Good afternoon, friends and readers,
Here in New York, we had a lovely couple of spring days this week. My spirits were so light! I kept the windows of the house open for much of the day, letting the warm wind blow through the rooms. Today it’s raining, but I’m glad winter is over and the jonquils are in bloom.
Recently, I had a special lunch with my new friend, Katia Mead. We met at Grace Farms, and she’s introduced me to the Praemium Imperiale, an annual global arts prize given by the Japan Arts Association. The 2022 winner in painting was the Italian artist, Giulio Paolini. A few of his paintings, sculptures, and photographs were featured in the prize book, along with excerpts from an official interview. I was taken with a part of his response, a section on “Work and Rest.” He wrote,
“There is no separation. Because in my opinion, the answer to what you are asking me was given long ago in the 19th century by the writer Balzac, who in his Traité de la vie élégante (Treatise on Elegant Living), which is a small booklet but of great finesse, went so far as to say, ‘the artist is an exception. His idleness is work, meaning that the artist’s idleness is his continual rethinking of what he is going to do or what he has done.’ So Balzac says, ‘his idleness is work and his work is rest.’ Because, as far as I know, there is nothing that rests me and that is to say, soothes me more than when I can put myself at the work table.”
What is the relationship between work and rest? They seem to imitate one another. I’ve stopped seeing writing time as fully separate from domestic time, mothering time, resting time, worship time, service time. Of course, I need hours to write and to parent, to stretch and to serve, and there simply isn’t enough time for it all. I struggle often with sensations of constriction. But, within that challenge, I’ve learned to resist my training in compartmentalization. What if, instead of distinct, work and rest are in a dynamic conversation, feeding and influencing one other? A poetry line comes to me while I organize plastic picnic toys for my daughter to play with. I write and as the thoughts settle, I suddenly think of a friend I want to call for a walk. I put dishes away and the prayers of the early morning process themselves.
I relate to Balzac’s idea of rest or idleness as a space of continual rethinking. Even in the spaces where my thoughts go quiet—in meditation, in communion, in yoga, in sleep, in hanging about, I sense that there’s a continual reworking happening over me and within me, a refreshing that’s needed for the artistic fruit to emerge. And, it’s such a relief that the reworking doesn’t start and end with my own strength. I simply need to surrender and receive the growth and healing that comes from the source of all sacred practice, from an endless, loving God. The more I receive God’s grace for myself, the more I feel able to relax into the patterns of life, and not fight them so much. I’m so thankful that at the end of the week, no matter what’s happened, no matter how excellent or poor my work/rest mimicry, I get to go to a spiritual well where I get poured into, where I am fed by the Giver of Life.
Mina Lowry, “Chalice”
It’s taken me many years to develop a healthy valuation of rest, and I’m still working on it. The Balzac quote reminded me of one of my favorite Wendell Berry poems, “From the Crest” (1977), in which he writes about working his farm again and again. “The thought of work becomes/ a friend to a thought of rest,” Berry writes. I read this poem in Dr. David Mahan’s class, “Reading Poetry Theologically.” I’ve recorded it in full:
I love the idea of being propelled forward in work and rest with delight, as Berry says here, a delight “that moves lovers in their loves,/ that moves the sun and stars,/ that stirs the leaf/ and lifts the hawk in flight.” A few weeks ago, I traveled down to North Carolina with my sister and cousins for a family wedding on the southern Outer Banks. It was fun to celebrate the happy couple and dance with my people, to walk alongside the big blue ocean. I got to share about my new writing journey, hug my loved ones, and laugh heartily with those who’ve known me since before I was born. Love goes on, I thought. It propelled me forward with delight. We had a joyful Easter here in Bedford last week and took some time to rest up north as a family.
Caspar David Friedrich, “Northern Landscape, Spring” (c.1825)
One night, after all the travel and the celebration of Easter, I slept very soundly. When I woke, I knew intuitively that the second small swell of my writing journey was now completed. Rest reveals so much about the work. What was the first small swell? In the fall, I finally went for it and launched as a writer, sending my first review and poem into the world. Then, in January, I built my website, this substack, and continued to publish in new places. I wrote about what I was drawn to in delight: my love of a merciful God, a dancer who moved me. I set myself to the desk and wrote several other short pieces and a handful of pitches that are now sitting on the desks of various editors, or, in two cases, possibly waiting to be sifted by an intern or college student (!). I send love to my essays and reviews and poems that sit and wait. I feel very tenderly toward them. Perhaps they will not see the light of day for some time. Time takes time. I accept that. I know it’s going to be a long journey ahead, and these are just the first little waves I’m riding on what I sense is a wide body of water before me.
Now I’m entering the next few months of work. What lies ahead? What work? What rest? “Cleared, the field must be kept clear” (Berry). I feel stronger as a writer: some pieces have been taken, some not. I’ve been a bit tested. I’ve gone through the first rollercoaster motions of elation and dejection and back up again. I can still feeling myself separating from institutional life. It’s taking a long time to individuate. Writing short pieces—reviews and profiles and short essays and poems—works with the rhythms of my family, and I’m grateful for that. I have enough time to do a little writing, and I want to do that little bit as well as I can. I’m excited. I’m still here, I thought to myself the other day. I’m still doing this! I share Paolini’s sentiment that the time at the work table is soothing. I find it calming and expansive to investigate what I think and feel, to read deeply, to catch a small moment or image and let the poem show me what it meant.
I’m going to keep on with those bite-sized pieces through the early summer. I’m like my own professor now, giving myself assignments and deadlines. I still have a lot to learn about the craft of writing, particularly around structure and tone. I do a lot of transcribing scenes around me. But what do I mean to say? I’m also learning what I’m feeling called to create more broadly as an artist. I want to be a part of healing the culture, of extending love and forgiveness and awe and beauty. Various artists are showing me the way, and writing up their profiles is like a lesson in life-building. Eventually, I do want to write books and find a couple of niches to live in. But these smaller bursts are helping me settle in and build a platform, make connections, and not take myself too seriously. I need to experiment and see what feels sensual and fun and serious and right. I need a space to play! I have to say that I’m finding Substack very comforting. I can pursue a predictable newsletter and output here while living inside the unpredictable world of sending out my literary work. Thank you for receiving me. As I step more deeply into my writing life, I am, as Berry says, “trying to teach my mind/to bear the long, slow growth of the fields, and to sing/ of its passing while it waits.”
In work and rest, with love,
Alice
William Trost Richards, “The Bell Buoy”
I’m wanting to be more careful with copyright and what images I use in my newsletters. I’ve confirmed all my images here (and forthcoming) are in the public domain or secured by artist permission.
(See this fantastic Paolini sculpture “Mimesis”—I didn’t have permission rights to share this image above in the earlier section.)
I enjoyed this profile on the writer Hanif Abdurraqib in The Guardian. It was very intriguing, particularly as he described discipline as a way of enduring in several modes of self. Thanks to
for sharing.I’ve been winding down at night with some PD James, reading her murder mystery Devices and Desires. It’s just the right amount of characters, suspense, and discreet Anglican references. Everyone is a suspect! I can’t wait to see how it ends…
I’m still deciding whether or not to finish The Three-Body Problem show on Netflix. It’s so different from the sci-fi book trilogy, which I loved. The books opened my mind up to new ways of understanding time and space in the universe. I was able to imagine the fourth dimension! This review of the trilogy and its subsequent adaptations by Christopher Fan is terrific, opening up layers of character interpretation and the complex contextual backdrop of the American production.
Finally, I learned of the Kenyan photographer Thandiwe Muriu through resident Bedford jazz vocalist Andromeda Turre’s Instagram page this week. Muriu’s photos are insanely cool and visually arresting. I had to share forward!
Now, to finish Moby Dick with my book club… see you in a week or two…
I’ve longed envied cultures that understand and respect rest in a way we often fail to in America. I could drive myself mad with the questions — What have we lost to the rise and grind culture? How much art and softness have we lost to that harshness?
It’s a delight to be in the presence of people who understand the delicate balance.
I don’t think I can say anything more concisely than William Wordsworth: “Rest and be thankful.” 🐋
Hi Alice,
Bob here. I have loved reading your posts on your Substack site. I have thinking about starting one myself, and have managed to set up the basic structure and I have a couple of things I am trying to post, but when I log in Substack seems to see me as a guest on my own stack and I haven’t been able to figure out how to get it to recognize me take the author and give me authority to edit what I have already put up and post some stuff. The stack is called “Musing of a Dying Unsystematic Theologian.” I am half kidding about the title. Although I have no plans to die this week, at age 81 the possibility of my mortal work, joys, sufferings, experiences and thoughts statically draws nigh. I have been doing pretty well with
So And Gp