Practising Falling
Since writing about falling quiet, I have certainly done that. The poem Walk can be seen as more on this theme. In contemplating falling quiet, I’ve also practised falling into the surf. Each wave I decided to fall into was different, and after three sessions in the water, I had in fact fallen only once, and ridden many waves. In its way, the poem Walk is about this: a determination to let go of control, to move a little beyond fear, and into the unknown.
Walk
Walk child, and let
the walking
fall into you.
Go into the dark
look around, and find
the lost and the broken
with your hands.
Hold what has never been held.
Speak what has never been spoken.
Gently now,
through the open door
out, into the field
of unknowing.
Walk child, and let
the walking
fall into you.
~ Kirstie McKinnon
During my second session practising-falling out in the waves, a white butterfly flew over my head and across the water, I paddled after it for a while. Briefly I looked away, keeping track of the shore and where I was headed, when I looked back, the butterfly had gone. I’ve never seen a butterfly above the surf before, it made me think about the unknown, and how much there is to contemplate, and rest within.
I’ve been reading The Gift by Lewis Hyde, and it’s returned me to my original ideas about keeping my Substack as much of a gift as I can: to support the work of generating kindness to ourselves in the form of self-compassion, and to the people we live and work alongside for the sake of our communities and our precious world. So, if you do choose a paid subscription, I accept your tangible support for my writing work with immense gratitude. Thank you. We are generating kindness together.
ah Kirstie, I always come to your posts at just the right time. I listened to your reading of the poem and it touched something me that helped me cry today. I really needed that. I have been struggling to surrender to a very big and sore change in my life. But your idea of practising falling as we walk, is helping me to maybe find a different way of letting go.
thank you for writing, and thank you for sticking with Substack and sharing your work in the world. it is helping at least one person, on the southern most tip of a continent, to heal
Love the tenderness in this poem. Something here about our inner resources, that we or at least, I, often pay too little attention to, tending more to look outwards. But conversations like this, one aspect of the self in dialogue with another, can be, as this shows, so powerful, steadying, enriching. We do have reserves of wisdom that creative work, and playfulness can reveal.
And I love the painting. That the surfer is a mere suggestion of a being, almost not there, a dream figure, but the strength in her paddling, her determination, are clear. By contrast, the butterfly is concrete reality, the strong dark outline of the wing, the black dot. Offering the surfer some sort of certainty. Invitation. Fall in this direction. These butterflies Kirstie!! How they glide in and out of your days. What a gift!