Hi Tea people,
I’m experiencing somewhat of a creative u-turn and really that just means that my initial ideas and their timing are panning out differently. Uncertainty arises when I want to push an idea one way and it shifts another. Certain projects illuminate that they don’t have a singular path which contributes to this feeling of things being out of my control.
Where do I want this all to lead? I could answer those questions for you but really they are boring and personal. Sometimes step B is totally different than what I expected to get to step C, and I can’t say if I’m even on step B. I try to just keep point Z loosely in vision, though it sometimes feels like I’m squinting out at a dimming lighthouse.
My day job and responsibilities are changing which is exciting and new. So I spend my free moments outside taking pictures of my neighborhood. Since late March all types of blooms surge and then shift. I have a magnolia tree outside my apartment. I moved in mid-May last year, only meeting its green version, so for several weeks this year, I waited for the buds to emerge. The tree flowered early, and petals lasted only a few days from the erratic weather, but I witnessed it!
I’m still catching color elsewhere though- all shades of tulips, pink cherry blossoms, daffodils, and other magenta or ivory fauna that I don’t know the name.
Every time I walk outside in the spring something changes. Soon most everything will be green. I have this urgent feeling to not miss any of it.
This is all to say that the Tea is delivered this year without a schedule. Notes will arrive when they arrive, and that’s probably great for you since you have other content to listen to or read or even better- fewer things to open- and maybe it’s a sign to go outside which I’m sure you are already!
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There is something enlivening about greenery surviving within city structures. How a tree branch reaches itself across 4 or 5 brownstones. Or how a cherry blossom canopy stands within a heavy amount of concrete.
I watched a Brooklynite haul water in a Home Depot bucket to a baby tree planted next to the street. People trying!
When I’m outside seeing the colors and how these resilient trees grow next to very old buildings I feel calm. Whatever that thing is–for me, it’s taking my sweet ass time walking around and resisting the urge to call it aimless– and whatever it is for you–do more of it. We all need to do more things that make us feel full– in that alive, peaceful type of way, so we don’t need to consume as much to overcompensate for feeling blah.
Novelist Anne Lamott wrote on her 68th birthday earlier this month:
“regrettably, by 68, one is both seriously uninterested in a vigorous debate on the existence of evil, or even worse, a pep talk. So what does that leave?.... A few very best friends with whom you can share your truth….you know that the whole system of our lives works because we are not all nuts on the same day. You call someone and tell them that you hate everyone and all of life, and they will be glad you called. They felt that way for three days and you helped them pull out of it by making them laugh or a cup of tea. Also, besides our friends, getting outside and looking up and around changes us: remember, you can trap bees on the bottom of Mason jars with a bit of honey and without a lid because they don’t look up. They just walk around bitterly bumping into the glass walls….All they have to do is look up and fly away. So we lookup. In 68 years, I have never seen a boring sky.”
Will arrive when they arrive is a good timeline for me!
Yes to looking up, around. To wandering. To leafing out. Petals and blossoms, blue doors on brownstones and long reaching cherry limbs. To dispensing with schedules when one can.