life

40.

I have been waiting for this one.

I thought, “My life will begin at 40.”

I thought, “I will have it figured out by 40.”

I thought, “I will not dread 40.”

All and none of that is true.

As for 40 as beginning, it’s the arbitrary starting line we humans love. January 1st. Birthdays. Anniversaries. First days of sobriety. Conversions and baptisms and strange rituals that indicate to us that somehow everything before was a wash, and everything ahead will matter. It’s, of course, a discourtesy to ourselves and the diligence we spent of getting from one day to the next; nevermind a discourtesy to the others who helped us along the way. We cannot be where we are if we were not where we’d been.

And also.

I am sitting in a bed on a second floor of a glass house north of Quebec City, overlooking mountains and miles of dark pines sprouting from land caked with snow. I have a stack of books next to me, am between cups of coffee, and hear my Someone below clattering forks and scraping jars to bring me a breakfast of local croissants and accouterments so that I may write uninterrupted, after which he will also write. This is the culmination of my childhood dreams. In the fray of this moment, it may not appear that way– it’s endless emailing and hustling and moving things from one room to another, or one state to another, in and out and repeating. As a kid, I didn’t know about the latter– about the drivel of daily life; I knew only of the former– the dream that I would be a writer in a beautiful mountainous place thinking my thoughts and eating delicacies from foreign places. Even if that foreign place is only French Canada. I acknowledge that this is not my everyday, and that I did not just “land” here. It is, however, a beginning of a different sort. From this idealistic perch, I am able to see the culmination, the mountain in its various stages from the top and the bottom. It is a fabric loosely gathered of my life so far, and I am able to wrap these four decades around me in the semblance of a tunic, this birthday the sacred wreath for my head. It is a victory in many ways. And like most victors, the winning is merely the beginning of a new cycle of trying for the next crown. And so, I begin again.

The “have it figured out” is another matter. My frame of reference for this particular novelty was ambitiously set by books, obviously. First, by the characters in them, finding their true path or true love or true self by the end. As I grew and my reading became more dystopic, the standard was set by the writers themselves– I should have written a novel by now. Or put out my life’s greatest work. Or have some commercially lauded emblem with a working team behind me and a manager to coordinate my many speaking engagements or public appearances. That’s to say, “figuring it out” to me as a kid meant having utmost control of my own narrative wherein my career was a self run machine and my life latched into a a grid– even a self sketched one– and I would know what a 401K was.

Rather, my life feels floaty most of the time. I do not know what a 401K is. My “team” is my Someone and occasionally my dog, and my manager is myself. And I still use a paper calendar to the exasperation of most of my colleagues and friends.

There is no grid, and frankly no hooks in my life that would allow me to attach to one.

In the case of figuring it out, though, the first version– the one from books– was most accurate. At 40, I have found a true path. I have figured out how to make art for a living– even if that living keeps me tied to the road– while also allotting myself daily walks in the woods, time to write and cook, and a schedule that does not confine me (aside from my own over scheduling). Money is feast or famine, but friends are always abundant, and any good book ends with a gathering of friends rather than a pile of money. I have found my true love, Someone who creates alongside and hashes out the negotiations between my paper calendar and his digital one. And I have found my true self. Or rather, I didn’t ever lose her. I am resistant to call her “the child within,” because the child is not a child, she is just me. When I was a kid, I didn’t think of my whims and penchant for creating as “the child within.” So when I am doing those things, it is not a return to some place I can never go back to, but the ongoing, open studio session I have always been in. It is more accurate to say that the “grown up” is the disconnected oddity. I am more prone to recognizing that the thing I am doing– for instance writing in a glass house for my 40th birthday in Quebec– is a “very grown up thing” to do. My ability to see that lets me know that my true self is still who I know best, and the accomplishments and milestones are merely the projections of irrelevant societal standards. That much, I have certainly figured out. And that is more than sufficient.

And so finally, the dread. What I have been telling everyone I spoke to is, “I can’t wait til my forties.” And this, as seen above, is mostly true. But I knew I would not be sure of it until the day arrived– the day of my 40th birthday.

This morning the moon set just outside the windows, glowing like the morning sun behind silhouettes of trees. It was 5AM, and I chose to stay awake, listening to the sounds of a strange house, in the company of a familiar light from a celestial body, feeling the steady breathing of my Someone beside me. My whole life, for as long as I have been aware, I have found myself in these quiet, dark spaces, often in the middle of the night, vastly awake and unable to keep my mind from running. Accompanying these times is also an anxious dread– for my safety, for my loved ones’ safety, for death. I run the scales of what-if’s and worst case scenarios until I am depleted, and the fear itself fatigues me into sleep again.

This morning, there was peace. I tapped the wound to be sure, dissembling a few classic fear standards– car accidents, health– but I could not summon any monsters. I felt at home here, in my body, in my own life. Any imaginings could not change it. I may not yet have lived through the worst that I could create, but I also cannot live while creating the worst I could imagine. Maybe my 40s are, in fact, a truce.

There is also this: if I am to live to the age of any one of my four grandparents, I am already well over halfway to death. Seeing the glow of the moon and the slow shadows of the mountains pool in my view, this thought did bring a bit of dread. I tapped my Someone. He stirred and pushed himself up to one elbow. He didn’t ask me why I had woken him– he knows better by now. He simply looked out the window.

“Wow,” he said.

“What is this life?” I asked.

“What is this life,” he repeated, then wrapped himself around me with his back to the moon and his face toward me. If I have received all of this in only 40 years, I am no longer afraid to die. I may dread it as anyone dreads the end of a very good dream, of a vacation, of a perfect slice of cake. But I am not afraid. It has always served me well to keep going. I dread death, but certainly not my 40s. How could I dread it? I am just beginning to figure it out.

And On Day 9, She Rested.

Day 2

I woke up here, on this island. I have no history, no identity, just a sense of belonging here only and always, and four incisions bruising on my abdomen. I hear everyone telling me to take it easy, to rest, to not worry. But I don’t worry. There’s no where to go here. The moon was full last night, and made the snowscape bright and reflective like glass. I awoke every three hours to alarms, telling me to take another pain pill. Tylenol, then ibuprofen, then Tylenol. They are the waves on the shoreline, and I am listening to them come in before sleep. At the 3AM, I willed myself to stay awake longer. The moonlight was too bright to close my eyes on, and it was too strange to see the night so bright that real, firm shadows formed on the ground. I spend the following day watching the same shadows from the sun. It was 1 degree in the morning, so cold that the hinges on the inside of the front door were frosted. My mother called. I don’t know how she found me here, or how I knew she was my mother. She said she made gingersnaps, and yesterday pizzelles. “It’s not Christmas til the pizzelles are made,” she said, and I wondered what was Christmas and neither judged nor resonated, only accepted that somewhere off this island, there was Christmas, but it didn’t effect me. Here was only wind that smacked snow to the side of every tree, slathered like white mud, making every tree a birch. I can’t imagine a prettier island, to exist in the center of a wood of cold birches. The winter day is closing its dense, blue eyelid. Here comes sleep, then alarm, sleep, alarm, and I hope for the moon to break up the night.

I love it here. But I get the nagging sense that I will have to leave someday, and it grieves me.

Day 3

There are prints that lead beneath the house in the snow– they look too large to be a squirrel but it’s too hopeful that they belong to a rabbit. I’m pleased to know that there is other life on the island, even if I am still too slow to catch it. I watch icicles like television, the prisms casting color before they frost over like teeth, dripping with hungry thoughts of spring.

Spring is a new idea on the island. I’m grateful it does not come here. I can’t imagine the chaos of vines and leaves whipping themselves around, mussing up the simplicity of a white blanket and footprints and the skeletal tan beech leaves I could count.

Day 4

It’s my fourth day on this island and the strangeness has worn off to normalcy. In fact, it is only strange that I ever believed in a world beyond the snowy sea. Complicated schedules and maps and to do lists have distilled down to baseless things. The only reigning importance is this: nourishment, bowel movements, deep breathing, sleep, and an occasional exploration of the perimeter. I am bodily reduced to these touchstones as before my mind was strengthened to perform complexities which on this island, I cannot fathom. Text messages come in like foreign postcards in the claws of gulls, indecipherable to this small world I inhabit. One ship has perched on shore, but brought no new news, only supplies to further my wait here. I will not starve. I will wait til the waters dry up and the boundaries soften and what happened here will little matter except that I knew only this for a time, and this was my home, and I was content to survive without curiosity and with contentment. The bright white out my window will sear like a memory blanket behind my eyes as I fall asleep and wish for the deep rest I have found here alone.

Day 5

And now time has snapped back into place. The island was an illusion. These things exist, in no particular order of importance and with equal certainty–

Monday
my body
my neighbor’s house
Europe
schools
seasons
music

Also, I have become aware of
schedules.
lists.
tasks.
Monday (again).

The realization is as shocking as it is normal, and I already mourn for day 1, 2, 3, 4 of a floating poet of no consequence who nearly lived a life into oblivion.

The biggest, most prominent awarenesses may be:
– a ticking clock

which leads to:
– irritations
– reality
– change
-clarity
-mournfulness
-regret
-longing

Oh, and look at that. Dashes. I have structured my lists, conditioned from the Before Time. I am not gently unraveling but forcibly conforming. Heart rate, higher. Motivation, momentous. Productivity, impossibly expected.

The island was not an illusion. And I was trying to fight to leave it too soon. My body not ready, my mind pushing forward. All of this time can’t be wasted. I began to panic. I pushed harder, walked longer, wore myself to pain, balled up my will and tried again. I exhausted myself on Day 6, walking outside in -12 degrees for over a mile, collapsing the rest of the day. That night, I told my Someone I had to write a book. I scanned the internet (it existed suddenly on the island), and realized much was expected of me. I should rest so that I could write a song. I should rest so I could write a book. I should rest so I could do more more more more more more more more more more more. I should rest, because rest means I can be better, bigger. There will be something to come of this rest. And if there isn’t, well, perhaps I did not take my rest seriously enough. I began making ridiculous goals. If I couldn’t sit upright to be productive in making books– hard as I’d tried– I would instead read books. An impossible number. I would finish at least one a day. I would consume books to prove that I am filling my well for future creativity. People would look at my online ledger and wonder how– HOW?– could anyone read this many books in such a short amount of time? Then, I made possible but fraught goals. I would do yoga every day. I would practice piano every day til my abdomen hurt. I would complete one mundane task a day. Suddenly my days of rest were so regimented, so riddled with expectation, I wished for the days before I rested so I could rest again.

And that’s when the spiraling began. Because I couldn’t– I physically couldn’t, not even to account for my mental capacity– hold up the weight of these expectations. I’m not even allowed to lift 5 pounds, let alone the hundreds of pounds of self imposed standards. I fell flat. It snowed that day, usually one of my favorite days. But as it piled up outside, I felt the weight pressing down on me. I became bitter, remembering when a snow day meant rest, and now a snow day means fighting the rest. I gave up, at last, and put myself to bed. A two hour nap. When I woke up, I made hot chocolate– with help lifting the maple syrup. I began a puzzle. I justified it as a snow day, but I worried that it would be the same tomorrow, the next day. And I still hadn’t written that novel that was supposed to come from all of this rest. I wished for exhaustion and got it, sleep without rest.

The next day was the same. I now lived on the shoreline of the island, unsure how to leave, unsure how to rest. I would leave. I would leave tomorrow.

I woke up angry, annoyed. I shoved myself into the small boat and pushed myself from the island I loved. Not because I wanted to leave, but because I felt like I had to. I didn’t deserve this place. I’d already overstayed. It was Day 8, for godssake. I couldn’t check out forever. Once out at sea, the waves grew more harsh. My body couldn’t handle it. My thoughts became the thrashing waves, a ship of haze– unrelenting, nonsensical, and from every direction. I became disoriented. I became a ball of defiant energy, a little work force of resistance, of fear, of small brutal efforts. And then I became a mouse at the bottom of a boat, running back and forth.

And then, another boat appeared. Lindsey. She tethered her boat to mine, lobbing over a bag of roasted eggplant tomato soup and fresh squeezed orange juice and a small gift wrapped prettily in orange paper. Then she sat with me in the middle of the sea while I tried to pretend my tears were just the water sloshing around. She’d been here before, in this exact part of the sea. It was a little and a long way to go, she said. She had a map, and showed it to me. I couldn’t make sense of it, but I love to see maps, and it made me feel calm. She stayed very still while I sometimes raged and punched at the water. When she left, I was still drifting, but toward somewhere. I let myself be pushed around as I did the gentlest yoga in the middle of my boat. I let myself think–

Who am I if I am not helping? Contributing? Performing?

I let myself think–

What happens to me when I am reduced to I AM, I AM, I AM.

I let myself think–

People are allowed to be not useful, but I am not allowed to be not useful.

I let my ideologies be pushed around. I thought how I believed somewhere that I would heal better than anyone else. I thought how I was in competition, to be better at getting better faster than anyone else. I thought of the merit of my own body, and then the merit of having a body unable to serve. I remembered a foreign postcard text my friend Dani sent me on Day 2, when she said, “I hate when reality screws up my positive thinking plans. And all that stuff that happens to other people certainly won’t happen to ME. Yep, reality bites.”

And then I thought, I am not special to be here in this floating sea alone and capable. But I am special to be in this floating sea where other people have been floating before and know the place that I am floating.

I thought– what is the lesson?

I thought– this is the lesson.

I thought– because there is no lesson. At last.

Day 9

This morning, I awoke in the world I left before surgery. I thought, “I would like to go to a bookstore soon.” And it seemed strange that I would want to go, but also that I remembered what a bookstore is. How decadently normal. My Someone has set up two bird feeders on a shepherd’s hook in front of my bedroom window, and when he delivered coffee to me in bed, he opened the curtains and I was shocked and amazed to see it. All day I’ve stayed in this room, even though I don’t need to stay in this one space. I’m well enough that I could leave. But I am choosing to stay because so far I have seen chickadee, titmouse, nuthatch, bluejay, and a hairy woodpecker, and I can’t stand to miss a minute. I read a poem this morning that said True creation is always purposeless, without ulterior motive.* It reminded me of an island I used to live on. I read more of the poem and, for the first time in months, I felt the poem touch my heart. True rest is also always purposeless. They have always been attached, twinned, but necessarily separated. Rest and creation cannot see one another, or the spell is broken, and they both disappear. I do not rest to create, or I do not create. I do not create so I may rest, or I will never rest. Today I remember my island, and I rest.

And here, by accident, create.

*”Fugue,” by Hayan Charara from These Trees, Those Leave, This Flower, That Fruit