The Entry Point
“Wherever you are is the entry point.” – Kabir
It’s always a challenge after an absence from my writing practice to find the entry point. What inspiration or muse is big enough to overcome the blank page? What story idea or poem is good enough to lead with? Are explanations, back stories, excuses, or apologies needed to acknowledge the period of silence?
All of that runs through my mind, but Julia Cameron says no—just write from where you are, emotionally, physically, psychologically. Just put a word here. And another one here. Keep going.
Today is Labor Day, which anymore is just another day to get work done, usually the unpaid kind. My wife has spent the day doing yard work and bathing our unruly herd of dogs. I have packaged up school supplies for six grandkids, started laundry, read Tarot cards, and done other puttering around the house.
Fall is making itself known: in the neighbor’s tree that displays color earlier than the rest of the neighborhood, in the overcast haze with a hint of chill in the mornings and evenings, in the faint smell of wildfire smoke in the air, common in the west this time of year, and in the mountain of aforementioned school supplies on my dining room table. The flower baskets and planters are all mature and overflowing with blooms; they have achieved the size, depth, and color I dreamed for them in Spring, just in time to be enjoyed for a moment or two before frost comes and steals them away.
Most people see Spring as the time of promise and new beginnings. I see it as a time for muddy paws, and the sad departure of snow and sweater weather. For me, Labor Day is not just a Monday reprieve granting a three-day weekend; it’s more of an entry point to the year than January 1st. September marks the season of possibility. It’s a holdover from my own school days of course, but it’s also from the decades during which I put children on school busses with brand new crayons and spit-shined optimism that I hoped would feel louder and bigger than my apprehensions and distrust of authority. It’s the unofficial end of summer; time for unpacking wool, tweed, and tall boots (even if it’s ninety degrees in the shade), assembling new notebooks, pens, and making promises to stay on task this year. “No really, I mean it this time.”
This year, Labor Day falls on the new moon in Virgo; it just feels like the perfect day for a fresh new start. One that doesn’t start with apologies for not being perfect in the weeks and months (and years) preceding. Right here: this is the entry point. Where it goes beyond this doorway is unknown, and ultimately, unimportant. Walking through it is all that matters.
My wife and I married in September nine years ago. I don’t remember specifically choosing the date as a nod to the time of year I always associated with potential and new beginnings. I think we just decided to get married because it was finally legal for us to do so, and our venue’s availability probably had more to do with the date than anything else. But there are no mistakes. The day was warm, the night was cool, the sun was bright, the stars were too. We’d already been together for nearly five years, but there we were, embarking on something new. Now that I look back over my career, nearly all of my jobs started in September as well. If the job itself didn’t start then, the decision to pursue it did. Call it a habit, a worldview, a mindset, or a matter of perspective, but it’s hard to overcome decades of conditioning. September is just my time to begin, or begin again.
This year, the beginning is ambitious but personal. Massive but built of small pieces. It’s poetic but practical. There’s an element of “No, really. I mean it this time,” but there’s a strong undercurrent of allowing myself the grace to be as flawed and human as I surely am. I might be more optimistic today than I ever have been. When I got school supplies for the grandkids, I was sure to order a few extra pens, pencils, and watercolors for myself too. There’s nothing like embarking on an exciting journey, making a fresh start, dreaming a new dream, with nothing but an expansive and unlimited array of potential spread out before you. From this vantage point, every mountain before me looks like an easily hopped molehill; nothing looks insurmountable. There will be days ahead that are hard, but I won’t get to them without going through this one first. It all starts with this word, and then with this one right here.
You make good points. I agree, you don't know what you have until you put it on the page. Anything else is just speculation.
“Back to school. Back to you.” Decades of conditioning, for sure! Welcome back…