Our senses by themselves are dumb. They take in experience, but they need the richness of sifting for a while through our consciousness and through our whole bodies. I call this “composting.” Our bodies are garbage heaps: we collect experience, and from the decomposition of the thrown-out eggshells, spinach leaves, coffee grinds, and old steak bones of our minds come nitrogen, heat, and very fertile soil. Out of this fertile soil bloom our poems and stories. But this does not come all at once. It takes time.
~Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones
It’s already been one of those winters- like I’m sure January had an entire extra week in it. Snow can be pretty and cozy; ice, not so much. The news has brought its dissonance; the Olympics, its unity in sport and spirit. Dark and light, yin and yang.
Even though our snow/ice combo was so solid my boots didn’t make an imprint, I thought about the unfrozen earth deeper down. I imagined the perennials sleeping, the bulbs awaiting a warming; all of us in a lull, banking on the end of this season.
I’ve tried to use these days to work on a novel I began in earnest last summer, but I admit I haven’t been in the mood for it. I was raised to not waste time, to be productive. (Which happened to fit my personality perfectly 😉 ) In my fretting about not getting as many words on the page as I planned, my husband said, “Take a break. If you force it, won’t you just have to rewrite it anyway?” Words of wisdom from the guy who doesn’t read novels. But he gardens and keeps a compost pile going. Neither of those things can be productive before they’re ready. And they need time and the right conditions before they can be ready.
So it boils down to this: a season of waiting, of hibernating, of not checking items off a list is not the same thing as wasting time. Maybe it’s composting. In the quote above, Natalie Goldberg was referring to writing, but I don’t think it’s confined to writing. Composting doesn’t waste a thing, whether it be coffee grounds or a meaningful conversation. I think it applies to any or all our endeavors: to how we learn, to how we navigate relationships, to how we make informed decisions.
Be well in this season of hibernating/composting/resting.