Poetic Revelations: Making your own Pattern
Our Inherent Calculus
If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
~ William E. Stafford
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Because Human-ing is harder than Adulting. This is a weekly publication for heart-centered warriors, swimming through this thing called Life.
Selected Readings and Sounds:
The Mistake, A. E. Stallings
Mistakes, John R. Carpenter
Today, When I could do nothing, Jane Hirschfield
A Ritual to Read to Each Other, William E. Stafford
Embodying Joy: The Hidden Power of Intentional Play, Monisha Mittal
Dear Embodied Hearts and Dancing Souls,
For the past few days, I've been aware of a constant undercurrent of irritation within me. A low simmering boil, I’ve felt cranky and a bit snappish. Luckily this morning, I benefited from moving and sounding it out of my system. Underneath it all I realized how much stress I’ve taken on; there’s a place in me that sorely needs some TLC.
While all the poems are wonderful, the first one listed above feels like a soft kiss. I also provide a link to my article published in Pathways magazine.
Mistakes and Patterns. Back to my knitting. I did keep going. I added another color by myself. Stitching knit knit purl in the grey yarn showed me just how ‘off road’ my attempts in the blue had been. I showed the project to an InterPlay playmate who is an avid knitter. “See,” I said sheepishly, “This was supposed to be knit knit purl. I don’t know why I keep getting into trouble.”
She showed me how to determine my next stitch by looking ahead, rather than rely on mental counting. Quietly, she suggested that my mistakes were simply making another pattern.
What’s that? Oh. Making mistakes is making my own pattern.
Y’all know I freely claim that I’m a recovering overachiever, right? Here is my inner fear making itself transparent in a bi-chromatic color scheme. It turns out I am quite sensitive about making mistakes and scared of getting ridiculed. I remember moments being four years old at a Catholic school in Delhi with nuns who ridiculed my handwriting. (I know, WTF!?)
Drop a stitch? Keep going. Make a hole? Keep going. This isn’t victory. It’s Grace. Making mistakes is another version of being myself, warts and all. This is how I deal with uncertainty. Whether in “on” or “off” mode, I can’t avoid the reek of my own essence. This is the invitation in John R. Carpenter’s poem, Mistakes:
the mistakes you find yourself making,
and remaking until you are at home with all you touch, living at last
in the paradise of the imperfect.
The takeaway is even better. Mistakes get identified using other people’s playbook. There is nothing wrong with either–the set pattern or mine. Between this and my co-teaching InterPlay’s Body Wisdom tool of Affirmation last week, I was indelibly reminded that I can’t get this—this part of my walk—wrong. In fact, my mistakes are just as valid an expression of my authenticity as my creations. They belong here too.
The Big Reveal. Even this wasn’t the big reveal. Let me lay this nerdish take out for you. I see three levels at which I approached my knitting.
Level 1, the Outcome: There is a headband I thought I was making. When I focused too tightly on this, I ended up being miserable.
Level 2, the Process: When my friend showed me to steer with my eyes, not my brain, tracking became simpler. Without my nervous system agitated by counting (and recounting), I enjoyed a faster rhythm.
Level 3, the Process under the Process: As I found my groove with the grey yarn, I felt a natural pull to try the project again using the original pattern. Not from a need to prove I could ‘get it right,’ but because something inside me enjoyed the look and feel of it. I’m led to my next step by recognizing what resonates, not by wanting to fix a mistake, or being more than I am.
In fact, anytime I focus on “getting somewhere”, it’s an energetic death knell. It’s a knock-out punch for my authentic self. A.E. Stalling’s poem is my favorite find this week. Let go of mistakes like you blow on a dandelion, he urges:
I did not think of the mistake again, until the Spring came, soft, and full of rain
And in the yard such dandelions grew
One Degree Turns. This is a kick in the head (and vital lesson) for this ingrained overachiever. Most weeks since September, I’ve woken up with an unspoken desperation—please don’t let me fail! Yet this playbook in my heart (likely also soul) is written with invisible ink. At best, I can feel an imagined spine in my hands. Actually, I am holding seeds. Each one I plant will take effort and pull me in a certain direction. How does one sort seeds?
As Beck counsels in her The Way of Integrity, I can only make my way forward in one degree turns, listening to my body’s feedback and choosing what feels true one step at a time. Jane Hirschfield writes of exactly such a moment. She walks us through her landscape of a “warm” laptop, the “essential services” of the morning paper though she herself isn’t exactly feeling like she has something to contribute.
Today, when I could do nothing,
I saved an ant.
Again I am reminded, these days approaching the Spring Equinox are a time of precious pause. I cannot succeed being anyone else but me. Still, from where I stand, I cannot always see the pattern I'm making.
Our inherent calculus. Knitting, everyone tells me, is math. Nerd alert ahead. I didn’t expect to see mathematical patterns in this project. To me, focusing on the outcome is like the distance between two points. The process of getting from one end to the other…that feels like velocity, the first derivative in calculus. Shifting to how you’re getting there, you’re now tracking that movement—how smoothly or jerkily you navigate the process. Then, that pivot moment where my movement accelerated, and I found my genuine momentum. That is acceleration, the second derivative.
Everything is movement—distance, velocity, acceleration. Perhaps our moves reveal each of our inherent calculus. What patterns might you be creating with your movements? I am in a pause choosing my walk into the second derivative. I am calling in my own rhythm.
To your exquisite unfolding. Stay #heartwoke.
Monisha
When we belong to ourselves, we move freely. ~ Monisha Mittal
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A friend of mine in Hyattsville is making one of these: https://thecrochetcrowd.com/crochet-temperature-afghans/
It's an interesting and beautiful way to represent the patterns of the seasons and climate change.