Bree Stilwell

Newtonian physics and a phantom’s directive show me how it’s done

I woke up this morning thinking about space. Not planetary space, as in the cosmos, or physical space, like the Michigan chill I could feel on the other side of the duvet pulled to my ears, but metaphysical space.

This is not normal.

I don’t typically ponder the unknowable first thing, let alone without one coffee down, but this morning brought with it some surprises.

I’ve been in a fairly stable, if not slowly deflating, state of undernourishment for the last many weeks, as I wrote about in the previous edition of this newsletter. I just haven’t seemed able to gain a leg on what has felt like mounting weight and pressure.

It’s coming at me from a variety of directions—from challenging situations in my marriage, with my 11 year-old stepson, my career path, money shit, walking the gangplank toward this newsletter and writing platform… disembarking.

I start every day, just as I did today, with my morning pages. Scratched into an extra XXL Moleskine (small writing + large page = small victory) with the day’s Blackwing, blindly selected from the mug of many I keep next to the bed. Pencil of fortune.

But even before I raised my head from the pillow, I was already reviewing recent pages, recent themes. Even in recollection alone – wincing, groggily confused, grumpy as fuck, 5a recollection – I realized I had ended more than many pages over the few months with must __________.

Must recuperate.

Must meditate on business prospects.

Must write 5-year vision!

Every day, adding more to the pile. More force on the bending reed. More calls to action without the reserves to support them.

Yet I’ve been wondering, daily, why I just can’t seem to get out from under the load.

And then, in the pitch darkness, all other living things in the house well asleep, I heard a crazed voice, bright as brass but also slurred and screaming: ‘No room! No room!’

No. Room. Familiar…

Was it… Alice in Wonderland? The Queen of Hearts??

So what does one do when confronted with a phantom voice, while still in one’s underwear and sleep socks? One quickly inquires with Google: alice wonderland no room no room.

Here I am, as Alice, deeply puzzled and moving into exasperation, wondering why I can’t find a seat at a table that appears to offer so many.

And here I also am, as the Mad Hatter, already exasperated and insisting, as I move from empty chair to empty chair, filling each on infinite rotation, that there’s clearly no room.

I’m filling my own goddamn chairs. And I do it ALL THE TIME.

If there’s ten minutes between the end of a client session and the ETD on picking up a kid, I’ll jump at the chance to fill it with folding laundry.

If there’s an hour? Get to moving the younger boys winter sweaters out and the extra t-shirts in. Scrape the weeks worth of over-boiled pasta water from the stovetop. Call my grandmother.

And guess what… there’s rarely more than an hour. Anything above 60 minutes is already accounted for with the bigger tasks, events, obligations and the more high-impact, high-investment stuff.

Of course I’m feeling heavy and depleted and stuck. I’m choosing it.

We all do this, particularly those of us with a productivity chip on our shoulder. We get into the game of trying to force results with more action without also creating the space for those results to take a seat and drink some fucking tea for a minute.

For those of you that don’t find great comfort and companion in busyness like I do, I’m willing to bet you might on occasion recognize a similar penchant for self-sabotage; doing that thing you know is robbing you from doing that other thing. It’s not dissimilar, so stick with me.

We know that, in most instances, nature abhors a vacuum. And, like nature, we hate the empty spaces too. We seek and fill and seek and fill, for myriad reasons.

This post isn’t really about the alternative to insecurity though, that very human tendency to fill in the voids created through trauma, lack, discomfort. I’m not going to, nor will I ever, deal in platitudes like ‘you already have everything you need.’ There’s more than enough of that gumming up our works.

What I’m examining here is more so our ability, or responsibility, to discern and decide how to use space—physical space, spacetime, mental and emotional space—in ways that serve us best.

This is beyond just prioritization, which, don’t get me wrong, is super important. The mechanism I think I’m circling around here is one that creates openings for those things we really want and need. Moving on from our tea party, here’s how I’m envisioning it.

We’ve been in our current house for three years now, and have been working each of those three growing seasons to convert our backyard from lawn to open meadow. There are a number of ways to do this, but in no current reality does it ever make sense to just throw a bunch of wildflower seeds into the grass and let nature literally run its course. The existing grass will (nearly) always crowd out the seeds.

Will there be exceptions? Sure. We’ll eventually see some pitcher’s thistle, some trillium, definitely some Joe Pye. But it’s a gamble, and where these beauties grow will be entirely out of our hands.

What that voice told me, and what I’m drawn to share, is that action without availability is just an utter waste of resource. Throwing seeds into a sea of hearty, well-established, completely territorial fescue and bluegrass is almost assuredly sending them to their immediate demise.

Unless you dig a hole, i.e. deliberately creating a space for that seed to gain purchase and access enough nutrients, that seed’s a goner.

And so goes our wants, desires, goals, needs. If we keep scattering seeds where they can’t grow, keep occupying our own empty chairs, there simply isn’t room for the good stuff.

The concrete, practical action then is to first become aware of where you’re crowding out that good stuff (with busyness, worrying, scrolling, people pleasing, etc.), followed by establishing, with deliberate intention, the grand breeding ground of space.

For me, it looks like sitting down while brushing my teeth. For real.

Just the act of doing a singular thing, instead of brushing and gathering backpacks or pouring coffee or putting my shoes on (none of it efficiently with a toothbrush in my mouth), creates the very palpable feeling of openness. Openness to what’s going on through the bathroom window or with my own naked feet which I haven’t seen since October.

It looks like not scheduling my grocery run to the minute, and like

cancelling dinner plans with our neighbors.

It even looks like making myself a cup of tea and sitting at the dining room table. One seat occupied, the rest, open and awaiting whomever cares to join me.

Will it be you?