behind the times, in the center

this post is late (later even now, then when i first started it) and after many weeks of delinquency i am using this as practice in imperfection. 

there are times in my life where i would have taken this as a sign to give up, to decide i don't have time to do things that aren't immediately necessary to the management of my life and completion of obligations. but, instead, i'm just taking it as a reminder that late is done, and messy is done, and short is done. we do what we can with what we have, honest and open, and then we release it. 

every year i set the same resolution: to release my grip just a little more than last year. i often illustrate it by showing my hands in fists, palms facing the ground, and then rotate up, opening my hands. each year my fist gets a little less tight, my hands a little more open. sitting in my buddhism seminar last week (now, forgive me, a couple weeks back) the instructor framed buddhist practice as helping us to open our hands, and release. i nodded, feeling the sensation of opening my hands over and over. imperfect and releasing. releasing and tensing and releasing again.

later in the same seminar they taught us a meditation exercise i've been coming back to repeatedly.  

take a rectangular object, your phone or laptop or notebook will do.

turn it, so it's positioned as a diamond in front of you.

put your hands on top of the point furthest from you and focus on a story you believe about yourself that frustrates you. i do not finish things that are only about joy, i only complete obligations, responsibilities, and tasks. stay like that for a while noticing that story. how it feels, where it lives in you, just welcome and notice it. 

move your hands one spot to the right. focus on the contradictions, the ways in which the opposite story is true. i literally just took off a scarf i made, just because i wanted to. sometimes it takes a while for this example to appear, but it will. we can never be just one thing. stay with it, just like the first story. 

the third corner, closest to you. both stories are true. i do not finish things that are only about joy, i just completed a scarf, this blog post is so late, i have a folder of finished poems i don't show anyone, i never finished my sweater, i love cooking elaborate dinners that we sit down to eat, i --- do this for a while. try, if you can, to just notice the ways they stack on top of each other. bleed into each other. exist simultaneously. 

one more corner, move your hands again. this time, neither of these stories matter at all. all of the you-ness that has absolutely nothing to do with them. the vast scope of you that never even thinks about knitting or blog posts or cooking but rather daydreams and reads Torah and wails a little in the steamroom, just a little bit, when you're alone. stay here too. 

finally, your hands move to the center. hold it all at the same time, let all of it go, at the same time. it is everything everywhere all at once. it is all true, it is all false, it is all the same thing, it is all nothing. i am, i am not, i am many things, i am no things.

so, in the spirit of do it late, thanks for reading. i hope to talk to you again soon.