Slowing Down, Seeing

View from my window this morning: leaf, branch, grass, through ice. This is the view through my window today.
Ice coats the glass.  Outside an east wind has swept the grass of leaves.  They collect, along with ice and broken branches, along the fence line.
Classes were canceled.
My children, all home.
Appointments rescheduled.
The winter storm that holds us is less ferocious than predicted.
And even though it feels natural, this stillness, this pause at the center of life, it also makes me feel anxious.
We live at the speed of digital life.  It is difficult, slowing down. The Lost Teachings of the North draft deck, with the North card visible. Slowness is the pace of winter.  Harvest complete, the beds turned under, larder full, firewood stacked.  In my childhood, winter meant evenings by candlelight, a pantry of gleaming jars, the matted coat of my horse, thick wool of sheep.  It meant wandering red cheeked through the blowing wind and wet, returning home to warmth.

There are rhythms that live within us.  Rhythms of place, rhythms of ancestry.  What does this time ask of you?  What does this place request?

As the nights lengthen, the dark deepens, the cold and rains set in, what do you look forward to?  What traditions do you seek?  What does your soul long for?
Slowness does not come easily to me.  My nature is air, quick motion, rapid thought, inspiration, conversation, fiery heat, rushing water, careening wind.  But without slowness, I am imbalanced, become dried and emptied, a husk, brittle.  An empty well.

I have to find and feel slowness, stillness in earth.  In stones, In trees.  In the deep roots of plants.  To take it into myself often requires sitting for a long time, observation, becoming what Mary Oliver calls the rich lens of attention.

For it takes practice to remember that slowness is in me.  That the rhythm of the winter, the low hum of rain, the dark, the story, is in my blood as well.  

Art is slow.  Writing is slow.  It takes patience, dedication, each line, each work.  This winter I am completing a long-term art commission, The Lost Teachings of the North.  The cards above are nearly done, just two more to scan and add. The project was begun last year in the midst of my homeschool/child intensity months, so the completion feels like an emergence.  Even in the midst of all that frenzy, I worked bit by bit on something.  

And, in line with the rhythms of the world, my work will be complete in the darkest days, and publication will take place with the return of the light. An artist I love who embodies slow attention to life: Tasha Tudor Slowness is spirited business.  Believing that a process is taking place even without doing.  That the walk in the ice storm you inexplicably lengthen,  the breath you consciously inhale, the half hour spent staring out the window at the crows dancing in the yard, that these matter as much as any human list of productivity.

In fact, I believe, they matter more.  Life wants us to live, to play, to participate.  To be with, we must rest in the moment.  We must move less, to draw our own attention.

By the way, writing this post reminds me of my dear friend, writer and teacher Kyle Lang, who once taught an entire Freshman seminar class based on the book, In Praise of Slowness by Carl Honere (this is a link to Honore's TED talk about the culture of speed).  Kyle, today is for you.

And you, and you, and you, fellow watchers, fellow lenses, lovers of days without measure.  May it unfold, may it be.  In beauty.