the long hold #2

short notes on edges, stillness, and time

Happy Friday pals,

Welcome back to the long hold, which—by some miracle—is arriving on schedule for the second consecutive week. I haven’t spent much time on the yoga mat recently, so I certainly am in need of some yin energy. (If that means nothing to you, catch up on the first post to get the lowdown).

Without much further ado, let’s dive in.

finding an edge

Some deep-seated, childlike competitiveness kicks in when I spot an empty front seat on the top deck of a bus. I sprint up the stairs to claim it for myself. Last night, crossing Tower Bridge from that vantage point never gets old, even for a born-and-bred Londoner. (And far less stressful than walking across it, dodging tourists who stop every two steps for a photo.) Now that I live in such a bus-busy part of town, I’m finally piecing London together in a way I never did before. Roads I usually see from eye level, or that I pop up onto via the Tube’s tunnelled rabbit holes, are connecting in my geographically challenged mind, thanks to the top deck’s panoramic view.

Am I too old to find so much joy in playing bus driver? I read or heard somewhere (the source escapes me), “You can either play it as the youth of old age, or the old age of youth.” A philosophy for someone in their middling years, possibly one I’m too young to be pondering just yet, but either way, it suggests an edge that can be cut in one of two ways, depending how you choose to look at it.

Old enough to know that joy doesn’t just happen; you have to go out and find it. Young enough to still give chase.

seeking stillness

It’s been a month of exhibitions! I found a meditative moment last weekend in Soil: The World At Our Feet at Somerset House. Standing among supersized projections of the activity that happens in the undergrowth, bathed in the ambient hum of an audio piece composed of electrical currents recorded from a peyote cactus. The specific sounds that had me entranced aren’t online, but to give you a sonic flavour...

taking time

It turns out that trying to post to a consistent weekly schedule is… ambitious. You’d think anyone could carve out time enough to write 500 words from 112 waking hours. It can’t be that hard, right? And yet, it’s always the first thing to slip when priorities start mounting. The bottom of the pile is littered with the things that ground us. They’re what we sacrifice for an extra half an hour in bed or the price for an evening spent socialising instead of introspecting (just me?).

Consistency comes with the pressure of hitting the same standard week in, week out, but that’s not the goal. Like we should treat our eyebrows—sisters, not twins—we’re not aiming for identical every time, just something that rhymes.

Where are you finding your edge / stillness / time at the moment? I’d love to know.