the glitter jar

1.

Through most of June, I felt as though electricity were running through my veins with a charge that sometimes woke me in the early morning. I feared that my heart might gallop away or even that my entire body might do so, leaving the rest of me behind. As for the rest of me—my thoughts—they meandered in and out of a fog.

And then one day at the end of the month I noticed that what had felt like a long, slow-rolling panic attack had mostly subsided. It’s not gone, but less intense now, less worrisome. I still feel it when I meditate or am just sitting still. Maybe it’s just the feeling of being alive.

2.

Glitter jars are used to teach children to meditate. They are like snow globes: shake one up and watch the glitter shimmer, swirl, and gradually settle to the bottom of the jar. And as with the glitter, so with the mind. Eventually, the mind settles.

That’s the idea, anyway. But in truth, sometimes the mind just swirls and swirls and swirls through an entire meditation period and beyond. And these days, too, my body feels like a glitter jar that never settles—shimmering, shimmering, shimmering. Shimmering while I write. Waking me early in the morning to shimmer.

The words I am choosing make the experience sound glorious or fun, but actually it is terrifying. I am my own whirlwind. What if I never settle down?

3.

And now I am going to contradict myself.

Earlier this year I wrote about not needing my inner turmoil to settle before I begin to write because I find the necessary equanimity in the process of writing itself. What I wrote then remains true.

But what is also true is that writing can shake up the snow globe of my everyday life. Rather than help me settle, it can stir up the whirlwind. Of course it can! Writing requires a kind of attention and curiousity that inevitably leads to trouble. To observe the particle is to change its momentum. But it’s awfully hard to write in the middle of a whirlwind, even one that was stirred up by the effort to write.

4.

Yes, this essay is yet another tiresome essay about writing.

But of course when I am writing about writing, I am also writing about how to live. How to live with the past, how to face the future. How to just be here, right now. How people live their lives day after day without drawing anything or writing anything down—this I will never understand.

5.

I’m not even trying to present an argument here. I’m not capable of doing so right now. The most I can do is put some sentences together in a few numbered sections. The numbers are like the jar that holds the glitter.

My heart isn’t actually going to run away from me. I can hold the glitter, too.

I had planned to post on Tuesdays through June and July but instead got lost in the whirlwind. I’m using the Five Things essay structure (thanks, Summer Brennan!) to get back into it. Until next time, stay cool, and take care!! xox