On the magnificent and its hiding places & week 32 of 52

all the things we tell ourselves to ignore

Imagine you had 20 weeks to live and a flooded kitchen. How would you “show up” to live fully?

On the energy scale, I generally sit on the low side and ride intermittent adrenaline highs till they taper out.

Because I fluctuate between having virtually no energy and feeling the creative charge to write, I often talk myself out of going to things or starting small talk when I could be writing. I need to stay home, I tell myself. I need to spend all my limited energy creating.

"The more you show up, the more the muse shows up."

—Isabel Allende

As I write this, my kitchen is sectioned off with a barrier of thick plastic and duct tape. The isolated space contains three industrial fans, a dehumidifier, and a HEPA filter to counteract the demo of my vinyl and moisture in the subfloor.

Oh, and the muse is here with me.

Over the last few days, as a parade of plumbers and insurance people filtered in and out of my house causing varying reactions from Potato and Ahti, I found myself hard-pressed to live in the moment and create joy. Chris was out of town, and I was tired of hearing fans and banging.

It would’ve been easy to think it was all just bad luck. But in the spirit of this AYTL experiment, augmented by a recent podcast interview I hosted with Stoic philosopher William B. Irvine (for the day job), I reframed my thought process to clarify my focus on the ephemeral even more.

As Irvine suggests, acknowledging that all experiences will move and change and, ultimately, cease to exist, can be freeing. This means treating every encounter (as I can remember to do so) as though it were the last time.

Of course, this is the point of the year-to-live experiment, only magnified. And it’s about more than living in the moment. It’s about exploring the moment.

“Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.”

― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

So I did all I could think to do. I began asking questions about the plumbing, the trade, the odd things plumbers see on the job, and what everyone liked to read. I heard some great stories and gained insights, including the way one master plumber characterizes various customers by profession (educators generally follow instructions and leave equipment alone, so I was immediately liked; doctors and engineers tend to move the equipment, thereby slowing the mitigation process; lawyers and salespeople are the best with insurance companies).

I enjoyed hearing these stories, and while the fans whirred in my house and Potato howled at various workers, some of whom began to howl back when they got used to her, I began to find it all rather amusing. I told myself that the whirring was quite similar to white noise, which I claimed to some agreement when teaching a qigong session with it in the backdrop on Insight Timer.

In An Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron suggested taking ourselves on artist dates for a reason—she wanted to break us from our routines.

A plumbing issue can offer just as much of the unexpected as a trip to a new cafe or a local play—if only we had the right mindset. Exploring the world with a curious eye, no matter the view is to find the spectacular: the stories that live everywhere around us.

As artists, we don’t have to do anything crazy. Sometimes we can move the tiniest rock and find some form of ignorance waiting to be addressed. For instance, how much do we take for granted when we turn on the faucet?

So if you have 20 weeks to live and a parade of people in a small home, why not get to know some of them? Everyone has a story, after all. Most have quite a few, but not many people ask.

So this week, I suppose my lesson was to inquire about something that could otherwise be seen as a problem. After all, there is alchemy in the exploration of the everyday.

Writing prompt: Write about missed connections or the story that goes unshared due to inconvenience.

AYTL prompt: Do the thing you’d otherwise talk yourself out of. Show up with curiosity this week, and see what happens. If you don’t have any invitations or unlikely events, make one for yourself. Show up in places and spaces you’ve rarely been.