There’s a way to begin that starts with a single word and an honest admission, the finished picture I had in mind before the work even began,
There is a way of beginning that asks me to stay present, rather than supervising it from a distance to make sure it arrives where I already decided it was supposed to go,
What would I actually make this week if I started with only the first true thing, instead of from the outcome I have already decided I am building toward,
There’s a way of beginning that I’ve been calling reckless—a kind of trust I haven’t been willing to extend to myself or to the work that’s trying to emerge through me…
The accidental thing I almost missed, and I had to choose between the plan and the discovery and I chose the plan,
The accidental thing I almost missed, but I corrected the error before I stopped to ask if the error possessed knowledge that the original intention did not,
How many times have I edited out the most alive thing in the room, and didn’t match the tone of the version of myself I was trying to present on that particular day,
The accidental thing I almost missed, I now carry into every room where I am making something — not what did I plan but what is actually happening here that I did not expect...
I’ve been so focused to what I intended, that I was busy confirming that what was happening was still on course for where I needed it to land,
I’ve been so focused to what I intended, that I treated it as interference rather than as the work trying to exceed the limits I had set for it,
Is what I am most afraid of in the uncontrolled moment of making the genuine possibility of failure or the genuine possibility that what arrives might be better than what I planned,
I’ve been so focused to what I intended, that I had and arrived perfectly empty of the surprise that would have made them actually worth finishing...
There is still space for me to make room for the honest assessment, that it finds and does not rush past the inconvenient places in the interest of feeling better faster,
There is still space for me to make room for the me who handled what I thought would break me, instead of filing her away as an exception that does not count toward the whole,
What is the one thing I have been planning so tightly, around the unexpected thing that might be the whole reason I started in the first place,
There is still space for me to make room, and the most honest thing I have done in a long time — to say I do not yet know what this is becoming and I am still staying anyway...
Beginning without destination is not being lost,
I corrected the error before asking what it knew,
Finished things that fulfilled every expectation perfectly empty,
The unplanned arrival trying to exceed my limits,
Staying without knowing what this is becoming...
