the long hold #4
short notes on edges, stillness, and time
Happy Friday Sunday pals,
Don’t worry, you’re not on the wrong day, I am. Although the Easter bank holiday weekend is enough to mess with any of our minds.
I told myself I could send one of these weekly digest posts every Friday, but after three successful attempts, Life inserted herself into my carefully formulated writing schedule, as Life is wont to do. For that, we both love and hate her.
For those who are new here — and there are a few of you! hello!! — the long hold is a shameless pilfering of the three core tenets of yin yoga (stillness, time, and finding an edge) that I use as a way to check in with myself. You can get the full lowdown here.
Nama-say no more, let’s tuck in.
finding an edge
In You’ve Got Mail, Meg Ryan’s character pens:
Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life - well, valuable, but small - and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around? I don't really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So good night, dear void.
I loved that sentiment. It’s something I’ve held onto and have brought into my own vocabulary — sending cosmic questions out into the void. Someone offered me one such cosmic question recently: How do scientists know the universe is expanding? Like, if they know the edge of the universe is getting farther away, does that mean they’ve found the edge of it?
It got me thinking about edges as a concept. Do we ever really reach the edge, or is the edge something we are ever only able to approach? Because once you cross it, it’s no longer an edge, really — like vessels with false bottoms, or trap doors.
Perhaps all edges, then, are false edges. We find them, but we only name them as edges once we’ve crossed them and look back, in which case they’re not really edges at all.
More like portals.
Or transition spaces.
My head hurts.
I don’t have an answer to offer at this moment in time, just throwing it out into the void.
seeking stillness
The bus was standing idle at the red light for quite some time. From my vantage point on the top deck (front seat, obviously), I could see a cluster of fixed-seating chairs arranged somewhat chaotically underneath a tree.
Their metal legs were melded into the floor. The intention is clearly to prevent theft while also inviting leisurely pondering, or perhaps to encourage chance social encounters between people who perch on them, seeking shade.
Except one of the chairs has started to be pushed out from the ground by the roots of the tree, forcing themselves upward through the concrete so that you sit on a slant.
It’s as if the tree is saying to the chair (or its human occupant), “You can sit here, but I was here first. And even if your back is towards me, you can’t ignore me.”
Nature 1 - 0 Mankind.
taking time
I can’t remember exactly when I started brewing my tea for 5 minutes. It might have been during lockdown — one of the few ways I felt I could control time during a period in which days, weeks and months had lost all meaning.
It was inspired (like most things are) by an episode of Inside the Factory, where the tea experts revealed that the optimum brewing time for the perfect cuppa is 5 minutes. You don’t need to tell me twice, Gregg.
This started as a means to maximise the taste of my tea, but quickly morphed into a kind of ritual.
That fragment of time became incredibly useful for marking a small window to do quick, menial tasks: wash the dishes at the sink, do a quick piece of phone admin, or — if I was feeling really radical — stand in silence with my thoughts.
I’m currently listening to the audiobook Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff, and in it, she appeals to the Greek concept of Kairos time. Kairos time is different to Kronos time, which follows the linear forward march of the clock. Kairos time, on the other hand, is about the ‘right time’ or the ‘opportune moment’, and is therefore entirely subjective.
A Kairos ritual, by extension, is a simple action that can quickly shift your mood, give a chance to check in with yourself, and break the capitalist spell of autopilot. It’s about temporarily removing yourself from the temporal world we all share, and reclaiming some of it for yourself. For one person, that might look like pacing around the room while doing some arm stretches. For another, taking their shoes off and standing barefoot in the grass for a moment.
I didn’t realise that with every 5-minute brewed cup of tea, I’d been doing it all along.
don’t hold back
What cosmic questions have been on your mind?
What’s your Kairos ritual?
I’d love to know!
Hasta la pasta,
Tea Time for me as well becomes my kairos ritual — there is a lot of waiting in Kronos time: waiting for the kettle to boil, waiting for the tea to steep, waiting for the tea to cool enough to be sipped. And all those waits give me back my mind (and time) and I think this is why it feels so much like a time slowing ritual. I can’t be hurried about it.