Space
Day 1: I wake to the heady pine scent of Christmas—the morning I’ve dreaded (backstory here).
Our trees are falling. Heartwood splinters like gunfire.
Out in the air-conditioned Forestry Bobcat with its whiz-bang red Masticator, the contractor we hired knocks over bug-ridden pines. Each living, still-photosynthesizing tree explodes. Detritus sprays 300 feet.
Goodbye, fairy-tale forest. Farewell, shadowy habitat for owls, deer, small furry critters. Our once-magical backyard seems doomed.
Our contractor follows another man wielding his chainsaw against the larger victims of pine bark beetles.
Their plan seems haphazard, the destruction acute.
I can hardly bear the new emptiness.
Absence hurts.
Perimeters
If you could see my desk, you’d note a distinct resemblance to our yard. Stacked files and papers teeter; wall-to-wall bookshelves box in my desk. You might think I’m a hoarder. Or lazy.
Or you might think I like having all projects visible, each resource at hand.
Much as I love to streamline prose, curate the lines of a poem, a garden, a room, my brain is a thicket of ideas and doubts, worries and goals.
Plus I’ve always enjoyed hard evidence of artistry’s litter, creativity’s stages.
I want to hear God’s direction, moment-by-moment. I also love surfing creativity’s wave, letting time melt away.
Need I mention housekeeping suffers? (All tips and opinions welcome!)
Verticals
Day 2: My view changes again. I see large gaps where pines once towered. When the contractor stops for the day, I see lower trunks cleanly trimmed, ten feet from the ground.
I see semi-pleasing vertical precision.
I see margins. Clearings. Scenic breathability.
It’s no longer the woods I have loved and walked through for twenty-five years . . . but there is a stark appeal to order.
And yet.
Our yard looks unnatural. Lonely. I want to pat the bark of surviving trees, impart hope.
“We are tactile creatures,” author Rob Bell writes, in his new book How to Be Here.
[The] substances and surfaces we surround ourselves with powerfully affect us.
Horizontals
If I prune old files, thin out my library, clear-cut a wider swathe through my office, will my creativity thrive?
Recently, my amazing sister helped me clear a forest of icons from my computer desktop. We created eight shortcuts, which she called “alien folders.” Weird name for an organizational tool. I felt like a stranded Martian trying to memorize each step of the process. In Swahili.
Upside? My computer starts faster now.
Might the same be true for my brain? What would happen if I organized one bookshelf this week? Several files next week?
Bell continues:
…even small changes in your exterior environment
can deeply shape your interior life.
Clean, intentional physical space can dramatically affect
how calm your mind and heart are.
I stare out my office window, decidedly gloomy. It looks more like a park than a small wilderness.
Diagonals
Insight often zig-zags my way in stages. Like lightning, or Uncle Tanner (our elderly lab), insight bursts into a clearing. Often peripherally.
Sight lines
Sight linesDay 3: Our contractor continues to edit the land. He wears a neck brace to offset the bone-jarring violence of his art. And he is an artist. I see that now. He works amid mess, like I do. He holds a finished outcome in mind. His work facilitates healing.
He is creating space. Space where surviving trees, like souls, can thrive.
- more light
- more air
- more water
Space for roots to go deeper. Wider.
He knows the new vista he’s giving me at present is hard for me to accept. He asks how I’m doing, takes time to show me photos of properties he has groomed—tamed estates, each a worthy inheritance. Green. Even lush. Simple. Serene.
I don’t know what I need, sometimes, until it’s forced upon me.
Life Lines
You set me up with a house and yard. And then you made me your heir! —Psalm 16:6 (MSG)
MAKING IT PERSONAL: Do you have a drawer, or shelf, or wallet in need of streamlining?
I would love to hear how an orderly—or cluttered!—work space affects your creativity . . . efficiency . . . serenity . . .
First, I am SO sorry about your trees, Laura! Trees ARE such a glorious part of any landscape. Over time, they become like old friends, don’t they. Plus, you’ve lost habitat for some delightful creatures. Again, I sympathize! As for my workspace, I follow Rob Bell’s thesis: “Clean, intentional physical space can dramatically affect how calm your mind and heart are.” Although the tools and books I need are close at hand, they’re organized. Each item in its place–more or less. My mind becomes jumbled if I try to work in a jumbled work space!
Nancy, thank you for sharing your empathy. It’s comforting. I’m surrounded by my usual piles as I type this, admiring your work aesthetic and hoping to move in that direction. Soon. 🙂
actually “alias” folders dear sis, but I know they felt like aliens to you!! 🙂 lovely words and reflections on our every-changing life…
Oh, how funny! And such a telling typo. Thanks for the loving correction as well as helping organize me more. Love and admire you so much!!
I love how you could see the clearing of your forest in your soul-in your office-as it happened physically. You said, at one point, that maybe you just like to see all your projects-in-progress at the same time. That resonated with me. My projects are all “out there” too. I’m afraid that if they are out of sight, they’ll be out of mind and I’ll be in a tizzy when I run across them sometime. Hmmm. Clearing out. Fresh air. A concept forced on one. I hear you breathing! Thank you, Laurie.
Linda Jo, I hadn’t seen the full significance as clearly until I read your first sentence. Thank you! Revelation occurring not only at the right time but in exactly the right place.
I have the same worry of forgetting what I’m working on (since it’s always multiple projects) if I can’t see hard evidence. 🙂 Though I’m determined to better organize said evidence. Tizzyless office experience sounds ideal!!
This essay struck a chord with me, in the midst of our own forestry “project”, and as an adjunct to a lifelong goal of “getting organized” while being perpetually creative. There’s really nothing I can add, except thank you for a beautifully written piece! I just love immersing myself in your words.
Pacia, I hope things are proceeding smoothly with your beautiful woods. Hearing you refer to the organization of a creative life as “a lifelong goal” gives me hope! Love you!
I have a cluttered workspace for you to see! Upon clutter, upon clutter upon . . .
Having now seen it, I can only add: I felt right at home. Thanks for the tour of your creative space. Keep making wondrous things . . .
Laurie-friend, I’m quite confident you and I have the same learning/thinking processes, needing stuff at hand to see our work, the available resources and such.
I also know this clutter-prone approach can definitely affect my creativity and my thinking.
Bell’s quotes are spot on….and fortuitously aligned with your property’s tree project. God is making a new horizon for you to see from.
And your organizing space question? mine is books–stacks of books, baskets of books. I came home from my SoCal trip and thought, “oh my, I really need to cull these piles. It’s like there are 75 different ‘voices’ calling me and I really long to hear what God has to say to me and through me. That’s my challenge; thanks for asking.
“a new horizon” —what a great way to look at it, Jody. And I do see farther from my office window than I used to. It’s heartening to hear from other creatives about their workspaces. Hope you get some long stretches of reading time once you’ve culled your book stacks alongside increasingly attuned focus on the Voice you love best.
How timely is the reading of your piece so poignant! I have been going through a desperate need to spring clean! And reading about clutter and hoarding in a delightful book called Counting by 7’s. I have a lot of work to do!
Jenneth, hello. That book sounds like one I should read! Standing with you in solidarity for timely streamlining, as God leads, my friend.
I’m glad to see that you are making peace with the yard transformation. Cutting away the dead and allowing for the new life has to be great in the long run. I like your Statement: sometimes I don’t know what I need until it is forced upon me. I identify with that statement. When I had to take a rest from burnout, I didn’t know how badly I needed rest until I had to do it. What felt like death of a job, of a career, was only the beginning of some new talents and creativity.
Gena, thank you for reminding me of your story, and yes, I am a witness to all the creativity then brimmed over from that enforced season of rest. What a gracious God we serve! Reading your comment this morning is like getting a transfusion of hope. Thank you, friend!
i too function well with minimal clutter, however, find it difficult and overwhelming to keep up with it. When I worked my home business I had an Ad Min Asst for 18 years. She was a lifesaver. I do have ADHD and focusing on details like this is hard. Brenda was like my seeing-eye dog!
When i want to really dive into an area that needs decluttering, i have found i need help, like your sister! it just works that way for me. Accepting that is not my strength has released me to get help., Now that I am retired, I miss having her in my life. it’s less complicated now, so most of the time I can manage.
those are my; thoughts tonight.
Carol, your words are so heartening to me. Thank you! Especially this line: “Accepting that is not my strength has released me to get help.” I am still in that reluctant stage of swallowing pride (on a number of fronts) to ask for, and receive gratefully, the expertise of others. A woman is coming today to help with the garden. 🙂
Help with the garden, what a treat and delight for you! At this time of losing the visual beauty of your trees. I hesitate to respond, I feel such sadness at their loss. I remember hearing about the beetle’s infestation and know it’s necessary. And it is good to hear of the compassion of your contractor.
Diane, thanks for your empathy. And yes, isn’t it just like God to send me a kind contractor?! AND a gardener?
Laurie, for me it wasn’t pride and sometimes i wonder if we blame pride when it something deeper that has affected, things that happened to us throughout our life that has made us feel less than adequate. For me, it was years of never quite getting it “right”, according to the linear thinking people in my life and work and educational system. Back in the early 90’s I read a book about being right brained. one of the authors was “extreme ADHD and I began to see myself. I started to see my “failings” were more about how my creative brain worked, rather than a failing. And learning how to work better with who I am. Of course, I am not saying you are ADHD since I do not know you, but i have observed us creative people think differently, process differently and that difference is what makes it possible for us to do the creating. Other people who can focus on details and never have clutter have gifts I don’t. They have sometimes asked ME to do some “creative” project for them because they can’t.
This whole process hasn’t been easy and has lots of layers for me. working through all of this with a counselor who helped me untangle the tangled has helped immensely.
Carol, I really appreciate you unpacking this question even further for me with your second comment. What you say (and have lived) makes beautiful sense. And it’s definitely more compassionate and even respectful than I have been toward myself. Now I want to interrogate that perhaps false notion of pride I’ve been lugging around all these years. Thank you for your openness and thoughtful response!
just recently I was in a hard place, grief wave unexpectedly and other stuff…i was down on myself and my counselor replied in an email to me: “the path to a better place is self-compassion.” so one afternoon instead of going to the pool with everyone which i normally would, i took my aching head to bed for a nap and saved the rest of the day!
Blessings on your day…wish I lived closer to your appearance in Wisconsin. going to be in chicago at all?
Carol, how difficult that unexpected wave must have been—a sneaker wave, for sure. I am saluting you, belatedly, for taking that nap. Self-compassion can be so difficult sometimes. Oh, to think you were only two hours away! The readings and workshop went well. Still feeling blessed at the opportunities. Thank you.
Love this Laurie! I’m in a season of spending lots of time in my car driving the kids to their activities. And just this morning, I had the thought that I wanted to keep the inside of the car neat and tidy, thinking it might be more peaceful. (It’s usually the opposite.) Inspired to give this a try.
Brianna, what a good idea. My backseat could use a spruce-up, too. It’s brimming things I ferry back and forth each week when I babysit grandkids. You’re inspiring me to find a fun new container to hold the extras!