When the Ground Glittered

Antidotes this week: frost, polar books, walks.

Sticker grab bags to bring a little joy // I’m on the Joy of Cooking podcast!

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Hello friends,

I’ve been reading A Woman in the Polar Night this month, trying to take it only a chapter or two at a time so that I can savor it (and be ready to discuss at

Katherine May

‘s bookclub next week). It’s about Christiane Ritter, who in 1934 traveled to spend a year on Spitsbergen with her husband.

Early on in the book, right as she arrives in the remote Arctic, a Norwegian man gives her some tips for getting through the winter.

“You must take a walk every day, even in the winter night and storms. That is as important as eating and drinking. Always good temper. Never take things seriously. Never worry. Then it will be fine.”

I live very far from the Arctic, but I’ve tried to have this as a mindset lately, particularly the walking bit. Sometimes I think that the majority of the process of writing is in fact walking. Movement as brainstorm, movement as reset, movement as medicine. As good for creative blocks as it is for the sense of overwhelm and dread in the face of the political reality this week.

A walk to clear the head, a walk to revive, a walk to ground.

“5pm sunsets are back” exclaims the Seattle Times newsletter headline. Something to celebrate! This of course makes walks easier, but I find that I like them most right at the edges of the day—the crepuscular windows. In particular this week when the frost gripped onto the ferns and blackberry vines. For a few moments, the ground glittered.

Around this time last year, I read The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven, a fictional account of a man who leaves Stockholm in 1916 to go to Svalbard. Apparently, I am making a tradition of reading polar literature in January. The starkness, the vastness, the intensity of the descriptions of snow and ice—it all feels fitting for the season, and yet, so different from my own reality that simply opening the pages feels like a reset. A kind of clarity that clears out the rest of the tangle of headlines and dystopian reality that encroaches upon the days right now.

Here’s a question I keep coming to, again and again (for years now, really): how do we do creative work in this moment?

I have been trying to narrow the windows in which I take in the news, not to avoid, but to instead be more focused, more intentional about the consumption. I don’t want to entirely check out, but also: how much is being informed and how much is incapacitating? No more looking at email on my phone, and at this point I’ve almost entirely cut out use of social media. Like

Anne Helen Petersen

wrote, there’s a social media sea change afoot. We can all feel it.

And yet, even with those limits, it all still creeps in. How could it not?

I think it’s why those Arctic stories are compelling. They cut the noise. Silence it for a bit. Like a cold spell that seems to clear the air out.

Fridtjof Nansen, 1911

One strategy that came to mind this week was linking news consumption with positive behaviors. Any window of time that was spent reading articles would need to be followed by a few minutes of art, a text to a friend, a walk, etc. Incorporate an antidote into the routine.

I have yet to put this diligently into practice, but it seems like one of the ways to get through. To keep our wits about us. To not be entirely sucked under. To ensure that we have energy to do all the things we need to do—in our personal lives, in the global one.

Schedule and routine also come to mind, reliable scaffolding to return to when everything feels uncertain. I always find inspiration in Ursula K. Le Guin’s daily routine.

Ursula K. Le Guin’s daily routine

At the beginning of this month (you know, 62 weeks ago) I hung a show at a local library. I decided it was high time some of the original pieces from my Women’s Wisdom Project came out again and got a little time in the limelight. Le Guin was one of them.

These pieces are usually in a box under my bed (glorious art storage, I know) so I hadn’t seen this one in a long time. I read the quote several times to myself.

You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia.

The question isn’t so much how we do our creative work in this moment, but instead, how do we keep our spirits alive?

I think back to the advice to Ritter. A walk. Always good temper. Never worry.

The last one might be out for the time being, but I think there’s something to the general sentiment. Get outside. Walk. Refresh. Keep going. It’s not a mantra, it’s a survival technique. Useful whether it’s how to get through a polar winter, a creative block, or an ever mounting sense of despair.

And to Le Guin’s point: lots of breakfast, regular creative work, ample reading and music, time to correspond with friends.

That’s what’s right there in front of us.

The sustenance, the imagination, the connections.

-Anna

Couzantes Stars, 1587

• “Maybe objects are the anchors. In an age where we are so little tied to place, where we are like moths being distracted by lights that mimic the sun and moon but instead lure us into spirals of doom we can’t emerge from, maybe it’s the objects we ascribe meaning to, that make us feel some sense of home among the whirr of daily life. And not in a consumerist sense, but in the value of objects that are cared for across generations, some known, some unknown—but still valuable to both the living and the dead.” -

  Freya Rohn
  in a beautiful essay

• Hilma af Klint will always brighten my mood.

  Sabrina Y. Smith
  wrote all about the Swedish artist’s notetaking practice for
  Noted
  (she left over 26,000 handwritten pages!!)

• 100 Day Project starts on February 23 (is this the year I actually do the whole thing?) and

  Lindsay Jean Thomson
  is doing a podcast!

• Brendan Leonard
  ’s advice? Don’t quit playing your music.

• I for one am craving more analog time these days, but if you do need a little digital rabbit hole, I highly recommend the new Public Domain Images Archive.

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