On Drifting

It has been a while since I’ve written - here, or anywhere. Though writing itself is not something I’m always compelled to do, it is one of many tasks I have been deeply reluctant to engage in lately, and this reluctance has been a bit of a mystery to me. 

I am the kind of person who makes to-do lists and then sets about checking those items off - not always with militaristic punctuality, but with faithful determination. For months I have been steadfast about routines, chores, and the necessities of life, but I have been unable (unwilling?) to wrap my mind around more nebulous intentions - this blog being just one. 

I’ve had to explore my own reluctance to engage in this way. As someone who usually exists so comfortably in the abstract, finding myself struggling to access this space has been unsettling to say the least. I have alternately felt lazy, unproductive, stymied, and barren. But within this bare, fallow state I have also begun to realize that this is, perhaps, how it should be. 

The earth around us (here in the northern hemisphere) is itself barren, fallow, seemingly unproductive. The daylight is waxing but the nights are still long. Crocuses are emerging but the soil is still too cold and unwilling for most growth. We are restlessly approaching the spring… but we’re not there yet. We have “started to start,” but we haven’t started.

In learning more about this Imbolc season we’re in, these weeks of late winter, I was struck by this concept of “drifting” that Meagan Angus has returned to over and over in her talks. We are truly in between, drifting within, or outside of, time - not only metaphorically, but also in a literal sense: the many calendars by which our ancestors and present folk have kept/keep time do not perfectly align (with each other or with the seasons), so there is periodically a timeless drifting until our calendars and the world itself realign.

Drifting… that word resounds in me like a struck bell. Not lost, but wandering, floating, carried along, subject to the the forces of wind and wave and circumstance but not overwhelmed by them. Never before had I considered this to be a potentially positive, even beneficial state. I associated this aimlessness with pointlessness, the passive movement with lack of determination, and this suspension with apathy. 

But dreaming is a drifting, too. Sleep is essentially an in-between state that is so vital and rich with purpose that we cannot survive without it for even a short period of time. As poet David Whyte so poignantly observes in his vital book, Consolations:

“We are rested when we are a living exchange between what lies inside and what lies outside, when we are an intriguing conversation between the potential that lies in our imagination and the possibilities for making that internal image real in the world… To rest is not self-indulgent; to rest is to prepare to give the best of ourselves, and to perhaps, most importantly, arrive at a place where we are able to understand what we have already been given.”

Between the full stop of the Winter Equinox and the quickening of Spring, we are suspended. This is a time for introspection, for integration of lessons from the deep work we’ve done during the winter, and for dreaming of what will come next. We are living in the liminal space between dark and light, death and birth, and we are invited to revel and doze in the interface between wisdom and curiosity. 

So I’m trying to embrace, if not fully understand, this weird and vast season of drift. I’m recognizing that yes, something is happening, but it isn’t quite here yet - and that’s good, because there is still time to get ready. Something is growing inside of us, but the Quickening has not yet occurred. We are about to launch into the active, fertile warmth of the spring, but we are still tucked below the ground.

Much work has been done during the dark of winter. There is much work to be done. But for now, there is rest and drift and dream, and that is a wild calling of its own.

Works Cited:

Angus, Meagan. “Imbolc ⋆ Meagan Angus.” Meagan Angus, 25 Jan. 2023, www.meaganangus.com/imbolc/.

Whyte, David. Consolations : The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. 2015. Revised ed., S.L., Canongate Books Ltd, 2019, p. 200.