Groundwork

I have been working on a studio/workshop space for a few years now.

For me, it started with the ground, the earth, the dirt under my boots. I am not a dreamer! I longingly admire all the dreamers I have known. I wish I could be a dreamer too, but it isn’t my comfort zone…so I work at it bit by bit.

I set aside my overactive sense of inhibition. I say, “No might not be the answer to everything…maybe this is okay.” I ease my way through the narrow spaces between fear and doubt. I promise and comfort my inner critic, cooing to her that I won’t embarrass her this time. I will be careful–meaning I will be filled with caring and focused.

I am allowed a space. “I’m being thoughtful,” I tell myself. The building is there on our land. The building hasn’t been used in twenty years, longer really, so it’s okay to claim it. So I do. I claim its rotting stores of wet lumber, gardening trash, and broken furniture. I claim its spiderwebs and the spiders who make them and all the dead insects in the webs and scattered on the dirt floor. I claim the water damage from the leaky skylight, the posts that were never set in concrete, the spaces where the trees and sunlight are visible through the walls, the dust, the absence of doors, and the lack of electricity. I claim all of the purpose it once had, now long past. I claim it’s oldness and see it all as new to my own eyes.

Here in this woods, in this dirt-floored, unused, ignored building, without electricity, without water, without doors, without an absolute certainty to fool me, I am filled with hope and excitement for all the things that can only happen when I look deeply at what is right here, right now. I’m not talking of possibility. Not yet. I mean just some gratefulness and amazement at this building standing here on our land. It’s like a miracle, because I don’t have money to build something like this. If I did I would never let it be so grand a space! No, this is inspiring, just as it is. And then possibilities come to mind. If I put my time and my hands together this space can offer more than my careful reined in dreams.

And maybe, just maybe, if I can make this building useful again, then I can see my own healing is happening too.

Invisible Shackles

Growth means going through states of disruption, discomfort, confusion, and trial. When we’re in it, often we feel lost or angry about the loss of equilibrium. My sixth grade son snaps at me, not just because he’s starting to have hormones released in his body, although that’s also a reason, but because he’s doing a lot of things that are new and challenging. There’s more demanded of him at school, more expected of him at home, but the same number of hours in the day. It can be stressful. Growth is rarely without some pain and heightened emotions. Some say the bigger the growth the more widely the pendulum of discord swings. I imagine a Buster Keaton- or Chaplin-esque scene with an enormous clock and a man hanging onto its ticking hands with a two hundred foot drop below. When we are mere voyeurs watching from our couches it is quite amusing, but the experience of living through our times of growth is terrifying, tiring, and filled with uncertainty.

In this novel experience it is easy to lose focus, to think we’re seeing clearly from the ground while having none of the detachment needed to see the whole picture. The metaphor of the lost explorer in a foreign land comes to mind. Lately I’ve been considering that there are more solutions to this problem than I thought. I mean, I tend to imagine that I need a detailed map and great research in order to make the journey, but it isn’t true. That’s one of the ways, but there’s also journeys where you start with an x, a rumored treasure, a simple destination. As you travel, you have a choice to draft the map of your own encounters or to skip that and just focus on finding the x. One way is not better than the other. Some of our journeys are following the map, some are drafting the map, and some are mapless/recordless. Some great journeys are because of getting lost. Other times we were never meant to return. Sometimes we’re filling in a little more information for the next explorer’s map, and other times we’re digging up treasure or finding an unexpected destination.

The perfectionist streak in me says, What if I don’t get it right? What if I am just wasting my time? I could die this afternoon and What have I contributed? This voice may help make things tidy, precise, well-crafted…but it’s deadly to free expression and creativity. And the worm that is doubt is in all of us. Some people are just dealing with it and not letting it stop them from making the journey anyway.

The truth is we don’t know which kind of explorer we are, and we’re fools if we spend our journeys trying to figure out which journey we’re on or which explorer we are—to be blunt, we waste a lot of time trying to understand when we should be trying to experience. I remember a Buddhist story about being shot by a poison-tipped arrow. When we find ourselves with that arrow sticking out of us, does it matter if we can name the exact muscle its embedded in? Or describe the details of the shape and substances the arrow is made of? Or even to question whether the person who removes it is a qualified doctor or a compassionate orangutan who stopped to help? Is it important whether she washed her hands first or believes in the same gods as I do? NO! All that matters is getting the arrow and hopefully the poison out of us as soon as possible; giving ourselves the chance to survive. There’s no “Do you deserve to be saved?” questionnaire where you have to score above 90% to live.

We don’t know why we’re here or whether we’re worthy or what we’ll do or where we will go. All we know for sure is that if we leave the arrow in, it’s pretty certain that we are going to die from the wound or the poison…and it won’t make a bit of difference what the cause is, because we won’t be around to discuss or understand it.

It’s these contemplations that show me how much time I throw away on the false security of knowledge. These are the chasms I can never fill with answers to why or with judgments or examinations. It is enough to do, to seek, to play, and to try to be free. The rest is just wasted time, egotism, the paths of inactivity and indecision, and the blindness of fear. We all die, but so many of us never truly live. Take out the arrow. Cut off your arm if it saves you to live another day, but don’t get caught up in getting it right or in understanding the reasons for everything. We really don’t have to understand to take the steps we need to grow.

Copyright © Sara Shumaker/Notkeepingscore All Rights Reserved 2021.

Play

What is play?

I ask myself this question frequently. I understand work. Labor, drive, what must be accomplished…but I know these are not necessarily play, since play has more to do with the How I do it, than the What I do. I have started to realize the Why of things is often a fine way to extinguish the possibility of Play. It’s deadly, in the same way that Is It Good/Right/Perfect/Enough is!!

Play is like chi or tao. It is in, around, through all things…or, more accurately, it can be…but it takes getting out of my own way. It removes knowing! It removes right! It removes a plan and definitely removes the illusion of control. If you try controlling play, play stops!

In our hectic world, where we assess to death the accomplishments and successes of the day, we kill the spirit of the freedom that play gives.

This is not to say play isn’t productive, because it is, often wildly productive. But the process of making, solving, doing, and being are radically different than what I feel in the order and control of working. Possibilities abound in play; whereas in work these would go by the label of “problems” that have to be dealt with, maybe even, answered. Play doesn’t hinge on outcomes or adversities to overcome. Play is the real deal best practice; an action of freedom, risk that doesn’t feel risky, and a simple embracing of chaos, liberation, and joy. As someone who rarely feels she deserves joy, the most amazing and difficult things I can do are to let go of thinking and knowing by just letting myself PLAY.

Copyright © 2021 Sara Shumaker/ Notkeepingscore. All Rights Reserved.

Dry Land

Remember the poem “Not Waving But Drowning” by Stevie Smith? That image feels so accurate to my mental state, as the coronavirus continues to thrive and adapt new strains. I imagine many of us feel like we’re in deep water not waving but drowning.

So, with that rather morose image in mind, welcome to Tuesday. Today. Right now is a pretty good moment. Warm light on the wooden floors surrounds me. The black-capped chickadees are gnoshing at the thistle feeder. For the first time in over a year and half my child is back in school (with masks mandatory for everyone), and I am alone in my house able to decide what I want to do. Could there be any greater luxury than the space I am in at this moment?

Though I am filled with fears and trepidation for the state of the world, environmental degradation and epidemics in mind, I am also choosing to enjoy the day. I drink my coffee slowly. I recognize my part in creating calm or panic in this time. I realize I am not in the metaphor of water, not drowning, not unless I agree to that story. I am here with many choices I get to make. I hope I make one’s of care for others, of challenge to the status quo, of rootedness and expansiveness both.

The story I say is the reality I live in. It’s time to write a story I that challenges me to get busy living.

Copyright © 2021 Notkeepingscore / Sara Shumaker, All Rights Reserved.

Action

I have been absent and hard on myself awhile now. I have no guilt over blogging lapses, but like too many people of late, I am guilty about where my life is right now. I have the burning question of what I should do with my life…and the shame of feeling like I am a coward who is throwing away her time and talents.

I read an interesting article on how deadly it is to ask questions like Who am I or What am I supposed to do in my life? These flood the body with cortisol, and often reinforce anxiety-based responses. It means that I sit out the real engagement with life, fear wins, I am frozen, and I spend my time overthinking.

There’s a cure. First, realize the answer to those questions is not an intellectual one, not a plan, not a dream…it is also not a reality. If figuring out life is the goal, then trying to answer those questions usually leads to inactivity, guilt, and immobility. Stop asking yourself for the outcome, the big definition in your life! The only way to get anywhere is to take action. You don’t seek a destination. You seek the actions you can take Right Now. Action leads to opportunities, learning, and invention of self. It isn’t a mind game. To become you have to be doing. My overthinking is not my occupation, but it would be if I let it.

Additionally, there’s infinite options of what to do. I’m learning to not think about it much. If something calls to me, I try to do that. If I get stuck, I try to move on to whatever I can do, even if it’s completely unrelated to the initial project. I can pick up that project after a recharge of doing something else. It won’t fall out of existence, and I am not failing as long as I am being active.

I’m still terrified, but maybe it is time to not talk about that so much, to just move on. I may even fake that I feel confident when I really don’t.

I want to be so much more courageous and, strangely enough, I feel certain that is my path. I think my courage is my real gift. As a mindfulness teacher once suggested it’s time to embrace that it’s going to be messy. I am going to make a big mess. I hope you will do more and make your messes too. Let’s bring joy and action back into the equation.

All rights reserved copyright © 2021 Notkeepingscore/Sara Shumaker

When in Doubt, Keep Doodling

Copyright © 2021 Sara Shumaker/Notkeepingscore All Rights Reserved.

Hope

Hope has red stalks too spindly now to eat, a miniature version of what two years from now may bring. Hope has poisonous leaves, wears its crown below the ground, and gives me memories of every farmhouse in NE Iowa where I grew up. I’m not sure my hope is going to survive the Arkansas sun, the humidity, and her unpredictable master. But hope still says it is time to try again, you aren’t who you were last time, you have more to give now, you’re better at caring…because hope believes in my growth. That’s what gives me the space to bear the suffering, the doubt, the worry, and the blame. If she makes it, I made it too. If she doesn’t, I’ll bury another crown and begin again. I am, at the least, good at persistence.

“Hope”

Copyright © 2021 Sara Shumaker/Notkeepingscore All Rights Reserved.

I Am the Gatekeeper

Yesterday one of my best friend’s and his spouse met my family at another friend’s woods, and we all we walked together for hours. We tramped around puddles in the floodplain areas of the Cadron River and near its banks. We had fairly private conversations since the leaf litter made it hard to hear anyone else while speaking to your neighbor.

I was having a sad day. My face is red and scabby with some recent cystic acne and my scraping at it, so I tried to cover it up with makeup, a hat, and (mostly for my own sake) red lipstick. Color has always helped me feel better, so I was willing to give it a go. I spent most of the walk trying to stay on the periphery and avoiding conversation.

On the drive over to our meeting place I lost my left contact. I found it as we pulled in the drive but it was hard and shrunken. Wetting it down revealed it had distorted badly, so I couldn’t put it back in. I would spend the next 2 and a half hours with only my right contact in. I don’t recommend it.

As we returned to our cars and prepared to depart, my friend’s wife said aloud to me, “maybe you’d like my suspenders.”

I was wearing suspenders so it wasn’t as strange as it might seem. We struck up a conversation, and she explained that she had a pair of suspenders she’d worn as part of a Halloween costume a few years ago. (She was costumed as a mime.) I said, I would take them, if she was sure she wanted to let them go, not realizing this would spark a debate.

Her husband chimed in that maybe she should keep them. She said that she would, but they didn’t look good on her because she was so “endowed”…meaning, I assume, her breasts were too big for suspenders. I was sorting this out, a little bit wondering if she was saying I was flat chested, when her husband chimed in that she could wear them fastened to the sides instead of straight. This was in fact how I was wearing my suspenders, I noted. But she protested loudly that wearing suspenders buckled to the side instead of straight down only brought more attention to her endowment. She said it was trashy or, at the least, immodest! I thought of my bright red lipstick, my suspenders buckled to the sides for comfort (and attention seeking, I supposed she’d say), and the offer to give me her costume suspenders. I wondered, should I be offended? Flat chested and lacking modesty, attention seeking and improper, is that how she saw me? Meanwhile her husband was agreeing with her about the calling attention to her chest statements, seemingly oblivious to the rudeness of the implications she was making about me. I understood—marriage first, I suppose…but it was rather awkward.

Later I thought, what would a good comeback have been? My first thoughts were to snap at her, but she is my friend so I kept thinking it over. Finally I decided I should have said, You know, you can wear whatever you want. You’re only trashy or immodest if YOU think you are.

I guess, I just wanted to say, I am not anything you say I am (though I really think she only was thinking about herself or her insecurities), because I own my mind and what I agree to put in it. I like color. I like suspenders to the sides. I like my friends, and I especially like that I didn’t snap at her when she was being kinda rude.

My husband said he heard it all and thought it quite awkward too, but he imagined she might realize on her drive home how it might have sounded. He imagined she’d feel embarrassed about it all, speaking without a filter. I told him, we’ll never know, but I am not going to bring it up.

Copyright ©2021 Sara Shumaker/Notkeepingscore. All Rights Reserved.

Two Quiets

In me there are two kinds of quiet.

The silence of going deep,

Sitting and seeing the world with beautiful connectivity,

The boundariless space of all things merging and sharing the finite world,

Which makes everything feel full of emotion and underlying joy,

Eternal renewal, effortless union,

Some call it peace. I don’t know its name.

The second quiet is sadness. Equally deep,

Arguably bottomless, but absolutely isolated, weighty, and

Shame, Hurt, and Lies

Are my identity in second space.

I would not shrug off my quiet, but am not yet certain how to heal it either.

Both kinds bewilder and enthrall me.

My two quiets, which are not me.

Copyright © Sara Shumaker/Notkeepingscore 2021 All Rights Reserved

Overwintering

My green-housed geraniums have bloomed all winter.

Almost a year of quarantine now. Last year at this time I had a plan. I had begun to reach out—joining organizations, attending events, scheduling enrichment activities for myself (and special events to take my son to), and cataloging my attempts to publish my artwork and my writing. I had set goals, and I was working on making things happen. I was tracking my concrete progress. I was asserting myself.

Instead of a year of professional growth, this became my year of Covid-19, homeschooling my child, protecting my older high-risk spouse, family deaths, maintaining physical fitness at home, making masks, and trying to lift my little trio out of our doldrums and beyond our petty irritations.

My household is filled with remarkable people. We’re smart, loving, creative, and sensitive. We get along. I recognize how fabulous this is and hope we’ll always be grateful for each other. I also hope we won’t choose to spend this much time together in the future. Space, private lives, first attempts and failures without an audience, the silence of really being okay enjoying being alone…these are things I crave. I imagine better organized families might have it all worked out, but then again maybe not. And I really like my family, so I’m not interested in criticizing us.

Overall, I have decided that this year has been a challenge, but it’s also been a long exercise in gratitude. A half a million people have died in the USA this year. 500,000 plus people are gone. Their relatives, in most cases, did not get to be with them when they died. Families and friends were separated from each other in ways we’ve rarely experienced, especially on such an epic scale. I read yesterday that an eleven-year old girl returned home from school last week and found both her parents had died of COVID-19 complications, while she was away at school that day. They were both in their early forties. They had gotten sick and were at home trying to wait it out. Instead they both became suddenly much worse, and they orphaned their middle school aged daughter. They’re gone, like too many others. My little discouragements, frustrations, loneliness, and moments of being overwhelmed are so small when I see all I have, especially my family safe and here with me. So, as I cry in the bathroom because so many have lost so much—mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, relations, and normalcy—the least I can do is keep wearing my mask, distancing, get vaccinated (my husband has finally gotten his first shot!), help offer comfort wherever I can, and practice gratitude every day especially when I don’t feel like it.

Copyright© 2021 Sara Shumaker/Notkeepingscore, All Rights Reserved.

Bedtime Again

No matter what the day deals out, the end of the day is reading, singing and playing guitar for my son. That’s a good day.