Blank Space

I’m shedding things. Stepping out of my shoes, leaving my pants on the floor in a heap, letting my shirt fall like a suddenly untied silk cape. A while ago I shed money. I picked apart the tight knot that connected money to my ego and just let money go. Today, it was meetings.

The vast expanse of this fine Monday was blank – no obligations, no meetings, no opportunities to dress up, be a presence. The rigor and posture of the past, so much of it comprised of meetings and presentations, showings if you will, have abated. I realized this weeding my side garden. I am present in this time and place, I thought, pulling a three foot tall thorny weed. I am present thinking about filling this tall bag with these evil weeds. I am free to think about these weeds as if they are the only thing on earth. And I relaxed into that, the weed pulling, as if it was a hammock stretched out in a shady backyard.

I stopped equating a full calendar with my value on the planet.

This leaves room in my life and my head for what matters most: writing, advocacy, physical service, exercise, reading, and thinking. I don’t have to go somewhere to be a presence. I am a presence.

I think about the new book of essays – 15 of them, only one or two already written but even those needing reworking and plenty of careful stitching and then there are the rest and those haven’t even formed in my head although if I keep pulling the three foot tall thorny weeks I know they will come to me.

It is a luxury – blank space. It feels like the purple velvet of my mother’s handmade wedding dress, gentle and caressing, hanging in dark folds in the back of my closet. I never took time to hold her dress, let the velvet drape on my lap. I was always too busy. I kept the dress hanging in the closet protected by a plastic bag because, somehow, it wasn’t the right time. I was always rushing, life’s urgency worn like war medals, my ego living too far out of my body to take the dress off the hanger and hold it in my hands.

But that isn’t true anymore and I am glad. I’m 70. I earned this blank space. I claim it as my own and hold it in my hands.