It’s spring, officially now, and I notice a lot of my
conversations have been about boxes and restrictions. I understand the importance of structure. Without structure we would drown in
possibility. Or, as my creative
writing teacher pointed out, without restrictions, you have no story. But I feel the need to stretch, and I’m
pressing against the walls to see what they’re made of, and to test if they
will still hold me in.
Something to keep in mind in this discussion is
turkeys. Really. Apparently if you keep a turkey in a
cage for a while and then remove that cage, the bird assumes the cage is still
there and confines itself to the dimensions of the phantom prison that’s no
longer there. I see my life as a
world I created, and my beliefs about what is possible are the arbitrary rules
I’ve set up based on my past experience.
I’ve come to see that the walls of my cage are not made of lead, glass
or even cardboard. The box I live
in exists only as strokes of imagination, and because life is a work in
progress, in this draft I’m writing right now, the shape of that box can be revised. The deliberate use of imagination is magic of the highest order.
One of the first signs that
there was something terribly wrong with my late husband was when he stopped
reading fiction, stopped being able to
read fiction. Biographies,
how-to’s, they were all fine, but anything that required him to access his
imagination became uninteresting, even irritating. When he told me this it terrified me. The cumulative trauma of life’s losses
and fears had left Michael trapped in the point of view of someone he’d
forgotten he’d created.
I would rather run headlong into a steel door than argue
with stale imagination. Without
dipping the pen of the linear self into the well of the imaginal part of us,
stories calcify and are constantly reinforced by a ferocious
defensiveness. The healthy
imperative to refresh mutates into mindless replication. It was not until Michael’s illness
progressed and he faced his own death that he was jolted out of his frozen
state and could again imagine something more. He died at home, and after his death, as my teenage son and I sat with his body,
Michael’s joy was palpable in the room.
His exhilaration at his freedom reclaimed is a legacy that nourishes us,
more valuable than anything he could have owned.
Do this: Take a
good breath and keep it for a moment, feeling the way the presence of this nectar
interacts with any boundaries it comes to, like water looking for a crack or
fingers feeling for any opening, no matter how small. Still keeping that breath, just imagine that there’s more room, following the breath’s
lead and feeling into the empty spaces.
Now wait for it; it will come.
With a rush your breath will find its way out of the deception that it
is trapped; and your chest, your belly and your lower back will open suddenly to
receive more. Stay there as long
as you can.
There. You’ve
just changed your life.
