THE LIFE OF INANIMATE OBJECTS<\/p>\n
When the Covid pandemic struck and we were directed to\u00a0shelter in place, after the initial shock wore off and I accepted the fact that\u00a0I was going to be alone in my house for an extended period of time, I started\u00a0organizing piles of unconsciousness that were lying around. I rummaged in the\u00a0back of closets. I foraged the junk drawer in the kitchen, the drawers in my\u00a0bedroom dresser and the shelves in the linen closet. I\u2019ve always been a champ\u00a0at letting go of things, it felt good to cull the objects that were collecting\u00a0dust and taking up space, but I was stunned to have forgotten that some of them
were even there.<\/p>\n
I sorted out the things I wanted to keep and put the\u00a0giveaways in brown paper bags, when I found three old pairs of pink pointe
shoes from my past life as a ballerina, hiding behind a set of white sheets.\u00a0The shoes seemed to glow and when I picked up one of them and caressed the\u00a0satin ribbons, I felt movement in my hands. It was as if they were alive with\u00a0memories of where they had been. My feet tingled when I remembered how it had\u00a0felt to slide them into the narrow openings and crisscross the ribbons around\u00a0my ankles. I would tie them snugly into a knot, tuck in the loose ends and\u00a0crush the sticky rocks in the rosin box with the toes and soles of the shoes so\u00a0I wouldn’t slip and fall in the rehearsal studio or onstage.<\/p>\n
Have you ever touched an inanimate object that triggered a\u00a0vivid memory of an event, a person or a place? Have you stopped to listen to\u00a0the flow of a river? The splash of a waterfall or the breaking of the tides?\u00a0The crackle of a fire, the movement of trees limbs in a breeze or the creaking\u00a0of your house settling into the earth? This is what Native Americans call\u00a0\u201canimism,\u201d the ancient cultural doctrine that objects, places and natural\u00a0phenomena possess souls and a spiritual essence all their own, a life force\u00a0that never dies.<\/p>\n
In the mid-sixties when I was experimenting with
psychedelics and altered states of consciousness, I stared at a large rock\u00a0beside a tide pool one day and I was sure that I could see the atoms moving. I\u00a0had the same sensation when I studied my reflection in a mirror. For me, this\u00a0was not an optical illusion. Rather, it was evidence that nothing is solid.\u00a0Everything is vibrating, alive and in motion, whether we can see it or not. And\u00a0everything has a story. One of my diva ghostwriting clients, Grace Slick, for\u00a0whom I wrote a memoir back in 1999, told me that years ago, she took some magic\u00a0mushrooms, became attached to a large Russet potato, and carried it with her\u00a0all night. \u201cI damned near introduced it,\u201d she said. Her humor was always wry\u00a0and outrageous, but it had felt to her like that potato was alive. Maybe it\u00a0was.<\/p>\n
Back to the year 2020, as I held those pointe shoes, closed\u00a0my eyes and recalled the smell of makeup in the dressing room. Of pancake
foundation, Johnson & Johnson\u2019s eyelash glue and cold cream. I went over to\u00a0my computer to write about it and put my hands on the keyboard. That\u2019s another\u00a0object that seems to possess a life if its own, that speaks to me in clicks and\u00a0whooshes. When my fingers flit across the letters, it feels like I\u2019m lightly\u00a0resting them on the planchette of a Ouija board and watching it slide along all\u00a0by itself.<\/p>\n
When I was through writing that day, I draped the pointe\u00a0shoes over some very large crystals in my living room and I walked around the
house, noticing various objects that I had forgotten about: an old photograph,\u00a0a favorite tourmaline necklace, a paperweight of the World Trade Center before\u00a0the bombing. They all triggered memories. Just like we each have our own\u00a0individual stories, so do the inanimate objects in our homes \u2013 which\u00a0counteracts the very idea that they are inanimate.<\/p>\n
Imagine an Alice in Wonderland planet where vials of liquid,\u00a0playing cards and a Cheshire cat\u2019s smile are alive, communicating, each in its\u00a0own way, showing us a magical world. I have a sculptor friend who told me that\u00a0after he shapes the clay for many days, there comes a moment when he arrives at\u00a0his studio and breathes life into the sculpture. I have that same sensation\u00a0when I edit my writing. I read it over again and again, making small changes, replacing words, rewriting paragraphs, until one day, the story takes on a life
of its own and it begins writing itself. I feel like a bystander and a channel,\u00a0watching my hands move, allowing the words to come through me and onto the\u00a0page. In the movie, \u201cAmadeus,\u201d Mozart famously said that he hadn\u2019t written the\u00a0score of a particular symphony yet but it was complete in his mind and all he\u00a0had to do was take dictation.<\/p>\n
When I\u2019m lucky enough to find my muse and get into the flow\u00a0of writing, I let my mind relax and the words, unremarkable on their own, blend\u00a0together and take on deep meaning. I call that being in \u201cthe zone,\u201d a timeless\u00a0place without boundaries where I feel totally and undeniably myself. Hopefully,\u00a0you have a place like that where you rise above the sense of yourself and key\u00a0into a creative flow. If you don\u2019t, start looking around your house. The zone\u00a0might be a place. Or an article of clothing. Singing. Reading. Dancing.\u00a0Painting. Story telling. Or it might be triggered by a desire to express
yourself in some way.<\/p>\n
In the Native American culture, everything has a\u00a0relationship with everything else and nothing is lifeless. It\u2019s all alive. They\u00a0have sacred objects like sage and eagle feathers that they use in rituals to
move energy, and they see no separation between the physical and spiritual\u00a0worlds as one spills into the other. They see dreams as extensions of reality\u00a0and they view enlightenment as waking up from a dream. However you see the\u00a0world, whatever you consider sacred, when we regard objects with the same kind\u00a0of respect that we treat human beings, when we listen to what they have to tell\u00a0us, everything becomes sacred and all of life has something to teach us.<\/p>\n
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THE LIFE OF INANIMATE OBJECTS When the Covid pandemic struck and we were directed to\u00a0shelter in place, after the initial shock wore off and I accepted the fact that\u00a0I was going to be alone in my house for an extended period of time, I started\u00a0organizing piles of unconsciousness that were lying around. I rummaged in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2165,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164\/revisions\/2165"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}