, farmlands, and forests. Kinda in the middle of nowhere. Few people know of its existence, including those who live close to it. (It’s surrounded by more trees than you see in the picture, so you couldn’t really blame them.)
But the people who’ve been there? They come back. Again and again.
I’m one of those people, as it turns out.
No pictures can do the building justice, inside or out — the interior is all stone, glass, and marble, the design so full of symbolic elements and intricate details, the feel of the place otherworldly and peaceful.
And the acoustics! Last week a flamenco guitarist played there, unplugged nylon strings and all, and my ears were overjoyed.
Beautiful music, a glorious location, peace and quiet all around (and a faint smell of swine manure being spread at a nearby farm).
Places like these are worth coming back to again and again, if only to remind myself that things like this can be experienced on this side of the ground…
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Not decent, but beautiful
GRAHAM’s “Dollar” comes to mind when I think back to the year or so I’ve worked at something only for the money it brings.
I quit freelancing when I realized I cared more for how much I was making than the thing I was doing, the companies I was working with, or even what I was doing with that money.
Now that I have more bills to pay and more expensive dreams to pursue, I’m tempted to regret making the decision to step away from a good (and easy) income source — was I stupid to toss that aside for some idealistic idea? What I make in a full day now I used to make in an hour — should I go back and admit I was too young and naive to know better?
I’m poorer now, on paper, than I was a mere three years ago. A good fifty-percent decrease. I guess I went in the opposite direction everyone else wanted me to go…
But then, I couldn’t shake the conviction that if I hadn’t quit once I realized I was too buddy-buddy with the dollar, I might have been living a decent life but it wouldn’t have been half as beautiful as the one I have now.
There’s a line in Chet Lam’s “When He Sings” that gripped me the first time I heard him sing it:
He walks on the thin line
Between light and darkness
Not decent, but beautiful
That captures exactly how I’d like to live — seeking and creating beauty through both my life’s work and the way I approach life, no matter if it’s decent or profitable.
There is value to the idea of having all your ducks in a row before going after your dreams and ambitions, sure. I have an essay in the works exploring how a passion burns itself out if it’s without substance; and part of that substance is having a life that’s sustainable and owned by the person living it.
But that’s where the thin line between prepping for the future and living in the now begins to be troublesome. This sobering short film demonstrates a risky approach to life — one simple square, one job, one skateboard. The last minute is painful for me to watch; that kind of suffering is different and filled with far deeper despair than the one of old age and loss of ability discussed above.
And besides the whole discussion on potential and dreams-chasing and life choices, I guess at some point memory dividends started to mean more to me than monetary dividends from my investment portfolio.
Some things are easy-come, easy-go — other things are not. My youth runs out quicker than my mind, and my mind also would one day no longer work with the speed and power it does now.
But because I’ve started from zero in different fields and built things that were either useful or profitable(or both), and have learned to accept the uncertainty, discomfort, and embarrassment of failing publicly (sometimes over and over, because the causes of the same problematic situation change), I think part of why I joyously scrape along the way I do now is because I know that even if all crumbles to pieces, as long as I have my two hands and an open mind, life shall go on.
For a time I worried if it was possible to not even have the 4-hour workweek (where you dedicate 4 hours per week to pure money-making). I now know, at least for me, that it is. Such living of course requires sacrifice — sacrifice of comfort, social expectations, a bit of life stability and things that other people my age kinda go after and could hold show-and-tells about.
But this haphazard living is working so far — and as this post hopefully demonstrated (if only there is an even better way I could share all this goodness with you in a more directly and personal way!), sometimes it falls apart and then puts itself together more wonderfully than it was before.
And even if the life’s not decent, it shall be a beautiful one.
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Random little updates
aka: What’s going not quite swimmingly in my life
Working through a couple small hiccups in my architectural school application process. Hugely thankful and relieved that the main parts of it’s done — pretty much in wait-and-see mode. Not my favourite place but hey, in the meantime let’s look at the other thousand-and-one things on the list!
Not much time these days to watch movies, mess around with random stuff, or even plant my own garden. I kinda miss that. I’ve also had to postpone more meet-ups and calls with friends than usual, and I don’t know how long I should let it be like this. Plans to study film noir, go longboarding, and learn stuff from ants are more “pending” than “current.” I guess you get to have your cake and eat it too — just not every single cake you see.
From one of the students in my current writing workshop comes a fascinating insight about how dust, thanks to particle interference, makes sunlight visible to us. Without those bits of stuff, we are unable to see the actual ray of light. This gave me pause.
Earlier this evening, I was reflecting on my week as I walked into our family evening gathering time, and I said out loud: “It is only when you nearly drown that you truly learn to swim.” (How’s that for a “lesson of the week,” ha!) My sister came back at me with the first verse from the psalm we were about to read together: “Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul.”1 I had to laugh, not only over the timing, but also with thankfulness for how the kind of “drowning” I’m dealing within doesn’t concern my soul or heart — only the admin part of my brain is being affected.
I hate it when I make the same mistakes twice, but I still do, sometimes. I heard somewhere this past week that every time you suffer the same sort of pain or trouble a second time, it’s your fault. You’re shooting the second arrow into the same wound opened by the first arrow (shot by Life). There’s much for me to mull over on this idea.
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Made of clay
A picture of a recent creation of mine to cheer your weekend. (She’s in a tea house, not a prison cell. Just to be clear.)
Whew! That’s enough of me yapping through text.
I wish you much joy and peace this weekend.
Odelia
Psalm 69:1, KJV