Tipping Over Into Something New
On the agony and ecstasy of liminal spaces {Notes From the Dissertation Desk #3}
Hello,
A question for you:
What ground do you stand on when everything is changing?
I’ve been thinking about this question as I find my footing on the fickle forest paths of early spring, as they cycle between ice, mud, hints of green, and then back to slush. I am also thinking about this question as I find my footing in the focus required to sustain my dissertation writing, cycling between freeze, distraction, hints of flow, and then back to slush. I’ll have a good day and hope that I have finally arrived in the season of only-good-days. I’ll have a bad day and wonder if all is lost.
I am so hungry for solid ground.
Today I present you with a diptych: two notes from the dissertation desk about finding groundedness in the liminality of transition. In the first note, a study in green of the ecstasy of emergence. In the other, the icy gray agony of falling backward.
And here is what I am learning through my body, as I walk through the shifting body of the forest: arrival is not the ground. The ground is the ground, icy or muddy or solid, and my feet will always fight to find their footing no matter what they meet. I am learning to trust that fight in me, and that trust is my practice of grounding. Like any other living being in this forest, I am constantly responding to the shifts in my environment to protect and nurture the most vital parts of me.
That is solid ground.
I’ll ask you again: what ground do you stand on in the middle of change? I hope these two notes from the dissertation desk will encourage you to explore your own solidity in seasons of fluidity. What do you know to be true, in an unshakeable way? When you touch your cheek, your belly, your calf, are they solid in their softness? What is holding the weight of your body as you read these words?
What is early spring but the embodiment of two things being true at the same time? Yes, the world is still frozen; yes, the world is beginning to thaw.
Yes, we may be struggling; yes, we are so very capable.
Wishing you solidity in the fluidity,
P.S. If you are enjoying these notes, the biggest way to support me is by sharing my writing with others. Thanks!
March 10
I’ll never be able to get it done in time, I repeated over and over to myself as I scrunched through the muddy forest, shame and adrenaline mixing through my body like a cocktail shaker. I’ll never be able to get it done in time, I’ll never be able…
!BAM!
I gasped as I looked up from my boots and saw GREEN. Not just moss on fallen trees, but Green that meant new growth, Green that meant we were tipping so close into spring that there was no going back.
An army of fuzzy ferns was unfurling over the crinkly carnage of autumn. I was blinded, and I couldn’t be sure if it was the low afternoon sun or this new Green. I lifted my hand to my eyes, but still I looked and looked and looked, soaking it all in, getting closer to make sure it was true.
I reached out to touch the Green.
It was true.
The infinite brown of late winter was, it appeared, finite.
And the part of me who believes I am not capable, it turns out she is finite, too. She is welcome to keep her home here—there is room—but she was shaped by other seasons. This, here, now, is the season of my
c a p a c i t y.
As I looked at this impossible Green, I felt in my body that my fear is just a part, not the whole. I am beginning to see hints of other parts emerging. I have no idea what they’re growing into, but they take my breath away with their newness.
I kept walking up that muddy hill in the woods, new words on my lips. What if, what if, what if…
What if?
March 13
Shit, I exhaled as I entered the woods and saw that the paths were icy again. On March 13. They had melted into mud, but now twirled back to winter as if the thaw had never happened.
Shit, merde, shit, I recited as walked back to the car for my ice cleats.
Yes, I know that this there-and-back-again, this will-they-won’t-they, of early spring is normal. I know that the maple men and women (as my preschooler calls the makers of maple syrup) are probably rejoicing over these sap-friendly conditions.
But when my body gets a taste of warmth and then goes back into a chill, I don’t care about spring’s nearness. I just don’t care.
Things are slow again at the dissertation desk. I felt movement, but now I’m back to being frozen over. I know that this ice isn’t very solid, it wouldn’t hold my weight on the surface of a lake, but still. I don’t care about the proximity of flow. I just want some warmth.
Did I keep walking in the forest even with the ice? Will I sit down at the dissertation desk again tomorrow morning? Of course, of course, of course. In the season of thaw, bad days are delicate, normal, sap-friendly. To borrow from
As I walked out of the forest, I turned back to the trees. My usual practice when leaving is to communicate some form of gratitude: a merci, a bow, a wow that rides a deep exhale. But today, I looked up at the cloudy sky, pock-marked with blue. My body held the sensations of both the morning’s freeze at the dissertation desk and the experience of showing up for a vigorous walk in the woods.
Both the freeze and the thaw were true.
I looked at those trees inviting me from despair into hope, and my body’s response was to release an enormous UGHHHHH. The same sound I used to aim at my mother as a moody teenager, usually followed with an annoyed Mawwwmmm.
I know I know I know, everything will be fine, but this totally sucks.
Surprised and tickled, I let loose a big HAA!
UGH! and HAA!
the liturgy of the thaw,
the most honest prayers
I could possibly exhale.
