Perspective

I had a couple pretty amazing experiences with perspective this weekend, that have got me thinking about the topic quite heavily. It started with a new sketch book. I finally finished the book of block, that is the book that has essentially held the entirety of my writers block over the past three years. Creatively, it is a pretty depressing book to look through, tons of pages of incomplete poems, stories, thoughts, ideas, sudokus, maps of places, plans, goals, drawings, grocery lists...you know the kind of things on puts in a sketch book when experiencing creative block.

Of course, the last two months worth of stuff shows a huge shift in my work, but that's only about 7 pages out of 200...but now I started a new one. And it was funny, looking at the first page and thinking about what to put there, I was afraid I was going to start panicking and I thought I will go back into the mode of self editing and creative abortion that formed the better part of the block. But before i had even started thinking these things I realized that i wasn't worried at all about what to put. I thought it doesn't really matter if it turns out really good, or really crap, or most likely somewhere in between those extremes. I just want to make something. I want to work on it and then some time later finish working on it.

I thought that was funny, because in that moment i came to realize that I wasn't afraid of blank pages anymore. And it was pretty cool. It was like when I came to realize I wasn't afraid of the dark anymore, or I wasn't afraid of people hearing me pee. And I never thought it was something i was afraid of, and if it was i never thought i would stop being afraid of them. And that got me thinking about I can...

I can't is the most dream defeating phrase in every language I have ever tried to learn. And that is because it reifies a temporal obstacle and makes us believe it may be an eternal blockage. We need to revolutionize this phrase and change it from I can't to Now I can't... I sort of always thought I can't means I never can...but that is my great error, and it is an error many of us make and I hope if you are still making it you heed what I have learned. That I can't only means in this moment I can't..but maybe with more heart and practice, with more support and strength I can one day.

I climbed a really steep mountain this weekend. With a child and two women. The child, like any child would, just wanted to go and go and go. She has not yet developed any sense for conserving energy. About 200m from the top, however, she reached her limit. Her legs were heavy from the climbing (it was in many parts a 60-75degree incline...totally wicked). She wanted to quit and stop. But I know how wicked it is at the tops of mountains so I told her to climb on my back.

I didn't know if I could carry her up 200m. In fact I was pretty certain I was as tired as she was. But I wanted her to make it. And I was up for the challenge. So I put my bag on her back and crouched for her. And it seemed that was enough. She sort of looked at me as if to say, "I am tired. I don't think I can keep going, but you would find the strength to carry me the rest of the way...well then I will find that strength too" And like a mountain goat she lit off up the last slope. We raced the last 50m and both fell down on the top of the mountain for feel how good it was to have made it.

Before that she didn't try to talk to me, nor I to her. But after I guess our relative positions changed and we did our best to talk.

Then their was the view of the world. At the top of the mountain there was only blue sky over head, as we has climbed up through the cloud that sits on the valley below, or so it felt. New mountains came into view in the distance and the sea too. I couldn't have imagined...but i can now. And I look forward to more things unimagined. And know they exist out there, just have to find them.