The Ocean, The Well

Some part of me longs to keep moving, keep busy, keep my mind fully and wholly engaged in the business of life. Another part of me longs for stillness. This part of me quietly insists I stay where I am, wherever I am, and listen.

Poetry and other forms of meditative writing take me to this still place, but only partly. When I write I feel and hear things that I can’t when my mind is otherwise busy making problems for me to solve.

Yet, writing is still an active state. It’s still busy, and it’s still work. Thrilling, enlivening and often calming work, but work nonetheless. It satisfies the busy me, but the deepest part of me still whispers to me to be still.

I liken writing to sailing an ocean and bringing home finds from far away places. What has eluded me (or rather, what I have been trying to elude) is not the venturing out, but the staying. It’s not the ocean that is calling me, but the deep well I stand next to.

Sometimes I take to the seas in order to distance myself from the well. The well with its dark depths terrifies me. I circle the well. I sit on the edge of the well, legs dangling. I dip my hand in the well, I drink from the well, I stare at my shaky reflection on its surface. But drop into the well? No.

What if, after all this time, I jump in and find nothing? What if the well finds me wanting, spits me out or, worse, turns out to be empty? 

I have noticed how often I keep moving simply in order to avoid the well, to avoid being still. In the stillness things whisper to me. New ideas rise up and swirl around, piecing themselves together, wanting to be known, wanting me to know them. But to know them I have to dive in with them. I can’t know them from the land. They are watery beings, their roots twist together in the depths, and it’s their roots and the places where they entwine that want exploring.

I’m beginning to understand this time of quietness and introspection. I long to spend more time with the things I feel drawn to, more time to study, perceive and know them. In truth it feels more like they want to be known, and long for me to be still enough to see them. 

At the end of a year of exploring ‘staying home’, I finally have a sense of what it means, and realise I’ve only really scratched the surface. 

Mary xx