I love the mountains here because there are always dense collections of wildflowers under the tree line: purple buds sitting in crevices and yellow petals caressing their grassy neighbors. In places their beauty rivals the alps, the colorful fields an undeniable testimony to the power of nature undisturbed and to the charm of small wonders. They sway in the wind with a carefree attitude of the unbothered and unnamed, some immortalized and dried out by the sun. A few are now resting pressed in my notebook. I try to search for their names. I can’t find any—in another life, one not so forgiving, they would have been known as weeds. White puffballs are the most abundant amongst these mountainside stems, holding globes of dandelion seeds resting half undressed. Dandelions were once celebrated in magic and medicine. Now they’re relentlessly eradicated from lawns and city grass.
I’d like to think the reason they’re so abundant is because of the wishes people have made—I’ve always wished on dandelion puffs found in the cracks of sidewalks and overgrown lawns because when given the chance, why not make a wish and spread a little magic? I look and think the mountains here could grant so many wishes; the wind must have so many wants to have scattered the loose seeds so freely. I love the notion of my dreams being blown to faraway gardens and hillsides.
Lately I’ve been taking myself too seriously. It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and while I can try to wave away the days under the guise of busy days at work it wouldn’t be a complete truth. The words have been abundant in the form of fragments tossed into notebooks and sticky notes but there they remain. While the time between posts has stretched, the queue of thoughts is growing; where to spew these half-bitten musings? I’ve been telling friends that I feel stingy with my words. My writing has entered a relative dry spell, a subtler writer’s block. Whenever I jot down a sentence I like, I hoard it, not sure when the next one will come and waiting for the right moment to use it. It feels like once released to others it will never be entirely mine again. I worry that my little bloom will be lost in the rest of the landfill that is my unpolished thoughts, beauty gone to waste. I forgot why I wanted to write on this blog: to nourish seedlings of thoughts and follow loose threads. I must plant the seeds to see them grow, drought or not.
All of this I knew in my heart but couldn’t feel until I sat with myself and gave myself permission to leave half-baked ideas on the table, to not be so miserly with my sentences. What I love about streams of consciousness are the surprising connections they surface when one thing reveals a tie to another in the fabric that is my life. What is difficult about them is knowing where to snip the textile or how big the shapes should be. I’m mixing up my metaphors. A dandelion can produce up to 200 seeds on one stem. Not bad for chances of survival, I must say.
I want to plant one today.
A seed: where does permission come from?
I asked this question a few months ago, considering it to be fundamental and probably very hard to touch. So I forgot about it until my new therapist in our first meeting asked to walk me through an exercise to manage emotions. AVP: acknowledge, validate, permit. I thought it was silly at first, seeming elementary as if it could have come out of a workbook, wondering if this should be our last meeting. I think it was in a workbook I had bought once. I haven’t yet sorted through my beliefs on therapy (another seed). I’m familiar friends with acknowledging and validating my emotions. My morning pages have helped a lot in this regard and as I opened my mouth to give myself permission, I choked. In that moment it felt ridiculous to say out loud with someone watching over zoom “I give myself permission to feel X.” I stalled, then blurted it out quickly, feeling unsettled.
Whenever I validate a feeling I am saying that I understand it and it makes sense. Then in my notebook I usually think of how to not feel that way next time. I’ll sit with my feeling and say “goodbye, try not to come again.” Permitting a feeling seemed akin to welcoming it, being complacent with the state of things. I worry about permitting decadence and decay. I worry about becoming too comfortable with sadness (another seed).
I try to give myself more permission now. That unsettling sensation comes from the logical inconsistency of saying it makes sense complete sense to feel this way or have this thought! but you can’t feel this way. Permission does not mean stagnation, but a certain forgiveness and friendship to myself through the process. I sprinkle permission on my life with the heavy hand of a young child who has discovered the other side of the sprinkles lid, the one without holes and is itself one big hole. I give myself permission to cry before breakfast. I give myself permission to feel shame when procrastinating. I give myself permission to forgive. I give myself to permission to be prodigal with my words.
I never made any promises for my writing. I give myself permission to not make sense to anyone save for me. I mix up my tenses; I mix up my metaphors. Even if I write every other day, I won’t finish 100 by the end of the year. I worry about spamming. I give myself permission to worry. I give myself permission to take up space.
Today I made a wish. I gave myself permission. I planted a few seeds.
“Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.” ― Henry David Thoreau