Let's Escape Into Life
Flowers are my escape hatch. What's yours?
Dear Beautiful-as-Tulips People,
I spent that last week taking endless photos of tulips and other spring flowers, then absolutely pelting people with them. I rat-a-tat-tatted my pictures all over a WhatsApp group of life-exploring friends, and then sprinkled them shamelessly around Instagram and now have learned how to reel (uh-oh).
All this while feeling low-energy, and a pedestrian case of the blues.
There’s something about flowers,
—the way they stand up and wave so cheerfully—a shock of pink on a day you’ve lost your job; a crowd of yellow faces cheering you on during a bout of loneliness; that aroma of sweetness that snaps you, for two quick seconds, out of a broken heart. A distraction of trilliums during a crap run (and more photo taking).
There’s something about the vulnerability of the petals surrounding its pistil, the way the flower shape wants to be drawn, starting with our first pictures as children. I still turn toward the flower when I’m stuck: creatively, emotionally, and structurally.
Take for example:
Journaling 🥱
Or, writing in a notebook, a place to dump ideas, emotions, and discoveries.
I used to LOVE LOVE LOVE a notebook scribbling morning. Here was a favorite way to start the day:
Swim
Go to a cafe, get a piping hot Americano and two inches of steamed milk, find a window seat
Opening up my notebook and write away, the background noise and music of humanity humming around me.
For the last several years it’s like my entire body turns into a brick of NO around doing any kind of morning scribbling.
Here’s a recent morning attempt:
Then, enter the Flower.
It started with a doodle. I drew a nice plump pistil, and one by one, added petals. I stared at the pistil and wrote:
Awake at 4 am also at 11-something. Why is my body restless about a night’s sleep, a child whining: “I don’t want to be here doing nothing!”
I drew a few petals and filled four with more ordinary life chords. In one petal I uncovered a distinction between how much a person loves another, and the capacity for love. What was my capacity for love?
It took a few days but I finished my flower journal on May 1. A bunch of little ideas, thoughts, and experiences. Hopping from one stepping stone to another. Hop. Hop!
Here was the final entry, as I exited the offramp of my funk:
“So low energy yesterday and today.
I had the blues. Or the blues had me.
I didn’t ask for the blues.
But I do love blue.”
That’s one way I Escape Into Life—in the face of flowers.
What’s yours?
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What is a marriage, especially a marriage in 2023 and beyond?
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What is a marriage that evolves with us?
What do you really, really want from a partnership with another (and among others)—and if you’re not sure is there a way to find out? Read more here.