Pre-existing condition

A 12-step program

A quick note for those who were waiting with me and holding good thoughts last week: my new friend is home from the hospital and making progress. The piece I mentioned will find its moment when the time is right.

I offer an audio version of today’s essay here, if listening suits you best. ⤵️

Reflection by Odilon Redon - Public Domain*

1. Begin with a week’s worth of very ripe news, or stale grievances, the artisanal dread that has been sitting in your stomach since the phone rang. At first, you’ll want to peel back the outer layers to be sure your selections are dark and pungent all the way through. With practice, you’ll learn to assess quality with a quick glance.

2. Pour the rankest of these into your being. You’re aiming for complete saturation. You’ll know you’re getting close when the metallic taste on your tongue mirrors the sinking feeling in your soul.

3. Continue stuffing yourself until the mixture begins to back up into your mouth and eyes.

4. Feel the bloated sickness, like something might spew forth any minute without warning. Notice how, when you lie down, it gets worse.

5. Pace the floor like a confined animal, remembering the time you ate too many pot brownies and made promises to god that if you lived, you’d exercise more self restraint in the future. Remember how you broke those promises.

6. Go somewhere, anywhere but where you are. Walk to the woods. Walk to the sea, to the park, to the shower, to the car. Take yourself to a place where you can sing with abandon.

7. Sing with abandon! The singing may sound like screaming. That is normal. Sing until your tears loosen. Let them rise, rise, rise until they fall out of your face, or seep through your toes, or mingle in the notes coming from your throat.

8. After the tears, and the singing, and the screaming have reduced by half, the concentrated remains of you will be too hot to touch. Let yourself cool.

9. When you are safe to handle, notice where you are. What is nearby? For the first time in a very long time, see what surrounds you. Take it in. See yourself in your space. See your fingers and wrists, arms and abdomen, the blurred tip of your nose, the color of the walls, the sky, your skin.

10. Train your attention on your hands. Steady your gaze until you begin to detect the faintest emission, the slightest glow. Keep watching. Experience it as part of you, the rhythm in your veins, the warming of your chest, a composition of electrical conversations beneath your skin.

11. Close your eyes. There it is again, the same silver shimmer suspended just beneath the membrane that separates you from the world. Your brain will insist this is an artifact, an afterimage, a trick assembled from expectation and retinal fatigue. Do not interrupt the observation. There is no rule that says the deepest light must always be visible from the outside.

12. Repeat as needed. This light will keep itself lit indefinitely.

~Elizabeth

Photo by the author, 2016

I wrote the bones of this in fifteen minutes with a timer running and a virtual room full of folks I didn’t know doing the same thing. The prompt on making light came from a Caravan Writers Collective write-in with Paul Corman-Roberts. The rest arrived later, slowly, when I sat down to ask myself what the procedure was actually for.

What’s your version of step one right now—something public, or a more private concern that you can’t name? Have you ever caught yourself in a step eleven moment, noticing something still lit in you after a stretch that should have put it out? The comments are a good place to explore both, and I read and reply to every one.

A heart 💚 or a restack ♻️ is the simplest way to elevate this work and it’s how more readers find their way here, which is a really big deal for me. You’ll find those buttons at the top and/or bottom of the page. I’m grateful every single time you take the time!

Subscriptions are also a welcome step, and those who can see their way to paid options brighten the glow behind the pages here. One-time donations are available, too, for those who feel some kind of way about subscriptions.

The point is, it all matters, and I couldn’t be more appreciative for all the ways you support this work.

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Afterward:

I close each week with something you can actually do. Small actions certainly can’t fix everything, but motion beats paralysis every time, and I believe you’re more capable than you think.

Try This:

Schedule your step six before you need it. Right now, before you close this tab or turn off the audio, put something on the calendar. A walk, a long shower, a drive with the windows up, or the windows down, and the music on at a volume that sends energy into your core. Do this as preventive maintenance, the way you’d change the oil before the engine starts knocking. The place matters less than making the commitment while you still feel like you have a choice about it.

Thanks for being here. See you soon!

*Odilon Redon (1840–1916) was a French Symbolist painter who described his intention as placing "the logic of the visible at the service of the invisible." Reflection dates to 1900–1905 and is in private collection.