Between More and Less
This morning I am driving to Whidbey Island, Washington State, to guide one of my favorite workshops: Exploring Minimalism in Mixed Media. And although this trip up north from my home in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, requires a few steps to get there, there is something about it that feels surprisingly, to me, simple, calm, enjoyable, soft, even adventurous. One that involves only myself, less stress, and more peace, compared to any trip involving flying, hurrying from place to place alongside many other hurrying people I know nothing about.
I often think about these things. Ask questions like: What makes a journey, any, have qualities of peace, or of turmoil, invoking rest of the heart, or way too known overbearing intensity? What lies between liveliness and silence? What makes either of those pleasurable? or not at all? And these questions always turn to be about quantity. The number of emotional ‘events’ crammed into any particular amount of time. When does ‘very much’, ‘rich’, ‘abundant’, becomes too much? Intense? And when does ‘little’, or ‘less’, becomes scarcity, or turns into a longing, an aching?
This type of pondering makes regular appearances in my daily life, in my mundane existence as a human, in my relationships with other humans, strangers, beloveds, and the spectrum in between, in what I make and how, what I plant in my garden, and what I remove from it, in what I eat, how often, in what I speak, and the silences between the spoken, whispered, written, or typed words, between landscapes, drought, or lusciousness. In what I choose to hang on my walls, cover my floors with. Who I invite into my kitchen, my bedroom, my bed, for how long, and how often.
And so when I leave my house to meet people for ‘Exploring Minimalism in Mixed Media’ it’s not a separate undertaking than any other in my daily life. It is one, however, that includes others. One that invites to examine the perpetual question of: What is Between More and Less? When does a thing we make stop being inspirational, pleasurable, and starts becoming overwhelming, overstimulating, a spike in Cortisol level? When do we start listening to the cues that tell us to stop, that enough is enough. To remove. To simplify. To breathe.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Thank you for visiting with me here, for listening and reading WHAT IS BETWEEN US, a reader-supported column. To receive new posts directly in your email box please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
🤎🤍🖤
“The silences between the spoken”—that is the potent space where great love and deep heartbreak abide. These silences are our inner being, where only we know our truth—our truth about love and abundance, about grief and loss. I have these spaces of silence within me too.
I could go on and on about this. How it all sits on my soul. In my heart. The slight tenderness of your words. Words that resonate. How I do prefer road trips over any other way of travel,
for all the reasons you've shared. I'm going to allow your words to wash over me for just a bit. LIke a creek, taking its sweet time to keep moving, following its own pace, enjoying the view, maybe the force of nature makes it a flood, at some point, or it goes down to a trickle, maybe it goes stone cold dry, regardless, your words always run just a little bit deeper over here, and I love that very much. Taking them in as a view from the roadside. Slow trippping!