Simply Sunday - A little library, chairs, & slivers of inspiration for March 26

A little free library, a porch full of chairs, an invitation to join me in a group read-along, and more.

Happy Sunday everyone! I appreciate you inviting me into your space to share a cup of something and a bit of casual creative talk and philosophy. Thank you for pulling up a chair for me.

I am looking at Sundays as tiny slivers or slices or random things, each one might seem small alone, but they make (I hope) an intriguing handful of findings and treasures when bundled together.

This Sunday:

• A little free library and a porch full of chairs

• An invitation to read Write for Life with me

• A rabbit hole rabbit hole

• Illustrate Your Week prompts for Week 13

A Little Free Library and a Porch Full of Chairs

Episode 485 of the podcast contains some talk about intentional wandering and the magic that can open up. This week, I parked one day to wait and realized I was near the little free library I had noticed last year and talked about in Episode 484. It’s memorable because it looks just like the house to which it belongs. It’s like the American Girl Doll approach to a free library… a mini-house version of the house.

I had only seen it from a distance last summer, so when I saw I was close, I decided I needed to get a photo. I worked for a while from the car and then headed out for a quick walk up and down the street. Stopping in front of the library, it wasn’t lost on me that it was the first time I’ve ever opened one. I unlatched the hook and peered inside at the stack of paperbacks, carefully re-latched it, and snapped a photo. (The moment reminded me so strongly of finding the “fairy door” in Golden Gate Park during my 50 Before 50 year.)

As with many things, seeing this “dollhouse” free library up close removed “some” of the whimsy. But it’s still a really cool thing. While I didn’t take a photo of the house itself, it looks so much like the small version. (The library is just missing itself, the library, next to the garage. That would have been amazingly self-reflective.)

I kept walking. It was an odd day in that it was 49 degrees (which is chilly for here), but the sun was bright, and so it felt much, much warmer. I would have told you it was 60 or even 65 if asked. I walked up and down the street, open to what was around me, enjoying the bit of breeze, looking at things blooming in small patches here and there.

My most charming discovery was a small porch full of chairs. As I approached the house, I could see two chairs, side by side, and I smiled, thinking it really special that people valued the ability to sit on the porch enough to have these two chairs. As I drew up parallel to the porch, I saw there was another chair facing them. These beautiful Victorian row houses often are tall and narrow, so the porch is relatively small, but there were three chairs. Completely charming.

This quote comes to mind:

“I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.” ~Henry David Thoreau

You don’t need a dozen. You might only need two. It’s a quote that has made its way into my journal before, but it might show up again this week… along with a chair.

Read Write for Life with Me

I posted earlier this week about my decision to read Julia Cameron’s Write for Life. After what feels like a lifetime of deliberately not reading Cameron, I feel like this is exactly the right moment. So this is the time, and this is the book. I am hoping a few of you might join me in reading the book, working through the six weeks, and sharing how the process goes for you. (If you haven’t read The Artist’s Way, even better. But even if you’ve already read it, the writers among us may still enjoy this focused group read.)

This will probably unfold here on the substack with weekly posts as I work through the book and open discussion questions. So if you’re interested, comment on that post and let me know. I want to go ahead and get started with my reading, but I want to make space for people who want to read along. You don’t have to commit to much, really…. other than getting or checking out a copy of the book and deciding you want to give it a go.

(Full disclosure: I already am doing something along the lines of morning pages, and I’ve talked about the habit stack I’ve put in place (which I am loving), but I want to read the book in full and talk about this process with you.)

Feeling Seen - Tracking the Rabbit Hole

Last Sunday involved a lot of rabbit hole talk, which sent me looking into rabbit holes and thinking about how to visualize peering into a rabbit hole. In that process, I found this wonderful article: The Rabbit-Hole Rabbit Hole (by Kathryn Schulz, The New Yorker, 2015). I loved it. I found it because I was doing exactly what the author was doing in writing this article, which was wonderful. She asks: “How did ‘rabbit hole,’ which started its figurative life as a conduit to a fantastical land, evolve into a metaphor for extreme distraction?”

She writes:

“These days….when we say that we fell down the rabbit hole, we seldom mean that we wound up somewhere psychedelically strange. We mean that we got interested in something to the point of distraction—usually by accident, and usually to a degree that the subject in question might not seem to merit.”

She gives three examples of how rabbit hole thinking spirals. I’ve done them all, including the flannel shirt one (with flannel shirts and with a variety of x things standing in). This example so beautifully summarizes and tracks the kind of leap-frog experience I associate with a rabbit hole:

“…you look up one thing, which leads to looking up something distantly related, which leads to looking up something even further afield, which—hey, cool Flickr set of Moroccan sheep. Thus have I have gone from trying to remember the name of a Salinger short story (“Last Day of the Last Furlough”) to looking up the etymology of “furlough” (Dutch) to wondering whether it had any relationship to “furlong” (no) to jogging my memory about the exact distance represented by that unit of measure (an eighth of a mile), to watching approximately every major horse race since the development of the movie camera.”

I felt so very seen. Leap frog and rabbit hole thinking are very much a part of how I talk, write, and think.

This doesn’t mean that everyone now needs to start talking about rabbit holes. It was a beautiful moment and a bit of word fun. Ultimately, the article reminds us that the Internet makes this possible in ways it might never have been before. Those of us who fall into these patterns (and down these holes) are not alone.

You may want to read the article to learn more about literal rabbit holes, which she learned about while researching rabbit holes, both real and as a figure of speech. In the end, she writes:

“The common charge against our online habits is that they are shallow; but, in keeping with the metaphor, rabbit holes deepen our world. They remind us of the sheer abundance of stuff available to think about, the range of things in which it is possible to grow interested. Better still, they present knowledge as pleasure.”

Oops! I did it again. Feeling so happy to have stumbled over this article and now reread it in preparation for this newsletter, I clicked to learn more about the author and landed on her book at Amazon. That led me to discover that she’s not only a fantastic tracker of rabbit holes but a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Now I’m scratching my head and looping back around to the beginning, as I traipse off down another corridor sparked, initially, by spending too much time researching colors of paint.

This is a book I will have to read: Lost & Found: A Memoir.

From the publisher notes: “On average, we each lose two hundred thousand objects over our lifetime, and Schulz brilliantly illuminates the relationship between those everyday losses and our most devastating ones. Likewise, she explores the importance of seeking, whether for ancient ruins or new ideas, friends, faith, meaning, or love.”

Definitely, this is going on my list.

(My “want to read” list is always growing. Disenchanted with the sf/fantasy book I was listening to this week, I started listening again last night to Katherine May’s Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. I want to read all of her books, but I listened to half of Wintering a year or so ago and have wanted to go back and read or listen to the whole thing. Since I first checked out Wintering, she published The Electricity of Every Living Thing: A Woman’s Walk In The Wild To Find Her Way Home and then, her newest one, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age.)

(Kathryn Schulz won the Pulitzer Prize for a piece in 2015 called “The Really Big One” (about the seismic reality of living in the Northwest.) (Note: The New Yorker has a paywall after a few articles. Don’t click through unless you really want to read this. Between the two, read the rabbit hole one.)

Following along? Hearing it in your head? “Oops, I did it again / I played with your heart, got lost in the game.” (Brittney Spears, of course, 2000)

Illustrate Your Week

The prompts for Week 13 are posted.

The Missing Fifth

There is a new episode of the podcast (Episode 485), and I had hoped to have it live in time to link to it from here. It will be live within the next day and connects to some of the things I’ve mentioned today.

Since I am choosing to go and finish my #illustrateyourweek spread (which still needs a weekly self-portrait fit into the last remaining blank space) and then read a bit, I won’t be able to post the episode before this newsletter reaches you. (I am trying to stick with a very early Sunday morning schedule so that the #illustrateyourweek prompts go out early.)

So, instead, I’ll mention an old show. I randomly picked this title from the list. You can listen at YouTube or from your podcast player. Episode 436: Olive Jars (2021). If you are new to the Creativity Matters Podcast, this one might be new to you. I did finally get rid of the jars a few months ago. It was very hard. But it was time.

Thank you for sharing this space with me today. I hope you left with something inspiring or thought-provoking as you move throughout your day.

If you know someone who would enjoy reading Illustrated Life, I hope you’ll share.

If you particularly enjoy something, please do leave a comment and let me know.

Amy

(Note: Amazon links are affiliate links that help support the podcast and the writing here at Illustrated Life. I use the library when possible, and I always encourage you to do the same.)