My Odd, Uneven Time
In her journals, Sylvia Plath once described August rain as, “The best of summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.”
How she felt about the tepid, muggy storms that roll in the eighth month of every year, is how I’ve felt about life lately: Incredibly lost in the strange, in-between season. (Yes, I’m blissfully aware that I incorporate the seasons and seasonality in almost everything I do, and I will not stop.)
The past month has been filled with endings or phase-outs that are as near as that first leaf changing color, along with a rolodex of new ideas and questions to accompany each one. It’s as though I’m on a bridge, with a slight sight of a new and shiny phase of me with a fresh perspective in the distance, and I’m attaching each wooden step to the rope as I move forward. I want to sprint across the bridge at full speed, see what this new era holds, and reap the rewards. But if I don’t go step by step, focused and intentional, I’ll fall. Or worse, step backwards and never give it a try at all.
It seems I’ve been on this bridge for a while, and that’s because I have. While putting these pieces together, distractions like bad moods, comparison, and impatience have slammed into me like a blast of wind, leaving me inconsistent and questioning, “Where can this bridge really go? What am I even doing? What do I focus on? What will this fulfill in me?”
That’s how I’ve felt, and I’ve let it get the best of me. Maybe it’s my generation or just human nature, but whenever desires aren’t crystal clear, or nearby, for god’s sake, it leaves me feeling frustrated and so discouraged. My stomach churns as time ticks away while the idea list, writing page or camera stay blank and untouched. I’ve sobbed at the loss of this time and am cruel to myself for my unknowing of what exactly I should choose. Again, Plath sums it up exquisitely in her vision of a fig tree in her novel, The Bell Jar.
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
This behavior isn’t kind to myself or others, nor is it sustainable in making any real progress. I am viciously trying to battle it. Day by day, I’m fighting for my life against my negative thoughts.
What I’m realizing is the only way forward, to the beacon that is clarity, is through. It’s through setting aside time for tea and writing, that a new prompt may spark. It’s through reading a page-turning novel that I see flecks of myself in different scenes, and characters, like the gay man gazing out the passenger window as he passes by the hot, concrete city that is modern day Los Angeles, or the woman observing the ceilings, faucets and tiles of every bathtub she’s been in while meditating in the hot water. It’s through cooking that combinations of tastes, textures and colors suddenly create a new recipe. It’s through trying on clothes and piecing together outfits that I curate my personal style. It’s through thoughtful communication and expressing feelings that conflcit is made sense of and resolved.
I’m going to continue to write, read, cook, photograph, dress, communicate and create, with consistency and intention. I’m going to figure out what sticks. To figure out what I love. To set and accomplish goals, both little and lofty. To be challenged. To go through and make it across this bridge.
Although this season has its stressors and strangeness, I believe that my odd, uneven time will be what leads me to places, projects and a life more grand than I could’ve ever dreamed.
In a spirited pursuit,
Jacob
