front yard photo walk, day 7 {100 days outside}

sol.i.tude

the state or situation of being alone

{written last night}

 

 

 

 

This week did not bring inspiration.  In absence of inspiration seeps in the slight feeling of dread that I will never feel it again...my mind works even when working against itself. 

 

It is late in the evening now, on Wednesday, and I am tired.  But I sit up, dog sleeping at my feet, in the quiet house letting my mind ruminate.

 

And then my mind begins to move, I sit a little longer and then hasten for the stairs, for my notebook to write these words.  On my way I stop briefly in the two bedrooms of my three sleeping children, how wrapped in peace they are -- and rather than feeling jealous of their quietude I feel a glimmer of my own peace returning, a glimmer of my inspired mind returning.

 

I progress to my own room and wrap myself in my favorite shawl(yes I have a favorite shawl), and climb onto my bed.  My pen begins to flutter.  I write best on paper.  I enjoy the feeling of the pen moving across its surface, the slight scratching sound of that surface being altered, the ink being controlled by the movement of my hand;,the tangible turning of the page.

 

The house feels particularly quite tonight, it is a quite filled with peace -- I have not tried to fill it with doing.

 

I am in love with a little book that I am reading right now, Gift From the Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1955.  She relays so much wisdom, but one of those that has rung most true for me is the power and necessity of solitude. Solitude as food for the soul, as a place to find connection to oneself, as a place to feed the 'inner well'

 

She writes;

For it is not physical solitude that actually separates one from other men, not physical isolation, but spiritual isolation. It is not the desert island nor the stony wilderness that cuts you from the people you love. It is the wilderness in the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wonders lost and a stranger. When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others...only when one is connected to ones own core is one connected to others, I am beginning to discover. And for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.

 

The inner well for me is the place where the creative flame has the fuel to ignite, or perhaps the oxygen to ignite. It is the place where I feel me.  I am learning that I can not take myself there, I have to allow myself to be there. 

 

And so I found myself there tonight, discouraged in my lack of inspiration, I sat down and found myself doing nothing but being.

 

 

With gratitude,

Joanna