Jen Knox's Blog, page 6

On the simplicity of writing & week 39 of 52

Have you ever seen someone look up toward the sky, as though receiving an answer before speaking? If you watch old interviews with David Lynch, he did this.

Once, in an interview on creativity, Lynch said that if you have a yellow notepad and a pen on your lap for long enough, the words will arrive on the page. Ideas come.

I don’t think it’s more complicated than that. I don’t think you need workshops and strategies and all the rest. You just need to sit and write. Or stand and write, if the ergonomics work better.

“We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination.”
― David Lynch

Meanwhile, like any meditation, it’s easy to forget that the process is the simplicity itself. The less we try to complicate things, the more it pours out. The more we talk, analyze, etc., the less it happens.

Photo by Rikki Chan

In other words, the notepad doesn’t need to be yellow or even a notepad.

We need to find something or some way to release—look up, out, or down for a while, then allow what comes. Maybe meditate on dropping expectations for a while.

AYTL/writing prompt: Write every day this week, even if you’re not a writer, and do not set conditions on it. Write for a minute, an hour, or a few hours. No formulas, not overthinking, no editing (gasp!). Just look up or down or off into the distance and write.

Bonus: Write a love letter to your writing and submit it to our team at Unleash.

Releasing expectations

9-minute meditation.

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The Snowstorm

© Jen Knox

We have six gallons of drinking water, half a box of graham crackers, and oatmeal we’ve been eating with minimal water and warming on the space heater. We had perhaps our last small fire yesterday, and Joshua found a few packs of raisins, a food that used to make me cringe, behind the fridge. Consumables dwindle so incredibly fast. The plump raisins on my dry tongue were as tasty as any piece of three-layer chocolate cake would have been to my former self, the woman of only weeks ago—the woman worried about consuming too many calories or not walking 10,000 steps.

I have an ounce of power left on my phone, but the last time I powered it up I threw the thing across the room, so I’m not entirely sure it works now. There’s no internet anywhere. We are left with the emergency laws, instructions, and survival tips. Also, the lists. Long, stomach-twisting lists.

Joshua heard rustling sounds on and off over the last few days, and he was sure it was tunneling, which, at this point, is our only hope—rescue. Freezing to death will take some days. We have a lot of cloth, wool, and a cordless space heater that the news suggested before reports stopped. The water won’t last long, though, and this is all I can think of as I try to summon my strength.

We count to three and pull hard to gain an inch of light. The ice around the door gives, and a clump of snow releases. The fresh air feels nice before it bites at our cheeks. Yesterday’s snow is now an undercoat and the powdery top layer glistens.

“Looks like it’s winking at the sky,” Joshua says.

There is nothing but snow, expectant clouds, and the top halves of our neighbors’ homes. A few still have smoke escaping their chimneys.

“Nature’s secret,” I say. The wonderland covers cars and bikes; it climbs stairs and devours porches. Our doors are barricaded, with only a few feet uncovered at the top. It’s infuriatingly beautiful.

Joshua backs up and sighs as he grabs the broom. I lean all my weight in, hoping the door will close again easily today, but it doesn’t budge. Despite the cold that enters, it was recommended we keep opening the door and clearing the path as much as possible to prevent it from freezing closed. He sweeps at our warped wood floors, and I tell him to be careful around the window, where there is a fissure in the glass.

“We’re lucky to be on the north side of Grant Avenue, kiddo,” I say. He hates it when I call him kiddo, he’s too old, but he lets me off the hook. Joshua examines the slight incline toward the other side of the street. We were spared at least a foot of accumulation, not much but something.

He lingers in the doorway, and a thin arm of sunlight reaches in and warms my face; meanwhile, the icy air and blinding light crowd everything around it. We push the door again, together, but it still resists, and I imagine the raisins on my tongue. The inside of my mouth is like paper, but I need to hold out before I drink or eat anything.

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On a few hundred ducks & week 38 of 52

After breakfast the other day, my husband and I walked. We came across a few hundred ducks and a tiny mischief-maker.

As soon as the ducks gathered for food, this kid would roar and run toward them. They’d scatter, pause, then wander back as he threw more food.

We hung out here for about 5 minutes, and the ducks kept coming back.

I think the answer to the poll above is “having fun” or “curiosity.” And because I’m a writer, I had to find out about a duck’s capacity to remember and found there’s a good chance the ducks were, on some level, getting something worthwhile out of the equation.

Why do I share this?

The scene itself was captivating. So much so that I forgot my lengthy to-do list and tally of worries about the world without having to sit on a mat and focus or count my breath.

It was a simple and somewhat awkward interspecies interaction. Like when my dog tried to cuddle up with my cat: there’d be hissing, then a resigned awareness that the dog offered body heat and something soft to curl up against.

Human-to-human interaction is often awkward as well. We take great strides to try to make it less so, but it often is.

There’s the “ice breaker” for starting conversations, the miscommunication that seems endemic when we talk about big issues, and there’s the laziness of implied meaning in texts and emails, not to mention the delightfully awkward but beautiful interactions with people when there is a language or culture barrier.

“Why not go out on a limb? That's where the fruit is!” —Mark Twain

We are often just bumbling along. So in the spirit of bumbling along and getting comfortable with getting uncomfortable, let’s approach this week with clear sight of this short, beautiful journey and all the magic that lives in the unexpected and awkward interactions.

Here are a few prompts.

“Izzy with Izzy” by Andy Dice Davies

AYTL prompt: Drop the cool, even if it comes naturally to you. Be willing to get awkward. And if you find yourself embarrassed or confused, embrace it. Journal about it. Love yourself all the more for being courageous enough to be what we so naturally are.

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Writing prompt: Write about a fictional character (poor thing) who sacrifices everything intrinsically valuable in exchange for comfort and how that works out for them.

A meditation offering for everyone…

From Worry to Love - Day 3

Today, we'll seal our practice with practical tools that we can take forward. We will discuss reframing, cultivating the opposite, and techniques to take off the meditation cushion.

I want us all to live and create fully and authentically, and I will bring you all the tools I know (meditations, creative prompts, and posts). Please support my time and efforts by subscribing or spreading the word.

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.” ― Henry David Thoreau Photo by Han-Hsing Tu on Unsplash

From Worry to Love - Day 2

“Love is cure. Love is power. Love is the magic of changes. Love is the mirror of divine beauty.” —Rumi

In the first session, we looked at a worst-case scenario. Today, I’d like you to develop an appreciation for what you have right now. In this moment. Because anxiety is based on a prediction, and predictions are never fully accurate, some of the best medicine is to get present.

Thanks for reading Here we are! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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On running in difficult times & week 37 of 52

Let’s talk about it …

Life is hard.

We have global warming/weirding and the impacts of natural disasters destroying cities and changing our ability to breathe clean air or access necessary ingredients.

We have unstable/mentally ill leadership and asymmetrical resource control increasing at rapid speeds across the globe.

There’s ongoing war and hatred that takes many forms and is all ugly.

And on a personal level, there’s the steady reminder that these bodies we reside in are temporary organisms that are as capable of pain as they are of pleasure.

It’s enough to make us want to give up, to think there’s no summit. And yet …

“The real meditation is how you live your life.” —Jon Kabat-Zinn

Life is full of wonder.

Like many people I know and love, I’m grappling with the big-picture issues that seem to dominate our shared human narrative. Meanwhile, I found some hope this week after a slow but purposeful run.

Despite the bitter temps and a mild achiness of middle age, I ran. I watched the world move toward me and fall out of view, constantly changing, and all I could hear was the wind and the sound of my breath. I barely ran two miles, but adrenaline-filled clarity arrived.

This run helped me to remember something fundamental.

Photo by Bruno Nascimento

When I was 9, a year older than depicted in the image below, I ran a 5-mile road race on the north side of Columbus that was hilly and rough. It was a hot day, and I was in a bad mood.

In my kid mind, it felt like the world was against me. I truly felt like a victim. And while I didn’t even think about the larger problems of the world, like the fact that Reagan was implementing deinstitutionalization, which would put many mentally ill and unhoused people on the streets, or that greed was at the forefront of most decisions as materialism began to reign and lay the groundwork for future atrocities, I did have a real form of stress.

I was tired, in a bad mood, on a hill, and ready to quit.

Then I heard a voice from behind me. I looked back and saw a woman sighing. “I can’t do this,” she said.

She was twenty-eight or maybe sixty-eight. At 9, all adults were merely old. So I saw this “old” woman who appeared to be in pain, and I said, “We’re almost to the top.”

She glanced at my neon, animal print running pants (side note: they were pink, had paws on them, and epitomized my fashion tastes at the time) and smiled.

“No, I don’t think I can finish. I’m going to walk,” she said.

“Don’t!” I yelled at her. I moved my curly red hair away from my face as I slowed my pace, and I fell in line with her.

me, near the finish line (a different race)

What’s funny is that her dialogue was exactly what I’d been thinking, but the moment she said it, my entire thought process changed.

I began to teach her a breath practice I learned from my cross-country coach. “Just breathe like this: two inhales, then one long exhale to give yourself more oxygen,” I told her. I showed her how to do it, and we breathed together.

I hadn’t remembered that technique for myself, but I remembered it for her.

From there, she asked me about school and how often I ran. I found out this was her first race and she was doing it to get back in shape after feeling down and out, as she put it, for a long time.

We both finished the race, together, and at the end, we hugged.

I bring up this story because we can create a circle of self-pity and hopelessness when we think about the weight of bad decisions and the repercussions of an unjust world.

But, we can also forget our fears and burdens by remembering what we might offer someone else. And in so doing, we find the internal freedom to keep going.

Yes, we’re on the uphill right now. Maybe we’re almost there, maybe not. Either way, here we are.

Together.

“The practice of Zen is forgetting the self in the act of uniting with something.” —Koun Yamada

I want us all to live and create fully and authentically, and I will bring you all the tools I know (meditations, creative prompts, and posts). Please support my time and efforts by subscribing or spreading the word.

AYTL: If you feel like you’re out of sorts right now due to large and looming reasons, extend your hand to the first person who needs it and remember the strength of uniting. If we all do this - if we all do - well, just imagine.

Writing prompt: Paul Spangler began running in his late sixties and found community. By his late seventies, he was running 10 miles a day. He finished his 14th marathon at the age of 92. Write about someone or something blooming despite norms.

On invisibility, celebrations & week 36 of 52

I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously. —Christopher Hitchens

Moving through the world for even a few minutes of our lives with the idea that we could already be gone elucidates just how many brilliant moments there are to experience.

In a way, this experiment is about what it means to be visible and invisible, to see and not see.

I did. When I was a kid, I used to pretend I was invisible ALL THE TIME.

The game would entertain me for hours. I think a lot of kids pretend to be invisible. Or maybe I was strange. Either way, it was a fun game that allowed me to see the actions of my parents and sister in new ways. As I hid or moved silently through the house, they weren’t about business as usual.

George Bailey: Isn't it wonderful? I'm going to jail! ― It's a Wonderful Life (1947)

The fact is, when we die, the world WILL go on, business as usual. It’s kind of like when I go to pick my loving dog up from the sitter after a long trip and she seems to have forgotten who I am for a moment before getting excited. She was sad when I first left, but after a few days, she was just fine without me.

The entire world will be. But I don’t say this to make anyone feel inconsequential. I say this to say that every moment is huge. It’s everything. Every moment is everything. The world is constantly in flux. To explore these ideas is to create art.

“We’re all carrying our coffins with us every day.” ― Edwidge Danticat

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While our names may or may not live on, we have no control over what is remembered and chances are it will be minuscule. But what is left is our impact. I didn’t watch It’s a Wonderful Life this year, but I did watch other movies, including A Christmas Carol remake with Bill Murray, Scrooged, and it struck me how many movies are about realizing the ephemeral nature of life and remembering this in order to better live.

My husband’s aunt died recently. Younger than 60, she was a woman I’d only met twice but who left a marked impression on me. She was strong willed and not self-conscious (at least not visibly) in the least. I admire these qualities, and I am happy to have met her, but I barely knew her aside from this snap impression.

When we feel the urge to shrink back, away from attention or when we reconsider sharing perspectives, maybe we should imagine the opposite. What if we truly were invisible. While we’re visible, why not share our stories? Why not share our successes? Why not share our experiences?

I want us all to live and create fully and authentically, and I will bring all the tools I know (meditations, creative prompts, and posts) to you. Please support my time and efforts by subscribing or spreading the word.

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This is a simple concept but one that I’ve observed is often lost on many principled people. We don’t have to be self-serving to celebrate and share our wins, and we don’t have to minimize what we do in the world. In fact, maybe if more good people learned to share their ideas and wins with confidence, perhaps fewer people would rally around the villains that seem to be taking over leadership positions globally.

Maybe Hitchens didn’t have confidence in the world to be quite ready to digest his arguments, but he made them nonetheless. And while I align more with a magical version of reality than he did, I am so glad he did.

No one has all the answers, but if we hide, we can’t bridge ideas and find what we—perhaps only collectively—are capable of understanding about this short life.

Photo by David DINTSH

AYTL experiment: Where in your life are you not listening to those who think differently? Can you find their wisdom, and can you better celebrate your own? (Just a question - do with it what you will.)

Writing prompt: Write about the person who always hides emerging from the shadows and facing all that comes (rewarding and confrontational) with exposure.

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” —Emerson

Now available in audio

A meditation for times of fear here.

Meditation for times of fear & dread

We are stronger than we know.

“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”

―Audre Lorde

Photo by Faris Mohammed on Unsplash

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On wandering into the new & week 35 of 52

“Home is everything you can walk to.” —Rebecca Solnit

It was a simple walk, no more than a mile from my home.

I was in my early twenties and barely able to stand, let alone move one foot in front of the other. What came before this moment doesn’t matter. What matters is that this was the first part of a journey from a sick and muddled time toward a new horizon.

I wrote about this walk last year, and the essay won the Montana Prize at CutBank. It was the story I didn’t have the courage to articulate until my forties, at least not in a way that didn’t injure my sense of pride. In fact, I was proud, prouder than I could’ve imagined. I was also happy that it only found the world through print in an academic lit journal, which means it reached just a few people, maybe people who were had found their own thresholds.

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Photo by Philippe Gauthier

My forehead was pulsing and actively developing a scar I now have just above my left eyebrow. I was in extreme pain, and I struggled to take each step. Nothing looked familiar, though I was not far from the neighborhood I grew up in. I wanted so desperately to fall back to the ground, to be immobile and stay that way.

But I knew that if I walked, I would find somewhere new.

Looking back, I probably had a concussion. I didn’t have insurance, so I never found out. What I did have was the open air and the feel of my heels finding the earth as I pushed my way forward. Walking alongside brick and concrete, rough edges for my finger tips to trace.

I continued to walk until my head cleared and the world began to make sense again. Objects began to solidify and I saw life all around me. I found my way home, and from that day forward I’ve been a new person who is only stronger for any pain endured.

We all have a story that comes before and a story that comes after. What divided mine was a simple walk.

“I have never succeeded in keeping some part of me from always wandering.” —Montaigne

Montaigne said that walks are revelatory. To wander is to clarify and live honestly in the world. “I do not portray being: I portray passing,” he said in his essay on walking, exploring how it is to move in the world rather than presume to be static.

We are always wandering, literally or not, but to wander the world physically is to find clarity. A walk can be the beginning of a new journey. It can help us to clear our heads, better understand how to articulate an argument or relieve our minds and bodies of pain.

A walk can loosen tense muscles and invigorate us. It can help us move our eyes around and take in the world rather than remain fixed on a screen. When we walk, we often look around and observe in a new way. A walk often brings creative ideas and can help us process ideas.

Walking can reset our energy when we feel drained from our daily responsibilities. A lot of clarity and pivotal moments happen during walks, but beyond walking from point A to point B, perhaps wandering is even more powerful.

Simply heading forward, with no additional goal in mind aside from a desire to invite in what is next, can offer one of the most simple but profound ways to change our lives, change the way we think, reconnect with ourselves, and create what we need to create in the world.

AYTL exercise: Take a mindful walk and when you reach a threshold—a door, a bridge, a crossing between two trees, or simply a crossing of a particular street—pause and acknowledge the YOU here now and the YOU on the other side of the street. Taking caution, of course, walk mindfully toward your future.

Writing prompt: Write about a crossroads, and you can use the threshold above as a symbol. Mine your past. Let this one go deep. Use it as a literary device to explore what it means to pass through and arrive on the other side of something. And if you get stuck … try walking.

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Photo by Lili Popper