Sticking Together
coherence
I keep hearing the famous line
From Yeats’ era-defining poem.
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.
So, why?
Always ask: why this ear worm instead of that one?
There are clues everywhere.
So I asked myself: how do you really feel about the center Beth?
Maybe, now there is no center.
Maybe I feel like now there are many centers
And can it even be a center if there is more than one?
Do we each have a center?
Does the universe?
The multiverse?
The verse?
The verse is easiest to remember
But it's the bridge
where the secret usually hides.
Maybe by thinking about the center not holding
I was actually telling myself to stop thinking
about the center.
And I noticed
When we stop thinking about a center
Things stick together differently
Once we stop thinking of a center
Things stick to each other.
Rather than everything being drawn to the center
Everything can be interconnected to everything else
Once I started letting go
of wanting the center to hold
letting go of
the longing for a center
I felt myself drawn toward something new.
A kind of coherence started revealing itself.
Tangibly - when I stopped trying to figure out
Which part of my work was the center
And started seeing it all as connected
It all became more clearly coherent.
Which, though it sounds heady,
Literally means sticking together.
One of my clients is a very accomplished painter.
Recently she had a retrospective
And seeing a long span of her work
It suddenly seemed - coherent.
To her.
In a way that it never had before.
Everything connected to everything.
And she could see why.
Sometimes finding the why things connect
Why things adhere
Why things stick together
Is not that easy.
You can feel it before you understand it.
Maybe it’s something to celebrate rather than mourn.
This feeling that the center is not holding.
The c/enter?
There isn’t just one doorway.
There isn’t just one entrance.
We can become entranced anywhere along the line.
Any flower is a way into the whole bouquet.
With infinite love and gratitude,
Beth