Traveling Back Through An Idea

a haibun(ish) travel log

In last night’s dream, they were back again
At the beginning. She was a child

And he was a child.
A plane lit down and left her there.
Cold sky whitening the white sky whiter.

—Mary Jo Bang
From: How Beautiful

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Six years ago, the idea for Microseasons began to build itself, layer by layer in my mind. In my heart, it also began to take on a texture and an ever-changing shape. Looking back at the photos on my phone, I’m able to retrace my steps to the roots of my thinking. Then beyond this, I can keep going farther back to the tiny seeds from which the roots sprouted.

Sometimes these glass rectangles in our pockets are so helpful.

.

I will try to show you

the view from this bluff.

Come, take my hand.

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It was winter, February 21, 2020. In the days just before the global pandemic, there was a moment of extreme stillness. I remember how a light snow had fallen on the piedmont region of North Carolina, casting a blue hush on this bright corner of the everyday world. Indoors, I brewed cups of green tea. I read away the evening in my favorite brown chair. Our small house, like a warm cocoon, kept us safe. Feeling peaceful, I wrote in my notebook.

.

white feathers falling—

great birds flying overhead

with powerful wings

Next morning, I went outside to find our yard covered in a crystalline blanket. I was struck by how the early daffodils had been toppled by the weight of the snow. They lay there, graceful and resting on a flawless cover. In that moment, I had a feeling of sadness for the flowers along with an awe of their fragile beauty against the frozen innocence of snow. There is a freshness that comes when two things exist together in an unexpected way. That moment felt like a new season for which I had no name.

.

first steps into brightness,

timing and awareness converge—

flowers asleep on snow

Refreshed from my time outside, I came indoors and sat down at my desk to begin a new project. Instead of starting with a clean, new sketchbook, I decided to alter an existing book that I’d found at my public library’s used book sale. Published in the 1940s, the old book felt elegant to me with its linen cover and smooth, foxed pages. I held my breath thinking, why is the first step so hard to take?

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Pausing on the threshold,

I knocked on the door, entered.

I drew a circle.

Inside the front cover of my book, I drew a big circle divided into sections corresponding to a liturgical calendar. Choosing images from classical religious paintings, I cut them out carefully and laid them on the circle of the year.

Imagining the gospel as a timeline-in-the-round, I wanted to inhabit it in a deeper way. To spin and spiral. To feast and to fast. To be hungry and filled by ancient rhythms of the Christian year. In this project, I hoped to find some new beauty in this rhythm that I had grown up in, but which had become somewhat rote.

The timestamps on my photos tell me that I worked and worked at this project all day. Just before midnight, I added some cutouts of my own nature photos to the circle. Previously, I had been grouping them only by color. Now I saw how they fit together in time. I saw the larger story—in motion—as a continual unfolding mercy: birth, death, and resurrection. Ongoing. It clicked for me.

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Then, the surprise of

flowers, leaves, and butterflies—

Gifts that show this love.

This is how it began for me. I had made a series of images that connected themselves and formed something new. I was making a Microseasonal calendar before I had a name for it. But I was making it in my own way. I combined the steady rhythm of the Christian year with the aliveness of small surprises in the natural world happening simultaneously. I chose to lay it all on a traditional grid of 72 seasons in 5-day increments.

Every time I got ready to glue down the images and have a final version of the calendar, I would stop and rearrange them again. Then I realized I didn’t have to make a static, finished product. Why not let this page serve as a backdrop? Like a template of the year— I could keep playing with it forever. And I do.

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I’d like to see you

palm outstretched holding a bird—

five days at a time¹

The microseasons are a lens I use to look closer at, to study, and to love the place I live. I walk in contemplative prayer. And in this quiet looking, I try to love, unconditionally, each day exactly as it comes.

I also try to let myself be loved in the abundance and generosity of God.

I feel that I am just beginning to explore the depth of this idea and what it continues to show me about the place I live, about the way time moves, and the work I’m called to do. Especially the way I am to live with others.

There is a great temptation to complicate ourselves.

It requires courage to let go of self-consciousness (ego) and to create/ live/ work from a place of commitment to what is greater than the self. It’s actually a freedom to stop thinking about yourself—letting go of the obsessive idea of “progress” and what you think you’ve achieved.

Give up all the other worlds

except the one to which you belong.

—David Whyte

So where does a creative idea come from?

I think it’s a collage of little ideas that start sticking together. We can try to see the separate bits sometimes, but it’s mostly a hazy cloud, isn’t it? Rarely, we get to trace it back through the fog.

The microseasons, for me, are a way of living in small increments of time. Sometimes I try to make it fit inside a flexible framework, and this pleases my brain. But Time is a mystery that cannot be fully understood.

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Poetry in motion,

a wheel turning on itself.

Who is the watchmaker?

To stay creatively alive, I think we have to keep surprising ourselves. We have to resist the urge to be too nailed down and formulaic. Formulas can become rote in our art and creativity, in our learning. Even in (especially in) our practices of faith and prayer.

I want to have a comforting expectation of what’s going to happen in my life, and yet I still want to be awed by what unfolds. This is what I love about observing the Microseasons.

Is it possible to live in a posture of love, service, and creative inspiration—on every ordinary day? Absolutely, Yes.

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I once made friends

with a dying butterfly.

This Life is for joy.

.

xo Ann

Here is the story of my butterfly friend.

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My grateful thanks to Mark Rico for sharing his helpful guide:

Slender Flames: A Study of Haiku and Related Forms which has been an inspiration in my writing this winter.

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1. Inspired by the story of St. Kevin of Glendalough