Goal stats (for real) – Process Peace

Do the work

September 30, 2022 Suzanne Biro

I submitted a piece for publication this month. It was hard for me to press the submit button. Sharing my writing has become harder in the last few years. It could be because a lot of the works are fragmented and unfinished but I’m discovering it has more to do with a fear of revealing myself on the page. If I’m really letting myself sit with this truth, it goes deeper: I’m afraid of discovering my self, or a part of my self, that maybe I don’t like so much or that doesn’t align with the idea of my self I have so carefully, painstakingly, curated.

The piece I submitted met the word count and the publication style and pulled in some pretty good phrases and layered in some pretty good ideas. It felt good while I composed it. I pulled from a number of earlier writings and wove them round a theme. The piece was born of intellectual exercise—my constant crutch—not a dreaming. But when I read the piece over again, with the help of loved ones’ feedback gently opening my eyes to what I had placed on the page, the dreaming, the subconscious, was revealed there…blurry, almost like a feeling of being on the cusp of discovering…something. And I balked at working more deeply with the piece. It was clear the writing was simply a door into another room, an unfamiliar room. I am stuck on the threshold.

But I wanted to meet the submission window, so I fixed up the easy bits, wrote a cover letter, uploaded it, and hit the submit button.

Now I’m actively ignoring the whole thing. I could say I’m just taking a break, but no, I’m actively ignoring that piece now. The knowledge I am afraid is haunting me.

Two writings pinned to my wall are helping me to turn toward the work:

A poem:

Our Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

And a quote I can’t find the orginal source for but taken from Twitter (?) attributed to Claudia Rankine: “You do the work and in the end the world will need it or not.”

Do the work I will.

Craft & Art

January 10, 2020 Suzanne Biro

This week, I received a package from my sister. She lives in Old Crow, a community of about 250 people. A Vuntut Gwitchin community. Old Crow, (Teechik in Gwich’in) is a two-hour flight north of Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory.

I gasped when I removed the box’s lid. Inside: a beautiful pair of slippers. The slippers are made of moose leather and decorated with white rabbit fur round the ankle. They are intricately beaded with a flower pattern. The slippers are infused with the wonderful scent of woodsmoke. I held them to my face and inhaled deeply. I imagined the woman’s hands, the sharp needle, the glass beads, the stitching together, a warm room with snow steaming off parkas and boots while the night sky—a round-the-clock reality at this time of year—wheels round, constellations glowing, aurora borealis crackling. It’s amazing to smell a place that is over 6000 km away from where I stand.

The slippers were crafted by Neta Arnold. My sister also laboured to make a pair of her own, in a sewing circle, under the mentorship of women, including Neta, in the community. My sister’s beading started in September and took four months to finish. The stitching together of leather pieces, another few months. What we now slip onto our feet are truly works of art, crafted with care, beauty and utility.

When I slipped them on, the slippers were stiff, but with my body’s warmth they softened and hugged my toes, heels, ankles. A perfect fit. They feel magic.

Unlike art, the word craft acknowledges the effort, the utility, of objects created. Unlike art, craft is both a noun and a verb – a thing and the making of the thing, but also the “trying” to make the thing. Craft acknowledges continual effort, continual dedication, continual improvement. In this way, the word is accurate and precise, more closely covered in the sweat and tears and joy of process.

One of my favourite online literary magazines, one I frequently turn to for solace, for solidarity, for technique, to improve, is called Craft.

The slippers wait for me each morning beneath my writing desk (an old table). When I slip them on, I feel the beadwork, the hand-stitching at the seams. I am reminded how dedication, time, persistence and care shape art. I am grateful for the lesson. I am grateful for warm feet.

First Post is forthcoming…

November 7, 2019November 7, 2019 Suzanne Biro

Lots of reading to start you off on “about” pages already….

Plan to post once a week…

Incidentally, the idea for this blog (note: a product and also a process) materialized a month or two ago. Then it took me a good long while pondering whether there would be sufficient content to carry it forward.

It took a couple of weeks to write the static page content…half of that was just thinking about it and jotting down ideas and lists (I use Evernote for this…and my notebook…two places I try to keep consistent instead of collecting tiny triangles of paper with my “brilliance”[1] scrawled all over them (illegibly).

The “about me” page took a solid 5 hours to write. That was followed by roughly 2 hours (if I add it up) of re-reading and moving words around. Then I spent a good evening’s worth of time tensing my shoulders up to me ears and second guessing the whole idea and wondering whether I’m a narcissistic freak!? I did the same in bed, tossing and turning and kicking the cats and making the dog bark until the early hours of the dark morning. Then I thought, Plan B Man: Fuck it. And here we are.

[1] inner critic notes: loud guffaw!