At a Time, and Slowly
Korean Zen master Seung Sahn told his students,
“When reading, only read. When eating, only eat. When thinking, only think.”1
Do one thing, at a time, and slowly. When typing, only type. When bathing, only bathe. When bedding, only bed. When listening, only listen. When playing, only play.
Earlier this year, I tumbled across Texas to Abiquiu, New Mexico, to find space between me and everything else, including my phone. I did my best to do one thing at a time, and slowly, to carve intention into habit.
I sit in my hotel room where an adobe fireplace blazes onto this pen. Georgia O’Keeffe has an adobe fireplace in every room of her house. I wonder about the indigenous workers who renovated it for her. I wonder if the insertion of her whiteness and wealth into this quiet place made anyone’s life better or worse, or if it even mattered. I hear old cottonwoods — they speak in dried rustles to the birds. This ecosystem sings the same song as my home in Austin, but with less pollen and larger skies.
When I wrote, I wrote. When I ate, I ate. When I sat, I sat. When I drove, I drove. As I did a ball of twisted magma uncoiled itself and slipped out between my shoulder blades.
What had been important became inconsequential. What was urgent, negotiable. What was big, small.
On the second day, I toured Ms. O’Keeffe’s home. Our tour guide was a retired art history professor named Frank who had moved to Abiquiu a few years ago. I asked him why here, and he said,
“Here I know I’m not the center of the universe.”
I felt a shake of recognition. I’d spent the morning on Chimney Rock where everything is so wide, so open, so big no matter how big you make yourself, it will never be too big for that place. The desert canyon can hold it all, whatever you have to bring.
At one point on the tour, Frank stopped in front of a small painting on a large wall. He said, “I hate this painting here.” I thought he meant he didn’t like the painting itself, but he went on, “Ms. O’Keeffe would NEVER have put so small a painting on so large a wall!”
And he’s right. In a big space, you get to paint a big canvas.
My grandpa was a painter. His art, like his life, was not refined, but he understood composition, contrast, color, and movement. He wasn’t educated or wealthy. He had the gnarled hands of a carpenter, a farmer, a rancher—not the delicate hands of a painter. But like O’Keeffe, he made art where he could, in determination to splash aliveness onto the world. And like Frank—he intended to live in a place big enough to hold it all, in a way, and with the people big enough to bring him alive.
So do I.