— Rick Rubin, The Creative Act

*Drawing the first irises of spring* | Derwent 4B wash pencil | © Laurie Doctor Sketchbook

“Impatience is an argument with reality. There are no shortcuts.” The shortcut is just a trick of the mind. It was Mark Twain who apologized for writing a long letter saying he didn’t have time to write a short one. It takes a long while to find the just the right words to make writing concise. We have ample reasons for argument with reality, and endless opportunities for impatience. How do I gain the clarity to decide what deserves my attention?

One complaint against “reality” is the absence of leisure. Where is the time free from demands, entertainment, news and distraction? Is something always on? The computer, the phone, the TV, those blue lights on the stove? We have a romantic notion of the past, when there was time for lying in the grass, swinging in a hammock, watching the clouds. The experience of the awesome immensity of a night sky filled with stars, or the surprise of a shooting star stirs the soul and settles the mind. Doubt, agitation, and anxiety cannot co-exist with gazing and immensity. The leisure of gazing — whether it is the night sky or the whole-hearted attention given to someone or something you draw — is in itself enough, and carries the joy of losing oneself in noticing, in beholding.

*Watercolor & ink* | © Laurie Doctor Sketchbook

If just gazing can be so fulfilling, why am I always striving to get things done?

So I think a lot about this idea of leisure, and how it is tied to the rare gift of being seized, of being fetchable.* Every maker, writer, dancer and musician is delighted when taken, seized, and apprehended by the muse, or falling in love, or birdsong. Our glance at the world shifts and becomes much more like the starry sky. Our small world of worries fades, and the part of us that remains intact, in spite of circumstance, shines.

But now, paradoxically, this leads me back to doing, to work — because I work a long while before being seized by the muse. When this happens leisure arises not from a hammock or starry sky, but out of the hard work and focus that precedes losing myself in my hands. Receptivity opens to forgetfulness about my “small self”— my personality, my duty, my fears — and makes me fetchable. Just thinking about how to make myself more fetchable makes me smile and remember this line of poetry:

"Today I am getting my instructions. I am getting them from something holy. A tall thing
in a nest. In a clearing.”
— Jorie Graham, (To) the Last (Be) Human

This is the feeling so often described as becoming an instrument, an open vessel for inspiration, filled with ability.

Perhaps leisure is not so much about doing nothing as it is having the attitude that for the moment there is nothing more to do besides this, what is in front of me.

*First iris* | © Laurie Doctor Sketchbook

This is not a fanciful notion aimed at a “leisure class,” or anyone who thinks they have “free time.” It is based on my experience of taking time when I didn’t have it, when I was a single-mother-artist supporting two children and a mortgage without a savings account. I discovered that when I took a responsibility-free morning, the afternoon seemed to expand for my work to get done, as if no time had vanished. I remember writing a poem back then that began here I am squandering time. The more I squander it, the more generous it becomes.

And now I discover that the word leisure comes from the Latin licere: permission, to be permitted. Oh, of course — so much permission is required to give oneself uninterrupted-irresponsible-time. A time when the world has no claim on you, a time for being “unproductive,” a time when I am listening (as Laurens Van der Post said) to the stars. A time for finding the courage to do what it is I am here to do. So much permission, practice and irrational boldness is required for blossoming into who you are.

This kind of permission aligns with closing the door to interruption and allowing time to write or paint or muse… or time in the woods listening, and searching for birds. I just got to do this with my son who came to visit for the weekend. He is an avid birdwatcher armed with a telephoto lens. We got to see some rare birds, like the Henslow Sparrow, and walk in the rain listening to birdsong.

*Some of the birds we saw this weekend |* (From left to right) Scarlet Tanager, Common Yellowthroat, Henslow Sparrow and Summer Tanager | Photos © Garrison Doctor

Leisure is being still, listening, and letting something else direct our world for awhile. I am committed to uninterrupted time and space for grace, for leisure — at home and in the classroom. This is what brings me back here; the longing to affirm the presence of infinite fullness waiting for us to be present.

At home the mornings are the best for me to practice stillness. Time set aside to meditate and read Christian Wiman or Gregory Orr or Sharon Olds. Time to look out my window. Here I can remember the part of me that has faith in the something else that keeps this ball of dirt spinning on its axis around a giant ball of fire. The part of me that remembers the call to do this work. Just this morning, sitting here by my window, I got reminded by John O’Donahue: Let the soul find you and care for you. When your soul awakens your destiny becomes urgent with creativity.

When I am not feeling urgent with creativity, I am searching for it. Beginning the day with an awareness of immensity, and the vast improbable-ness of being given this life, charges the day. I am fetchable.

How do you make yourself fetchable? I’d love to hear from you.

* From Joan Sunderland’s book Through Forest of Every Color | Awakening Through Koan